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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"It's only 10:30 a.m. on the West Coast. Why have you already declared the Troll of the Day?The day is still young. Keep an open mind. I'm sure somebody will rise to the challenge. Does anyone have Zoltan's e-mail?"--- ethics_professor
Dahlink,
Please look again. I haven't updated the ToD yet as there seem to be several semi-qualified contributors hereabouts today and it's difficult to pick just one.
Greenwald: "contempt for, and an insatiable desire to demonize, the so-called "Left."
Democratic Senate staffer:
Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes. Their influence would be in question."
I don't think the left is being demonized so much as being used. We're not powerful enough to demonize, at least among Democrats. I think we're more like doormats. In that we help them get in the door, but are left outside. Where we then 'rant and rage', howl at the moon, etc., etc.
I like "constitutional dictatorship", an apt term I first saw used by Sandy Levinson, at balkinization.com (not sure whether it originates there or not).
Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Senator-elect Jeff Merkeley, D-Ore., spoke against allowing Lieberman keep the Homeland Security and Government Affairs post. Reid, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and John Kerry, D-Mass., were among those speaking in his favor, according to a Democratic aide requiring anonymity to discuss a private meeting.Some, like Iowan Tom Harkin, still harbor hard feelings for statements Lieberman made during the campaign.
Hopefully. a newly elected Franken will be just as happy with Joe.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hyIW3sNdPT-eLawFnLxF9lJ9-AtAD94HGB080
The natives are restless over at the DSCC's blog. Upset folks are really letting fly with what we think of the party and its Senate leadership.
Come join the fun:
http://dscc.org/blog?blog_entry_KEY=504
I suspect they'll close the blog before long....
What's a Tufu? That's what you said you would be wearing to Parsnip Breath's place.
I suppose you will also sit down with him and drink a spiked coiffure while wearing the Tufu. No?
Noseeum the purple see-through at Tony's.
Ho Boy!
BebopO sips mowed grass tea and burps dandelions delightfully.
True
For the sake of my own sanity, I'm going to have to stop reading.
-- bamage
I think I know just how you feel. I just keep telling myself two things, bamage. First, Obama is not President yet, not til he's Inaugarated. And second, it has been such a long time since the Democrats have had a politician as skillful as Obama leading the party. We (I'm serious about this) may not know what effective political leadership looks like any more!
And because I can't count, here's a third: I think Obama's best gambits have been two, the "Invisible Man" technique (I've talked about that before, if you are lucky, you missed it.) and the "Give the Repubs enough Rope" technique.
And when I do think I'm going right over the edge, I ask myself, "exactly, what were you expecting, and how quickly, given the circumstances"
And then I call my connection. That's the one that always brings surcease. I can suggest no better course for you. That's why you should ask somebody else.
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he had been very angry by Lieberman's actions but that "we're looking forward, we're not looking back."
if one is going to be a proper invertebrate, then some level of muscle tone is needed to look anywhere but forward...
the phrasing I had been searching for finally came to me:
Joe Lieberman stands for everything the American public just voted overwhelmingly against.
I also had some fun calling the Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee office. I asked when we would see the schedule for the hearings Lieberman obviously had to promise to hold in order to keep his chairmanship. I was informed that the schedule is not published until the new session starts. I told them they'd better get busy, since he's done nothing for the last two years. I was informed that the committee has been quite busy. Gosh, could have fooled me...
Now, the other way around - Democrats selling out their positions and supporters to give the Republicans what they want - happens all the time. But I can't think of a single instance in recent memory where the Republicans returned the favor. - JoeMommaSan
To be more precise, I'd say: Democrats selling out their [purported] positions and supporters to give the [Republican or Democratic] president what he wants. [As Psychlist rightly noted.]
And "Democrats selling out their positions" should probably read "Democrats selling out their party platform" - because where else do these "positions" ever get clearly stated or affirmed, if even there?
What their supporters assume about the Democratic Party is largely just that - projected assumptions, often based on myths of old (from say FDR's legacy) and cynical marketing slogans, that are devilishly hard to shatter for loyal Party members despite the overwhelming, cold, hard evidence of another, unstated Democratic agenda (even if it's simply an agenda by default as dictated by a president), the results of which Glenn's post itemizes in detail. Notice too, how it's never about doing the right thing for the right thing's sake - instead it's just about what the rest of the world thinks about us (our "moral stature" in the world as opposed to honoring our founding ideals). Good thing they - the rest of the world - still have principles, or we'd have no reason at all to remedy our unprincipled ways, I guess...
But what are the causes of the results that Glenn highlights? Because in addition to accepting the reality of the actions of today's Democratic Party - whether run out of Congress or the White House under Obama - we need, I think, to understand how the Party (secretly) operates in Congress, so that we can attempt to thwart it or reform it in the most effective manner.
As I indicated yesterday, I think a huge part of the problem is the top-down domination of the strictly-segregated Party caucuses, and thus the Congress, by Party Leadership. Particularly when, as now, that Party Leadership worships at the feet of the American president. The Speaker is not a Party position, officially - the whole House votes for Speaker. But Pelosi effectively works to dominate the House through a handful of Party Leaders in both Parties whose jobs are to cram down leadership decisions on key matters with a minimum of dissent or rebellion (using Party favors and horse-trading as needed to accomplish the task). It may "get things done," but in the worst possible way, and with predictably egregious results, given the dangerously thoughtless, untransparent, and undemocratic manner of the legislation's creation, and its lack of vetting or careful examination by committees of jurisdiction and the public.
That closed-door, top-down, ends-justifies-the-means process is very much underway again today on the auto bailout. Yesterday, the first day back for the Senate in more than a month, Carl Levin introduces a bill he's had written in the interim to bail out the auto industry's largest American companies (for whom he is the unofficial spokesperson in Congress). Today, the Senate Banking Committee invites to a hearing the three CEOs to advocate for Levin's bill (the House will do the same tomorrow). Then, within a week - minus any committee hearings with disinterested, even semi-objective experts or any public input via mark-up from committee members - Harry Reid will force the Senate to vote on the measure, basically as is. All in an effort to 'cram down' an auto bailout in accordance with the wishes of the Party Leadership of both houses who have been personally, privately lobbied by the CEOs to do just that. It's the exact same process that was followed for the TARP Bailout, which committee members now spend their time and energy bewailing as they berate in pathetic futility the administration witnesses that their Party voted to empower - in accordance with Party Leadership dictates (including Obama's, probably helped by Emanuel) - to basically do as they please with our TARP money.
Next time anyone gets a chance to publicly rebut a Congressional Democrat lauding "bipartisanship," that Democrat ought to be asked if it isn't time for weekly Party caucuses in Congress to be merged - in the spirit of "bipartisanship" - and for committee strategy sessions to be attended by Republican ranking members in addition to Democratic Chairs. Watch them scurry for the exit when actual power-sharing in Congress is at stake, as opposed to the empty feel-good rhetoric that's deployed to obscure the bankrupt agenda of today's Democratic Party leadership. A bankrupt agenda that to-date, the rank and file of the Party refuse to repudiate in any meaningful way, because Party Loyalty and its campaign-financing power drive Congress, not the Constitution or the people.
[Sorry about yesterday's "Calc III textbook" effect, bystander - I rushed that one a bit and it shows. Hope this is clearer and not so confusingly over-elaborated. And yes, because the real Constitutional power of the federal government does lie in Congress, in one sense there's less to despair about in Obama's unpromising beginning than if one mistakenly believes that the president holds the real Constitutional power in Washington. But, of course, that simply leaves us confronting the dilemma of a Republican-admiring, presidency-worshipping Democratic Party hierarchy in Congress that we've come to know all too well since 2006... We need to focus on creating a Resistance movement inside the Democratic caucus, or, if need be (as seems increasingly likely), outside both Party caucuses.]
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
