{"id":601,"date":"2009-02-09T01:17:02","date_gmt":"2009-02-09T05:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/?p=601"},"modified":"2009-02-09T05:27:22","modified_gmt":"2009-02-09T09:27:22","slug":"bullies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/2009\/02\/09\/bullies\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bully Pulpit Isn&#8217;t Enough, When You&#8217;re Dealing With Bullies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I never thought Barack Obama&#8217;s post-partisan unity shtick would work.  So I&#8217;m not surprised that no matter how much Obama reaches out to Republicans, they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/08\/opinion\/08dowd.html\">abuse the privilege.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So, is Obama finally wising up? The good news is he&#8217;s beginning to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philly.com\/philly\/blogs\/americandebate\/Blasts_from_the_bully_pulpit.html \">make more aggressive use of the presidential bully pulpit to promote the fiscal stimulus bill.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, Obama seems to be in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.talkleft.com\/story\/2009\/2\/7\/10857\/67521\">triangulation mode,<\/a> apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/02\/06\/AR2009020602097.html?wprss=rss_print\">buying into GOP &#8220;centrists'&#8221; proposed tax and spending cuts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Somebody please clue the President into this fundamental precept:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Give Republicans an inch and they&#8217;ll take you &#8212; hard.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never thought Barack Obama&#8217;s post-partisan unity shtick would work. So I&#8217;m not surprised that no matter how much Obama reaches out to Republicans, they abuse the privilege. So, is Obama finally wising up? The good news is he&#8217;s beginning to make more aggressive use of the presidential bully pulpit to promote the fiscal stimulus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,15,44,114,20,479,154,3,9,12,45,484],"tags":[480,481,482,2763,483,200,2753,453],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-congress","category-economy-humor","category-fiscal-policy","category-gop-humor","category-mad-thoughts","category-political-commentary","category-politics","category-republicans","category-senate","category-tax-budget-humor","category-twisted-aphorisms","tag-aphorisms","tag-bipartisanship","tag-bully-pulpit","tag-gop-humor","tag-negotiations","tag-obama","tag-republicans","tag-stimulus-bill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.madkane.com\/madness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}