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.

Good to see the numbers on Obama's deliberate failure ...

From Greenwald:

A new CNN poll today finds that Americans oppose the current health care plan by a margin of 59-39%, but a sizable portion of those opposed -- 13% -- oppose it because "it is not liberal enough" ...

Thus, a majority of Americans either support the plan or believe it should be more liberal (52%), while only a minority (43%) oppose the plan on the ground that it is too liberal.

I'm one of the 13%. I think Obama did this deliberately. He got a teensy bit of improvement in insurance coverage (maybe) at a tremendous cost to the country's citizens while working to fill the coffers of the greedy, crooked insurance and pharmaceutical industries. And he calls that a victory.

Now that's creepy.

Seem to think? ...

... [Republicans] seem to think Democracy means that that elections are irrelevant, majorities are meaningless and that all legislation is contingent upon the permission of the Republican Party.

This is they way Republicans have operated for decades. Why shouldn't they? Democrats cave repeatedly. That is Dems either cave or they've been lying to their constituents all along. Which is better? Cowards or traitors?

"Did Obama just kill the public option?" ...

Well, why not? It was obvious that he was lying every time he sorta, maybe, perhaps supported the Public Option:

Curious

I have to agree that Marshmallow Man Obama is not as bad as Bush The Lesser, but that is so far from a compliment or recommendation that it is embarrassing.

Today's quote ...

Jon Walker, firedoglake.com: “What a strange ‘Democracy’ we live in that an idea is too popular for any to stand against yet it might bring down the whole party and health care reform because many so deeply hate their supporters.”

I've got to hand it to Raul Grijalva ...

... he hasn't caved to the those (including Krugman) who think the indefensible Senate's protect-the-future-profits-of-the-'health'-insurance-industry bill should be passed now, right now, don't think about it further, just do what we say, right now. After all it can be fixed (by the same morons who can't produce anything halfway acceptable should their very lives depend on it) later. Sort-a-like Medicare Part D was fixed -- oh, but it hasn't been fixed, has it?

It takes guts, which so few in Congress have, to keep standing up for what it right as other Democrats, like Diane Watson of California, get down in the mud and slither towards their corporate paymasters.

Today's Quote ...

Leadership, Obama Style

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.

Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn't mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can't tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

We have seen the same pattern of pretty speeches followed by empty exhortations on issue after issue. ...

-- Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator by Drew Westen, Huffington Post

I once had a manager who fit this description. He acted like he was a very nice person. But he had an assistant, not unlike Rahm-boy, who he gave the 'dirty' jobs, the normal personnel related jobs that most managers must do and that many do well thus garnering respect and a reasonably smooth running organization. Playing the good guy while a subordinate plays hatchet man can have unintended consequences ... as we are seeing right before our eyes.

Apt characterization of Republicans ...

... and, sadly, of not a few Dems:

... [they denounce a judicial decision] for reasons having nothing to do with law and everything to do with their own political beliefs and outcome preferences -- i.e., they're advocating, as usual, for the consummate act of outcome-based "judicial activism" which they endlessly claim to oppose.

Yeah, yeah, just part of the game ...

Source: Reid Fed Up With GOP Obstruction, Committed To Finishing Health Care By Xmas

Too put it mildly ...

... Even bigger than health care, if the entire Democratic party exists only to give Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu sole power to design every peice of legislation, the progressive grassroots needs to reevaluate why they even vote for Democrats.

Classified Benchmarks ...

America's insanity just gets better and better. Once again the US has, will you believe it, BENCHMARKS! Remember those. Those benchmarks that have no consequence when they fail to be met. Those benchmarks that are forgotten when they no longer work as a propaganda tool.

But wait, these BENCHMARKS are better. These bench marks are CLASSIFIED. Just think of the propaganda value of CLASSIFIED BENCHMARKS.

Now that must be what Obama SMARTS brings to Bush STUPIDITY.

Way to go. Change you can believe in.
-------------------

Apparently Obama is working for the Republicans:

While Democratic lawmakers are increasingly opposed to a possible troop increase, Republican lawmakers say the move is necessary and that the president needs to convey that in his speech tomorrow.

Of course, fighting 'insurgents' and citizens in a country far, far away keeps the US from taking care of it's own problems: health care, education, starving children, overcrowded prisons and other little matters like an increasingly insane political environment.

Not to mention all the money certain factions make in and around the military establishment. Afghanistan is not the only center of corruption revolving around this war of the very wealthy and very unChristian 'Christians.'

Don't lose sight of the fact that if the Senate does not pass real health care ...

... it will be because they didn't want to!

This post explains why that is the case.

Reconciliation is only one possible solution. At any time, 50 senators plus the vice president could use the “nuclear option” to effectively eliminate the filibuster. The filibuster is a terrible perversion of the idea of allowing unrestricted debate in the Senate. The founders had no intention, that 200 years later, it would be warped into some gimmick used to permanently undermine the foundational constitutional power of the majority.

There is no need to compromise, there is no need to find 60 votes, and there is no need to win the support of Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, etc.; it is well within the power of Harry Reid and fifty other Democrats in caucus to pass at much better health care bill without some potentially terrible compromises. If the Senate Democrats don’t pass a decent health care bill–with a public option–it is because they did not want to, not because they were unable to. They decided that maintaining their special Senate privileges were more important.

Ah, yes. The US is such a leader of nations ...

Copenhagen Climate Talks Already In Trouble. Guess Why.

Way to go Obama and our oh so self important Senators, the Dems as well as the Thugs ...

Obama's performance: as candidate astute and apparently deliberately deceptive; as President unbelievably short sighted ...

A Union Man Ponders the Democrats’ Collapse in the Virginia Elections

2. When the Obama campaign turned out the lights and went home just a couple days after the election last year that was it. The campaign was over. When the paid campaign staff operatives threw the switch to try to turn it all back "on" this year nothing happened. The Obama strategy of relentlessly and fruitlessly trying to coax support for its timid agenda from the Republican Congressional minority has left the rank-and-file with nothing to do but complain in frustration. The activists were largely missing in action, and the newly energized voters stayed at home. It was as if last year never happened. [emphasis added]

Today's quote ...

... This is a base problem, and this is what Democrats better take from tonight:

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary "bipartisanship", you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected -- health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform -- you will lose votes.

-- Lessons by John Amato, Crooks and Liars quoting Tonight's big lesson by kos, Dailykos

So we continue using Afghanistan for one of our wars ...

... so that Dianne Feinstein's husband Richard Blum (among others) can increase his millions through the deaths of thousands of Americans (and others).

Democrats and Afghanistan: what's at stake

Today's quote ... Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs

A whopping 83 percent see unemployment as either a fairly big or very big problem; and 81 percent say the Obama administration hasn't done enough to deal with it.

And there just aren't a whole lot of things that more than 80 percent of Americans agree about.

Not coincidentally, large majorities of voters also see the government's economic policies as helping banks and Wall Street -- while few see themselves or average working families in general as benefiting.

So why isn't political Washington fully engaged in addressing the unemployment problem? For the same reasons it can't seem to get much of anything done these days: most notably the abject lack of boldness from the Democrats and persistent obstructionism from the Republicans.

Democrats have been particularly terrified for decades now of doing anything that can be said to actually cost the government money. (Republicans, ironically, have no such scruples.) So our modern ruling party has found itself boxed in by its own president's support for "pay-as-you-go budget rules". And the fact is that very serious concern about the deficit -- even now, when it's the least of our troubles -- is considered a hallmark of serious thinking in Washington. Those who don't toe the line are written off as crazy, wild-eyed radicals.

-- Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs by Dan Froomkin

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-news/reporting/dan-froomkin,

Out of the mouths of Americans ...

The following two quotes are taken from today's Glenn Greenwald article Georgia/Russia: how our political discourse works

Sarah Palin, ABC News interview, September 10, 2008:

PALIN: For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep...

GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.

PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.

and

John McCain, presidential debate, October 7, 2008:

[Putin] has exhibited most aggressive behavior, obviously, in Georgia. . . .We have to make the Russians understand that there are penalties for these this kind of behavior, this kind of naked aggression into Georgia, a tiny country and a tiny democracy.

Not only do our high visibility politicians and media 'luminaries' make the facts up but they have no apparent hesitation in excitedly encouraging the US to actions that they state as absolutely wrong, unChristian, evil, contemptible (pick most any negative adjective you like) when others engage in such actions. How do McCain and Palin reconcile the above words with US actions in Iraq and the current build up of excitement over Iran that is eerily similar to that that preceded the invasion of Iraq? The answer is that they don't bother nor attempt to reconcile the incomprehensible position. They do not have to justify nor explain. All they have to do is speak the same lies over and over.

The only ones who have to explain or justify their words are those who buck the current Political/Media fantasy. And then the words that they are asked to justify have nothing to do with their position, with the facts nor the logic of their argument but, rather, with a few specially selected adjectives. For example:

Notice that Alan Grayson is trying to talk about the need Americans have for health care while the 'panelists' are concerned about the adjectives he uses to describe the Republicans in the House and similar diversions. It's really great the way Grayson keeps to his points about health care and refuses to be misdirected by the silliness of the kind that the media regularly dishes out to anyone who doesn't regurgitate what the corporate media deems acceptable.

I get email from the Prez. Well not really ...

Mitch Stewart, BarackObama.com" writes:

Call your representatives, and tell whoever answers where you are from and that you watched the President's address.

Then tell them that you want your representatives to support the President's plan, ask them where they stand -- and thank them if they already clearly support it.

Don't forget to click here to let us know what they said.

Why would I respond to a request to ask those Reps and Senators from Arizona who theoretically represent me to support Obama's plan when I don't really know what his plan is other than an awareness from past and current practices that he favors corporation over people and the rich over the majority of Americans.

Obama has a meeting with Reid and Pelosi. Afterwards Obama continues to increase his rhetoric supporting a 'public option' and Pelosi starts to wind down her once absolute support for the public option. Obama, as far as I can see still has secret deals with Robber Baron corporations already killing people over their health needs. Though Obama appears verbally to support a 'public option' he still does not appear to support the progressive who are working for it nor has he pressured the Blue Curs to cooperate. So why would I call Grijalva with Obama's message when he appears to be doing exactly what I prefer and the Prez is most likely working against both Grijalva and me.

As for McCain and Killer Kyl, we already know they only support corporations and the rich and look forward to the continued peon-ization of America. It's ironic, really, that the insurance control of health care without the balancing presence of a strong public option would support the goals of McCain and Kyl. But since it's a stupid Dem Prez doing the corporate bidding, instead of themselves, they will not support the insurance controlled legislation that will most likely pass without any public option and they will even use the horror of such legislation to help them improve their electoral chance. Stupid Dems indeed.

Well I wish he had not apologized for ...

... asking questions that are more legitimate than any of the hissy fits the Thugs throw.

Van Jones Resigns

I'm so tired of Democrats reflexively apologizing without thinking. I'm also tired of the lack of official Democratic support for any Democrat except the Blue Curs!