Why we're celebrating the Supreme Court "Obamacare" Victory

It saves lives.

A Presidential Boston Oopsie

Just got a local press pool report. Highlighted the funny part, only the names have been changed deleted to protect the [somewhat] innocent.

Emphasizing the wrong crowd? Check. Missing likely satire? Check. Then again, maybe this was just the Globe making their snarky submission to the press pool in an attempt at dry humor -- and the President's people whiffed when they sent it out.

In all seriousness, it looks like tonight's been a big success. Can't wait to see all the clips.

Dear Fellow Firebaggers,

Not that it's a surprise to anyone with half a brain still left on their head, but if you're a fellow movement progressive and netroots activist, the President and his peeps probably don't like you very much. In fact, that's putting it mildly. After all, Rahm Emmanual, the President's BFF, thinks you're "fucking retarded." The President's former Press Secretary called you the professional left. We are flies in their way to be swatted, not supported, and they are not done disparaging, demeaning and bemoaning us.

Look no further than one Mr. Ray Sandoval, Obama's top guy in New Mexico. He sent out an official Obama Organize for America campaign email to supporters in that state calling the activist base "firebaggers" and the "ideologue Left." The message tried to tear down pretty much anyone who is worried about the direction Obama has sent our party and country toward, because Obama's right and they're wrong. Opposing Obama policies would be an "economic 9/11."

The President's people didn't appear all that upset about it. They called the official email unofficial, but couldn't be bothered enough to apologize for it. Sandoval hasn't received any sort of penalty or rebuke for his comments and doesn't seem overly apologetic. There is nothing to indicate here that the President's people don't very, very much agree with everything Sandoval said -- perhaps they even see this as another opportunity to burnish the President's "Independent" cred. That's all they seem to care about, these days.

Sadly, this is just more of the same from what we've come to expect. The President's close team has long made political sport of progressives, turning us into the opposition, instead of... you know... the Republican Party. The people running OFA do not buy into the progressive movement -- now considered an opposition movement to Obama zealotry -- and see any kind of dissent as disloyalty, instead of disagreement. As I said earlier today, the purpose of the OFA is "to create an alternate DNC that can mobilize the grassroots from the top down, while minimizing erratic bottom-up feedback."

What we end up with is an OFA with a mixed bag of talent, not a ton of organic or competent volunteer support, and a remaining culture of "If the President says it, it's right, and if anyone else says it, it's wrong." To borrow from George Orwell, the OFA is becoming a "nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting," except instead of being 300 million strong, as they are in Oceania, the OFA is going to be increasingly reliant on an ever-shrinking pool of the hangers-on left from over the 2008 campaign who haven't felt betrayed yet, without the same kind of buzz or excitement that existed then to appeal to the newest young crowd.

What we 'Firebaggers' and 'ideologue Leftists' need to remember is that the OFA is out for the President first and foremost, local party politics and candidates are almost an afterthought. They don't care about the long-term brand or building up the Democratic Party from the bottom up -- that's all stuff that has to happen with a focus beyond just Barack Obama, 2012, and they don't like us bottom-feeders, anyway. If we don't get in line, we're treated like the enemy.

That's a far cry from Dean's Democratic Party, which was out for the Democratic Party and the people of this country, not for any one individual or thing. It's a sad state of affairs, but worse than that, it's hurting the Democratic Party and it's hurting America. Still worse, it may be too late for the President to do anything about this, should he ever decide that he actually wants support from his base again. I have the sneaking suspicion he'll realize that yes, he does want it, as the election in 2012 closes and he can't find anyone to knock on doors and make phone calls for him. By then, it will all be too late -- and it will be Martha Coakley redux, this time on a national scale, unless corporate largess in the campaign war chest (and a incompetent Republican opponent) is enough to save the day. Anything's possible, I suppose.

The bottom line, though, is the President is not on our side. If he doesn't want our money and our support, it's not as if there aren't other people who need it. With the President's turn to the right -- and his continuation of the Bush agenda, some of it on steroids -- it's becoming more important than ever to stand up for what's right. We still have good people in the House and the Senate, or who should be there, who are going to need our help and support. My advice is to skip the OFA and go straight to the source, lest you give anyone in the OFA your Firebagger cooties. It's become beyond clear that they don't want our help, anyway.

So, Obama's strategy for winning reelection is to hoodwink America?

That's what Robert Reich is saying.

Even though the President’s two former top economic advisors (Larry Summers and Christy Roemer) have called for a major fiscal boost to the economy, the President has remained mum. Why? 

I’m told White House political operatives are against a bold jobs plan. They believe the only jobs plan that could get through Congress would be so watered down as to have almost no impact by Election Day. They also worry the public wouldn’t understand how more government spending in the near term can be consistent with long-term deficit reduction. And they fear Republicans would use any such initiative to further bash Obama as a big spender. 

So rather than fight for a bold jobs plan, the White House has apparently decided it’s politically wiser to continue fighting about the deficit. The idea is to keep the public focused on the deficit drama – to convince them their current economic woes have something to do with it, decry Washington’s paralysis over fixing it, and then claim victory over whatever outcome emerges from the process recently negotiated to fix it. They hope all this will distract the public’s attention from the President’s failure to do anything about continuing high unemployment and economic anemia.

Dragging the Democratic Party on Wisconsin, Kicking and Screaming

The President and national Democratic Party clearly does not want to rise to the level of defending the Wisconsin workers. That became very clear today in Press Secretary Jay Carney's statement on whether or not public and private unions should have the same rights.

What we have said and what the President has said is that with regard to what’s happening in the states now, as the states address their fiscal situations, everybody needs to tighten their belts, everybody needs to sacrifice and work together to bring state budgets into balance, to bring stability to the fiscal situations in the states, much as we need to work together at the federal level. And that’s our position.

Unfortunately, that wasn't today's only scary sign of where national Democrats are at. Democratic Maryland Governor O'Malley, who's in the past come out strong for collective bargaining rights, wasn't so strong on it today, after coming out of a Governor's meeting at the White House.

After a White House meeting with President Obama, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley was asked if the on-going public employee union dispute was raised in their meeting. "No, not really," O'Malley replied bluntly. "We were focused today on the things that we can do together to create jobs."

"So, we didn't talk about whatever it is they're doing in Wisconsin today," O'Malley reiterated.

"I think most of us see that as distraction, really, from the most important work that we can do, which is creating jobs," he said. "All of us get things done. We're about getting things done. We're not primarily an ideological group of people."

President Obama, who, as a candidate, said he'd get up and picket with the protesters if collective bargaining was on the line, and national Democrats must get on board the Wisconsin workers. Union jobs are the jobs we need in this country most of all, so why the President and other prominent party leaders isn't sticking up for them is a very disturbing question. At the end of the day, the Democratic Party does not win without labor, not to any degree of the success that would deliver a majority -- but it looks like we're going to be dragging them kicking and screaming to this fight. The good news is it's a fight working people are winning, even if Democrats in Bizarro Land (Washington, D.C.) are too scared of the Republican Boogeyman to realize that yet.

President Obama, Where's the Beef?

I'll never quite get why so many people jump to 'rate' the State of the Union. It's a given that such speeches will take at least half an hour, and usually more like 45 minutes. There's a lot of stuff going on there -- and how do you rate it, anyway? Generally, I think people rate it by how warm and fuzzy it makes them feel, instead of asking themselves, "where's the beef?" Well, that's what I want to know, right now.

For starters, I'm happy President Obama spoke at great length about the importance of education, but I was distressed at how little he offered in terms of how he expects us to afford it. There's little chance of states getting aid to avoid horrendous cuts in this coming year's budget, and there was distressingly little spoken during the speech about how students are to afford a college education in today's broken system. How does he honestly expect to improve education in this country, given those two facts?

Another disappointment was his specifics-free call for a neo-Sputnik; while the best and easiest answer to our jobs crisis is a serious investment in this country's infrastructure and research programs that's the size of the Apollo space program (or, better yet, the Manhattan project), how are we supposed to fund it, given his call for a five-year spending freeze? We're losing out to almost every developed country in the world -- because they're the ones funding their infrastructures and they're the ones funding new technologies like solar panels, while America continues to fall behind.

This goes doubly for his call for strengthening our country's education. If the vast majority of funding for public education is undertaken at the state level, and states are cutting absolutely massive portions of their budgets, how are we supposed to improve education for our kids? Unlike the federal government, states can't print money or go without a balanced budget. If President Obama wasn't pushing for a spending freeze, it would be entirely possible to pass addition state aid packages to keep his big promises, like education and infrastructure. And what is he supposed to realistically do to help people get a college education? Right now, all too many people can't afford it -- even amongst those who are attending. The jobs market is so bad, and there's such a high glut of college-educated people compared to the number of available jobs, that a college education alone is no guarantee to a good job. Furthermore, without a good, high-paying job, most college educations are almost impossible to afford, reasonably or otherwise. The President has not came up with any solutions to these problems yet, so right now his push for a better educational system is just words.

My two biggest disappointments from the speech, by far, had to do with where President Obama thinks this country is going -- and something he said that almost amounts to a lie at this point. The latter is on his call to make the richest in this country pay more of their fair share. He had an opportunity to accomplish this just this past December, yet gave up on it at the merest hint of a fight. Meanwhile, this is an idea that may just be more popular than Ice Cream in this country. Has this just become an annual campaign pledge to the base meant to stir up votes that will, even though it'll probably never happen? I think so -- and it could be to our country's demise.

The biggest disappointment, though, was Obama's parroting of the idea that we're never going to have a strong industrial base in this country again. In a day and age when a country the size of Germany has outpaced us in exports -- and I'm not talking exports, but in the sheer dollars and cents of the exports -- this is just an unacceptable idea. We cannot have a strong country based on building weapons, paying too much for health care and relying on companies like Goldman Sachs that play with numbers, producing nothing. Equally, we cannot have a country where our major corporations are not only not discouraged from shipping jobs overseas, but encouraged to do so. Between "free," but not fair, trade agreements and actual tax credits to ship jobs overseas, our economy has shed literally millions of good, working-class jobs to foreign companies. Furthermore, it isn't a decision that's been made by many of these companies out of profit -- it's been made out of greed, the quest for even higher profits. There are companies that will shift their jobs overseas if it means they'll make 4 more cents, and we can't have that.

This is really about the future of our country. By all means, we may not be able to compete in each and every type of the labor market -- there are certain products that would probably be too expensive to make practically here, like textiles, but certainly we've proved in the past year or two that there are plenty of others that can do well if we invest in them. We can absolutely grow jobs in many manufacturing sectors, building products that are competitively priced and do a lot to help the working class. Just look at how well Detroit's doing these days; they're making great cars that are competitively priced and that people want to buy. We could have lost millions of jobs in the auto industry, but instead we've gained tens of thousands. We can add all sorts of tech and heavy industries to this list -- from components to computers to solar power, which is a particularly touchy subject for us Massachusetts voters right now, after we lost Evergreen Solar.

The point is, we need to believe in this stuff. The point is we can't just keep talking about how we need to do these sorts of things, we actually have to do them. That means we need money, which means we either have to pay for it now by raising taxes on the rich and by drastically cutting the size and scope of the military, or we need to subsist for a few more years on heavy deficit spending -- something we can do, but only if we have a real road-map to get to the point where we'll have a good jobs market within a few years. Unfortunately, I don't think President Obama has that plan right now, and no warm-and-fuzzy speech that boasts of American Exceptionalism, when we have little reason to feel exceptional these days, is going to change that.

Obama's Tax Cut Deal Explained

I can't help but feel like Obama's not just from Chicago, but the Queen of sorts, and by that, I mean Big Mama -- holding ward over America's nationwide Wall Street debtors prison. You want unemployment benefits in the nation's worst depression since the "Great" one? $700 billion for millionaires and billionaires.

Big Mama is certainly willing to "spice things up" for the people who live in her cell blocks, but at a cost that is so steep as to not be worth it -- at least if you weren't trapped in her ward.A deal that doesn't include any help the '99ers,' states that are in fiscal crisis or one that raises of the nation's debt sealing (so Republicans can't hold America hostage again in another few months, or force us to make grotesque cuts) is no deal at all. That Big Mama territory -- or maybe we should say Big Obama territory.

State Department Refused to Protect Their People

This paragraph from a recent Time Magazine article on WikiLeaks and the State Department really stands out to me.

Assange said that all the documents were redacted "carefully." "They are all reviewed, and they're all redacted either by us or by the newspapers concerned," he said. He added that WikiLeaks "formally asked the State Department for assistance with that. That request was formally rejected."

Look, the biggest criticism we've seen against WikiLeaks is that they're 'putting people in danger.' That the State Department would refuse an offer to help redact information they view as critically important to national security, or the safety of their own intelligence sources, either means they don't care about that safety, or they care more about getting WikiLeaks taken down than they do the safety of their own people. Either way, the criticism that WikiLeaks is 'putting people in danger' is no longer credible given this information -- particularly given the fact that WikiLeaks still went out of their way to carefully redact this information despite the lack of participation of the State Department.

President Obama eloquently spoke about the need for his government to keep open communications with enemy nations while campaigning. The government would be much better off if Obama's administration opened communications up with WikiLeaks and tried to work with them to redact what they truly think needs to be redacted, rather than attack this nation's very first amendment -- the freedom of speech.

How Obama Could Stand to Change

Over at BMG, I said that President Obama isn't nearly as different from the legitimate Republican opponents he may face in 2012 as we'd like him to be (and, no, Sarah Palin doesn't count -- because she has no chance at winning POTUS). A few other people scoffed at that, to which I said... let me count the ways.

Krugman: "This looks like pure disaster."

Krugman speaks out about what he thinks of Obama's newest, most idiotic idea yet.

The message this sends is far more damaging than the policy -- it's essentially a surrender on trying to fix the economy and growing jobs, while a complete validation of the deeply flawed Republican world view. Does anyone possibly think we'll get a jobs bill with the president pushing policies like this?

Still waiting optimistically for a primary challenge -- who will have the courage to take Obama on?

Rachel Maddow

Watch it over here - with a blog that really puts the President's proposal into perspective (and calls for a primary against him).

Once you factor in inflation, what the president will be proposing is actually a reduction in government spending. You might recall that John McCain ran for and lost the presidency on the idea of answering economic calamity with a spending freeze, since that's the kind of strategy that Herbert Hoover used in the 30s to make the depression great.

Emphasis not mine.

Obama has lost it, Part 2

This is the second time I've had to title a post of mine like this. [Update: Let's call this the Hoover edition.]

Obama's introducing a plan to create a "spending freeze" -- which is really a spending cut. A lot of people would be fine with that, but let's consider a few things.

First off, a federal spending freeze/reduction that doesn't include the pentagon's overly inflated budget, littered with cold-war-era expenses, is disgusting. How on Earth could we freeze social spending, but not the military budget, when the US spends more on its military than every other government on earth combined? Yikes.

Second, the President has declared that he'll protect critical programs from the freeze -- those programs will actually have expanded budgets. Sounds nice -- great even -- until people realize that this bill will have to go through Congress. What do we know about Congress? The good programs tend to get cut, while special deals to keep constituents happy are the ones to stay. No doubt, we'll see huge cuts to critical social programs, while things like the Farm Bill keeps on getting uglier and uglier and don't get touched.

Finally, we're still in the middle of a recession -- the worst one ever since the Great Depression. Things have become a little more positive, but we're still in a very weak position as a country. This is not the time to start cutting government spending -- if anything, a major part of the reason why more than 10% of this country is unemployed is because the stimulus bill was not enough. Every major economist who hadn't been proven wrong a million times before predicted this -- and they were right. Now we're going to add even more cuts?

We ought to be talking about a jobs bill, not cutting $250 billion from the budget.

Update: Does Obama even want to be reelected? Obama's press secretary told Ed Schultz, liberal radio and tv guy, that he was "lying" about Obama's policy to increase viewership. What was the lie? That the Senate bill was a gift to HMOs -- corporate welfare. Um, Gibbs, it is corporate welfare. That's why America hates it. Whatever, though. Even if Schultz lied to get viewers, Obama's lies to get votes. What's worse?

Napolitano and Obama

The very silly story going on is that the old cable-news line, "some people say," has now been affixed to "Napolitano should resign," because she said, "the system worked," in its response to the boxer-briefs bomber. First, let's get this straight: No one should have to resign for having their words taken out of context. And people should be allowed to say at least one stupid thing on the job before there are reportedly "calls" for their resignation. Joe Biden says this crap all the time and no one seems to mind that. All asking for Napolitano's resignation would serve would be to fuel the flames and make Obama look weak -- so Obama was right to show that he's firmly behind her.

However, with all that said, I do think a point should be raised here. Why Napolitano? Obama had some sort of Governor fetish when he was selecting his cabinet members, instead of going after competent individuals with unceasing experience in the field. He wanted the big-name All-Star Team lineup, instead of the high-on-base percentage lineup that typically beats the All Star team. I'm sure Napolitano is actually a very competent person and has done a solid job with her new office, but not only did Obama rob Arizona of a very strong Democrat in that state who could have defeated McCain in his next reelection bid, but he did so at the cost of a position where he probably could have hired someone who would have been quietly better.

This is even more relevant with former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Not only has she a few of her own hiccups in the administration, and not only was she silent on health care reform when she was head of Health and Human Services, and not only did Obama's selection of Sebelius rob us of a popular Kansas Democrat who could have won a Senate seat there, of all places, but there could have been dozens of better picks for the job, some (like Howard Dean) who would have been able to do much more with the position.

Obama's desire to surround himself with political All Stars in his cabinet may have made him feel better about himself and feed his ego, and it may have made for some great press coverage in the beginnings of his administration, but the fact of the matter is it wasn't what was best for this country, the Democratic Party or his own administration in the long run. He should have made picks that were far more relevant for the position, focusing on people who had a lifelong record of superior service to this country in the relevant fields -- not just Governors or Senators who often bring as much baggage to the table as skills. This is just one of the many areas in which Obama can hope to improve upon in the future.

Wow

It's amazing...

Candidate Obama's health care plan was pretty damn good.

Essentially . . we're going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don't have health http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=15133926insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services." (7/17/07)

Even more interesting (from the same link):

For starters, Obama's proposal would require that all children have coverage. He would expand the tax-funded children's health-insurance program to make sure that those unable to join private plans were covered. Although Obama would not require adults to have insurance, he would mandate that large businesses either provide coverage to their employees or pay into a new public plan through which anyone without coverage could buy it. Small-business owners would be exempt and would get a 50 percent health-care tax credit to help ease their cost of employee coverage. People without coverage could buy insurance through new public and private plans. Key to Obama's plan is creation of a National Health Insurance Exchange in which private insurers would offer coverage as generous as the government's plan, with new regulations requiring them to accept and not penalize anyone regardless of pre-existing conditions, Tanden said. [Columbus Dispatch, 9/23/08, via Lexis]

It's too bad President Obama decided to sell out and lie about all that transformational/courageous/stand up to the special interest crap.

Primary challenge, anyone?

Obama has lost it

Thanking Joe Lieberman, when he held a gun to health insurance reform, but lashing out against Howard Dean -- who's only trying to help the American people and get the President to adhere to his promises? I'm done with Obama. If he loses reelection, I may not be all that sad.

Obama's Bush Problem

It used to be that the biggest problem Obama faced was the eight years of havoc George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove wreaked on this country. After a year in office, while this country is still reeling from the policies and practices of the George W. Bush administration, it's becoming increasingly clear that Obama's biggest George W. Bush problem is he's becoming far too much like him, following the very practices and policies of the George W. Bush administration that led to eight of the worst years in recent American history, most especially the Bush Doctrine.

Don't take my word for it, just watch Rachel Maddow.