Obama Prepping KSM Cave-In
I’m now begging. Can we please stop the self-flagellation until he actually caves? He might very well cave, and this certainly does fit a pattern, but for my own sanity, I just can’t handle the pre-emptive outrage anymore.
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter
Obama Prepping KSM Cave-In
I’m now begging. Can we please stop the self-flagellation until he actually caves? He might very well cave, and this certainly does fit a pattern, but for my own sanity, I just can’t handle the pre-emptive outrage anymore.
by DougJ| 61 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Good News For Conservatives, We Are All Mayans Now
I never thought I’d use that as a post title, but this is as on the money as it gets:
In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.
This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Sunday column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that “Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter,” i.e., a one-term failure.
[….]From too many years of covering politics, I have come to believe as Axiom One that the absolute worst advice politicians ever receive comes from journalists who fancy themselves great campaign strategists.
Milbank now is urging Obama to emulate Gordon Brown, who is probably just weeks away from being voted out as Britain’s prime minister, and start bullying people himself. That is — well, it’s in the great tradition.
by DougJ| 111 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Even the "Liberal" New Republic, Good News For Conservatives
One of the memes going around Washington is that Obama’s biggest political problem is that he doesn’t scare anybody (MY here; dickwhisperer here, for example). I think that’s true. Of course, it was also true of the last two Democratic presidents.
I wonder how possible it is for a Democratic president to scare anyone. It seems to me there’s a limited number of ways that a president can screw people: (1) he could sic the press on them, (2) he could deny them and their family Think Tank/K Street/Board of Directors jobs, (3) he could have some arm of the federal government (say the DOJ or the FBI) go after them, (4) he could deny funding for re-election campaigns, and (5) he could see that they were screwed out of earmarks. Have I left anything out?
Realistically, (5) and, to a limited extent (4) (you don’t really want to lose seats by screwing Democrats’ campaigns, obviously) are the only options available to Obama. There’s no segment of the press that the Obama White House controls and I don’t think they have as much sway in the Think Tank/K Street/Board of Directors world as Bush did. On (3) there’s no doubt that Bush used it a lot and that Obama could do the same if he wanted to, but I don’t think a Democratic president could get away with that the way Bush did (largely because of the aforementioned lack of control of the press).
Perhaps this is paranoid, but I think the claim that “Washington is wired for Republican control” runs pretty deep. Democrats, for all their political success, are still pretty institutionally weak. For a long time, Republicans have been more serious about controlling institutions — that’s what the K Street project is about and it’s what the 30 year LIBRUL MEDIA jihad is about too.
At this point, it’s not much of a stretch to say that Republicans mostly control the media and the Think Tank/K Street world (they probably have more power over Board of Directors positions too). And that puts a serious dent in Democratic presidents’ ability to scare anyone.
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Clown Shoes, Democratic Stupidity
This just strikes me as pathetic (and I know I am going to get flamed for this):
Virtual March for Real Health Care Reform
Take Action!
Sign up to join the march
When you sign up, we’ll prepare faxes in your name and send them to your senators on the day of the march (click to view the fax we’ll send.) We’ll also send you reminder to call your senators. We will send you updates on this and other important campaigns by email.
No wonder we are losing to the teabaggers. They drive hundreds of miles and stand in inclement weather to voice their displeasure, give the news media lots of film to show on the nightly news, and do it over and over and over again complete with signs and a real presence (even if they lie about the actual numbers). We’re going to have a “virtual march.” We’ll deluge some poor unpaid jackass intern with strongly worded faxes!
We can’t even be bothered to get off our asses and march. Go slacktivism! Is there a facebook group for me to join, too? Will there be magnets for my car?
And don’t get me wrong, at least MoveOn is doing SOMETHING. And for the record, I blame the administration for some of this. Just WTF are they doing with OFA? Saving it for something really important, like Blanche Lincoln’s re-election effort?
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter
A group of unnamed businessmen bring this message to us:
At the very least, the cowards could put their name to it.
by John Cole| 91 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Clown Shoes, Democratic Stupidity
Maybe, maybe not:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is rewriting a jobs bill after Democrats complained of too many concessions to Republicans.
Reid announced Thursday that he would cut drastically back on the jobs bill Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced only hours earlier, essentially overruling the powerful chairman.
The Finance Committee estimated that Reid’s proposal would cost approximately $15 billion.
The Baucus bill, which was estimated at $85 billion, included $31 billion in tax extenders that Reid has decided to leave out. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said Reid decided to drop the tax extenders after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to endorse the Baucus package.
I’m glad he is learning to not let Baucus screw up every god damned thing that goes through the Senate, and I’m glad he is saying to hell with the Republicans.
Now, could someone tell me exactly wtf he thinks he is going to accomplish with a piddling 15 billion dollar jobs bill with 9.7% unemployment in a $15 Trillion economy. Even if he gets everything he wants, this is so small it is laughable. You might get unemployment down to what- 9.67%. Heckuva job, Harry.
How do so many worthless human beings stumble their way into so much power? Where do I go to get Krugman in charge of the Senate?
(via Talk Left)
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter
Earlier today in the comments, I said some nasty things about Steve Clemons, and Steve has come to defend himself. All’s good, he was right, I was rude and hasty and unfair, and I apologize. In other words, it is Monday.
The crux of the foodfight is his post several months back in which he asserted that the WH intentionally did not put up the text of the Human Rights Campaign speech fast enough on a Saturday night, which started yet another inevitable “Obama Hates The Gays” three day affair on the internet. You may not remember which one of those it was, because it was sandwiched in between a couple days of “Obama hates the womyn folk” because he doesn’t play basketball with them, and a couple of days of “Obama hates the progressives” because he hasn’t shot Lieberman in a dark alley yet but asked Howard Dean to tamp down the rhetoric (hint- one of those two people has a vote in the Senate). Likewise, I don’t want you to confuse this freak out with the “Obama hates the gays because he has not waved a wand and ended DADT and DOMA” and “Obama hates the gays because Rick Warren gave a shitty speech and was totally outclassed by Gene Robinson and Rev. Lowery.” No doubt, the fact that I have even mentioned this will foster fifty emails and delinkings because I am not gay friendly.
But here is the thing- Steve says he has private information, and I just don’t want to hear it. The piece making the assertion was public- very public, and if he and others have evidence that this was intentionally done, then I want it out there so I can beat up on the WH Communications Office. I don’t want private assurances, because right now I see a real deficit of trust between the beltway progressive activists who call themselves the base and a lot of the rest of the party who look and think like me and many of the people here.
I’m new to this whole party, so I haven’t quite figured out the whole history of all the infighting yet, but I have to tell you that there are a number of people like me who worked their ass off last year trying to get Obama elected, and who would still crawl over glass to get him elected again. We are just sick and tired of the unending negativity in some quarters and tired of being told that we are vastly outnumbered by the disaffected (but loudest) few, when polls show Obama with up to 90% of liberal support. So help me God I will curbjaw the next person who savages Obama on Fox and then has the balls to use the “Overton window” as a defense. I’m sick and tired of people writing pieces flaying the administration alive and then saying “but I only wish the best for the admin.” I’m sick and tired of people looking at the HCR bill and picking out only the things they dislike, ignoring all the positive aspects that make folks like Feingold and Sanders willing to vote for it- but that isn’t good enough for our progressive betters on the blogs and in the media.
I’m sick and tired on the focus on Rahm, because it weakens the President for his alleged allies to constantly act as if Rahm is really running the show. Everything you think has happened because of Rahm, Obama had to sign off on it.
I’m sick and tired of people on the left having the same amnesia that the folks on the right have about how well and truly fucked this country was on 20 January, and now pitching daily fits because there is no pony yet. I’m sick and tried of going to progressive websites and reading the following posts:
Obama sucks
Rahm sucks
Obama and Rahm suck
Obama sucks
Rahm sucks
Obama and Rahm REALLY suck
And then, without a trace of humor, ending with a concern troll post about how demoralized Democrats are about the fall elections. No shit? Your readers are demoralized? I wonder what could be helping to cause that?
So I tend to act in a volatile manner when I see unsupported assertions. Maybe we have carved out our little Obot sanctuary here. Or maybe we have carved out a place where we remember all the good things that have happened in the past year, on top of the failings. And yes, there have been lots of failings.
But right now-I just don’t trust the beltway progressives any more than the beltway Republicans, even though on a lot of issues I think the progressive activists are probably right about policy. What I see going on are the same hysterical types of responses to everything that we get from Republicans, only the position on the issues has changed.
And I’m rambling.