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5 years ago
Showing posts with label liberals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberals. Show all posts
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, May 29, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
This is Great!!!
Hat Tip: Black & Right
Click on the image to listen to a great recording of Lou Dobbs:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/mp3s/parks/Lou_Dobbs_Olbermann_Garofalo_MSNBC.mp3
© Janet Crain
Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts
Click on the image to listen to a great recording of Lou Dobbs:
http://mensnewsdaily.com/mp3s/parks/Lou_Dobbs_Olbermann_Garofalo_MSNBC.mp3
© Janet Crain
Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
What Would Dick Do?
Obama’s Cheney Dilemma
Cheney pushed for expanded presidential powers. Now that he's leaving, what will come of his efforts? The new president won't have to wait long to tip his hand.
By Stuart Taylor Jr. and and Evan Thomas
Dick Cheney, who will step down as vice president on Jan. 20, has been widely portrayed as a creature of the dark side, a monstrous figure who trampled on the Constitution to wage war against all foes, real and imagined. Barack Obama was elected partly to cleanse the temple of the Bush-Cheney stain, and in his campaign speeches he promised to reverse Cheney's efforts to seize power for the White House in the war on terror.
It may not be so simple. At a retirement ceremony recently for a top-level intelligence official, the senior spooks in the room gave each other high-fives. They were celebrating the fact that terrorists have not attacked the United States since 9/11. In the view of many intelligence professionals, the get-tough measures encouraged or permitted by George W. Bush's administration—including "waterboarding" self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—kept America safe. Cheney himself has been underscoring the point in a round of farewell interviews. "If I had advice to give it would be, before you start to implement your campaign rhetoric, you need to sit down and find out precisely what it is we did and how we did it, because it is going to be vital to keeping the nation safe and secure in the years ahead," he told CBS Radio.
Cont. here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/178855
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Liberal Left Learning Lesson
In Barack we trust?
Obama campaigned on his personality and judgment and won. Now, like it or not, he isn't beholden to anyone.
By David Sirota
Nov. 29, 2008 Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised "change we can believe in."
After voters rejected the mantra of free trade and deregulation, some of those contacting me say they are upset that Obama is hiring so many free-trading deregulators who birthed today's economic mess.
With the president-elect having touted his opposition to the Iraq war, some are bothered "that Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views," as the Los Angeles Times reports.
Others recall Obama's insistence that "change doesn't come from Washington; change comes to Washington," and say they are dismayed that his government will be run by Washington insiders. And still others are confused that Obama championed a progressive platform but, as the Nation's Chris Hayes notes, "not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive" has been floated for a major Cabinet position.
To my fearful letter writers, I offer three responses.
First, I counsel not fretting too much yet. Although there is truth to the notion that "personnel is policy," crises can make radicals out of former establishmentarians, and the president-elect's initial declarations imply a boldly progressive agenda. "Remember, Franklin Roosevelt gave no evidence in his prior career that he would lead the dramatic sea change in American politics that he led," says historian Eric Rauchway.
Second, I tell e-mailers they are right to be somewhat distressed, right to ignore Obama loyalists who want them to shut up, and right to speak out. When President Bill Clinton rammed George H.W. Bush's NAFTA through Congress after candidate Clinton pledged not to, he provided ample reason to recollect the saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." And voicing concern is critical. As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without demand."
Finally, I ask my pen pals if they really are shocked.
Despite the election's progressive mandate, Obama is not what Ronald Reagan was to conservatives -- he is not as much the product of a movement as he is a movement unto himself. He figured out that because many "progressive" institutions are merely Democratic Party appendages and not ideological movement forces, he could build his own movement. He succeeded in that endeavor thanks to the nation's Bush-inspired desire for change, his own skills and a celebrity-obsessed culture.
Though many Obama supporters feel strongly about particular issues, and though polling shows the country moving left, the Obama movement undeniably revolves around the president-elect's individual stardom -- and specifically, the faith that he will make good decisions, whatever those decisions are. With that kind of following, Obama likely feels little obligation to hire staff intimately involved in non-Obama movements -- especially those who might challenge a Washington ruling class he may not want to antagonize.
This is the mythic "independence" we're supposed to crave -- a czar who doesn't owe anyone. It is the foreseeable result of the Dear Leader-ism prevalent in foreign autocracies but never paramount in America until now -- and it will have its benefits and drawbacks.
Wielding his campaign's massive e-mail list, the new president could mobilize supporters to press Congress for a new New Deal. Or, he could mobilize that army to blunt pressure on his government for a new New Deal. The point is that Obama alone gets to choose -- that for all the talk of "bottom-up" politics, his movement's structure grants him a top-down power that no previous president had.
For better or worse, that leaves us relying more than ever on our Dear Leader's impulses. Sure, we should be thankful when Dear Leader's whims serve the people -- but also unsurprised when they don't.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/29/obama_choices/index.html?source=newsletter
Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts
Nov. 29, 2008 Judging by the proliferation of capital letters in the e-mail correspondence I receive, many seem worried that Barack Obama may not deliver the promised "change we can believe in."
After voters rejected the mantra of free trade and deregulation, some of those contacting me say they are upset that Obama is hiring so many free-trading deregulators who birthed today's economic mess.
With the president-elect having touted his opposition to the Iraq war, some are bothered "that Obama's national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views," as the Los Angeles Times reports.
Others recall Obama's insistence that "change doesn't come from Washington; change comes to Washington," and say they are dismayed that his government will be run by Washington insiders. And still others are confused that Obama championed a progressive platform but, as the Nation's Chris Hayes notes, "not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive" has been floated for a major Cabinet position.
To my fearful letter writers, I offer three responses.
First, I counsel not fretting too much yet. Although there is truth to the notion that "personnel is policy," crises can make radicals out of former establishmentarians, and the president-elect's initial declarations imply a boldly progressive agenda. "Remember, Franklin Roosevelt gave no evidence in his prior career that he would lead the dramatic sea change in American politics that he led," says historian Eric Rauchway.
Second, I tell e-mailers they are right to be somewhat distressed, right to ignore Obama loyalists who want them to shut up, and right to speak out. When President Bill Clinton rammed George H.W. Bush's NAFTA through Congress after candidate Clinton pledged not to, he provided ample reason to recollect the saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." And voicing concern is critical. As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without demand."
Finally, I ask my pen pals if they really are shocked.
Despite the election's progressive mandate, Obama is not what Ronald Reagan was to conservatives -- he is not as much the product of a movement as he is a movement unto himself. He figured out that because many "progressive" institutions are merely Democratic Party appendages and not ideological movement forces, he could build his own movement. He succeeded in that endeavor thanks to the nation's Bush-inspired desire for change, his own skills and a celebrity-obsessed culture.
Though many Obama supporters feel strongly about particular issues, and though polling shows the country moving left, the Obama movement undeniably revolves around the president-elect's individual stardom -- and specifically, the faith that he will make good decisions, whatever those decisions are. With that kind of following, Obama likely feels little obligation to hire staff intimately involved in non-Obama movements -- especially those who might challenge a Washington ruling class he may not want to antagonize.
This is the mythic "independence" we're supposed to crave -- a czar who doesn't owe anyone. It is the foreseeable result of the Dear Leader-ism prevalent in foreign autocracies but never paramount in America until now -- and it will have its benefits and drawbacks.
Wielding his campaign's massive e-mail list, the new president could mobilize supporters to press Congress for a new New Deal. Or, he could mobilize that army to blunt pressure on his government for a new New Deal. The point is that Obama alone gets to choose -- that for all the talk of "bottom-up" politics, his movement's structure grants him a top-down power that no previous president had.
For better or worse, that leaves us relying more than ever on our Dear Leader's impulses. Sure, we should be thankful when Dear Leader's whims serve the people -- but also unsurprised when they don't.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/29/obama_choices/index.html?source=newsletter
Click here to view all recent Sarah Palin in 2012 posts
Monday, November 24, 2008
Barack Obama, honeymoon killer?
The Clintonites in his Cabinet, forgiveness for Lieberman, the creeping signs of centrism -- progressives aren't ready to panic, yet.
By Mike Madden
Nov. 24, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- One of the first things Barack Obama did after winning the election two weeks ago was put an old-school political brawler in charge of his White House. Next, he saved Joe Lieberman. Then, he met with John McCain, and asked Hillary Clinton to run his State Department. For good measure, he's also apparently weighing whether to keep George W. Bush's Defense secretary, Robert Gates, on at the Pentagon.
This is the guy Republicans called a socialist, maybe a Marxist, and National Journal said was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate? McCain aides were saying on Election Night that their own polling showed 60 percent of the country thought Obama was a liberal (and many voted for him anyway). Barely two weeks into the transition, that number might already be dropping fast.
In fact, in his appointments, and in what can be divined of his foreign policy, there are loud echoes of the last Democratic administration, and also of that lady he beat in the primaries, the one the netroots didn't like very much. Certainly, some of Obama's supporters are getting a little nervous about what this all presages about an Obama White House. "The list [of disappointments] is getting awfully long," wrote the blogger bmaz at Firedoglake. "Almost as long as Barack Obama's arm that he used to take our money and efforts to get himself elected. All we have seen is the short arm he has used to punch us in the face and collect street cred with villagers for having done so." Open Left's Chris Bowers wrote on Friday that he felt "incredibly frustrated ... [W]hy isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left?" Even Pat Buchanan -- not exactly the world's most liberal guy -- apparently thinks Obama needs to throw a bone to progressives after the start the transition is off to.http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/11/24/obama?source=newsletter
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