mmmm ...

From the mouths of the intelligent ...

I would certainly think that if liberal cheerleading is valuable they would at least refrain from using liberals as a doormat every time they want to appease some conservadem princeling. Depending on supporters' masochism probably isn't a great strategy.

And any adult should know that angrily exhorting someone to love you doesn't actually work.

Obama, are you listening? ...

Even though I was not enthusiastic about Obama as the Democratic nominee for President, I NEVER thought he would take ahold of some of the worst of Bush and Cheney and make it the norm for both political parties.

... How ironic that Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, is persecuting a former child soldier, using him to validate his own version of the executive’s kangaroo court military commissions, while Omar Khadr himself looks for meaning and hope in the example of the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

Does Obama identify with the civil rights struggles of the '50s and '60s? I doubt it. I don't think concepts are more than words to Obama. Justice, rights, independence, humanity, health, welfare, fairness, law. To Obama words have no meaning except in their use to justify actions that please the powerful and the wealthy. Everyone else should believe that he 'understands' and 'sympathises' but that they should pull themselves up by their broken bootstraps and be grateful for the honor of handing over their country to the wealthy few.

Sign of the times? ...

Equity?

"The articles of Equity are three:

"I. The balance of power among the people being very much deranged, by one having too much and another nothing, we hereby resolve ourselves into a congress or court of equity, to restore as far as in us lies the said natural balance of power, by taking from all who have too much as much of the said too much as we can lay our hands on; and giving to those who have nothing such a portion thereof as it may seem to us expedient to part with.

My, once we have all the equity we can take perhaps we will share it a little, perhaps, maybe.

The above quote is from Maid Marion by Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), Gutenberg.org, EBook #966.

I'm about half way through Peacock's version of the legend. There's so much more there than what Hollywood passed on.

Well, that's a surprise isn't it?
--------------------------------

Oh, mustn't leave out the the 2nd article of Legitimacy.

"II. Our government being legitimate, all our proceedings shall be legitimate: wherefore we declare war against the whole world, and every forester is by this legitimate declaration legitimately invested with a roving commission, to make lawful prize of every thing that comes in his way.

Has a sorta Bush-ian ring to it, doesn't it? I think it appeals to Obama also from what I've seen.

Closer to the Fall-of-Rome comparison that we'd like to think ...

digby writes:

By the way, in case you haven't heard, the congress passed yet another "emergency" war supplemental last night. After listening to a bunch of tripe for weeks about having to offset costs to extend unemployment benefits, and watching teachers all over the country be fired for lack of funds, that vote may be the single most illustrative move we've seen yet to illustrate that the fall of Rome comparisons are not as far fetched as we like to think.

We've been close for some time now and were seemingly offered a chance to 'change' our destructive ways by an apparently intelligent young politician who has turned out to be (surprise?) just another political hack who does what his financial/industrial/military controllers want him to do.

He calls himself a new kind of Democrat as he pursues the same course we've been following for 30+ years. That's the kind of 'new' that only exists in marketing campaigns.

And he worries about his legacy!

My God, we're a nation of fluff.

What happened to substance? Should substance exist still in any hidden cranny of our political world the press will be sure to stamp it out by ridiculing the good, praising the corrupt and channeling innuendo and lies.

What we've got is a new kind of improved marketing campaign kind of president. Welcome to America!

Obama and WikiLeaks ...

Why, oh why, did Obama choose to take on Bush-the-Stupid's war and make it his own?

Now as A-Great-War-President, Obama's takes the usual approach that these types of illustrious leaders reflexively glom on to for a war --or other detrimental policy-- gone bad:

• increase the war effort (more troops, more money, more hype), and
• shut those damn truth-tellers up!

So again, I ask, how is Obama different from Bush?
----------------------------------------------------------------------

As Glenn Greenwald writes:

It's hardly a shock that the war in Afghanistan is going far worse than political officials have been publicly claiming. Aside from the fact that lying about war is what war leaders do almost intrinsically -- that's part of what makes war so degrading to democratic values -- there have been numerous official documents that have recently emerged or leaked out that explicitly state that the war is going worse than ever and is all but unwinnable. ... [emphasis added]

Greenwald also points to this post by Jay Rosen. It's one of Rosen's better posts and a must read:

The Afghanistan War Logs Released by Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization

Shirley Sherrod ...

Impressive lady ... but notice it appears they did not actually offer her HER JOB back. They offered her a different job.

That has the appearance of taking her back, putting her somewhere out of the way and getting her to stop impressing people at their expense.

Right wing want ... Obama do!

Let’s see, Dawn Johnsen, Van Jones, ACORN, Liz Warren, Shirley Sherrod, . . . unions, women, hispanics, LGBT, the unemployed, . . . It’s almost as though there were a White House insider deliberately trying to drive people away from the Democratic Party and discredit this Administration. . . .”

This really shouldn't be a surprise by now. The Obama administration is so terrified of right-wing lies and liars that they will try to stop the lies by instantly complying to the lastest crazy right wing stated desire. This, of course, causes the right wing crazies to up the ante instead of the reverse.

This 'democratic' WH can never succeed since their obvious goal is to keep the craziest republicans happy.

Another Obama dud ...

Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske.

This individual thinks that legalizing marijuana 'would [ ] see a black market that would come into play!'

Right, legalization would create a black market. What does this Obama appointee think we have now?

----
source:Drug Czar Warns of “Black Market” for Marijuana by Michael Whitney, firedoglake.com

The only reason to cut or eliminate SS and Medicare ...

... if cuts are proposed and enacted in Social Security and Medicare, they will hurt millions, weaken the economy, and the deficits will not decline. It’s a lose-lose proposition, with no gainers except a few predatory funds, insurance companies and such who would profit, for some time, from a chaotic private marketplace. [emphasis added]

-- Galbraith Blasts Alan Simpson: He “Lacks the Temperment to Do a Fair and Impartial Job” on Deficit Commission by Jane Hamsher, firedoglake.com

And our day-late and dollar-short 'democratic' President, the O-Bomb, is doing all he can to help the destruction along.

Nothing good ...

... That's what is 'says' about us!

... the thesis of the article is that electric torture devices only become popular in democratic societies where police are constrained in how much cruelty they can inflict. What exactly does that say about us?

-- Shocking Reflections by digby

The Case of Inverted Reasoning ...

Dave concedes that the NAACP has a case, but concludes that they're wrong for making it. But they're only wrong for making it because the broader society, evidently, believes that objecting to a call for literacy tests is, in fact, just as racist as a call for literacy tests. This inversion, this crime against sound logic, is at the heart of American white supremacy, and at the heart of a country that has nurtured white supremacy all these sad glorious years.

It is the Founders claiming all men are created equal while building a democracy on property in human beings. It is Confederates crying tyranny, while erecting a country based on tyranny. It is Sherman discriminating against black soldiers, while claiming that his superiors are discriminating against whites. It's Ben Tillman justifying racial terrorism, by claiming that he's actually fighting against terrorism. It is George Wallace defending a system built on bombing children in churches, and then asserting that the upholders of that system are "the greatest people to ever trod this earth." [emphasis added]

Those who employ racism are not in the habit of confessing their nature--inversion is their cloak. Cutting out the cancer means confronting that inversion, means not wallowing in on-the-other-handism, in post-racialism, means seeing this as more than some kind of political game. Someone has, indeed, failed here. It is not the NAACP.

-- The NAACP Is Right, Cont. by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

Teabagger redux? ...

" ... the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor."

-- A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT by MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens) Part 2., Chapter 8

To empathize is to civilize. To civilize is to empathize.

Is there still hope for the planet ... and us ...
via Mary at The Left Coaster

A reviewer of Rifkin's book

The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

at amazon.com writes:

The question Jared Diamond asked, " What did the people on Easter Island think as they cut down the last tree?" resonates throughout this book ...

George Bush is rolling in the aisles ...

... We knew Harry and Nancy had struck a deal; we just didn’t when or how it would be implemented. Turns out that Nancy picked the most chickenshit cowardly self-serving way it could have possibly been done. Since this rule is only in effect for the 111th Congress, it expires on January 5 and applies only to the lame duck Congress.

Pete Peterson’s smiling now. He’s got my retirement money. Maybe he’ll use it to fill one of his swimming pools.

[from Phoenix Woman at firedoglake.com: Thank You, Nancy Pelosi, For Saving Me Money ]

Thank you, you despicable people: Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi! The laughs definitely on us. We put a Dem in the WH and got majorities in both houses of Congress so that you [fill in the blank with the most insultingly descriptive epithets you can think of] #$%@#*# would do what George Bush was incapable of doing.