Overall, Keith’s Special Comment didn't reach a new low point, but it was a waste of time. If you want to see it, find it your damn self.
First off, as I feared, he made the lead story about him, and not the death of Ted Stevens, which was the headline on virtually every other News Organization across America, including MSNBC.com.
Now, granted, the late Sen. Stevens was a corrupt scumbag. He only got off because Attorney General Holder discovered his case had concerns over prosecutorial misconduct. (Note: Next time, if there’s a piece of evidence that the opposition is supposed to have, it’s best to let them see it.) Still, despite all the negative feelings I have about the man, he was still a U.S. Senator, he still deserved at least a moment on the show. It didn’t happen.
So let’s be honest, Keith made the Professional Left about Keith. He wasn’t claiming hurt feelings, but he was going to tell the President that he isn’t doing “it” right. I thought it was a wasted exercise, so I fast-forwarding through a lot of it. Still, there were two moments in the show that really got on my nerves:
First was this from Michael Moore:
I think that what's bothering them is that Liberals and the Left have been right from the beginning. From the beginning of this Administration, what did people on our side of the fence say? You should take over these banks temporarily and fire all the thieves who stole our money. But instead what did they do? They enabled them. They called for more offshore oil drilling. They expanded the war in Afghanistan. The stimulus package, they caved into the republicans. Everything that we've been trying to push them to do has now come back to bite them in a profound way to the point where they're very frightened, as they should be, about the election in a couple of months.
Michael, you weren't even right in this statement. How could you be right from the beginning.
First off, you didn’t need to take over these banks even temporarily. History has borne that out. First, there’s the matter of which banks to nationalize. Some banks were on their ass (Citi) others were half-dead/half-alive (B of A) only to be made worse by taking on other Banks. And the rest were generally healthy, but still being dragged down by the overall collapse. So the notion of nationalization being a magic bullet is something even Paul Krugman has backed off from (thought I still think he would have preferred it), and he knows more about the economy than you do, Mr. Moore.
Can’t argue with the Offshore Drilling comment. That was a political calculation. At the same time, we’re still going to need more oil in this country till at least 2025, and something needs to be done.
The Afghanistan comment is sheer asshattery. If Mr. Moore wasn’t paying attention to virtually everything the man said on the campaign trail, then that’s his damn fault.
Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?
I'm not even a fan of Ruth Marcus, this is how much Michael Moore pissed me off.
Again, his position is that he has all the answers, and they're all so simple, but he's never had to get a vote in his life.
What has been getting on my nerves about the "Professional Left" more and more is the notion that for some reason they can’t get off, that somehow, the alternative to weak legislation is better legislation.
No. In this Congress, the alternative to weak legislation is no legislation.
Next, Keith blathered with this:
The Professional Left didn't start the Health Care Negotiations by moving to the right of the Single Payer and then the Public Option, the Administration did. The Professional Left didn't try to grease some skids with the minority by taxing union benefits, the Administration did.
Again, I’m glad Keith enjoys his cheap shots as much as the next guy, but I was under the impression he had paid attention to the Health Care debate, not just its hyperbole.
And second, as much as I personally want frickin’ Socialized Medicine in this country, the actual enemy is already calling this quote-unquote half-measure socialism, a plan that relies heavily on the Free frickin’ market.
Again, what part of 60 votes does Keith not understand??!?!
There was never anything close to 60 votes for Single Payer in the Senate. You maybe had 43 votes, not even a majority. That’s 17 (or more) Democrats being against Single Payer. And if you don’t have 60 votes in your own caucus, you don’t have a proposal.
Mr. Moore, Mr. Olbermann...what exactly is it you want to do?
I think you need to remember that the midterm elections ain't a video game. You’re not “rewarding” President Obama with "points" (in the form of Democratic Represenatives and Senators) because he’s been such a good guy. You’re trying to get a Liberal Agenda passed, and what you think is going to happen to that Agenda if the GOP takes over Congress?
For all the money being spent and plans being made, the single action that matters most is people (like you) voting. If the people who showed up in 2008 carry vote in 2010, we're going to win, and keep making progress. If they don't, we won't. And for the record, I think the Professional Left is helping depress that cause.
Indeed, for all the derision from the left about the Bush administration not being "reality-based," many lefty bloggers and talking heads have failed to be reality-based in assessing the Obama administration.
Health-care reform, in this glass-half-empty world, is a disappointment because it lacks a public option. The president's failure to close Guantanamo or end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is a betrayal. If only President Obama was willing to bang heads, name names, stand tough, he would have been able to get -- fill in the blank -- a bigger stimulus, tougher financial reform, new legislation to help unions organize.
Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?
Apparently not. Responding to Gibbs, Jane Hamsher, of the blog Firedoglake, derided Obama's record of "corporatist capitulation" and noted, "Spiro Agnew -- sorry, Robert Gibbs -- says ‘the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.' Well, the Obama in the White House is not representative of the Obama who organized, campaigned, raised money and ran for office, so I guess it's a wash."
Spiro Agnew? Gibbs is going to have to work on his alliterative skills to come up with anything as memorable as nattering nabobs of negativism. Carping cavilers of cyberspace?
That the left would fall out of love with Obama was entirely predictable. "After eight years without the White House, and two years in which a Democratic majority in Congress found itself stymied in delivering on its promises, the leftward precincts of his party are not inclined toward either compromise or patience," I wrote just after the election.
What surprises me, though -- and, no doubt, what set off Gibbs -- is the venom of the liberal critics, even in the face of the sustained attack on Obama from the right and a legislative record longer and more impressive than I would have guessed back then.
In the old days of press-bashing, it was sound advice not to argue with people who buy ink by the barrel. The Gibbs backlash shows how foolhardy it is to argue with people who don't even have to buy ink.
With the controversy still simmering over Robert Gibbs' slam on the "professional left," the Dem firm Public Policy Polling offers a reality check on what liberals think of Obama. They overwhelmingly approve:
On the national poll we'll release this week 85% of liberals approve of the job Obama is doing to 12% disapproving. 88% support his health care plan looking back with only 7% opposed.
Not only are those numbers good, but they're steady. Obama's favor with liberals hasn't been on the decline. In May his approval with liberals was 87/10. In February it was 81/15. In November it was 87/4. Even as his ratings have declined overall he's stayed in that sort of mid-80s range with liberal voters.
The volume of the voices of liberals who don't like Obama is much greater than the volume of their numbers, which probably means Robert Gibbs shouldn't let the select few get him so irritated.
This bears out what other polls have found. It suggests that Gibbs was right when he said that rank and file liberals still like Obama, and some will point to this as proof that Obama's liberal critics don't speak for the left and just get attention because they have big megaphones.
But there may be another conclusion to be drawn here. If criticism of the White House from the left isn't meaningfully depressing Obama's support among liberals, than what's the harm? Seems to me that the liberal rank and file are capable of listening to left-leaning opinionmakers taking issue with various aspects of the Obama presidency without concluding that they should stop supporting the president entirely.
In other words, liberal voters appear capable of keeping two ideas in their heads at the same time. First, Obama does not always live up to their expectations, whether or not he should bear the blame for this unfortunate reality. And second, this isn't grounds to abandon him completely.
If anything, this demonstrates that lefty critics should keep it up. They can keep pressuring the White House and Dems to try to expand the realm of what's politically possible, and keep trying to hold the president accountable to his promises and to the expectations he has created for his own leadership. After all, the President himself has told us he wants us to keep doing that. And if liberals aren't turning on him in advance of the midterms, what's the downside?
UPDATE, 1:38 p.m.: One other thing: Given that Obama is still polling extremely well among liberals in multiple polls, it's unclear why the White House overreacts to liberal criticism.
So the long and short of it is, I agreed with Robert Gibbs.
I probably agree with Dennis Kucinich 98% of the time (the idea for a Department of Peace is just ridiculous) but it doesn't mean I like him, nor does it mean I trust him. The same goes for the others. Watching the Professional Left's behavior over the last two years has frankly been the thing that turned me into a Liberal who hates other Liberals.
I think there is a responsibility for those of us on Left to hold the President accountable, as he has asked. But there is also a responsibility for those of us on Left to deal in facts, to understand that ideology is a way of looking at the world, not a purity checklist (again, Republican behavior), to understand how, where and why a piece of legislation goes wrong, to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and most of all, to keep working.
Simply put, for the last two years, the Republican Party and their Conservative base have been our enemies (and to any Republicans and Conservatives out there reading this, sorry...but the behavior of your ideological extreme has been nothing short of repulsive). The second that any Liberal starts confusing the President with your enemies,they've lost their way.
Honestly, is there a way this guy doesn't screw something up? He does have a unique talent. (And yes, I realize I'm talking about a Black Democrat...supposedly two of my favorite things, since I'm both.)
What worse is, he thinks he's helping in the Cordoba "Mosque" matter by offering them New York state land to, in effect, go away. (I put Mosque in quotes, because it's really a community center more than a place of worship.)
First, it puts Mayor Bloomberg in a weird spot. The mayor, you may recall, eloquently defended the religious freedom of the developers and stood up for their right to build on a site of their choosing in the face of withering national criticism. Now the governor's position is that, yes, there's something to that religious freedom thing, but let's give away some state land to make the whole mess go away? What is Bloomberg supposed to say in response? I'm told City Hall won't be commenting on the governor's idea.
Second, let's say for the sake of argument that the center's developers would support this scheme. Who gets to decide how far away from Ground Zero is an appropriate distance, and why should they be accorded that power? Should the governor appoint Sarah Palin or Abraham Foxman to a newly-created post of Mosque Exclusion Zone Czar?
Third, this sets an awful precedent. Other religious groups in New York will be asking why they aren't being given state land to build their own cultural centers. Will the state cheerfully throw free land at the next group whose plans spark controversy?
Separately, opponents of Cordoba House will no doubt be psyched by a new poll finding a majority of New Yorkers opposes the project near Ground Zero. But you know what? This is about protecting the rights of a minority. Polls, by definition, should have no bearing whatsoever on this debate. Unless of course the real goal of opponents is to score political points.
Lemme get this straight. Two private Companies get together and decide to impose a tiered-system on at least part of the internet (something, last I checked, Obama's FCC doesn't like), and it's the President's fault??
The latest WikiLeaks flap raises, once again, the problem of revealing classified information. Some of the WikiLeaks Afghanistan material—the names of individual Afghans who are working against the Taliban, some of whom are now sure to die as a result—represents exactly the sort of stuff that any government would reasonably try to keep secret. The other classic examples are "order-of-battle" information, negotiating instructions, intelligence sources and methods, and technical details about the capacities and vulnerabilities of specific weapons and about how to create them.
I'm just glad its getting noticed. My fellow Liberals on the blogosphere have been too quick to paper this over.
Once again, if you're going to release classified material, fine...but do your due diligence and redact all the names of those involved. If you can't do that, don't release the stuff. Period.
There have been, and always will be right-wing movements who stand in opposition to anything a Democrat does; but none seems so driven by personal animus as the Tea Party. None seems as incoherent, as lacking in policy ideas as this one is. (Until they delineate their spending cuts, they remain incoherent in my book).
Spending under the Bush Administration (wiping out a Clinton-era Surplus) was far more profligate than it was under this President, yet Tea-Party anger did not show itself until Obama. Why? The continual chant of “they’re coming to take your guns” has never been louder, but gun rights have expanded under the Obama Administration (in ways that even I as one of his supporters, find alarming). Why? I remain an advocate for actual Socialized Medicine, but what passed earlier this year was nowhere near anything like what they have in Canada, France or the United Kingdom (I would have settled for any one of the three). What actually passed was similar to something passed by former Republican Governor (and newly minted hyper-conservative) Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, yet its passage sent these people into apoplexy. Why?
Could it be that Tea Party rage has more to do with the man that the policies, or should I say…the idea of the man?
Listen to the words they choose to assault the President: “threat to our way of life” “he can’t do that”, “he’s taking our liberty away” or its remix: “our freedom away” (freedom to do what, exactly?). The word slavery is used quite often, with the President in the role of the Slave Master. Former Governor Palin went so far as to intimate that President Obama was a “threat to our children” at one point. They rarely say the President’s actions are wrong. Instead, they call him names: Socialist, Marxist, Fascist, Statist. Never mind that those three political philopshies have nothing to do with each other.
And mind you this is before we even get to the images of the President made up as the Joker, a Witch Doctor or a Pimp.
I tell friends who were born abroad that to truly understand America, you have to understand our Civil War. The motivations around the war are important, but certain character traits that we’re now seeing first reared their ugly head back then. In effect, the genesis of the Tea Party was back then, and not in a harbor in Boston.
Abraham Lincoln, ran for President as an Anti-Slavery Republican. All the while, the South threatened succession if he was elected.
Think about that. The South was telling the North it had no say in the matter. It’s choice wasn’t going to count (which clearly was to vote for Lincoln). It was saying that the North had no right to be a part of National Governance.“You have to do what we say”, it was telling the North. “Only our interests matter.”
If you think about the Tea Party, after having lost not one, but two elections, and their constant whine of how “they’re not being listened to?” What’s the difference? They are telling the majority of Americans (again, Barack Obama won more votes than any President in history) that only Tea Partiers need to be listened to.
It goes back to something Jon Stewart said a while ago: “You're confusing tyranny with losing.”
The next irony about the Civil War was that while it was fought (by the South) in defense of the slavery, the majority of the people fighting for slavery couldn’t afford a slave themselves in a million years. Poor white men were fighting and dying for the right of rich white men to keep slaves. (Some disagree with the shading of that statistic, but still...)
Why the hell would they do this? It seems like a lot to ask, until you remember that the poor white man’s sense of self was on the line here. (This is there the Andy Hall piece, linked to above, and this one dovetail perfectly. He uses the word "vested". The author says "sense of self." Same difference.)
The poor white man may not have been able to afford a slave of his own. He might not have a lot of money (if any), land, or a steady job. He had one thing, though. He knew he was better than a slave. Or put in the colloquialism of the time: “I may be poor white trash, but at least I ain’t no n----r.”
I ran into a massive study that has really been going on 50 years now by academics. They've never really shared this with the general public. It's a remarkable analysis of the authoritarian personality. Both those who are inclined to follow leaders and those who jump in front and want to be the leaders. It was not the opinion of social scientists. It was information they drew by questioning large numbers of people -- hundreds of thousands of people -- in anonymous testing where [the subjects] conceded their innermost feelings and reactions to things. And it came out that most of these people were pre-qualified to be conservatives and this, did indeed, fit with the authoritarian personality.
The authoritarian personality, those more likely to do the following (or demand to be followed) are more likely to be Conservative.
Think about that in relation to those poor white Soldiers fighting for the rights of Slaveholders in the Confederacy. Think about that in relation to those Tea-Partiers protesting on behalf of Insurance Companies during the Health Care fight.
It is the idea that the person above you, should be above you as if by divine providence. They’re above you for a reason. Just accept it.
Of course, any hierarchy is a lot easier to accept when it’s not you at the bottom. Thanks to slavery, there would always someone else at the bottom.
But what happens when the hierarchy is challenged? What happens when someone says “we don’t like you keeping other human beings in perpetual servitude”? We get the Civil War. What happens when someone decides they should have the right to vote? First you get Reconstruction, and an eighty year delay until the Civil Rights movement.
What happens…if you get a Black President?
We get the Tea Party.
When the hierarchy is challenged, people benefiting (or vested in it) from it will always erupt to madness and rage. Watch this segment from Eyes on the Prize, focusing on the Little Rock Nine in 1957. Watch toward the 7:00 minute mark when the black students finally get into the school.
(For the record, the white lady who saved Elizabeth Eckford’s life wasn’t identified in the film. Her name was Grace Lorch. Her husband, Lee, is still alive today, and is a friend of the family.)
Look at the reaction of the crowd and tell me it doesn’t remind you of some of the lower moments of the Tea Party Movement.
Where is this rage coming from? There’s nothing about the mere presence of black people that should offend. Black people are a constant presence in their lives. They’re in their homes, preparing their food, serving their food, handling their children, cleaning up after them. They are everywhere. In a major sense, nothing about the lives of these angry White People has changed.
Yet everything has changed. The idea of what their lives are like has changed. The moment the Little Rock Nine enter that High School, they’re not at the bottom anymore. They’re the equals of a lot of white folk, maybe more.
And when true equality starts to be achieved, what do the people who have benefited from inequality do? What do these authoritarians do?
They turn on the authority.
My favorite part was the little woman, her face scrunched up in anger, shoving that Police barricade, then turning away in shame, because she doesn’t want to look like that for the camera. The hierarchy is great when it insures that you’re up, and someone else is down. The nano-second it can’t guarantee that, what good is it?
And now we return to the Tea Party already in progress.
The President of the United States is, in most respects, the ultimate authority figure for this country. Constitutional realities dictate equal roles for Congress and the Courts, but the relationship between any citizen and their Government is really formed between the citizen and the President, through the Television.
And now that ultimate authority figure staring at them through the tube is a black man. Don't tell me that that's not making a difference..
If the normal position of the Authoritarian Conservative is that the man at the top must be respected, what do authoritarians do when that person can’t be respected because he is, because of his nature, allegedly beneath them?
The President may have been elected over a two-year time frame, with every move subjected to public scrutiny, and every mistake magnified a thousand-fold but if you're one of these Authoritarians, he must have somehow cheated his way into office (Birthers). This is where the racism begins. Even if he didn’t cheat his way, he cannot be allowed to do anything while in office (Tenthers; Deficit Chickenhawks). In any case, we will make him listen to us, despite the fact there was an Election, and he gained more votes than anyone in American History. And if he does something without my permission (once again, only the consent of the quote-unquote Southener matters), then we will leave this union (Rick Perry, and too many others).
How else could an obvious inferior been elected to the highest office in the land? "Above me," in the authoritarian mind.
When you hear a Tea-Partier say, he’s a “threat to our way of life” how does that sound now?
We you hear one of say “he can’t do that”, isn’t he’s really saying “He can’t tell me what to do”? (And you can replace “he” with the six letter epithet of your choice).
We one of them pipes up with “he’s taking our liberty away” or the equally logic-free “he’s taking our freedom away”, you can assume it means, he’s taking away my place in order of things. Hell, it was said in a New York Times poll, Tea Partiers said yes to the question of whether too much been made of the problems facing black people?
African-Americans have been listening to white people for a long time. We’ve been doing it for four-hundred years. Our lives have depended on it.
When you are thought of first and foremost as chattel, your lives aren’t valued very much. The prospect of near-instaneous death was a daily fact of life. Thus, listening to White people isn’t a hobby. It can’t be.
We know how to listen to you. We know when a threat is at hand. We know when our lives are in danger. It is a fear that is passed on from generation to generation. I have grown up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., nowhere near any ghetto or slum in the world, and I am telling you, my children (when I have them) will learn this as well.
When I look at the Tea Party, I know what I’m hearing. I know where they stand, because I have heard it all before.
There are about 1,900 mosques in the United States, which run the gamut from makeshift prayer rooms in storefronts and houses to large buildings with adjoining community centers, according to a preliminary survey by Mr. Bagby, who conducted a mosque study 10 years ago and is now undertaking another.
A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.
Radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, Mr. Bagby said. “But the youth we worry about,” he said, “are not the youth that come to the mosque.”
The President discusses a new Medicare Trustees report showing Medicare to be on much stronger footing as a result of the reforms in the Affordable Care Act. In addition, seniors are also already getting help with prescription drug costs when they fall into the infamous “donut hole.”
Federal indictments unsealed Thursday in Minnesota, Alabama and California charge 14 people with terrorism offenses for allegedly aiding the radical Islamist al-Shabab organization in Somalia.
In announcing the indictments, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the charges reflect a disturbing trend in which al-Shabab, which has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, has appealed to U.S. citizens of Somali descent to join the group's battle against a weak U.S.-backed transitional government and African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia.
But...
[Holder] praised the American Muslim community for being "strong partners in fighting this emerging threat," saying its members "have provided critical assistance to law enforcement in helping to disrupt terrorist plots and combat radicalization."
My only question is, after an Ethics Mechanism that's been gathering dust, why aren't the Democrats getting more credit for going after their own? We have strong majorities in both Houses and we're not papering this crap over.
Well, someone must've listening to me---errr, uhhh, that idiot, because:
On MSNBC just now, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen made it explicit:
Dems will argue that the ethical travails of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters prove that Dems are making good on their promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress. Even if it's their own who are swirling around that drain.
Also: Van Hollen rolled out another line of attack: He contrasted the Dem leadership's response to the Rangel mess favorably with the GOP leadership's proposal in 2004 to change the rules to allow Tom DeLay to remain in a leadership post if he were charged by a grand jury.
Republicans have signaled that they will pound away relentlessly at the Rangel and Waters affairs as proof that Dems failed to clean house. Asked if this is a liability, Van Hollen answered:
"We've actually strengthened the ethics process. The reason people are hearing about the cases of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters is because we put in place accountability measures to make sure that we have high standards and that people are held accountable to those standards.
"If you recall back when the Republicans are in charge, and Tom DeLay was about to be indicted, the Republicans actually weakened their rules. They changed their rules to say, even after he's indicted, he can still be the Republican leader.
"We were very clear. Charlie Rangel is not the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He stepped down as a result of allegations. And now we're going through what is a very much strengthened process, with more outside oversight."
For my part, I don't think there's anything particularly racial about these ethics investigations; it's just that long-term incumbency breeds this kind of corruption. Indeed, if you take a quick look at each of the congresspeople under investigation, you'll notice that most are long-serving incumbents. Simply put, when you're isolated from credible challengers, you have no electoral incentive to stay clean. In the long-run, the best way to combat corruption is to create as many competitive districts as possible so that incumbents do not become complacent.
For the record, I have yet to meet a white person (male or female) named Jamelle. That's definitely a name my people use.
But let's face facts, we did see a major blow in favor of Civil Rights in this country yesterday, so the Prop. 8 decision (which, Lord knows, I didn't ignore) may just be a teeny-tiny bit more important.
The again, the decision has got to stand. If the Supremes overturn it (and there's every chance that they could), then today's overwhelmingly good-news story becomes a footnote.
This “liberal San Francisco judge” was recommended by Ed Meese, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and opposed by Alan Cranston, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the leading gay activist groups. It’s a good thing for for advocates of marriage equality that those forces were only able to block Walker twice.
Josh Green of the Atlantic notes a pattern: the federal judge in Boston who struck down a significant portion of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that it denied gay and lesbian couples the federal benefits afforded to straight couples, was appointed to the bench by President Richard Nixon.And the chief judge of the Iowa Supreme Court who wrote the unanimous decision striking down that state’s marriage ban was appointed by Republican governor Terry Branstad, who was just renominated for governor by Iowa Republican voters. Of course, Nixon and Branstad don’t have the conservative cred of Reagan and Meese.
Don't be suprised when the Secret Service comes knocking on your door:
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The head of an eastern Pennsylvania amusement company has yanked a carnival game in which players shot foam darts at an image resembling President Barack Obama.
Irvin Good Jr. pulled the target-shooting game after receiving a complaint from a Massachusetts woman attending a fair in Roseto, about 65 miles north of Philadelphia. Good said Wednesday his company, Hellertown-based Goodtime Amusements, won't offer the game again.
"It was just a big, big mistake in judgment, and I feel sorry about it," he told The Associated Press. "I can't take it back, but I can try to make it better."
The game, dubbed "Alien Attack," featured a large painted image of a black man wearing a belt buckle with the presidential seal and holding a scroll labeled "Health Bill." Players could win prizes such as stuffed animals by hitting targets on the image's head and heart.
Similiar to the speech he gave in Michigan, and to a Democratic Fundraiser, but I liked it anyway:
Because as hard as it is out there right now for a lot of folks, as far as we’ve got to go, what’s clear is that our nation is headed in the right direction. Our economy is growing again instead of shrinking. We’re adding jobs in the private sector instead of losing them. America is moving forward.
And we’re moving forward largely without any help from the opposition party -- a party that has voted no on just about every turn. No on making college more affordable. No on clean energy jobs. No on broadband. No on high-speed rail. No on water and highway projects. That doesn’t stop them from showing up at the ribbon cuttings. It doesn’t stop them from sending out press releases. They’ve even said no to tax cuts for small businesses and 95 percent of working families. They just said no to a small business tax cut again just last week.
As we speak, they’ve been trying to block an emergency measure to save the jobs of police officers and firefighters and teachers and other critical public servants across the country who may be laid off because of state and local budget cuts.
And as if that was not enough, now they’re talking about repealing this and repealing that. I guess they want to go back to hidden credit card fees and mortgage penalties buried in the fine print. They want to go back to a system that allowed for taxpayer bailouts. They want to go back to allowing insurance companies to discriminate against people based on preexisting conditions. They would repeal the tax cuts for small businesses that provide health care for their employees. They want to go backwards; we want to move America forward.
And that’s what the choice is going to be in this upcoming election, and all your members need to understand it. I know if you’re talking to a lot of your locals, I’m sure they’re feeling like, boy, change is not happening fast enough; we are still hurting out here. They’re frustrated. They’ve got every right to be frustrated. And I am happy, as President of the United States, to take responsibility for making decisions now that are going to put us in a strong position down the road. And they need to know that, that we’re going to be working with you to make sure that we’re putting ourselves in a position where folks are working and working for a good wage and good benefits.
But you have to remind them for the next three months, this election is a choice. You’ve got these folks who drove America’s economy into a ditch, and for the last 20 months, we put on our boots and we got into the mud and we’ve been shoving that car out of the ditch inch by inch, and they’ve been standing on the side the whole time watching, telling us, no, you’re not pushing hard enough, you’re not doing it the right way -- not lifting a finger to help. And now we’ve finally got that car up on the blacktop there, about to drive, and they say they want the keys back. Well, you can’t have the keys, because you don’t know how to drive. You don’t know how to drive. You’re not going to get the keys back. You’re not going to get them back.
Somebody pointed out to me that when you’re in a car and you want to go forward, you put it in “D.” You want to go back in the ditch, you put it on “R.” So I just want everybody to think about that.
Also, there was this story:
Now, just a few weeks before I visited that auto plant, 14 of its employees won the lottery. This is a true story. Now you’d think they would have decided to retire, cash out, walk away. But most of them didn’t. They’re staying on their jobs. And the guy who bought the ticket -- was a guy named William Shanteau -- took the money and he bought his wife one of the Jeep Cherokees that they make at the plant. And then he bought a bunch of American flags for his hometown, because he loves his country, just like he loves the company that he works for and the workers that he works with and the union that represents him.
And he’s going to keep on showing up every day because he loves that plant, he loves his coworkers, and he loves the idea of making something right here in the United States that’s worth something. He loves the idea of being productive and creating something of value for people.
That’s the true character of our people. That’s been the essence of the AFL-CIO. That’s why even in these difficult times, I remain confident about our future, because of people like that, because of the workers that I meet all across this country, members of your unions who get up every morning and put in a hard day’s work to build a company, build a future, support their families.
1. Marriage is and has been a civil matter, subject to religious intervention only when requested by the intervenors.
2. California, like every other state, doesn't require that couples wanting to marry be able to procreate.
3. Marriage as an institution has changed overtime; women were given equal status; interracial marriage was formally legalized; no-fault divorce made it easier to dissolve marriages.
4. California has eliminated marital obligations based on gender.
5. Same-sex love and intimacy "are well-documented in human history."
6. Sexual orientation is a fundamental characteristic of a human being.
7. Prop 8 proponents' "assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence."
8. There is no evidence that sexual orientation is chosen, nor that it can be changed.
9. California has no interest in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in its population.
10. "Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital union."
11. "Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."
12. "Domestic partnerships lack the social meaning associated with marriage, and marriage is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.
The availability of domestic partnership does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships."
13. "Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect the stability of opposite-sex marriages."
Remember, these are the FACTS that Walker has determined from the testimony and evidence. These facts will serve as the grounding for the legal arguments yet to come.
I may be a Liberal, but there are Liberals out there that I can't stand. Namely: Arianna Huffington, Glenn Greenwald, and David Sirota. There are others, but they're at the top of my list.
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
Listen, I'm straight, and I don't give much of a damn what Adam and Steve do with their lives. They want to get married, fine. Have at it! What do I care?
How does it affect me again?
Oh yeah, that's right. Not at all.
Why is what I just said not the actual conservative position in all this? Remember, individual liberty? No?
Immediately after Proposition 8 passed, many who supported same-sex marriage tried to make sense of the results. A set of assumptions gained wide acceptance. Some are correct. Most, however, are just plain wrong. And it's crucial that we know what happened in the last election before launching another attempt to legalize marriage for all.
I [the article's author, David Fleischer] recently headed a team that analyzed data from polls conducted by the No on 8 campaign during the run-up to the election. Our analysis sheds new light on what fueled the Proposition 8 victory.
One big question after the election: Who moved? Six weeks before the vote, Proposition 8 was too close to call. But in the final weeks, supporters pulled ahead, and by election day, the outcome was all but certain.
After the election, a misleading finding from exit polls led many to blame African Americans for the loss. But in our new analysis, it appears that African Americans' views were relatively stable. True, a majority of African Americans opposed same-sex marriage, but that was true at the beginning and at the end of the campaign; few changed their minds in the closing weeks.
The shift, it turns out, was greatest among parents with children under 18 living at home — many of them white Democrats.
The numbers are staggering. In the last six weeks, when both sides saturated the airwaves with television ads, more than 687,000 voters changed their minds and decided to oppose same-sex marriage. More than 500,000 of those, the data suggest, were parents with children under 18 living at home. Because the proposition passed by 600,000 votes, this shift alone more than handed victory to proponents.
Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise. The Yes on 8 campaign targeted parents in its TV ads. "Mom! Guess what I learned in school today!" were the cheery-frightening first words of the supporters' most-broadcast ad. They emerged from the mouth of a young girl who had supposedly just learned that she could marry a female when she grew up.
Granted, I didn't buy her line about Mr. Cohn "falling into the same trap as his apathetic Netroots liberals as far as national security is concerned", but the list was good and instructive. Once again: good stuff in bold, bad stuff in red.
Jonathan Cohn falls into the same trap as his apathetic Netroots liberals as far as national security is concerned. The Rodney Dangerfield of the Obama Administration, it can’t even get enough of their attention to be disrespected. (It should be said that Netroots organizers convened their first-ever broadly-themed foreign policy panel to take a look at exactly this question, and invited my organization, the National Security Network, to put it together, so give them some credit. Like many of the successes described below, it’s a work in progress.)
And yet. In 2008, Americans said they were anxious about terrorism, about Iraq, about US global standing. Liberals felt we were trapped on a path toward expanding, endless wars and shrinking interaction with global partners on global problems. President Obama will have us down to 50,000 troops in Iraq (from 145,000 in February 2009) and an end to combat missions next month. His Administration revived the international consensus on reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons, and safeguarding nuclear materials. Next month will likely get the new START Treaty through the Senate (albeit with an ugly, healthcare-like orgy of side deals).
The economy looks bad now, but with full global recession it might have been much worse–Administration leadership prevented global meltdown and created a more representative and inclusive forum, the G20, to manage global recovery.
The first 18 months of the Administration saw more terrorism convictions in civilian courts than did five years of Bush Administration military tribunals–and the killing or capturing of half the leadership of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, according to CIA Director Leon Panetta. Counter-terrorism experts like Stephen Flynn of the Center for National Policy argue that the smaller-scale terrorism attempts we’re now seeing (and thwarting) reflect an important success–Al Qaeda no longer enjoys the safety in its AfPak border hideaways to plot complex, multi-part attacks such as September 11.
The Administration successfully reset relations with Russia to get things we want in other fora (Afghanistan, Iran). Iran itself is weaker, more isolated externally and divided internally, than at any time in recent memory. Last year, the Administration and Congress passed through a significant increase in aid to fight poverty and disease around the world. Global public opinion of the US moved up nearly everywhere, soaring in Western Europe, Russia and China. Americans who work at the UN and other international bodies tell stories of foreign nationals sidling up to them in the halls with a message: “We’re so glad you’re back.”
Hey, I can be critical, too. The opportunity to close Guantanamo promptly, send most of its inmates to humane destinations and try those deserving in our civilian courts fell victim to ugly politics and inattention. Nobody, not even General Petraeus, thinks Afghanistan is going well enough as the Administration tries to hold steady on its plan for an “inflection point” next summer. (Speaking of Afghanistan, just 8% of Netroots attendees told pollsters that “finishing Afghanistan” should be the Administration’s top priority, vs. 74% favoring “improve the jobs situation.” I’d say the White House hears them loud and clear.) Middle East results have disappointed. The effort to find a post-Bush language for the promotion of democracy and human rights remains a work in progress. Some vital longer-term structural questions, about how we organize our nation’s conduct of international affairs and redress the funding and capability imbalance between civilians and the military, have slipped down the priority list in the welter of short-term challenges–as does the effort to explain again and again to Americans what kind of a world it is we are building toward.
Substantively, though, those shortcomings and delays are fixable–if the Administration has the political capital and the time. Where on the domestic side, liberals got the big change and need the enthusiasm to use and keep them, in foreign policy the Administration has fought to clear the path. A changed paradigm is now possible–if liberals can rouse themselves from apathy enough to work for it and embrace politicians when they are supportive, in addition to pummeling them when they are not.
The hardly new announcement that the US is drawing down in Iraq captured media headlines all day. The press ran with every possible variation of this theme, but neglected to report on an equally important component of the speech - and the war: the veterans.
If you watched the whole speech, you saw that the drawdown update on Iraq was just one of two big themes – the other being what the Obama Administration is doing for veterans. And even though the President said many of the right things, the hard results were lacking. Lip service doesn’t go far with military folks. We expect more than rhetoric about respect and promises; we expect outcomes.
Mr. Reickhoff, as well as every other man or woman who has served in uniform, all have a hell of a lot more standing than I ever will on Veterans matters. (Mea Culpa, he's the expert, he's lived it, I haven't.)
Still, I watched the speech, and this list strikes me as a little more than lip service (accomplishments in bold, proposals in blue):
At the same time, every American who has ever worn the uniform must also know this: Your country is going to take care of you when you come home. Our nation’s commitment to our veterans, to you and your families, is a sacred trust. And to me and my administration, upholding that trust is a moral obligation. It’s not just politics.
That’s why I’ve charged Secretary Shinseki with building a 21st century VA. And that includes one of the largest percentage increases to the VA budget in the past 30 years. We are going to cut this deficit that we’ve got, and I’ve proposed a freeze on discretionary domestic spending. But what I have not frozen is the spending we need to keep our military strong, our country safe and our veterans secure. So we’re going to keep on making historic commitments to our veterans.
For about 200,000 Vietnam vets who may have been exposed to Agent Orange and who now suffer from three chronic diseases, we’re making it easier for you to get the health care and benefits you need.
For our Gulf War veterans, we’ve declared that nine infectious diseases are now presumed to be related to your service in Desert Storm.
For our disabled veterans, we’ve eliminated co-pays for those of you who are catastrophically disabled. We’ve kept our promise on concurrent receipt by proposing legislation that would allow severely disabled retirees to receive your military retired pay and your VA disability benefits. It’s the right thing to do.
We’ve dramatically increased funding for veterans health care across the board, and that includes improving care for rural veterans and women veterans. For those half-million vets who had lost their eligibility -- our Priority 8 veterans -- we’re restoring your access to VA health care.
And since the rumors continue to fly, even though they are wrong, let me say it as clearly as I can: The historic health care reform legislation that I signed into law does not -- I repeat, does not -- change your veterans benefits. The VA health care benefits that you know and trust are safe, and that includes prosthetics for our disabled veterans.
Thanks to advanced appropriations, the delays for funding for veterans medical care are over. And just as those delays were unacceptable, so too are long delays in the claims process. So Secretary Shinseki is working overtime to create a single lifetime electronic record that our troops and veterans can keep for life.
And today -- today I can announce that for the first time ever, veterans will be able to go to the VA website, click a simple “blue button,” and download or print your personal health records so you have them when you need them and can share them with your doctors outside of the VA. That’s happening this fall.
We’re hiring thousands of new claims processors to break the backlog once and for all. And to make sure the backlog doesn’t come back, we’re reforming the claims process itself with new information technologies and a paperless system.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hallelujah!
THE PRESIDENT: We got an Amen over here. (Laughter and applause.)
As a result of the innovation competition that I announced last summer, our dedicated VA employees suggested more than 10,000 new ways to cut through the red tape and the bureaucracy. And we’re already putting dozens of these innovative ideas into action. Additionally, we’re enabling more veterans to check the status of their claims online and from their cell phone.
As a next step, we’re opening this competition to entrepreneurs and academics so the best minds in America can help us develop the technologies to serve our vets, including those of you with multiple traumatic injuries. And we’re going to keep at this until we meet our commitment to cut those backlogs, slash those wait times, and deliver your benefits sooner. This is a priority and we are going to get it done.
We’re making progress in ending homelessness among our veterans. Today, on any given night, there are about 20,000 fewer veterans on the streets than there were when we took office. But we’re not going to be satisfied until every veteran who has fought for America has a home in America. We will not stop.
Finally, we’re keeping faith with our newest veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re offering more of the support and counseling they need to transition back to civilian life. That includes funding the post-9/11 GI Bill, which is already helping more than 300,000 veterans and family members pursue their dream of a college education.
And for veterans trying to find work in a very tough economy, we’re helping with job training and placement.And I’ve directed the federal government to make it a priority to hire more veterans, including disabled veterans. And every business in America needs to know our vets have the training, they’ve got the skills, they have the dedication -- they are ready to work. And our country is stronger when we tap the incredible talents of our veterans.
For those coming home injured, we’re continuing to direct unprecedented support to our wounded warriors in uniform -- more treatment centers, more case managers -- delivering the absolute best care available. For those who can, we want to help them get back to where they want to be -- with their units. And that includes service members with a disability, who still have so much to offer our military.
We’re directing unprecedented resources to treating the signature wounds of today’s wars -- traumatic brain injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And I recently signed into law the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act. That’s a long name, but let me tell you what it does. It not only improves treatment for traumatic brain injury and PTSD, it gives new support to many of the caregivers who put their own lives on hold to care for their loved one.
And as so many of you know, PTSD is a pain like no other -- the nightmares that keep coming back, the rage that strikes suddenly, the hopelessness that’s led too many of our troops and veterans to take their own lives. So today, I want to say in very personal terms to anyone who is struggling -- don’t suffer in silence. It’s not a sign of weakness to reach out for support -- it’s a sign of strength. Your country needs you. We are here for you. We are here to help you stand tall. Don’t give up. Reach out.
We’re making major investments in awareness, outreach, and suicide prevention -- hiring more mental health professionals, improving care and treatment. For those of you suffering from PTSD, we’re making it a whole lot easier to qualify for VA benefits. From now on, if a VA doctor confirms a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that is enough -- no matter what war you served in.
These are the commitments my administration has made. These are the promises we’ve worked to keep. This is the sacred trust we have pledged to uphold -- to you and all who serve.
The following is Mr. Reickhoff's list of demands:
And so far during President’s Obama’s time in office, veteran unemployment has risen, the VA disability backlog remains unacceptably high and suicide rates continue to skyrocket. The veterans community hoped that the President would deliver concrete solutions to these acute challenges in this speech and issue a call to action. But what we got instead, was mostly just talk.
Now, the President addressed both the backlog and suicide rates. There's more funding for both, and they're still working on making a single electronic record for our returning vets to end the backlog once and for all. I'd say that one falls under in progress. Once the source of PTSD is cut off, one we stop creating combat veterans, the suicide rate will start to fall. The most important thing for groups like IAVA is to let the Administration know how well the improvements are working and if they feel more money is necessary.
The problems of Vet unemployment is connected to the broader economy (let's not get tribal here, Paul; this is kicking the crap out of everybody). An uptick in the economy will fix that. In the meantime, there the Federal Government is hiring more Vets, and there's job training. That problem isn't going to get better with a special appropriation for Veterans. Once businesses start hiring, that rising tide will lift all boats, including Veterans.
After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents—some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military—it didn’t take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to “punish” any Afghan listed as having “collaborated” with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen.
One dead, but that's one dead too many...to gauge this by Mr. Assange's standards.
I mean, that's why you did it, right? You were outraged by all the death and destruction in Afghanistan, and you wanted to do something about it.
Congratulations, your overinflated sense of self-importance just got someone killed. I really hope that all the Interviews and publicity were worth it.
Again, I will repeat. I have no truck with Whistleblowers. I'm not comfortable with them leaking stuff on National Security, but it's sometimes necessary (see: Ellsberg, Daniel). But for Wikileaks to black out everyone's names except for the Afghanis is now bearing tragic consequences, and all it is directly attributable to Mr. Assange's decision to put this nearly worthless crap out there.
I hope Mr. Assange enjoys the limelight, and burns in hell afterwards.
As for myself, I deeply regret that once, on television in the days before the war, I reluctantly but foolishly said that going ahead with the invasion might be the right thing to do. I was far more skeptical, and equivocal, in print--I never wrote in favor of the war and repeatedly raised the problems that would accompany it--but skepticism and equivocation were an insufficient reaction, too. In retrospect, the issue then was as clear cut as it is now. It demanded a clarity that I failed to summon. The essential principle is immutable: We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.
"Reluctantly" is a term for editorial discussion. I personally remember him being a little less than reluctant.
There is no "victory" in Iraq, nor will there be. There is something resembling stability, but that might not last, either. There is a semblance of democracy, but that may dissolve over time, or in the next few months, into a Shi'ite dictatorship--which, if not well-run, will yield to the near-inevitable military coup. Yes, Saddam is gone--and that is a good thing. The Kurds have a greater measure of independence and don't have to live in fear of mass murder, which is a good thing, too. But Iran has been aggrandized. Its Iraqi allies, especially Muqtada Sadr's populist movement, remain a force that will play a major role--arguably one more central than ours--in shaping the future of the country. This attempt by western neo-colonialists--that is, the Bush Administration--to construct an amenable Iraq will most likely end no better than previous western attempts have. Certainly, even if something resembling democracy prevails, the U.S. invasion and occupation--the carnage and tragedy it wrought--will not be remembered fondly by Iraqis anytime soon. We will own the destruction in perpetuity; if the Iraqis manage to cobble themselves a decent society, they will see it, correctly, as an achievement of their own.
...
It is the way of the world that Barack Obama's announcement today of the end of the combat phase in Iraq, and the beginning of a 16-month period of advice and support for the Iraqi security forces before U.S. troops leave in 2011, will not be remembered as vividly as George Bush's juvenile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator in a golden sunset, to announce--six years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely--the "end of combat operations." But celebration is not appropriate now. What is appropriate is what the President did: promise that amends will be made to those whose lives were shattered and that their service in an unnecessary cause will be honored. What is also appropriate now is a mournful colloquy on America's place in the world--and how our natural leadership among nations, a consequence of the freedom that Bush misconstrued, is best utilized in the future.
I got to say, the President’s speech was good, but the crowd’s reaction was even better. This was not a tame, laid back, polite VFW crowd, but a raucous, rowdy, full-bore, full-on Disabled American Vets crowd.
And I liked it.
UPDATE: 4:39pm Pacific: Why the MSNBC Video cut things short at 30:50, I don't know. When the White House Video is put online, I'll put it up.
UPDATE: August 4, 2010: It took 'em long enough, but here it is.
I'm not ignoring the Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters stories, and I think this Joe Klein column provides a decent enough overview, but I think Joe neglects one aspect:
Of course, race doesn't apply here at all. This is about entitlement and yes, as Joe said, longevity. I think the Ethics Committee is moving with clean hands and a clear conscience.
I've been hearing about Maxine for years for having family members on the Congressional Office Payroll. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a Liberal Ethics Watchdog has had her on their most corrupt Congresspeople list for years. In this case, we're talking about steering Federal Money to a Minority-owned bank. I still can't explain to you in clear english what Rangel did, but it involved chicanery on his tax returns and some free trips to the Caribbean. In either case, I think these are cases of low-level corruption. No one's going to jail in either of these cases. Lose their jobs? Maybe, but I'd let the information loose, and let the people of their districts make their choice.Knowing my people, they'll look after their own. Calling them crooks, as Joe Klein does, is going a little overboard. My understanding is that these were clear violations of House Rules, and they deserve some kind of comeupance.
At the same time, any time the media wants to focus this much attention on Sen. John Ensign's actual criminal behavior, be my frickin' guest.
My only question is, after an Ethics Mechanism that's been gathering dust, why aren't the Democrats getting more credit for going after their own? We have strong majorities in both Houses and we're not papering this crap over.
"One of the things Obama’s been doing is deliberately trying to increase the percentage of our population that is dependent on government for your living. For example, do you know what was the second biggest demographic group that voted for Obama? Obviously the blacks were the biggest demographic, y’all know what was the second biggest? Unmarried women. 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama. And this is because when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have Big Brother Government to be your provider. And they know that. They’ve admitted it. And they have all kinds of bills to continue to subsidize illegitimacy… The Obama administration wants to continue to subsidize this group because they know they are Democratic votes."
Ladies and Gentlemen, your (and I do mean your) Republican Party.
Well, I'm willing to take one for the team(s) (I own both) if it'll get Richard Blumenthal elected to Chris Dodd's Senate seat.
Citing "potentially anticompetitive ebook deals," Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating the relationship between Apple, Amazon and publishers. Blumenthal claims Apple and Amazon have struck exclusive deals with publishers that would block smaller ebook distributors from offering better prices.
I do not understand the connection with 'big ears' and 'racism', and I do not understand how a 'dark face' implies racism. The accusation of 'Hate' is true, but it is the hate of an IDEOLGY [sic], not a of race of people..... I understand that the ideology has captured 80 or 90% of the race(s) in question, but it is STILL a AN IDEOLOGY and NOT a "race" that this comic book attacks.
