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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Doggett is a GOOD congressman, in my opinion. If I'm not mistaken he's a former member of the Texas Supreme Court. I remember him giving a GREAT speech during the Clinton Impeachment Fiasco.
How dare anyone defy the Supreme Leader? What's next, accountability to the "rule of Law"?
It really is quite revealing. pow wow has repeatedly documented the back room deals, the secrecy, the absence of debate, the dangers of committee reconciliations, and now we can add plain old threats and loyalty tests. Unreal.
My inchoate thought was, Who the fuck does Obama think elected him? And, then my thoughts ran to pow wow's discussions of the party elite, and the influence of corporate dollars.
Creepy? For sure. Also, alarming.
Hamsher's piece is worth a thorough read to get the full flavor of how truly grim this is.
Obama should just declare the guy an "enemy non-combatant," ship him to Gitmo, and appoint a friendly replacement. (There's some Honduran guy recently out of work, I think.)
That's about where we are as a "democracy" these days. What more harm would it do?
Only two possibilities: Obama gets away with it, and we get a nice profit-friendly climate bill, or people think of such behavior as unjust, and maybe they wake up to how irrelevant the rules of the republic have become.
...will be the FIRST bluedog the white house criticizes. meanwhile, progressives get spanked and demonized. is that really better than being ignored?
can we just drop the pretense that obama is really an agent of progressive change? that he really wants to be our bigtime lib/left flagbearer but the times, or the politics, or the repubs won't let him?
he's a clinton for the 21st century. that's all. got it?
"Democrats say" "Administration Officials"
How is this different from the unnamed sources you so often, and correctly, criticize other journalists for citing?
If you work in the administration, and your president wants a piece of legislation passed, of course you are going to try and twist arms, and of course you are going to be upset if you don't get the votes you want or need. How on earth is it creepy that an administration official, who is most likely a BIG fan of the president, vents after not getting what their boss wants?
Hamsher's article was just as focused, if not more, on the actions of Pelosi and other members of Democratic leadership.
Between Obama, Lieberman, and Specter...the Democratic party ain't what it used to be.
I asked in comments on Friday if anyone had seen the debate on the House floor on this bill. It was, for once, great political theater. The so-called Clean Energy Act is one of the worst pieces of legislation (non-military that is) to come through congress in many a moon.
It's a real jolt when there's an actual debate on the Hill. I've grown so accustomed to "bipartisanship" that it's refreshing to see both sides argue their position passionately. What we had during the Bush II years was one vote after the next passing by wide margins, mainly because of the compliant, capitulating Democratic caucus.But when the Republicans are in the minority, they suddenly find their voice. Yesterday, they won the debate on the House floor hands-down, but lost the final vote because 8 Republican lawmakers joined with the Democrats.
I used to despise John Boehner during the two terms of Bush, but yesterday in closing the debate for the minority, he was magnificent. His thorough dismantling of the 300 page amendment the Dems tacked on to the underlying bill at 3am that same morning was a tour de force.
The most interesting part of the debate involved several pretty cleverly worded parliamentary inquiries from Joe Barton (R-Tex), not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but again, here he was brilliant. The Dems were very clearly trying to get the amendment tacked onto the main bill without giving the opposition time to read its contents. At one point, the minority kept asking where they could locate a physical copy of the amendment and were stonewalled by Madame Speaker, until she finally had a house clerk make it available.
The Clean Energy Act 2009 is a detestable bill that adds huge layers of bureaucracy to our already bloated govt. To see part 6 of 6 of Boehner's closing remarks, click signature. Around the 7 minute mark Boehner sounds like an old-time populist. Great stuff.
which I commented on a couple weeks ago.
With minor grammatical changes:
Please, for the love of whatever we each hold holy or dear can we work on stomping to death the thought or phrase "my/our president". The U.S. President is The President... not my frakking president, not our president... just "the". He's an elected official... elected to do a job on behalf of citizens. Elected to job at which he is failing just as the last one did, miserably. This ownership of the president, this personal relationship with an elected CEO might have been developed in the early years of the republic and perfected by FDR in some of its darkest hours, but it has become such a dangerous tool in the hands of the authoritarian extremists. The number of people I heard referring to Bush as "our/my president", who we had to trust to do what was right, sickened me. People who spent 8 years puking at the very thought of Bush as "their" president and who called many of his acts criminal, now accept the same (or worse) acts from a president because he is person they want to claim as "theirs".There is only "The" President of the United States. I wonder if the servility would stop if people would stop claiming political leaders as their own personal saviors and start treating them as what they are: people hired to do a job.
...And who should be fired when they fail to do it - no matter how much we may personally like them.
The attitude from the Beltway class of state "priests and scribes" is that we should all abandon our skepticism and desires for transparency/accountability upon the altar of a unitary Executive. Well... so long as the Executive behaves as they wish him to behave; or at least behaves like the "cool" jock who beats the nerds in congress up. (Our major media pundits really do need a good shrink - I mean sweet Norma Jean, how obvious is the mental pathology that has a person praising and trying to be on the side of the type of personality and behavior that likely victimized him as a youth?)
Most of our congress-"persons" have adopted a similar attitude and style of argument. We all must obey "our" president and do as he wishes. I'm stuck conversing with colleagues and family members who mostly seem to fit the paradigms as well: support for "their" guy, irrational criticism of all acts by the "other", or massive frustration and cynicism so deep that they've largely just checked-out.
That's why I've started arguing the above. Hopefully, I can shake a few of them out of the paradigm they've chosen or out of their learned ambivalence and get them thinking independently again.
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"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
