January 20, 2009 · 4:07 pm
↓ Jump to Comments

White House 2.0

White House 2.0

Change has come to the White House.

Please just don’t start calling it “America’s New Government”… because that would be completely retarded.

About these ads

15 Comments

Filed under Barack Obama, US Politics

Tagged as

15 Responses to White House 2.0

  1. counter-coulter
    January 20, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    Judging by the way that Obama’s run his campaign, his transition and his statements about the future of the White House and DC; I believe that it will become a much more open and accessible government. Quite a refreshing change of pace from the bunker mentality of its previous inhabitant.

  2. redtory
    January 20, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    Last Sunday on FNS, Britt Hume said something to the effect that the Inauguration almost seemed like an interruption in what was already an operating presidency. Or something to that effect. Aside from a few minor glitches, the transition was quite impressive. And obviously their “new media” group has been doing a lot behind the scenes in the last couple of months in addition to the “Change.gov” site (which was also a pretty slick affair). Amazing that this revamped WH site is up and running on day one.

  3. counter-coulter
    January 20, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    …what was already an operating presidency.

    Not much choice in the matter for Obama considering Bush checked-out some time back in early 2008. I believe that Bush should be inducted in to the short-timers hall of fame. Considering that he couldn’t be bothered to leave his Crawford ranch when the Gaza fighting started.

  4. redtory
    January 20, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    Never lost any sleep or a day of vacation while acting as president, that’s for sure. And I use the word “acting” advisedly.

  5. Sebastian Ronin
    January 20, 2009 at 10:10 pm

    Jenna Orkin over at Mike Ruppert’s blog has hit the nail on the head with a label for the “new” administration: Obamalot. The shining knight and his gang of Clintonite re-treads (who opened the gates for the bankster pillage) will be brought to their knees. I doubt if the pink lenses will last six months, certainly not a year.

  6. RuralSandi
    January 21, 2009 at 4:59 am

    Clinton re-treads – can’t be so bad. The Clinton years were successful (other than the sex scandals) and they have absolutely no time in the current situation for upstarts.

    So they’ve lost the Decider and now have someone who may actually make a good decision.

  7. counter-coulter
    January 21, 2009 at 7:29 am

    RuralSandi

    Clinton re-treads – can’t be so bad. The Clinton years were successful (other than the sex scandals) and they have absolutely no time in the current situation for upstarts.

    Hear! Hear! If having some within the administration that were part of one of the most prosperous administrations we’ve seen, so much the better. Although, to the best of my knowledge, it was only a sex scandal, singular — and it was complete bullshit through and through.

  8. CWTF
    January 21, 2009 at 7:32 am

    The Clinton years were successful
    There is much debate about that if we look at the economic picture.
    Public finances were healthy but the disparity between rich and poor augmented.
    We can also see some policies that may have contributed to this global meltdown.

  9. oemissions
    January 21, 2009 at 8:25 am

    Maybe the Cons our preparing the ground for the Coalition takeover!

  10. toujoursdan
    January 21, 2009 at 8:26 am

    I am loving the LGBT section Civil Rights page and have some hope that he won’t throw gay Americans under the bus like Clinton did. I think American society has changed enough so that won’t happen.

  11. redtory
    January 21, 2009 at 8:28 am

    Apparently they’re going to change the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the military. When asked on Change.gov site whether they would be, the answer that came back was one word: an unequivocal “Yes.”

  12. toujoursdan
    January 21, 2009 at 9:10 am

    I think the repeal of the hateful and unconstitutional Defence of Marriage Act, signed by Clinton, is a good change.

    Also, there is a message sent here. I know that in Canada most of the policies articulated in the Obama platform are already law, but Paul Martin couldn’t bring himself to utter the word “gay” during the marriage debate and Harper is as hostile as legally possible.

    It’s nice to see the pledge of support from the top.

  13. RuralSandi
    January 21, 2009 at 9:32 am

    You have to remember – Clinton times, even though not that long ago, were a little different. I think the don’t ask, don’t tell was a good starting point but it’s time to change it now.

    No president is perfect – and even Obama won’t be, but all in all, the Clinton years were good.

    The Americans just won’t let up on Clinton’s sex scandals, and yet the Kennedy family scandals make Clinton look like an amateur in that regard, are held in such high regard. Unbelievable.

  14. benalbanach
    January 21, 2009 at 10:40 am

    I’m a little surprised that the chosen title is “Canada’s New Government ” rather than the more edgy “Team Canada”.

  15. Scotian
    January 21, 2009 at 11:03 am

    A couple of points regarding Clinton and Don’t ask, don’t tell and DOMA. In the case of the former, Clinton wanted to go farther but got betrayed in Congress by his fellow Democrats, in particular Samm Nunn as I recall and had to backtrack, and even then the result was still an improvement over what existed before. As to DOMA, he hadn’t of signed it when he did there was a good chance the GOP and socons would have gotten something far more draconian in place, so for all its faults DOMA was still better than say a Constitutional amendment against gay marriage or some other broader and more restrictive legislation. Do I like or approve of either personally, no, but then I am hardly a disinterested person where the prejudice against gay people is concerned given my wife and I are both openly bi (which I might add means we have gotten crap/intolerance for it from both straight and gay people, the former for obvious reasons, the latter because we were supposedly sellouts, liars, afraid to admit being gay, etc) and have been since puberty. Did I think it was the best that could be done at the time, yes I did. Political compromise sucks at times, but that is the nature of the beast.

    We have to remember that anti-gay prejudice is much stronger in the US than it is (and had been for some time, although our own history wasn’t much better prior to the changes started in the 60s) in this country, in no small part because there is a much higher percentage of fundamentalist Christians in American society than there is in ours (if I remember the numbers correctly it is roughly 10% in this country 30% in the USA that believe the Bible is the literal word of God, that being the standard used to define fundamentalist Christian in that survey) and therefore the political compromises are going to be much more to the right/socially conservative than we would see in this country. It is also important to remember it was in the 90s that the socons really started to dictate GOP policy and the GOP power got stronger and stronger (and no, that was not really that much Clinton’s fault/responsibility despite the claims of many to the contrary, there were many other factors more responsible, Clinton just made a handy target but any Democratic President would have been smeared to the maximum extent possible, and until his affair was revealed in 1998 nothing stuck outside the GOPer circles and the affair really didn’t impact on his perception of being a good President as polls repeatedly showed throughout the farce that was the impeachment attempt) through the 90s culminating in the election of GWB as the GOP candidate for 2000.

    Clinton had his problems and failings as a politician and a progressive, but for the American context he was clearly progressive (if not as much as many might have preferred) and he did try to advance progressive policies as much as he could successfully manage despite a massive GOP opposition both in Congress and in the wider society (thanks to all those well funded GOP institutions releasing sham studies and false scandals of the Clintons, not to mention the multiple media mouthpieces they controlled and used to feed into the so called independent national media who I might add appeared to have their own issues with Clinton and approached their reporting of his WH accordingly). This includes on gay rights, and I have never agreed with the beating he has taken from some supporting gay rights regarding don’t as don’t tell and DOMA. Obama may be able to get more done for progressives, but if so that will be at least as much because the GOP have been discredited along with the socons within the party thanks to the tenure of GWB and with far less support from private institutions available in the 90s than because Obama is inherently more progressive than Clinton (something I have yet to be convinced of, I might add, his rhetoric has sounded it but it will be his actions that will define it for me not his words).

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s