Obama: On The Progressive Front

While I applaud the in-depth work of analysis in BagNews, the idea that Obama has “been putting the heat on his largely Wall Street bred financial team” remains at the level of report. The dissonance you see between the caption “Obama leans in to listen” and the manufactured affect of a “tough guy” points us to the division between what Obama is saying after the debacle in Massachusetts, and what will actually happen.
To wit: the architects of Obama’s bungled handling of the economy, Sheila Bair and Timothy Geithner, remain secure in their positions, and now Ben Bernake is being made the sacrificial lamb for all of it. If Obama had any real leadership, he’d drop Geithner like a hot potato. I’m not a fan of Bernake, but of the three, Bair, Bernake, and Geithner, the Treasury Sec. is just too involved with the likes of AIG, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup. And now that the Supreme Court has decided to allow corruption to run rampant and the privatization of government to take us boldly into the next millennium,I doubt the incompetent lackey of the big banks is going anywhere.
Until I see Mr. Geithner gone, I will believe that the above image, like many about Obama, is a pose. And for the record, I voted for him.

OMFG is that a wax statue of William F’Buckley in the back to the right of the painting ? Kept around to remind us to be gracious and bi-partisan ?

What a Shakesperean sensibility you have: he is the first to publicly denounce the spectacle of politics (and way before photography or the net!) You are continuing a noble tradition and I thank you.
In Shakespeare, as in The BAG, looking is not the same as seeing. A good thing to remember in daily life too.

Bungled?
So, you buy the conventional wisdom, which emanates from the conservative dens along the Beltway.
The Supreme Court’s decision, by the way, is independent of anything Obama has or hasn’t done, and has the potential to cancel every progressive accomplishment, past and present. I’d concentrate on amending the constitution to deny corporations their personhood, rather than parroting rightwing talking points.

mcmama,
Rather than “bungled,” I could say fumbled, mishandled, mismanaged, clumsily handled, misguidedly dealt with, etc. And while some “conservative dens along the Beltway” may think the same, it is a little unfair of you to draw a line and cast me in with that lot when folks such as Bob Herbert, Cornell West, Tavis Smiley, and Robert Reich are also calling attention to Obama’s misstep with the economy.
Here’s West:
“It was clear when he chose his economic team, when he chose his foreign policy team, he was choosing, of course, the recycled neo-liberals and recycled neo-Clintonites that substantially you’re going to end up with these technocratic policies that consider poor people and working people as afterthoughts. Beginning with bankers, beginning with elites.
Symbolically, black man breaks through makes you want to break dance. So, yes, we have to be able to relate to both of these. So I resonate with your dear fiancee, because the hopes that were generated and the call for change, and then we end up with this recycled neo-liberalism. There’s no fundamental change at all.”
http://www.alternet.org/rights/144569/always_controversial_cornel_west_disses_obama,_survives_cancer_and_almost_spent_his_life_in_prison/?page=2
Herbert begins his latest article “How loud do the alarms have to get? There is an economic emergency in the country with millions upon millions of Americans riddled with fear and anxiety as they struggle with long-term joblessness, home foreclosures, personal bankruptcies and dwindling opportunities for themselves and their children.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/opinion/23herbert.html
And so forth.
It may be that you have been untouched by these circumstances, and that therefore any criticism of Mr. Obama’s economic policies immediately sounds like “parroting” the right. If you are, I’m happy, since you have been spared, and I don’t like the suffering of my fellow citizens, even those who charge I’m a traitorous parrot without knowing anything about me. But before you impugn anyone’s political stripes by a virtual tarring and feathering, do some research. Keeping Mr. Obama accountable, as we fought to keep Mr. Bush accountable, is vital to this democracy.

What is going on with Axelrod’s shirt? Is that some kind of medical apparatus going into his chest? He looks nearly comatose.