Tuesday, March 30, 2010

An Obama Disappointment

Okay, given that headline, I don't want anyone to take up the idea that I in any way regret my vote in 2008. Obama would have to do something egregiously evil, like stomping puppies on live television, before I would say that I shoulda voted for Grampaw McDrooly and Sister Lipstick Pitbull...

That said, his whole handling of the Faith Based Initiative process started by his Magic Christian predecessor has stuck in my craw for over a year now.

As Rev Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (full disclosure: I am a member of AU and chapter leader, and I sit on the National Advisory Council), wrote on the Huffington Post today:

When Obama was a candidate in the summer of 2008, he announced his vision for a dramatically revised "faith-based" initiative. And before Obama took office, Americans United and numerous other organizations presented his transition team with a concrete set of changes that could have solved all of the problems Bush had created.
Instead of moving on those changes, Obama created his Advisory Council, a body made up mostly of religious leaders. He tasked this entity with, among other things, looking at an array of legal and policy questions. In the meantime, the President did not change a single rule from the previous administration. This Bush-era regimen has since governed the distribution of billions in social service funding. In effect, the creation of the Council has had the effect, intended or otherwise, of perpetuating a deeply harmful status quo.
Read the whole thing. It's an eye-opening look into some of the workings of the Obama Administration and its approach to many of things that those of us out here in The Real World are truly concerned about.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I ask your pardon in advance.

Obama is f****** useless. This opinion from an unreformed Democrat who is still waiting for him to do something sensible and effective. All show and no substance so far.

I don't even want to start the list of stuff he has NOT done; I will just cover it with the general statement that corruption and incompetence don't seem to bother him all that much.

On that cheery, upbeat note I will shut up.

Jay in N.C.

Farnsworth68 said...

I know exactly what you are saying. I belong to the democratic wing of the Democratic Party, and the rumblings amongst many of my fellow progressives is that we are tired of being taken for granted.
But in the last analysis, they know that we'll get into line and vote for the Dem candidate because we don't have the barest chance at a system that will support more than two parties, and that we'd rather swallow poison than vote for a Republican.
I don't like it, but, in the words of Tony Soprano, "whaddaya gonna do?"

Anonymous said...

As per newscast on Wed. 3/31, now we will drill for oil off the Virginia coast. I'm aware that I'm not too sharp but couldn't we have gotten this same stuff from Romney (half-***** health insur. reform that funnels money to for-profit corps, channeling tax payer money to "faith based" groups and drilling for oil in U.S. waters)?

I've a bad feeling that any lending law and financial reform will be of similar pablum-like strength.

Does Halliburton still rule the Pentagon? Do banks and insurance companies still rule government? Does the Fed govt still have time to pursue Navy Seals for slapping an Iraqi prisoner? Does this administration continue to offer weak candidates for positions? Is Sotomayor still the pinnacle of legal acumen and integrity? If it isn't clear, let me be specific and say that Sotomayor struck me as a politically correct and weak candidate - sort of a Hispanic female Clarence Thomas type thing. I don't think she has the brain power, the drive, or the talent to fight Scalia and Alito. They won't give her anything in the way of equal opportunity or racial preference, so what's she going to do about that?

Obama isn't Bush and that is still good and that's still the best I can say for him.

I won't vote for him again. I did vote for him purely because of Supreme Court nominations. So much for that. I will write in Senator Jim Webb or maybe Bernie Sanders.

My disappointment in Obama and most of the democratic congress (both houses) is thick and heavy enough to carry in a bucket.

Jay in N.C.

Farnsworth68 said...

Yeah, tell me about it...
Much as I would like to think of this as a double-whammy political jiu-jitsu move, I just can't do it.
I'm perfectly happy to hear the Rethugs assailing it as more Obamanation socialism, but still...