Is BP Obama's new Max Baucus?

[radhika]

As we watch the Administration's response to the Gulf tragedy, it's deja-vu all over again. The Prez getting publicly jerked around and minimized by a player that hypothetically could be squashed and eliminated.

I recall Max Baucus - who insisted his Tribe of Six needed a free hand and more time. So Obama let Max drag HCR out for months, killing momentum and giving Dick Armey and Glenp Beck time to assemble the Town Hall Roadshow. Is BP Obama's New Baucus? A compromised and incompetent entity given all the time it needs to delay effective handling of a national crisis. On the other hand, maybe BP is Chuck Grassley, a saboteur. Or Olympia Snowe, just there killing time, to give lobbyists and lawyers more time.

Is BP the Big Banks and the Wall Street CEOs? Whoever is playing the villain, this storyline is tiresome and life-draining. It is not history, it is tragedy.

[polichick]

1. Hopefully Obama is getting it now, but there does seem to be a pattern...

...of trusting those least likely to be on his side.

imo some therapy could help him shake this self-destructive behavior - the sooner the better, since the stakes are so high for all of us.

[rudy23]

3. Maybe because he is not on the side we think he's on.

I think he's trusting exactly who he always wanted to.

[polichick]

4. That's my worry too - his cabinet choices strongly suggest he's not...

...on our side - or the side of the environment.

I hope and pray that the Gulf horror will wake him up in a huge way.

[radhika]

6. He can't escape his core dilemma....

He has to take a forceful, substantive stand against power elites he once believed were enchanted with him: Big Oil, Pharma, The Fed, Wall Street/Banks. He may just not have it in him. Assuming, down deep, he actually wants to save his Presidency and address the nations problems.

And his key staff (Rahm, Geitner, Summers, Salazar) are really working undercover for other employers.

[polichick]

7. Those choices suggest he's a con man - how could he not know...

...who they're working for?

[Nite Owl]

8. I think you got that right

people seem to think that he wants what we want but he doesn't at all.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

2. Jennifer Granholm (D-MI)

is going to take a hit. This will be coup'de'grace for the internal combustion engine -- after the bail out (of GM and Chrysler). The American manufacturers had futzed around with electrics, and the Big Oil players have obfuscated around with alternatives, and Shell and GM have sought to sink alternatives.This auto-industry "Chernobyl in the Gulf" is just what the US does not need.

[DefenseLawyer]

9. Sorry but that's loony

This is an environmental catastrophe and perhaps the coup de grace for unfettered deregulation but let's not get crazy. It won't bring an end to the internal combustion engine. It won't have any effect at all on the amount of oil we use in this country.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

11. I disagree

Electrics are making market penetration among the "early adopter" segment.
The venture capitalists who backed computers are now backing electrics.
The external costs of petroleum (I am thinking here of military involvement in the oil lands) are climbing.
As CAFE gets raised - we will burn less gasoline.

[DefenseLawyer]

12. Nothing you mentioned there has anything to do with the BP spill.

There is no question we are moving in that direction but to say that the direct result of the BP disaster will be the end of the internal combustion engine is just silly.

[scentopine]

5. I would have to agree with your assesment. -nt

[lib2DaBone]

10. K&R Max Baucus and Alan Simson are now in charge of Social Security Reform...

..They want to meet behind closed doors and Mr. Obama wants their decision to be "Binding" on Congress.

The Presidents Committee on Financial Reform is being consulted by The Pete Peterson Group, a Washington Looby firm of infamous Banksters and IMF thugs. They are coming for our Social Security... and they are GOING TO GET IT!
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http://www.thenation.com/article/looting-social-security

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire (Pete Peterson) spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.


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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-hickey/this-week-obamas-deficit_b_550807.html

It really does look bad - just as the White House is warning more progressive members of the Obama Commission to hold off on publicly talking about the commission's work - to allow the two co-chairs to attack senior organizations (as Simpson has, since being named) and to declare that Social Security and Medicare have to be cut (as Bowles recently did) and then to participate in this Peterson "summit" so obviously meant to push the White House in a conservative direction.