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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
On the weekend when the first
The tea-party activists who insist the country is going to hell in a hand basket shelled out very big bucks to hear their new rebel-in-chief, Sarah Palin, fire them up even more with her broadsides against Washington and the Democrats in charge here.
At the same time, however, the
Days earlier, the
All this inspired President Obama to tell a
Meanwhile, however, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had just plunged 2.6 percent to only two points over the 10,000 mark attained a decade earlier. Democrats and Republicans alike could find statistical ammunition to argue the case for or against recovery either way they chose.
These mixed signals came as Obama was renewing his pitch for bipartisan cooperation in
Amid public frustration demonstrated in three major state elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts -- the latter depriving Obama of a filibuster-proof
Proclaiming the nation's emergence from recession to the road to recovery through his
He listed support for equal pay for women, lifting the ban on stem-cell research, child health care reform, higher spending for veterans, consumer protection from credit-card ripoffs, mortgage fraud and predatory lending, and child protection from tobacco-company exploitation.
He cited his nomination of the first Hispanic-American woman to the
He boasted of "a new era of engagement" with foreign partners, including efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, dealing with climate change and banning torture as American policy in interrogation of suspected terrorists. And he cited his speech in Cairo launching "a new dialogue with the Muslim world" and U.S. leadership in responding to the earthquake chaos in Haiti.
All of this was in the way of lifting the spirits of the
Indicating he has not given up on health care, Obama criticized "deficit hawks" who "aren't willing to do a thing about (its) skyrocketing costs." Bipartisanship, he said, will not work "when I offer a hand I get nothing in return."
But with mixed tea leaves on the state of the economy still roiling the tea-party activists and other uneasy voters, many Democrats want to see more fight than conciliation in their president with the next election only nine months off.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Reading the Economic Tea Leaves | Jules Witcover
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