I am rather tired of the rhetoric being applied to Obama for not beating his head on the wall and, like King Canute, trying sweep the waves away from the beach!

Barack Obama is not dumb. He KNOWS what is going on, and he knows what can be done with a minority House and less than 60 votes in the Senate. How soon folks forget how much he did in the 1st 2 years, when he DID have some votes to work with.
"Yeah...but what have you done for us lately?"
The answer should be: "Well, I made proposal after proposal and had them voted down, even when they were almost identical to what various Republicans had suggested!"

I have not read the details of the 'smog rules' decision yet, but I doubt that he entered "spineless jerk" mode to do it. If *I* were in the White House and privy to all the discussions about all the issues, I might disagree with how he decided various things, but I also remember his basic positions on things, and I sure don't see any Republicans on the horizon that I think would cope with it all!