A tail dragging romp through the swamps of the world
"It's not going to help our cause. It's going to make people think that the tea party is full of a bunch of right-wing fringe people."
There's lots more here, and Professor Westen makes a good case.
Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator
Drew Westen | Psychologist and neuroscientist; Emory University Professor
Posted: December 20, 2009 09:34 PM
_______________Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry).
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What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.
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Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.
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Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn't stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can'tstand them because I realize he doesn't mean what he says -- or if he does, he just doesn't have the fire in his belly to follow through. He can't seem to muster the passion to fight for any of what he believes in, whatever that is. He'd make a great queen -- his ceremonial addresses are magnificent -- but he prefers to fly Air Force One at 60,000 feet and "stay above the fray."
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Gays? Virtually all Americans are for repealing don't ask/don't tell (except for conservatives who haven't yet come to terms with their own homosexuality -- but don't tell them that, or at least don't ask). This one's a no-brainer. Tell Congress you want a bill on your desk by January 1, and announce that you have serious questions about the constitutionality of the current policy and won't enforce it until your Justice Department has had time to study it. Don't keep firing gay Arabic interpreters. But that would require not just giving the pretty speech on how we're all equal in the eyes of God and we should all be equal in the eyes of the law (a phrase he might want to try sometime). It would require actually doing something that might anger a small percentage of the population on the right, and that's just too hard for this president to do. It's one thing to acknowledge and respect the positions of people who hold different points of view. It's another to capitulate to them.
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Am I being too hard on the president? He's certainly done many good things. But it would be hard to name a single thing President Obama has done domestically that any other Democrat wouldn't have done if he or she were president following George W. Bush (e.g., signing the children's health insurance bill that Congress is about to gut to pay for worse care for kids under the health insurance exchange, if it ever happens), and there's a lot he hasn't done that every other Democrat who ran for president would have done.
Obama, like so many Democrats in Congress, has fallen prey to the conventional Democratic strategic wisdom: that the way to win the center is to tack to the center.
Leaderless: Senate Pushes For Public Option Without Obama's Support
HuffPost | 10-24-09
President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.
The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.
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On Thursday evening, after taking the temperature of his caucus, Reid told Obama at a White House meeting that he was pushing a national public option with an opt-out provision. Obama, several sources briefed on the exchange, reacted coolly.
"He certainly didn't embrace it and he seemed to indicate a preference for continuing to work on a strategy that involved Senator Snowe and a trigger," said one aide briefed on the meeting. Several other sources, along with independent media reports, confirmed the exchange.
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It is not philosophical, one White House aide explained, but is a matter of political practicality. If the votes were thereto pass a robust public option through the Senate, the president would be leading the charge, the aide said. But after six months of concern that it would be filibustered, the bet among Obama's aides is that Reid is now simply being too optimistic in his whip count. The trigger proposal, said Democratic aides, has long been associated with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
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Advocates of a public option largely consider a "trigger" the equivalent of no public option at all . . . . "The current state of our health system should be trigger enough for anyone who's paying attention," said a congressional aide in the middle of the health care battle. "The American people pulled the 'trigger' in November."
Sure but If you look at the polling, Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the “internet left fringe” Lester. And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult.
White House greeter : Hi, Steve, is it? The big O is terribly sorry not to greet you himself - he's in the loo.
Steve : Well, uh, that's perfectly fine
WH greeter : He knew you'd understand. Right this way. Of course I can't go in there with you myself ...
h/t West End Bob for the laugh this morning
In the late great dystopian tv show Max Headroom, whenever a crime was committed, suspects were arrested, profiled, and then the most likely perp was sentenced via a big spinning wheel of "consequences" on the tv game show that had replaced the courts.
Canadian content : Hey, David Emerson, how's your "one security perimeter" Project North America coming along?
"Without a doubt, this case is a grim reminder of the seriousness of the threat we as a nation still face," Attorney-General Eric Holder said in a statement.And then listen to Rachel Maddow as she underlines the most significant point of Ali al-Marri's criminal prosecution. (Once the obnoxious little ad is over slide forward to minute 7)"But it also reflects what we can achieve when we have faith in our criminal justice system and are unwavering in our commitment to the values upon which the nation was founded, and the rule of law."
Ali al-Marri, who was the last remaining "enemy combatant" held on US soil, faces a maximum of 15 years in jail after admitting he conspired to provide material support to al-Qa'ida. He will be sentenced on July 30. It was not clear how much credit he would be given for time already served.
"He asked for his day in court, and he got his day in court with all the constitutional protections," Marri's lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said. "It's all he wanted."
As Michael Isikoff points out, the guilty plea of Ali al-Marri opens the doors for other prosecutions, not through the Bush/Cheney manufactured military commissions, but within the criminal justice system; Not with dubious confessions obtained through torture, but from the testimony of eyewitnesses.
While the volume keeps getting cranked up in some quarters demanding that Obama prosecute members of the Bush administration for knowingly and intentionally engaging in illegal acts, (not to mention immoral at a hundred different levels), everyone needs to be aware that it's probably far too early to go wading in that pool.
Obama is no idiot. As the memos continue to be released and the facts continue to accumulate, Obama will continue to hold off until such a time as the evidence is overwhelming, any defence would be ineffective, and screeching remnants of the Bush cargo culture (Limbaugh, Malkin, et al) have so completely impeached themselves that the demand for prosecution of Bush administration principals will suit both the popular need for cleansing and occur in a favourable political climate.
There will be prosecutions. Just, not now. They will happen when the current cheerleaders of those who perpetrated crimes have no audience, and instead of energetically defending their Bush/Cheney heros they are forced to hang their heads and mutter in their own defence, "We didn't know."
"When you walk in the door, all you see are pictures of Stephen Harper. I'd say between every window, in every available space of the wall, at eye level, every available space has a photo of Stephen Harper."
As the famous anarchist "Red" Emma Goldman may or may not have said: "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution"
There are few things more popular in Second Life than music and dancing. After all, in a virtual universe, we are all young and fit and we can all dance like the genetically cross-bred children of Martha Graham, Fred Astaire, Alvin Ailey, Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson and Gypsy Rose Lee. But while we dance, we talk, and as often as not, we talk politics.
And you can't dance without music, whether it's the hot salsa of Los Gatos, the sunny folk-funk of Richard Maynard-Langedijk, the brooding, country-flavored power-pop of Calliope's Radio or even the off-beat satirical stylings of Billy Bob Neck -- it's all here.
The proceeds from this album will go to aid Netroots Nation in Second Life in its efforts to support progressive politics through online activism, networking, advocacy and work on behalf of progressives running for elected office. We are grateful to the artists for the donation of the their inspiration, creativity and hard work. And to you, the listener for contributing to this worthy cause.
Special thanks to all the artists who contributed, Gen. J.C. Christian, Jillan McMillan, Jane2 McMahon, Rocky Torok, Michele Migrish, Jackson Street Books, and all the regulars at Cafe Wellstone, the Lonely Yak and the Red Zeppelin.
Check out the website:http://www.nninsl.org/
The Revolution Will Be Streamed
1. So Glad - Richard Maynard-Langedijk
2. My Strange Love - Brian Lillie and the Squirrel Mountain Orchestra
3. Super Evil - Spoon Spatula
4. Arianara - Los Gatos
5. Hank Paulson's Blues - The Black Tie Martini Club
6. Gimme a Job - the Extras
7. Jesus: The Anti-Rap - Billy Bob Neck
8. Endless Night - Richard Ainslie
9. Zumbro Valley - Zathras Afarensis
10. One More (Land of Beginning Again) - Katherine King Segal & Charlie Brown
11. Watcha Gonna Do? - Golgotha
12. Rachel's Song - Scott & Michelle Daiziel
13. Samba Do Sueno - Pete Siers & Los Gatos
14. Darker, Longer - Calliope's Radio
(Shhhhhh, don't tell the Yanks that the first and last tracks are by Canadians)
The Official George W. Bush "Days Left In Office" Countdown:0 Days
0 Hrs 0 Min 00.0 Sec
"In the square of the city, in the shadow of a steeple,by the relief office, I'd see my people,As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,This land was made for you and meThere was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;The sign was painted, it said 'Private Property'But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,That side was made for you and me.Nobody living, can ever stop meAs I go walking that freedom highwayNobody living can ever make me turn backThis land was made for you and me"
