Obama rips Republican ‘obstruction’, Politico, June 19, 2010, by Politico Staff, quoted verbatim:

President Barack Obama used his Saturday radio address to slam Republican “obstruction” in Congress, accusing the GOP of standing in the way of job-saving economic programs and saying, “Gridlock as a political strategy is destructive to the country.”

Obama unleashed a torrent of criticism against the Republicans – accusing them of blocking votes on bills that would save jobs for teachers, lift a $75 million liability cap for oil leaks like the BP spill and help(ing) people buy their first home.

“All we ask for is a simple up or down vote. That’s what the American people deserve. Just like they deserve an up or down vote on legislation that would hold oil companies accountable for the disasters they cause – a vote that is also being blocked by the Republican leadership in the Senate,” Obama said. “We should remove that cap. But the Republican leadership won’t even allow a debate or a vote.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered a rebuttal to Obama’s remarks, saying, “The American people are looking to Washington Democrats – including the president – for leadership on tough issues like jobs and spending, not complaints.”

In his address, Obama also called on Republicans to confirm 136 nominees for jobs in his administration that are held up in the Senate.

Democrats in Congress have called on Obama to be more forceful in his criticism of the opposing party, and the address meets that demand, with a point-by-point attack against Republicans for allowing “a dreary and familiar politics get in the way of our ability to move forward on a series of critical issues that have a direct impact on people’s lives,” Obama said.

See Profiling 10 of the Deeply Troubled Individuals Leading the Right-Wing, Government-Hating Crusade, AlterNet, June 15, 2010, by SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) Intelligence Report.

Obey’s Afghanistan:
At Long Last, It’s Guns vs. Butter

Obey’s Afghanistan: At Long Last, It’s Guns vs. Butter, Truthout, June 19, 2010, by Robert Naiman, excerpt quoted verbatim:

One of the many destructive legacies of the Reagan Era was the effective Washington consensus that wars and other military spending exist on their own fiscal planet. Reagan got a Dixiecrat Congress to double military spending at a time when the U.S. was not at war (unless you were a poor person in Central America.) Meanwhile, Reagan got the Dixiecrat Congress to cut domestic spending – we just couldn’t afford those costly social programs. Reagan pretended the two things were totally unrelated, and the Dixiecrat Congress went along.

Ever since, the Democratic leadership and the big Democratic constituency groups have largely collaborated in maintaining the destructive fiction that we can shovel tax dollars to war and to corporate welfare called “defense spending” without having any impact on our ability to provide quality education, health care, effective enforcement of environmental, civil rights, worker safety laws, and other basic services to our citizens that are taken for granted by the citizens of every other industrialized country.

But maybe – maybe – that destructive connivance is coming to an end.

This week, House Appropriations Committee Chair David Obey [D-WI] told the White House that he was going to sit on the Administration’s request for $33 billion more for pointless killing in Afghanistan until the White House acted on House Democratic demands to unlock federal money to aid the states in averting a wave of layoffs of teachers and other public employees.

Obey didn’t just link the two issues rhetorically; he linked them with the threat of effective action.

At last, at long last.