Charlie Rose

Matt2h  02/15/2010 01:53 AM Report

If Obama had personally campaigned for Jim Martin in the U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia, he might have retained a Senate supermajority. Franken and Martin would have made 60, and that was before the Specter switch. Everyone forgets this. No one found it important enough during the post-election euphoria. Jim Martin was one of the first casualties of Obama's naive political miscalculation. It happened on December 2, 2008 before Obama even took office.

Incidentally, if a book is ever written on the downfall of our democracy due to the degeneration of social discourse into hateful, vindictive nonsense, I think the title should be IN ALL CAPS.

charliesheep  01/29/2010 04:16 AM Report

TRUTH; IS A COMMODITY THATS TANGENTIAL,LIKE THE WEATHER-OR-HISTORY, IT WILL REPEAT CERTAIN FOOTPRINTS-BUT, UNLESS "YOU WERE THERE" AS IS OFTEN--NOT, A THIRD PARTY -RENDTION OF HERESAY--IS AT BEST; SHOOTING AT YOUR FEET--AND DOESNT REVISIT THE EVENT WITH OBJECTIFICATION--RATIONALES, ARE OPINIONS, WE'RE AWASH WITH THOSE THANK YOU ! CHARLIE, BUT REALITY IS WE MUST BOIL DOWN HARD INFO TO WHAT WEVE SEEN AND NOT HEARD--SOURCES ASIDE--THE BOOK SELLS TO RATIONAL FOLKS, I.E. BOOKCRAFTERS DOESNT IT ?

REMant  01/26/2010 02:40 PM Report

Really I have no idea what a left, right, centrist or even a liberal is and I wish ppl would at least try to define their terms. I don't know what successes the admin has been trumpeting except the idea that they averted the Second Great Depression, which is not only not true, but also nothing they did. I think Clinton would have taken far more extreme positions in every area. And I think Obama's main failing has been that he has been unable to control his own party, which I have thought would have rather had Clinton as president, could she have won, but with which, I believe, this book disagrees. But he did appoint Rahm Emmanuel. The problem with Obama's war oratory is that there is no such thing as a just war, and calling wars just, just makes them worse, by suggesting they are a police matter, rather than one of self-preservation. Personally, I think Michelle was quite right to point out how little there is to be proud of in recent American history, but at the time, except for the debacle in Iraq, it appeared to many the country, like the Titanic, was riding high. The book, I read, reveals a lot of damning material about the candidates, but, undoubtedly the Edwardses appear to be some of the most disappointing ppl in recent public life, altho I do not think they eclipse the Clinton's. Like the Woodses, all of whose golf shoes, I think, are yet to drop. Hopefully this book will do a lot towards disabusing public fantasies about these matters, and entice others to stop excusing or ignoring them and take to the streets when necessary, which, I think, is something fundamental to the American polity we have lost.