It sends once again the message that Obama -- and by extension most Democrats in power - see liberal and progressive folk as nothing more than pincushions to stick and stab to win over "centrist" credibility.

It's so funny how only Democrats seem to have to pander to their political "enemies" (i.e., the Right) in order to gain legitimacy; no one ever said that about Bush and the Republicans having to move to the "center" and attract "moderates". I guess that unlike reality, "credibility" must have a right-wing bias.

And this "president of ALL Americans" nonsense...reminds me of the "equal rights for ALL Americans" smack that was being run by....you guessed it....David Duke here in Louisiana during his runs for state office in Louisiana. Of course, he wasn't excoriated for leaving certain people out of his "America" either...no more that Rick Warren was.

Memo to Barack Obama: ALL Americans did not elect you to that office: working class, poor, progressive, Black/Brown, and GLBT folk did (even in spite of your pandering to their enemies). That you would stab them in the back so openly with this selection of this bigot says a great deal about you...and your party...and it's not all pleasant for the future, either.

Keep this up and we will have President Huckabee or President Palin in 2018 after all.

Anthony Kennerson

Lafayette. LA

It's understandable and certainly proper to hold Obama accountable for his obvious policy reversals and betrayals....but I'd rather hold the entire political system to blame for not seeing genuine change this past year.

Ultimately, even a "reformer" like Obama has to answer to the people who bankrolled his campaign and the political-corporate-industrial-military-intelligence complex that has dominated American politics since even as far back as the 1940's...and it's obvious that even with the overwhelming Democrat majority, there are enough paid followers from both policies in Congress to keep the system going unabated.

If you want to see any real change in direction, it will have to come from the people themselves, through independent institutions in direct opposition to BOTH political parties and a radical grassroots that is willing to accept all the risks of political repression (even to a scale of the recent Iran crackdown; nothing says that we can't here in America form our own brand of Basji or Brownshirts to beat down popular unrest) in order to take back our political apparatuses. It's easy right now to condemn and bash Obama as a traitor; the hard part is doing something about it.

Between this "preventive detention" idea, the health care debacle, and DADT, that should be fuel for an independent Left party to emerge from the wreckage of the Obamacrat/ConservaDem/GOP political meltdown.

Anthony

I guess that Holder and Obama must be that afraid of the CIA/military complex...or, the CIA must have something so explosive on the Democrats that would blow them out as much as the Bush Republicans.

Only an independent prosecutor will save us now....anything else allows the perpetrators to get off scot free...and simply sets the stage for the next wannabe dictator to assume these powers.

And to think I once believed that Obama would promise real change from the Bushies....too bad for me.

Anthony

While I'm certainly glad that folk like KO and Maddow are allowed to exist as a voice against the Right, I am under no illusions about how they are ultimately employed -- even if fabulously compensated -- by mostly conservative corporations that reserve the right to pull the plug at any time. MSNBC -- and their owners at GE -- can just as easily decide that their "liberal niche" programming is rubbing their profits the wrong way, and return to the standard mode of "centrist"/copycat "journalism".

Having said that, I'm not quite ready to declare KO the sellout merely because his bosses might have declared that piling on O'Reilly was becoming a bit too much. It simply may be that even Olbermann was getting a bit tired of it as well, and the BillO smacking of George Tiller after his assassination was the final nail that pushed him (KO) over. Yes, KO does have his egotistical ways, but if you have been basically the only "liberal" voice allowed on the toobz (now joined by Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz..no, Chris Matthews doesn't count), it would probably have an effect on you. And besides that...O'Reilly was only getting what he deserved; anyone who runs such stupidity as "American troops massacred Germans at the battle of Malmedy during WWII", and who hires stalkers to harrass opposing journalists, deserves nothing but contempt.

I believe that I will withhold judgment until I hear from KO on tomorrow...I'm sure that he will have a word or a hundred to say.

Anthony