Quote of the Day: Suggested signs for Tea Partiers

Andrew Kimbralls excellent piece "The Empty Pulpit: The Obama Problem" in Tikkun criticizes the lack of ballsy action taken on the very issues Obama all us progressive types fired up about during his campaign. The piece is a stand-out because it illustrates ways in which the opinions and slogans of the reactionary right can be countered with common-sense points that might actually change some hearts and minds (rather than capitulation to the right and rather than dissembling in the name of political realism, as has been the case).

In his point about countering the "Government is the problem" meme, Kimbrall suggests:

To be true to their “anti-big government” message, Tea Party rallies should have been festooned with signs such as “Fire the Fireman,” “No More Police,” “Bite the Postman,” “We Support Fewer Teachers and Overcrowded Classrooms,” “Collapse our Bridges — No More Infrastructure,” “We’ll Pave and Build Our Own Roads,” “Citizens for Salmonella,” “Unsafe Drugs for Everyone,” “Americans for a Weak Defense,” “Senior Citizens Against Medicaid and Medicare.” These signs were missing, of course, and instead we have the endless brow furrowing over “big government” in both parties as the discussion remains conveniently abstract.

OK, you rugged individualists out there. Get out your steamrollers and line-painting equipment. Self-sufficiency, right?

Pass the dutchie, Barack

cross-posted on Workhorse Politics

As part of a two-day campaign to talk directly to Americans following Tuesday’s State of the Union address, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time today, President Obama will answer questions via live streaming on the World View YouTube channel. Up through midnight World View invited the public to upload their video questions and to vote the most popular questions to the top of the list.

U.S. Marines battle poppies in Afghanistan

This morning, if you visit the page and filter the questions by choosing “All Questions” and “Sorted by popularity” the most popular questions at least through position number 30 (where I got tired of counting) ask about legalizing marijuana  or all drugs, or about allowing growth of industrial hemp in the United States as a green initiative (we currently import our hemp from China and Canada), and similar questions.

To ignore these questions would certainly turn the effort to respond directly to Americans’ concerns into a sham. One might think that Obama is in a bit of a spot here, but in actuality the sentiment that drug prohibition should be ended in the United States plays out on both ends of the political spectrum — Liberals and many Conservatives (or, at least, the Libertarian if not Christian Right flavor of Conservative) alike believing that we waste billions on the so-called War on Drugs, that it is not effective, that it in fact supports gang activity and causes violence, and many other reasons (supported by research, by example in other countries that have relaxed or removed prohibitions, and by the opinion of a growing body of current and former law-enforcement officials).

The question at the very top of the list, having earned far more votes than any other question, comes from a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (“LEAP”). This seasoned Officer Mackenzie Allen packs many solid reasons for repeal into his 32-second vid, and asks only whether the President thinks it is time to discuss repealing drug prohibition.




How can Obama possibly ignore answering the most popular question by far, coming from a police officer? We shall see.

Dog Training

In his new NYT column "Time for This Big Dog to Bite Back" Frank Rich recommends that Obama forcefully illustrate the class warfare that has been waged for decades in the U.S. You know, the redistribution of wealth that has resulted in the decimation of the middle class and the concentration of 25% of the nation's wealth into the hands of 1% of its people.

Though F.D.R. was predictably accused of “class warfare,” his antibusiness “radicalism,” was, in Kennedy’s words, “a carefully staged political performance, an attack not on the capitalist system itself but on a few high-profile capitalists.” Roosevelt was trying to co-opt the populist rage of his economically despondent era, some of it uncannily Tea Party-esque in its hysteria, before it threatened that system, let alone his presidency. Only the crazy right confused F.D.R. with communists for taking on capitalism’s greediest players, and since our crazy right has portrayed Obama as a communist, socialist and Nazi for months, he’s already paid that political price without gaining any of the benefits of bringing on this fight in earnest.

F.D.R. presided over a landslide in 1936. The best the Democrats can hope for in 2010 is smaller-than-expected losses. To achieve even that, Obama will have to give an F.D.R.-size performance — which he can do credibly and forcibly only if he really means it. So far, his administration’s seeming coziness with some of the same powerful interests now vilifying him has left middle-class voters, including Democrats suffering that enthusiasm gap, confused as to which side he is on. If ever there was a time for him to clear up the ambiguity, this is it.

 Word.

The Status-Quo Sucks (us back under)

posted by Ilyse Kazar

So, McDonnell takes VA and Christie takes NJ. This is just hunky dory. The Conservatives will now be spreading the meme that this is a rejection of Obama.

The distinction that will be lost: This is not a rejection of the Obama who promised to sock it to the special interests. This is a rejection of the glacial pace at which anything has been done along those lines.

If politics in Washington had ridden the tidal wave of sentiment re the little guy suffering at the hands of huge power blocks, if Washington had done a trickle-up bailout of homeowners instead of a fairly useless (to 99.999% of us) bailout of Wall Street, if Obama were pushing harder for the Dems to include a make-no-bones-about-it public option and if his administration had done a better job of selling it to the people, if stimulus money had gone directly to folks who needed to save or wished to start up small businesses, if Congress had immediately enacted some sort of real incentives to encourage Earth-friendly consumption and energy-user habits, if we had not only gone up against Coal but had the imagination to plan re-training, re-tooling and thereby a boost for the employment prospects of folks in areas where Coal has historically been the only employer ... this would not be happening.

I also blame this on all of us. We were all psyched during the election. There were leagues of us talking it up, knocking on doors, standing at tables, organizing and attending rallies.

Where is the march in Washington against escalation in Afghanistan?

Where are the dramatic news-worthy public events in support of universal health care, demanding real action against global warming?

Where are the demonstrations against the subsidies to factory farming mega-corporations?

I mean, shit, in my junior high school we staged a sit-in, complete with black arm bands, against the war in Nam. Where are you, people? In November 2008 we pulled levers, touched screens or punched chads. We poured out into the streets in a spontaneous celebration when the results came in. Then we sat back to watch and complain.

Maybe the election of more Christies and McDonnells is what we actually need. Maybe we simply have not reached that howling pain-point at which we will get up off our duffs. Maybe we needed this dangerous pivot, this wake-up call that if you don't push hard and keep pushing for Change, the Status Quo is whatchergonnagit.

We were going to take back America, remember?

Evil Trouser Wearing Women

BBC NEWS | Africa | Sudan women 'lashed for trousers' -- and Obama didn't even mention Sudan?

Is there nothing to be done about theocracies that brutalize their women? That is not a rhetorical question, I really wonder about the implications of doing nothing and also about the implications of interfering.

Still wondering whazzup that Prez O did not take one of the most cruel African regimes to task when he had the chance.

TY to Nick Kristoff for his FB post on this.

Quote of the Day: Barack on Fatherhood

From the White House Blog:

On the 100th anniversary of Father's Day, the President writes a piece on fatherhood in Parade Magazine talking about his own life and highlighting the responsibilities all fathers must step up to:

In many ways, I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.

Quote of the day: Shovelin' the ____?

After the ceremony at which Obama announced his proposed expansion of Americorps ...

Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton doffed their coats and ties to travel together to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens to plant trees in a muddy riverside marsh. The two presidents seemed in good spirits and teased each other about their tree-planting ability.

“I think the president has pretty good shoveling skills,” Mr. Obama said after watching Mr. Clinton demonstrate the proper technique.

What He Said

Frank Rich in Sunday's New York Times:

PRESIDENT Obama did not offer his patented poetry in his Inaugural Address. He did not add to his cache of quotations in Bartlett’s. He did not recreate J.F.K.’s inaugural, or Lincoln’s second, or F.D.R.’s first. The great orator was mainly at his best when taking shots at Bush and Cheney, who, in black hat and wheelchair, looked like the misbegotten spawn of the evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the Wicked Witch of the West.

Such was the judgment of many Washington drama critics. But there’s a reason that this speech was austere, not pretty. Form followed content. Obama wasn’t just rebuking the outgoing administration. He was delicately but unmistakably calling out the rest of us who went along for the ride as America swerved into the dangerous place we find ourselves now.

Worth reading the rest!

Obama Restores Worldwide Women's Health Services

Just days after President Obama took the oath of office, he reversed the "global gag rule." His executive order reversed the awful policy -- issued by Reagan, continued by Bush 1, overturned by Clinton, reinstated by Bush 2 on his first day in office in '01 -- that canceled US funding to women's health clinics worldwide if they so much as mentioned family planning methods as an option.

The global gag rule forced health clinics in developing countries - which often serve as the only source of birth control for the world's poorest women - to cut their staff, limit services, and sometimes close their doors entirely.


When Obama first launched his campaign, he surveyed his supporters asking what we would like to see him do as his first act as President. My answer was: Overturn the global gag rule that Bush reinstated on *his* first day in office. I feel like my wish came true and am SO grateful that my sisters around the world will be supported by our country in having control over their lives and their health, instead of having their biology rule their destiny and suffering from women's health issues with no local clinics to turn to. And we have rejoined the modern age, in recognition of the need for population control on our overtaxed Mother Earth.


Please consider joining me today in thanking President Obama for his swift action on behalf of women everywhere.

Tupac, do ya feel us today? Please pay us a visit

Come on come on
I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
"Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?"
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.
First ship 'em dope & let 'em deal the brothers.
Give 'em guns, step back, and watch 'em kill each other.
"It's time to fight back", that's what Huey said.
2 shots in the dark now Huey's dead.
I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
unless we share with each other. We gotta start makin' changes.
Learn to see me as a brother 'stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me?
I'd love to go back to when we played as kids,
but things change, and that's the way it is.

(Come on, come on) That's just the way it is. Things'll never be the same.
That's just the way it is. aww yeah...


I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace for races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...
let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause mo' black than white is smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other.
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.
And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh.
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact...
the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks.
But some things will never change.
Try to show another way, but they stayin' in the dope game.
Now tell me what's a mother to do?
Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you.
You gotta operate the easy way.
"I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid,"
Well hey, well that's the way it is.

We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

And still I see no changes. Can't a brother get a little peace?
There's war on the streets & the war in the Middle East.
Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.
And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do.
But now I'm back with the facts givin' 'em back to you.
Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up, crack you up and pimp smack you up.
You gotta learn to hold ya own.
They get jealous when they see ya with ya mobile phone.
But tell the cops they can't touch this.
I don't trust this, when they try to rush I bust this.
That's the sound of my tune. You say it ain't cool, but mama didn't raise no fool.
And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped & I never get to lay back.
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the pay backs.
Some buck that I roughed up way back... comin' back after all these years.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. That's the way it is. uhh

Arabama

The NY Times today published a collection of blog entries from Arab countries:

The Skeptic, Egypt (elijahzarwan.net/blog)

A new day dawned in Cairo today. As it does every day.

And it started as it always does: with birds, schoolchildren and car horns. No national holiday here.

I’m looking forward to going out in the streets to hear the reaction. The best reaction I’ve heard so far: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Bah humbug. I confess I’m moved.

RIP Madelyn!!

Barack's grandma Madelyn Dunham passed yesterday, made my heart physically hurt for Obama. Can you imagine, losing the last caretaker of your youth, effectively he was orphaned YESTERDAY, and will likely be elected President of the United States TODAY.

I cannot fathom this. What a convergence of events. Big things happening in the Universe. He may be about to become OUR caretaker of sorts. Wow.

This is his grandma hugging him on his H.S. graduation. Grandpa Stanley standing next to him:



I know they're all cheering him from Heaven! I know they're surrounding him in an orb of incredible light. Mama Ann, Grandma and Grandpa are all fine, I just feel so RAW for the load Barack himself is called upon to carry at the moment. Perhaps one of those Purifying moments in life.

Millions and millions of just such loving hugs from all of us.

Let it come down, No, Wait

HuffPost has a great slideshow up called Tears for Obama (click on photo), tears of joy, awe, grief and relief over the course of this campaign. My heart anticipates rushing out in the streets some time around midnight, shouting with elation together with my fellow Manhattanites (probably 80% Pro-O). My head, though, admonishes me to be neutral, that anything can happen, to disengage the heart...

"Watching Obama accept the Democratic nomination, Times Square, August 28th"

Kudos to Obama's staff AND ALL THOSE VOLUNTEERS!

The Washington Post reports today:

With one day to go, Democrat Barack Obama appears to have rebuffed recent GOP efforts to label him as "too liberal" or too big a gamble.

The new Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll puts Obama well out in front over Republican John McCain and finds that Obama has firmly reestablished his advantage on handling the economy, beaten back a challenge on taxes and has an edge in terms of perceptions about which candidate would better deal with an unexpected major crisis.

Job well done, y'all! Thanks from the rest of us who did not have the time or resources!

Obama Shining Knight for TV Networks

NYT reported yesterday that the "infomercial on behalf of Mr. Obama was a smashing ratings success on Wednesday night, proving to be more popular than even the final game of the World Series — and last season’s finale of “American Idol.”

Well, I'm surprised that the networks were surprised:

“I was shocked by the number Obama was able to draw,” said Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. “It’s just a stunning number.”

On CBS, the infomercial was seen by about 8.6 million viewers, a number that topped the show CBS usually runs on Wednesday night at 8, “Old Christine,” which averages about 7.2 million.

But this is the part that is shocking:

On NBC, the disparity was even greater. Its regular show there, “Knight Rider,” has been averaging just under 7 million viewers. Mr. Obama pulled in 9.8 million for his half-hour special.

Seven million people watch Knight Rider? No accounting for taste, as they say.

Obama Devotion

At yesterday's drenched rally in PA, Obama shared this allegory:

John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy towards a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas.

My fave pics of that rally this morning are in the NY Times:

by Doug Mills:



... and by Damon Winter:



And a sampler of The Closing Argument:

Pennsylvania, that’s what hope is about – the belief deep down inside us of us that we can do better than we’re doing right now, that there better days ahead, if we’re willing to work for it. If we’re willing to shed our fears and our doubts, if we’re willing to reach down deep inside us, when times are tough, when it’s cold, when it’s rainy, when it’s hard - that’s when we stand up, that’s when we reach for a better future. And if all of you are willing to be just as determined as you are today, if all of you go out on election day, if all of you get your friends and your neighbors, your co-workers, if you are determined to bring about a better America, then I promise you this, we will not just win Pennsylvania, we will win this general election and you can I together, we’re gonna change this country and change this world.

Sullivan's face of the day

Pop quiz: Which man can you see being President of our United States? (Click entry title)

Appalachians for Obama

This is rather long but so sweet, I wish I knew who these folks were so we could all send them our thanks. Lyrics will scroll past at the end.



I love how she flicks a piece of popcorn to the dog every now & then ...

Journalist of the Day Award: Alessandra Stanley

In her TV Watch article in the New York Times, Stanley writes:

It wasn’t a television blackout of John McCain; it was worse: split-screen contrasts that at times made it seem as if Barack Obama was on a state visit while back home his opponent chafed at the perks and privileges of an incumbent commander in chief.

On Tuesday, Mr. McCain held a town hall-style meeting in Rochester, N.H. In the shadow of the ancient Temple of Hercules in Amman, Jordan, Mr. Obama solemnly described his vision for peace in the region while standing at a lectern, the Middle East sprawling out behind him. Reporters were cordoned in front of him like the White House press corps — except that an audio snag kept their questions inaudible.

All three cable news networks carried Mr. Obama's news conference live and in full. They showed only parts of Mr. McCain's forum and focused mostly on his reaction to Mr. Obama's statements. Even Fox News broke away from Mr. McCain midevent to cover the rescue of a bear cub wounded in a California fire and nicknamed Lil' Smokey.

Read her article here

Journalist of the Day Award: Arianna

From "Tell Me Again, Why Is Obama Being Popular With Our Allies a Bad Thing?":

And here was Gloria Borger on CNN, responding to Wolf Blitzer's assertion that Obama seemed to be on top of his game by pulling out the Straight Talk talking points (and leaving logic and rational thinking in a pile on the studio floor):

...as the McCain campaign points out, he can't appear to be seen as running for the president of Europe. He's going to be really cheered in Europe, he's going to give a huge speech. He's going to have a lot of support there. But he's running for the president of the United States. And so they have to walk a very, very fine line here because they don't want to be seen having too many adoring people after him in Europe because he's running for president of the United States.

What do Borger and the McCain campaign think would play better in Missouri, Obama getting off the plane in Germany and having the locals throw tomatoes at him? Would that endear him to the people in Middle America -- who, in McCain World, are like an insecure girlfriend, panicked by just the thought of someone else finding their guy attractive?