Looking at the long game I'm sure Obama will take the 14th next time, as elections.

He will be able to cite his previous flexibility and the lack of compromise from the GOP/TP. And talk about vested interests, decisive action and making a stand.

This episode just goes to highlight something I've though for a long time: The US is an absolute joke.

Does this come as a surprise? Anyone who has watched this presidency could have predicted this, in fact, why was it even allowed to get to this stage?

President Obama is a lot of things, but he sorely lacked political experience when he entered the White House, the system is too big and he is getting swallowed up.

If he gets a second term it will be 4 quick years to the speakers circuit. To be fair to him the job has become virtually impossible but then that is why you need an FDR type to get the job that needs done, done.

Stop scolding Obama for not standing up please. He is still a black man, even though he lives in the US white house, remember?

Look at who Obama is surrounded by. His "economic advisors" are all Wall St. or hedge fund types. That being said, is it so surprising that he would consistently give in("compromise")?

Obama and other politicians constantly talk about how "politics is the art of compromise". No it's not. This proves that trying to shove your views down the throats of others is all that matters.

It's boring to have to say this, but I will. Being the first President of color, Obama can only go so far. It's no secret that many of the neocons hate having an African American President and will do anything to destroy him. Now, will any national politician be stupid enough to publically call Obama the N word and risk throwing away his career? I don't know. However, if Obama fights back too much many will say he's being "uppity" and other idiotic racist rubbish.

What's even worse than that? That's considered "normal" in Stateside politics. For two years, Obama had to just sit there and take endless racist abuse during the '08 campaign. He was told, this is how it's done. If you can't take it, quit and go home.

Now, three years later Obama knows this "agreement" won't solve anything. All that matters to the corporate Powers that be is get the bloody markets open again. Which means even more borrowing and spending.

It is hard not to sympathise with US Democrats. They have a leader who does not lead - who capitulates to the benefit of hids pponents and against the interests of his supporters. They must feel like Labour Party members.

Obama has played the 'reasonable' card. In his speech subsequent to Congressional approval, Obama mentioned the billionaire hiding in his tax shelter and the wealthy paying the same level of income tax as the nurse.
Down the road apiece he hopes to get the Republicans holding out for the folks who just happen to have a million or two. The Democrats will no doubt be supporting the American worker and the old timers needing Medicare and other earned benefits.
There will be a gunfight at the Congress corral. And dad blame me if it ain't gonna be a helldinger of a ruckus.
Deputy Dawg

Since his election Obama has had two overwhelming priorities; the first was to undermine the anti-war movement, the second was to protect the interests of the financial aristocracy that control the US economy. On both accounts he's succeeded.

For those who believed he represented a break with the past and the trajectory of the Bush era; more war and more inequality, he's a disaster, a disaster for the vast majority of Americans, but a saviour for the 1% who real count, an elite who can continue to 'rob' the country virtually unopposed for even longer.

He is an incredibly weak president, inept, with the politics of a conservative male model. He is all surface and no substance, something the right realized far sooner than Obama's liberal base, who swallowed his bullshit like it was the softest, sweetest, cream.

Obama could have chosen another course and used his 'historic' victory, with an oppositon on its knees, to introduce a Green New Deal and create millions of new jobs. Instead he acted as if he hadn't really won at all and began to 'copromise' with the people he'd just defeated. There was no break with the Bush years at all, there was continuity, look at the people he chose as his advisors.

One feels really sorry for ordinary Americans who, as usual, have been screwed again.

Obama is a charlatan.

It's ordinary Americans who are angry at big government, high taxes and endless pointless foreign wars. It's ordinary Americans that are angary at big bussiness. It's ordinary Americans that keeps voting for the tea party.

Personally... I don't think it really matters very much who ordinary Americans vote for... voting, though interesting as a form of gigantic opion poll, doesn't really lead to fundamental, structural, changes to the distribution of wealth and power in society, or radical changes in imperial strategy. When has grand, imperial strategy, ever been influenced by the 'mob'?

I'm all for, up to a point, 'democracy', in theory; but I question its practicality and how one impliments it on a large scale.

If, for example, one looks at a series of opinion polls, for what they are worth, one can see that there is an overwhelming opposition, or at the very least, scepticism among 'ordinary' Americans relating to the 'empire'. Most Americans don't want to spend their taxes paying for the US play the role of the world's policeman. They want the money spent at home. If foreigners what to kill each other, well, that's their business. Yet decade after decade the US elite more-or-less totally ignores the will of the people, the majority, and spends a vast fortune on grand, imperial, strategy, and pointless wars.

Second, the American people want the corporations and the super-rich to pay their fair share of taxes. Americans aren't stupid. They understand that their tax system is grossly unfair and puts the burden on those who earn least and own peanuts, whilst the super-rich, as in 18th century France, pay far less than their share.

How is this possible in a democracy? First to ignore the will of the people and secondly to pursue policies that are oposed to the will and interests of the majority?

Do Americans really 'freeely' choose and vote for their own 'castration'? Or is the political system structurally biased in favour of the interests and reflects the power of the elite, far, far, more than it does the will of the people?

Obama is the perfect example. Here one has a candidate that promisses real change, people give him an historic level of support, a mandate for change... yet instead of reform, once in office he changes tack and reaches out to the same people and the same policies which the people have resoundingly rejected, almost as if there existed a permanent 'House of Lords' that has a veto over the will of the people, regardless of how they vote. Like a kind of 'shadow Congress' exists, made up of powerful, vested, economic interests, and the military, who don't have many votes, but who do have collosal power.

And even the Tea Party are a minority, but incredibly well-financed, how does a minority like them gain so much power way beyond their actual numbers, in a democracy? Does this indicate that a well-funded and well-organised minority can weild disproportinate power in a democracy? How exactly is that representative and democratic?

Tom has a point. I often wonder whether this intelligent and inherently brave man acts spineless because of his colour, feeling the need somehow to 'play the game'and not come across as a big (black) bully. You will never mollify racists, so he might as well fight his side more vigorously rather than keep trying to compromise with extremists who are beyond reason.

Why do they even have two political parties in the United States? To disguise the fact their political system is really a form of dictatorship. One party rule would make it way too obvious.

But today, for various complex reasons, it's becoming increasingly difficult to hide the nature of 'elite, class rule' as the economy shrinks and the empire falters in key areas. An empire is either expanding, and successful, or contracting, and a failure; their is no state of equilibrium for empires.

Now, the heart of the empire is no longer the economy, which has been outsourced, the heart is now the military machine, the legions, which function like a state within a state, a military state like a gigantic parasite inside the body of what's left of the democractic republic.

A massive political, and democratic, challenge in the United States, is how does one curb the power of the legions, and the people in the civilian sector, who profit so vastly and disproportionately from the emperial project?

Historically, from the very beginning of the republic, and still today, there has been a form of 'conspiracy' between the military and those in the 'private sector' supplying the military, to cheat and rob the treasury of as much as they could get away with. Corruption and crime were, and are, at the core of the military/industrial complex, but because it's the military criticism is muted because of the fear of being thought unpatriotic. This attitude is a permanent, golden payday for a thoughroughly corrupt and grossly wasteful system. And this corrupt, destructive system is about all that's left of the state, or soon will be. The corrupt heart of an empire in terminal decline, heading, in a desparate attempt to justify its own existance and worth, for even more war.

Te President is not the Pope and doesn't rule by decree, particularly when it comes to Budgetry Matters.
Obama must be mightily relieved; he's got his breathing space and 'the trillion $ cuts' for which the Republicans will be blamed.
And if the economy does by a miracle improve, he can always claim the credit.
Obama is bound to win because the Republicans have yet to find a credible candidate.

The article is correct in every detail. But, come 2012, what is the alternative to Obama which is not a full horror movie scenario? The Republicans would caused the global financial meltdown from sheer ideological stupidity.

The executive power of the President can conquer all. But it not something that a President wants to use on a matter such as this. I suspect he used it as a bargaining chip to get a deal. I used the situation to make a heap of dosh by buying call options on Friday and selling on Monday .. probably more than Mehdi Hasan makes in 6 months.

A heck-of-a-lot of Republicans and 'way-down-south Democrats are still south of the border if you consider the Mason-Dixie Line.
'The America my Dad used to know!' Seen a lot of placards with this legend. Strangely, NO smoke signals. Reckon there must be more than a smidgeon of Native American blood in them 'on-the-prod' protesters.
Next Prez gotta be one of our tribe - not one of them Tea Bag Ladeeze, pleezze.

Crazy Horse & Braves

America had it's short flirtation with progressive politics, but found it doesn't pay the bills, and end unpopular foreign wars. Like it or not. American politics will move sharply to the right, it's going to be the tea party that will be driving American politics for the foreseeable future.

What a damn shame. There seems to be practically no one in power who is on the side of the little person right across the world. Profoundly depressing.