The Obama ReBoot: America 44/111 RSS

This "tumble-log" is devoted to the election, transition, and administration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States and to commentaries on the enormous problems (financial, economic, environmental, global, etc.) facing him and our nation.

Begun on October 9, 2008--right after my wife and I completed a 4,000 mile road-trip across the prairie from Chicago to Utah and back, and less than a month before the elections--it presents an on-line scrapbook of news clips, quotations, videos, and photos adapted from news sources, as well as a few observations of my own.

At first, I was mostly interested in seeing whether or not Barack Obama would be elected as our 44th president. Then after he took office, the formulation of an economic recovery plan seemed the single most pressing concern. As time went on, the development of health insurance reform legislation seemed most important.

But beyond these specific questions and issues, I became increasingly concerned with the state of American democracy. The Republican Party, long the carrier of one of of our two great political traditions, seemed to be moving increasingly toward a radical right-wing populism and a new form of "know-nothingism."

Most of the items in this blog can be expanded by clicking on them. The "search" box will create a list every entries that include any particular term. The "archive" below provides a brief calendar of all the items, and thus serves as a kind of "table of contents."

Archive

Nov
9th
Mon
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Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it.
Nov
8th
Sun
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Let me tell you why Joe feels that way and I do [too],” Graham added. “I think the public option will destroy private health care.
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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) declared on Sunday that the health care legislation passed by the House of Representatives would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate, in part because his friend and colleague, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), wouldn’t go “anywhere near” it.
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Nov
7th
Sat
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The system is going back to the way it was with a vengeance, against a backdrop of despair. As the unemployment rate crossed the 10 percent threshold at week’s end, we learned that bankers were helping themselves not just to bonuses as large as those at the bubble’s peak but to early allotments of H1N1 vaccine.
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After months of debate, the House of Representatives passed historic health care reform legislation late on Saturday evening.
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