Taking it Outside

leaving the "oughts" with ObWi

Jan 07, 2010 by libjpn

Which has multiple meanings, so you can take it anyway you like, I mean every one of them. 'Oughts' is my preferred name for the past decade, in that it was filled with any number of things that ought to have been done, and as ObWi seems to be picking up a bit, with Lindsay and Bob Mackey posting and some interesting cross talk, the main purpose of this post is to let us hoi polloi (my preferred term here is 'the unmatched washes') rant and rave about where ObWi is going, if it is going anywhere. Or talk about what you should have done during the decade. Or I should have done. Or anything else. I'll put my comments in the comments, but you all are welcome to have at it.

Comments

Jan 07, 2010, 09:16:24 libjpn wrote:

I had this in drafts, but the recent comment here

http://obsidianwings.blogs....

which is, as Slarti astutely notes, is the same as here

http://obsidianwings.blogs....

provoked me. I have never corresponded with with Lindsay and have no idea how she takes this but this really seems like a way of being an ass and then having total deniability ('how could you think I meant that?')

There's a lot more that is rumbling around in the back of my head about this, such as trolls who seem to have followed Lindsay to ObWi, because, I presume, they feel very threatened by a an intelligent woman, or the vaporware transition of the site or about 4 other topics, but, as I said, that comment provoked me. More later, perhaps.

Jan 07, 2010, 21:35:12 OCSteve wrote:

As this is really meta I’ll chime in with a couple of rambling thoughts:

-Good riddance to the oughts. It wasn’t a particularly bad decade for me personally until the end when my 401(k) got wiped out – but that’s enough for me to be happy to see it in the rearview mirror. Compared to many many other folks though I really have nothing to bitch about… The only regrets I have are not quitting smoking 10 years ago and of course not moving the bulk of my 401(k) into a money market around 2007…

-I’m really not seeing the value-add with Lindsay. AFAICT, all she does is occasionally cross-post something she already has up on her [url=http://majikthise.typepad.c...]own site[/url]. And then she rarely engages in comments. Given the trolls that followed her over to ObWi, it hardly seems worth it.

I don’t have much to say about Mackey as he has only posted a couple of times. He seems willing enough to engage commenters, which is cool. First impression is that they wanted a “military authority” that still had the “right” (meaning more left) political viewpoints.

Both of them have some journo/author cred. Coincidence or were they looking for someone with more chops than the typical blogger? If so I’m gonna go with fail… Any decent established blogger willing to post at least daily and engage in comments would have been a better choice for ObWi.

-On ObWi in general, well, there no longer is an ObWi. There is still something at that URL but it ain’t ObWi. I’ll predict that many of the regulars left will abandon it in this coming year and in 2011 it will be defunct or unrecognizable. Hell, hit the archives for Jan09 – its unrecognizable now compared to a year ago.

Anyway, once again, Happy New Year everyone and I hope the year and the decade are good to you.

Jan 07, 2010, 23:25:35 JanieM wrote:

OCSteve -- I agree wholeheartedly. ;)

Nothing personal to the current ObWi crew, because I like Eric and I think he's doing a yeoman's job of keeping it going. But topic-wise it has become much narrower, and by chance on a topic I don't find all that absorbing in the first place.

I still check in often, but ever less and less, and I wouldn't be surprised if your prediction for the next year or two comes true. ObWi has never been a big problem for me blood pressure-wise, but it is a big time sink and from that point of view there's a silver lining to having it fade. I've tried frequenting other blogs but there's nothing quite like it for me. Which -- again -- is probably just as well.

But it's a community of sorts, and I'm sad to see it changing into something that I don't find all that engaging.

There's more I could say, but I'm at work and had better get back to it.

Jan 08, 2010, 02:58:58 Slartibartfast wrote:

Well, my position on this is that OW really, really needs hilzoy, or a near facsimile.

See, policy wonks serve two very important functions: a) patiently explaining that which they find fascinating to those who are bored stiff by policy discussions, in a way that's not guaranteed to render the recipient narcoleptic, and b) fending off the other policy wonks by discussing policy wonk stuff with them in policywonkese.

Plus, hilzoy has many other interesting things to say, and has a deft touch with people.

So, maybe not a facsimile, or just any garden-variety policy wonk. Maybe a carbon copy would be needed.

Yeah, Eric is doing well holding it all together. I don't fault him for anything, other than he isn't sufficiently hilzoy-like.

Jan 08, 2010, 04:01:59 JanieM wrote:

Slarti...there's some cleanup needed on Linday's latest post, in case you haven't been over there.

Jan 08, 2010, 04:04:17 cleek wrote:

yeah, what you three said.

i miss the old ObWi - even the non-Hilzoy posts! back when it was wide-ranging, troll-free and relaxed.

Eric's great, but i, personally, don't feel like i know enough about what he posts on to have anything to contribute. Mackey, too. Lindsay's even less my thing.

i still read ObWi. i just don't think i have any business commenting on most of the posts.

Jan 08, 2010, 09:52:26 John Thullen wrote:

Slart:

"isn't sufficiently Hilzoy-like.

Well, that's a universal.

We walk through the pale world, thinking something's not quite up to par, the conversation, the sky, the risotto, and we think .. not sufficiently Hilzoy-like.

Jan 08, 2010, 13:21:36 DonaldJ wrote:

Yeah, hilzoy is needed.

I do like Eric and Mackey and don't mind that I don't know enough to contribute much, since that's true of the vast majority of issues. (I'm more of a lurker these days anyway.)

Lindsay's posts either don't do anything for me or seem wrongheaded--for instance, this latest one on the two Democrats seemed like spin on some news that is more bad than good for Democrats.

Jan 08, 2010, 13:22:45 DonaldJ wrote:

I also miss Gary the Best Blog Commenter Ever, who is going through some more bad times--I just visited his blog today.

Jan 08, 2010, 23:34:12 libjpn wrote:

Well, I pretty much agree with everything above. I've often defended ObWi, but I'm kinda giving up on seeing what I want to see, understanding that I am not owed anything by anyone.

I do think that Lindsay's presence (or lack of it) might be attributable to the fact that she is also writing for pay, which, at least for me, would make it difficult to decide what I should write for a blog and what I should hold back.

Eric's working hard, but at one point, he noted that he was going to use sarcasm and irony as his weapons to deal with policies he felt to be wrong. While hilzoy wielded sarcasm expertly when the situation called for it, you felt that she didn't feel like it was something that should be channelled into fighting for policies that she felt were more appropriate. My feeling is that if you start thinking that sarcasm is a rhetorical weapon, you end up justifying a lot of rhetoric that doesn't really help to move the conversation along.

Bob is interesting, but the manned nuclear bomber thread seemed a bit forced. I hope he will give a little more background, but it seems that he might be constrained in that regard.

Jan 10, 2010, 17:09:43 Platosearwax wrote:

Extremely infrequent commenter here. I pop up from time to time when I have time, which is rare in periods and made worse being in Norway so out of time sync with most of the rest of you all. But I go all the way back to Tacitus and the days of Moe at ObWi.

Quite frankly, ObWi has slipped far down my list of blogs I check every day, and that is most likely due to Hilzoy's absence. Though I hung on for a while with Publius but now that he is gone there just isn't much left that interests me. Eric is fantastic and should be lauded for his efforts, but like many others he writes about a lot of things I have a bit less interest in. I don't Lindsay really contributes much.

The focus seems to have shifted entirely to foreign policy, which is great in a sense, but I don't find it as exciting and engaging as it once was. Basically, I just miss Hilzoy. And I think Slarti is right when he says ObWi needs a policy wonk to replace her, not that she is replaceable.

Anyway, I'll start lurking again.

Jan 11, 2010, 11:40:42 DaveC wrote:

[url=http://obsidianwings.blogs....]This is a sad anniversary that I missed the other day.[/url] I think that what a person does in his life does have meaning; it is just hard to reckon. The efforts of one single human being are very hard to make sense, what with historical events being the big end results and not individual stories. Sometimes I think that perhaps nothing we do changes anything beyond close family and friends, but then again the older I get, the more I choose the safe route. It is interesting that a man, even though skeptical, would put on the mantle of idealism even given personal doubts, because he was ultimately a leader and bound to duty.

Jan 11, 2010, 22:15:53 JanieM wrote:

DaveC -- thanks for that reminder. I found Obsidian Wings because of Andy's last post, and even though I never "knew" him, that piece is very special to me.

You comment reminds me of the last paragraph of [i]Middlemarch[/i], which I reread over the holidays:

[blockquote]Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.[/blockquote]

I don't know if it counts as part of "the growing good of the world," but the fact that I can download [i]Middlemarch[/i] onto my laptop in a 2-meg zipped .txt file still amazes me.

Jan 11, 2010, 22:16:51 JanieM wrote:

So much for the atttempt to blockquote.

"The greater good of the world" via html is still a work in progress.

Jan 11, 2010, 23:24:45 libjpn wrote:

That anniversary has actually been weighing on me quite a bit. This year, I wasn't able to write anything about my mom, and Andrew's death is tied to hers in my mind. Though the absence of noting at ObWi is probably as poignant a reminder how much things have changed. It's interesting that you would take this as an indication that there isn't much we can do to change things whereas I take this as an indication that nothing stays the same and that, on the whole, change really sucks. Not that I think you are wrong, but the problem doesn't seem to be not enough change, it's too much change.

Jan 12, 2010, 00:51:50 JanieM wrote:

I wrote earlier in this thread: [i]ObWi has never been a big problem for me blood pressure-wise...[/i]

I must have been in denial. This from Marty a little while ago...

[i]the quibbling is almost a compulsive negative reaction to a conservative writing an essay of depth and substance[/i]

...makes me wild. "[C]ompulsive negative reaction" indeed. Pot, meet kettle. Or: do you have your eyes closed while you're standing in front of that mirror?

Almost every time Marty shows up it is with some resentful, chip-on-the-shoulder, accusatory meanness. Or in other words, with some "compulsory negative reaction."

I am so getting closer to done....

Okay, thanks for letting me vent. Back to work now. ;)

Jan 12, 2010, 03:25:45 russell wrote:

OK, now I want to read Middlemarch.

Jan 12, 2010, 05:07:34 Slartibartfast wrote:

Marty reminds me of me, not that long ago. He might be salvageable, to the extent that I am, or was.

Jan 12, 2010, 06:59:36 DonaldJ wrote:

I'm just a sporadic inconsistent lurker, but Marty doesn't seem obnoxious (not meaning that Slarti was). I missed the thread that angered JanieM.

Jan 12, 2010, 08:48:33 JanieM wrote:

[u]Slarti[/u] -- Marty doesn't remind me much of you, but I've only been around for a couple of years, so maybe I missed an earlier Slarti incarnation (so to speak). You can be sarcastic, okay; and inscrutable and cryptic. ;) But not resentfully nasty.

*****

[u]DonaldJ[/u] -- the passage I quoted was from today, in the “Open Thread: Weekend reading” thread. And I came over here, as I said, just to vent. I give Marty -- and several commenters, including NV and Russell, who regularly engage him at length -- credit for oftentimes sticking with a discussion for a long time, and finally moving out of the unpleasantness and into a phase of actually clarifying areas of disagreement. I like it when that happens.

Marty played a big role in a thread that straggled on for 2 weeks starting the day after election day, with same-sex marriage as a central topic. Marty's contribution was, from my point of view, hostile, maddeningly illogical, and repetitively oblivious to what the gay contributors themselves were saying about their own motivations.

For example: <i>So my point is completely accurate, the discrimination is equally applied to all non married people. So instead of solving that problem, we will declare another set of people as "married", they will get theirs and screww the rest.</i>

This was in relation to the fact that his son and his son’s girlfriend are unmarried. The fact that his son+girlfriend have an option (i.e. to get married) that gay people don’t, and that in a sense that’s the whole point of the campaign, never seemed to make the slightest impression on his repetition of his debating points. (Of course Jay Jerome played a big part in that thread too, which made it extra specially unpleasant.)

I could go on, but -- as Russell said about his own reactions in a recent thread -- this is my problem, no one else’s. If I have buttons that Marty pushes, my task is to notice the buttons and see what I can do to reshape/rewire them. It’s helps to be able to vent relatively harnlessly (I hope) and also to hear that there are people whose buttons he does not push. J

*****

[u]Russell[/u] -- When I was young (college and grad school), Middlemarch was my favorite novel. It may still be, depending on what counts (LOTR is in a category by itself, I guess). I have read it quite a few times over the years. There was a long gap, then I tried to read it 5 or 6 years ago and bogged down in the middle. This time I was right back into it. No doubt it isn’t to everyone’s taste. But if you ever get around to it, I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Jan 12, 2010, 11:15:47 DonaldJ wrote:

I vaguely remember that post-election day thread involving gay marriage, and that it got heated, but I can't remember the details. I'm definitely not saying that you don't have the right to be upset with Marty on that or the more recent thing. (I haven't looked at the open thread lately).

In general, from what little I've seen (and I've evidently forgotten some stuff) he seems okay, but it sounds like he has his bad days or maybe certain issues where he is clueless.

Jan 13, 2010, 01:28:35 nous wrote:

I think that Marty and Jay Jerome are very much the same sort of beast, and it is one that doesn't listen much or well, and when it does, it's only to score debating points. Think of it as a Rhino...only capable of seeing what is directly in front of it, slightly paranoid, and prone to charging.

Jan 13, 2010, 05:08:14 Slartibartfast wrote:

I guess you could say I've been more strident in the past. [url=http://obsidianwings.blogs....]Here[/url], for instance.

But only on points of information as distinct from speculation. You have to go back a while further to get me up in arms as Marty is apt to be, and my long-defunct blog hit the bit bucket many years ago.

Jan 13, 2010, 11:40:33 JanieM wrote:

nous -- Funny, since I'm the one who started complaining about Marty, but though I agree with some of what you say, I think Jay doesn't really give a damn about the topics, or believe the opinions he expresses, he only comes around to entertain himself by pushing people's buttons.

Whereas -- I think Marty cares a lot about the topics and believes the things he says, and that his approach is what it is partly because his own buttons are pushed by a lot of what's written on ObWi.

Bringing it back home again, because all that is mostly mind-reading (except for Jay's expressed purpose of "stirring the sh*t"), I find it easy to ignore Jay precisely because he admittedly comes around to say things not out of convictions he cares about but out of a desire to irritate people. I find it harder not to get riled up in response to Marty's riled up approach. Some of that is just knee-jerk combativeness (on my part, for sure; on his, I intuit), but some of it on my part is disappointment when what could be an enlightening discussion of seriously differing viewpoints is instead just name-calling.

Jan 13, 2010, 21:56:09 libjpn wrote:

The thing is, Jay started out concern trolling about Hilary, so he was full of it from the beginning. Marty, on the other hand, seemed to start out at least from a position of honesty, but the pile ons have made him more combative. It's unfortunate and I tried to mention it a few times, but I've been too tired to wade into those threads, a feeling that I imagine I detect in a lot of other regulars lately.

Jan 14, 2010, 10:48:56 nous wrote:

Janie and LJ -- you're likely right about Marty having better intentions than JJ but whatever those intentions may be I don't see that Marty is any more deliberative than JJ is. JJ may actually be a better reader in that he does shift his position in response to others, he just tries to shift in a way that keeps hitting buttons. Marty just sandbags and refuses to budge, then complains that he's set about by so many foes. Either way I don't see any genuine engagement in the sense that they will consider another paradigm.

I could be wrong. I could be skipping the comments where Marty actually considers someone else's premise. What I do read usually irks me fast enough that I skip ahead to the next comment.

Jan 14, 2010, 11:33:12 JanieM wrote:

nous -- you're right about the sandbagging. Not to mention the goalpost shifting....

I mostly skim or skip Marty at this point too, although since there are still people engaging him at length, I do still tabs to see if anything interesting develops.

Thinking about this made me realize that I haven't seen a word from von or sebastian in a long time.

Oh well, times change. I'd love to see an ObWi resurgence but "working on it" has been the answer for so long now that I've lost hope that it means anything.

Hey, what the heck, I think I'll go read the day's liveblogging of the Prop 8 trial.

http://prop8trialtracker.com/

Jan 14, 2010, 11:33:54 JanieM wrote:

still tabs = still keep tabs

Jan 16, 2010, 11:46:34 tgott wrote:

A busy life and shifting priorities have kept me from visiting ObWi regularly the past several months.

But had the site not changed so much and landed in its current form, I would somehow find the time to log on more often, as others would.

Hard to disagree with what has been said here.

I suppose we all worried quite a bit when hilzoy "retired" and figured ObWi would not draw us in like before. After all, when you loses your heart, it's hard to fabricate a soul.

But publius joining hilzoy on the sidelines was the double whammy.

Eric deserves props for keeping things going. But it seems to me ObWi works best as a collaborative effort.

I was optimistic about Lindsay's arrival, but alas, she is not my cup of tea.

As others have mentioned, the addition of a policy wonk -- albeit on the domestic side -- would help greatly to complement Eric's output.

(An aside: I am surprised I have not seen a post yet on Haiti and the greatest human suffering I have ever seen, or thought I could ever see, in an age when the cameras always seem to be on to record the world's great triumphs and tragedies. Whether the deal toll is 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000, these numbers are hard to comprehend until you see the hopeless, yet somehow hopeful, faces of babies and young Haitian boys and girls, death and destruction all around them. As President Obama said, I pray these poor, poor souls will not be forsaken.)

In regard to our little corner of the world here and at ObWi and its lack of domestic coverage lately, I think a post on the Massachusetts Senate race and its implications would be worthwile.

I mean, with the Republican gaining traction on Martha Coakley for Teddy Kennedy's seat -- and leading in some polls -- the Dems' 60-vote marker is at stake and, with it, President Obama's entire first year since he essentially staked it on Health Care Reform, which I feel he has bungled from beginning to where we are now.

And as much as I am completely disallusioned by the second Democratic president of my adulthood -- a president I was never that enthusiastic to begin with (even setting aside the fact I was a very hopeful and loud Hillary support) -- I would not want to see the man suffer this defeat because, frankly, if the Dems don't maintain their 60-vote stronghold (which as the Ben Nelsons of the world have proved is tenuous on the best of days), forget the countdown to Election Day 2010: Start the countdown to Election Day 2012, when, as it is, I hope a valid Democratic challenger will emerge to challenge BO.

My bittterness toward President Obama stems from his utter and embarrassing embracement of corporate welfare and the way we have seen the rich get richer under his
watch (just as we did under GWB) while millions of regular Americans have lost their homes, their jobs, their wages, their self-esteem, their quality of life.

I find Mr. Obama to be a poor excuse for a Democratic president, and too often an empty.

I find no greater sin for my president -- let alone a Democrat -- to become an ally of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street robber barrons, essentially giving these titans of greed a free pass to resume as Masters of the Universe under the guise that they are Too Big To Fail.

Perhaps it is best I stay away, clearly as one of the charter members of our nation's incredibly shrinking middle class, I am not entirely objective and would be better served keeping my blood pressure dead.

My 50th birthday is couple years away and, unlike my old man who worked his whole life building bridges and skyscrapers all over the East Coast only be struck down by throat cancer that traveled up to his brain (ironically, or perhaps, not so, he was a non-smoker) I'd like to see 60.

---bedtimeforbonzo

Jan 16, 2010, 11:59:46 tgott wrote:

I hate typos.

A busy life and shifting priorities have kept me from visiting ObWi regularly the past several months.

But had the site not changed so much and landed in its current form, I would somehow find the time to log on more often, as others would.

Hard to disagree with what has been said here.

I suppose we all worried quite a bit when hilzoy "retired" and figured ObWi would not draw us in like before. After all, when you loses your heart, it's hard to fabricate a soul.

Publius joining hilzoy on the sidelines was the double whammy.

Eric deserves props for keeping things going. But it seems to me ObWi works best as a collaborative effort.

I was optimistic about Lindsay's arrival, but alas, she is not my cup of tea.

As others have mentioned, the addition of a policy wonk -- albeit on the domestic side -- would help greatly to complement Eric's output.

(An aside: I am surprised I have not seen a post yet on Haiti and the greatest human suffering I have ever seen, or thought I could ever see, in an age when the cameras always seem to be on to record the world's great triumphs and tragedies. Whether the deal toll is 50,000 or 100,000 or 150,000, these numbers are hard to comprehend until you see the hopeless, yet somehow hopeful, faces of babies and young Haitian boys and girls, death and destruction all around them. As President Obama said, I pray these poor, poor souls will not be forsaken.)

In regard to our little corner of the world here and at ObWi and its lack of domestic coverage lately, I think a post on the Massachusetts Senate race and its implications would be worthwhile.

I mean, with the Republican gaining traction on Martha Coakley for Teddy Kennedy's seat -- and leading in some polls -- the Dems' 60-vote marker is at stake and, with it, President Obama's entire first year since he essentially staked it on Health Care Reform, which I feel he has bungled from beginning to where we are now.

And as much as I am completely disallusioned by the second Democratic president of my adulthood -- a candidate I was never that enthusiastic about to begin with (even setting aside the fact I was a very hopeful and loud Hillary support) -- I would not want to see the man suffer this defeat because, frankly, if the Dems don't maintain their 60-vote stronghold (which as the Ben Nelsons of the world have proved is tenuous on the best of days), forget the countdown to Election Day 2010: Start the countdown to Election Day 2012, when, as it is, I hope a valid Democratic challenger will emerge to challenge BO.

My bittterness toward President Obama stems from his utter and embarrassing embracement of corporate welfare and the way we have seen the rich get richer under his
watch (just as we did under GWB) while millions of regular Americans have lost their homes, their jobs, their wages, their self-esteem, their quality of life.

I find Mr. Obama to be a poor excuse for a Democratic president, and too often an empty suit.

I find no greater sin for my president -- let alone a Democrat -- to become an ally of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo (whom I have a waged my own personal war with the past eight months) and the rest of the Wall Street robber barrons, essentially giving these titans of greed a free pass to resume as Masters of the Universe under the guise that they are Too Big To Fail.

Perhaps it is best I stay away, clearly as one of the charter members of our nation's incredibly shrinking middle class, I am not entirely objective and would be better served keeping my blood pressure down.

My 50th birthday is a couple years away and, unlike my old man who worked his whole life building bridges and skyscrapers all over the East Coast only be struck down by throat cancer that traveled up to his brain (ironically, or perhaps, not so, he was a non-smoker), I'd like to see 60.

---bedtimeforbonzo

Jan 16, 2010, 12:06:53 nous wrote:

I keep reading progressives who feel betrayed by Obama, but what baffles me is that they all seem to hope for a more progressive candidate when the opposition that he faces is clearly pulling right, rather than left. A more progressive president would be facing even greater opposition from within his own party. I'm sure he could chastise more loudly, but I'm not sure how that would play. And I'm not clear how Hilary could do any better working with this congress...assuming that she could have coattailed even the mushy margin we have.

As I see it, the lack of progress from Dems comes directly from Congress. I've lost count of how many times Feinstein has responded to me by telling me that she was coming down farther to the right than I wanted her to. And she's not even a "Moderate Democrat."

What's a guy to do? The Democrats are clearly at sea.

Jan 16, 2010, 14:10:45 tgott wrote:

I never bought into President Obama's overarching campaigns themes and, by extension, promises of Hope and Change and all the rest of that good-sounding bullshit.

ABB (Anyone But Bush) was going to produce Change with a capital C.

I merely want results from my president and, in particular, on this count, I have seen President Obama provide inept, inartful, narrow leadership on the home foreclosure devastation (latest report: 1 in 366 homes are now in foreclosure; 3 million since the Great O took office) -- to my mind, as big as any problem he has faced and failed to address.

His HAMP solution is an utter disgrace and embarrassment and yet another excuse for the Wells Fargo thieves of the Too Big To Fail economy to make an end-run around making Main Street more whole and making Wall Street more rich.

The foreclosure crisis did not emerge overnight.

It should have been on Mr. Obama and his ballyhooed team's radar well before they took office.

But talk of foreclosure and how to solve complex problems brought on by Wall Street gaming the system did not make for good rhetoric or sound bites or oratory -- or big-money corporate campaign donations -- while Team Obama was Yes We Can-ing us at every corner.

What's more, it is clear the Obama Administration slapped together HAMP in late spring in Keystone Kops fashion that only a Bush could love and have yet to get it right.

Mr. Obama long ago made the banks and mortgage companies and whatever the hell you call AIG whole.

Yet the President continues to turn his back on the very folks who put him into office -- the very folks who will vote him out office in 2012, for which I will be first in line and cannot wait to cast that vote.

Many suggested the governor races lost last fall by Dems were not part of an Obama backlash.

But now we have the potential loss of Ted Kennedy's seat in the Senate.

The very fact that it is going to come down to the wire -- and forcing Mr. Obama to campaign for Martha Coakley against the backdrop of the Haiti crisis -- should tell us that I am clearly not alone, not even close, as a disaffected Dem who once would blindly pull the lever for the candidate with D beside his or her name.

No more, Mr. Obama.

No more.
---bedtimeforbonzo

Jan 17, 2010, 02:32:20 russell wrote:

[i]My bittterness toward President Obama stems from his utter and embarrassing embracement of corporate welfare and the way we have seen the rich get richer under his watch (just as we did under GWB) while millions of regular Americans have lost their homes, their jobs, their wages, their self-esteem, their quality of life.[/i]

I'm really glad Obama won, rather than McCain.

That said, all I can about Tony's comment here is right the f**k on.

When Obama ran, I figured him to more or less be the Eisenhower of our generation. Middle of the road, temperamentally conservative but open to progressive initiatives on specific issues. Interested more in competence and results than in ideology.

In general I still think that's about right, however throughout his year in office I've found his deference to Wall St to be astounding. Jaw-dropping.

My prediction is that, to the degree that Republicans do well in 2010, it will be by running as the anti-Wall St populists who are going to stand up for the little guy against Obama's big-money cronyism.

Ain't that a kick in the @ss.

Regarding Brown in particular, voting for Brown as a protest against Democratic feebleness is like blowing your head off with a shotgun because you have a headache.

You won't have a headache anymore, but neither will you have a head.

Brown's a by-the-numbers, drown-government-in-a-bathtub Norquistian I-got-mine-and-screw-you conservative Republican.

He drives a truck, so that's supposed to make him a regular guy. As the "Bert And I" guys observed, just because the cat dropped her litter in the oven doesn't make them biscuits.

Jan 17, 2010, 05:07:25 nous wrote:

I get the frustration with Obama and am fairly disappointed myself, but I don't see that wishing for a true progressive leader solves anything.

Who is that leader? Are there any such figures in the Democratic party or on the horizon?

If nominated, how does that person prevent an electoral backlash as the states to the political right of him or her split their vote and go for a more conservative congress?

Assuming that this person can prevent #2 and preserves the status-quo in congress, how does that person deal with Lieberman and the "moderate Democrats"?

Obama is not as strong or as progressive as I might like, but he's still more progressive than the 50% mark in Congress and he needs to govern slightly right of even that if he must have 60 votes to do a damn thing.

Until the Democrats can not just beat Bush, but bury the ghost of Reagan in 30 states I don't see anything changing.

And I don't see any Dems in the wings who can come close to doing that in Obama's place.

Jan 17, 2010, 05:32:36 russell wrote:

No, you're quite right.

The guys I've liked over the last few years are basically Dean, Sanders, and Feingold. I'll probably end up liking Franken.

None of them could ever be effective as President. They would spend all, by which I mean all, of their time fending off political attacks. Governance would go by the wayside.

Obama's the right guy for the job given the country we actually live in.

None of which changes the fact that he is amazingly deferential to the financial sector. And that at probably the time of greatest popular support for federal intervention in the financial markets in the last 30 years.

Jan 17, 2010, 07:29:37 JanieM wrote:

I'm not thrilled with Obama either, but for reasons that all of you have already mentioned, I don't know who could have done any better. Certainly not McCain (heaven forfend). Clinton would have been better than McCain, but I don't think that she would have done any better than Obama.

Obama already is the subject of constant political attacks, as Clinton would have been had she won. Some of that phenomenon is racial (not far) below the surface, but if Dean or Sanders were in Obama's place, the lack of the race factor would be balanced out by the reaction to the fact that they actually are somewhat leftish, unlike Obama, who is only "left" if you're crazy. As for Feingold, we'd have further left [i]and[/i] Jewish. I'm sure that would go over just great in Palin-land. And with Clinton, the (not far) below the surface misogyny and general Clinton-bashing would have made the situation just about like it is now as far as political attacks go.

What I'm disappointed in is that I was hoping for a [i]leader[/i]. But I'm not even sure what a "leader" would mean, or could do, in the current climate in this country. I am (perhaps foolishly) still giving a little credence to the idea that Obama is playing a longer game than we are grasping. I suppose it's too much to hope that he is giving the financial sector just enough rope to hang itself with.

And as for leadership: In "the country we actually live in," we've got Coakley as the Democratic choice in [i]Massachusetts[/i]. What does that tell us about the chance of anyone to the [i]left[i/] of Obama getting anywhere in national politics?

Jan 17, 2010, 10:15:56 Turbulence wrote:

[i] And that at probably the time of greatest popular support for federal intervention in the financial markets in the last 30 years.[/i]
Is that really true though? If Obama did come out swinging against the finance titans, wouldn't the media turn on a dime and start hounding him for being a crazy populist socialist leftist, who is just like Sarah Palin in his total ignorance and nowhere near smart enough to futz with the geniuses at BoA who never considered the possibility that housing prices might not go up forever? And if the media did go all psycho-crazy on him, in that particular way, wouldn't a substantial portion of the electorate go right along with them?
I mean, this country has drunk the koolaid when it comes to believing that "rich people" = "brilliant people" = "hard working people" = "just plain better people who deserve to have everything that's not nailed down and some stuff that is". Now, those views are totally inconsistent with the torches and pitchforks dreams that so many people have, but mass movements aren't really about strict intellectual consistency, right?
I'm very frustrated with his failures to push for cramdown and the hard core version of the financial products safety commission and a real too big to fail tax, but I honestly don't know how much of that is fault and how much is due to the fact that wall street has already colonized the minds of America.

Sometimes it feels like America is the abused spouse who can't stop defending its abusive wall street husband, even after calling the cops.

Jan 17, 2010, 12:24:53 tgott wrote:

"My prediction is that, to the degree that Republicans do well in 2010, it will be by running as the anti-Wall St populists who are going to stand up for the little guy against Obama's big-money cronyism."

Which is indeed ironic, and an absolute kick in the ass, since the GOP has long been the party of the rich and well-connected, no longer showing any resemblance to the cloth coat Republicans of yore.

But that is indeed the path a smart -- and I would hope moderate -- Republican would take in trying to overtake Congress come November and President Obama in 2012, who failed to run, and who has been consistent in this persona, as an anti-Wall Street, populist candidate.

It is also the path -- and my considered hope -- that the Democrat who emerges to challenge Mr. Obama in 2012 will take, embracing the anger and frustration I feel and nearly every friend and customer alike I know feels, and grasps our anti-Wall Street, populist sentiments.

As much as a phenomen as Obama was in 2008 -- and he was as much a phenomen as he was anything else -- I believe, as unlikely as it may seem now, such a candidate will emerge.

Who knows who the hell that candidate will be. But he or she will indeed surface in another year or so, for if a week is a lifetime in politics, 500 days is an eternity.

For unless the economy and unemployment and foreclosure rates are markedly different this time next year -- and they won't be; the foreclosure crisis looms only larger and is now spreading into the retail sector -- President Obama will be markedly beatable. I, for one, will lead whatever charge it takes to beat him.

---btfb

Jan 17, 2010, 12:24:54 tgott wrote:

Jan 17, 2010, 13:36:04 tgott wrote:

I think the fact that passage of Health Care Reform now hinges on the outcome of Tuesday's Massachusetts Senate race shows President Obama's lack of leadership and experience in good governance.

Our president failed to carry the health-care message over the summer, failed to use the biggest megaphone there is in the world, and, in doing so, allowed the opposition to pervert the process.

If Coakley does lose Tuesday and HCR goes down the tubes as a result, we can look back to August as a turning point its demise, the month the president vacationed while those crazed Tea Baggers overtook townhall meetings and forced the president and the Democratic Congress to play catch-up on the issue he set out to be the hallmark piece of legislation in his first term.

In sports, we would call this a rookie mistake.

I don't think presidents are allowed such rookie mistakes.

The Democratic Congress and the president's bungling of HCR has exposed Mr. Obama's overpromising and status as just-another-politician whose campaign's great soundtrack belied that notion.

Grasping to achieve historic and hallmark legislation as part of his legacy once he and the Dems regained the high ground on HCR, transparency was sacrificed.

Moreover, the pork that was stuffed in HCR has turned countless Democrats sour on the Change President who voiced disdain over earmarks and business-as-usual politics during the long campaign when the Great Obama could do no wrong.

The whole backroom business -- "bribes," as the GOP have effectively charged -- of getting Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, among others, on board further sullied not just the process but the image President Obama seemingly wanted to portray as a different kind of leader.

It all looks like business as usual and the American public have reacted in kind as more Americans now reject President Obama's version of HCR and his attempt to make history, at the expense of what once seemed to be his principled approach, than support it.

Overpromising and not delivering is a bitch.

So is not coming across as the smartest kid in the class when you were supposed to be the smartest kid in the class.

I was among those who thought President Obama was a fool for attempting landmark legislation in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression itself -- especially while legislation for economic reform and renew regulation was desperately being cried out for.

I suppose Mr. Obama thought foreclosures would slow down, just as he and his assembled best and brightest thought unemployment would never hit 10 percent. Fools.

Fools who put so much of a hoped-for economic turnout in the hands of the very entities that precipitated the unimagined economic meltdown in the first place.

This approach was stupid and foolish and naive and corupt and smacked of a leader ill-equipped to handle such a crisis and still shows no sign otherwise.

I wonder what President Obama thought of JP Morgan Chase's report $3 billion in profits the other day and whether he even knows they along with Wells Fargo and Bank of America and the rest of the titans of greed are sitting on the $300 billion that his laughable HAMP program gave them to modify distressed and in-danger-of-being-foreclosed-upon mortgages, a program that has produced less than 30,000 such permanent modifications in the face of millions of foreclosed-upon Americans.

The Change President may have been a vaunted community organizer at one time in his storied past but he has done damn little in keeping my community and millions of others across this nation together.

---btfb

Jan 17, 2010, 13:36:05 tgott wrote:

Jan 17, 2010, 14:03:07 tgott wrote:

Oh, in regard to the original subject of this post, I think it is telling that Lindsay does not list ObWi on the Blog Roll of her own site.

With apologizes to Simon and Garfinkle, where have you gone hilzoy?

P.S. It is always amazing how triumph emerges even in the greatest tragedies like the Haiti horror: After watching the NFL playoff games just now, I tuned to CNN and was heartened to say the least at the story of the pregnant woman who was pulled from the rubble. Just amazing.

Jan 17, 2010, 14:03:08 tgott wrote:

Jan 17, 2010, 14:03:51 tgott wrote:

Sorry for the double posts. My son's PC is beyond me.

Jan 17, 2010, 14:03:52 tgott wrote:

Sorry for the double posts. My son's PC is beyond me.

Jan 18, 2010, 11:06:58 russell wrote:

[i]The whole backroom business -- "bribes," as the GOP have effectively charged -- of getting Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, among others, on board further sullied not just the process but the image President Obama seemingly wanted to portray as a different kind of leader.[/i]

Just a quick comment on this specific point.

I can't think of an example of progressive legislation passed at any time in the nation's history that didn't involve significant compromise, and that wasn't met with significant resistance.

Even the New Deal and Progressive era stuff was a mixed bag. It was all important and worth doing, but the process of getting it done was a piecemeal mess.

Back room deals do have an unsavory flavor, but for good or ill that's the way things get done.

Jan 18, 2010, 22:44:12 Slartibartfast wrote:

I agree that this is the way things get done, russell. It's just that this way of getting things done is a lot of what I despise about our government.

I don't think Nelson did anything illegal, or even exceptionally (for DC) immoral. It's more that DC has a fundamentally different set-point for objectionality than would be the case for you or I acting on our own, and Nelson was pretty close to tripping over it.

If he all of a sudden were sporting a new Escalade, that would be another thing entirely.

Jan 18, 2010, 23:30:55 russell wrote:

I'm not sure any other governments do it any better.

I'm not sure any non-governmental institutions or organizations that operate at any kind of significant scale do it any better.

You have a lot of people with different interests, and you need to get them on board and heading in more or less the same direction.

Compromise, inefficiency, and some level (hopefully petty) of corruption ensues.

The innovation of democratic and/or republican government is that the governed have a lever in the process, either directly (democracy) or through representatives (republics).

So, in the end, the responsibility ultimately lies with us. But the basic problem is, IMO, inherent in doing things purposefully at anything more than middling scale.

Jan 18, 2010, 23:36:22 russell wrote:

One simple solution in the case at hand would be for the representatives of more conservative Americans to say, "We lost the election, let's sit on our hands like good sports and let our more liberal countrymen have their way until the next round".

I don't see that happening, nor do I think it would be a particularly good idea.

I'm not saying it's a good thing that Nelson or Landrieu exploited the situation to gain special favor for their states.

I am saying it appears to be in the nature of how humans do stuff, and Obama and the democratic Congress are not exempt.

Jan 18, 2010, 23:57:16 Slartibartfast wrote:

General agreement here, russell, except I think that if it had been a Republican that had essentially sold his vote on some major (to Republicans), large numbers of Democrats would be loudly screaming about how corrupt Republicans are.

Kind of the photographic negative of the current situation, I think, except for any Republican cause would be, naturally, also corrupt.

Which also bears some resemblance to the current hoorah. It's a wierd combination of tragic and amusing.

Jan 19, 2010, 00:15:15 John Thullen wrote:

The abuse of the filibuster provides minority Republicans with the tyranny of the minority.

It also lets individuals like Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, etc wield the power to derail and/or eviscerate legislation unless their demands are met.

If an Escalade was all they wanted, the country would be better served. I'd trade an Escalade or two to pass legislation that reformed the current Death Palin healthcare system which kills people.

That said, if the Republicans endanger my government in any future election, the Democratic majority should ram through a new filibuster rule: every piece of legislation will require a 100-vote majority in the Senate.

I will not pay one cent of taxes to a government run by the Republican Party.

An army of cold dead hands will be required.

Jan 19, 2010, 12:50:47 tgott wrote:

"General agreement here, russell, except I think that if it had been a Republican that had essentially sold his vote on some major (to Republicans), large numbers of Democrats would be loudly screaming about how corrupt Republicans are."

And large numbers of Democrats would indeed be screaming loudly about how corrupt Republicans are.

It's just -- and I guess this is a backhanded compliment -- Republicans do it better.

Everyone knows this goes on. But by screaming about it so loudly on what has become as unpopular a reform effort, even by many Dems, as it began popular, once again, the GOP is threatening to carry the day in a Democratically-ruled Congress.

Using such verbage as "bribes" when most Americans know what is going on is business as usual, like it or not, has been effective and is an example of the GOP adroit handling of being out of power which, to some of us, makes us still feel as if they are charting the course.

And the fact that so much of what the HCR process has become can be labeled as "business as usual" has been a major turnoff for Democrats and even the diehard Obama supporters who thought they were voting for something other than business as usual.

Maybe it was their own fault, maybe they were naive, but they were bamboozled, which, again, is one of many reasons I see emerging as why the Great Obama will be a one-term president.

I suspect he can always go back to community organizing. Jimmy Carter could surely use more help with his wonderful Habitat For Humanity cause.

Jan 19, 2010, 12:50:48 tgott wrote:

Jan 20, 2010, 01:23:49 nous wrote:

BTFB -- again...assume you are right. Give Obama a pat on the back and send him off into the sunset.

What changes amongst the Democrats in his absence? What more gets done? Why?

I can't seem to wrap my head around any meaningful change that doesn't also require sending a big chunk of Dem congressional leadership with him.

Meanwhile. If I picture those changes happening with Obama still in office I have a hard time seeing him vetoing progressive legislation.

Again. This is not a defense of Obama. It's a criticism of the Congressional Democratic leadership.

Jan 20, 2010, 04:24:52 JanieM wrote:

I think the chance of anyone to the left of Obama getting elected to the presidency is zero. Less than zero, if that were possible.

That means that if someone leftward challenges and beats Obama in the primary, we'll have another 4 to 8 years of worse than lunacy. I would go further and predict that if [i]any[/i] Democrat, progressive or not, forces a primary, a Republican victory will follow.

Expecting a nationally viable progressive Democrat to rise out of nowhere and come riding in on a magic white horse to fix everything that Obama hasn’t been able to address in the way that we would have liked seems ... familiar somehow.

/pretending I understand a thing about politics.

Jan 20, 2010, 04:25:44 JanieM wrote:

To clarify, the familiar element is the magical thinking....

Jan 20, 2010, 04:46:35 JanieM wrote:

Okay, another clarification. Then I'm on the road (yuck).

"to fix everything Obama hasn't been able to address in the way that we would have liked" implies that he [i]wanted[/i] to fix everything in the way that we would have liked. I don't believe that's true. So more like: "to fix everything that Obama hasn't wanted to, and/or been able to...."

Jan 20, 2010, 05:52:19 russell wrote:

[i]Expecting a nationally viable progressive Democrat to rise out of nowhere and come riding in on a magic white horse to fix everything...[/i]

Hey, maybe Ralph Nader is available...

Jan 20, 2010, 09:51:32 tgott wrote:

"What changes amongst the Democrats in his absence? What more gets done? Why?

"I can't seem to wrap my head around any meaningful change that doesn't also require sending a big chunk of Dem congressional leadership with him."

Can't answer those questions, unfortunatelty, because we're stuck with President Obama for another three years.

Maybe he is as smart as he is supposed to be and develops effective and real domestic policy.

You know, some change.

After all, it took a first year of missteps and mistakes for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to turn things around en route to two terms of mostly peace and prosperity.

And the president is going to get some new faces in Congress for sure -- they just might be mostly Republican.

Just logged onto HuffPo to see how the Massachussetts Senate race turned out and was greeted with this damning headline -- Coakley's Pollster: We're Hurt By White House Failure To Confront Wall Street.

The <A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">story</> was more damning than the headline.

Coakley pollster Celinda Lake: "If Scott Brown wins tonight he'll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they've got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street."

Clearly, spending his entire first year putting the focus on Health Care Reform and putting a priority on making Wall Street whole -- while millions upon millions have lost their homes and jobs -- was a big, big mistake and the chickens are coming home to roost in a way the White House does not seem ready to handle.

Next week's State of the Union address should be quite an event.

In many ways, Mr. Obama is fortunate it is happening now since, his administration and first term, desperately requires to hit the Reset button.

Would be nice to see a little discussion of all of this at ObWi. Frankly, I'm surprised the Senate race, with its huge implications, did not warrant a post.

Oh, well.

Jan 20, 2010, 09:53:14 tgott wrote:

"What changes amongst the Democrats in his absence? What more gets done? Why?

"I can't seem to wrap my head around any meaningful change that doesn't also require sending a big chunk of Dem congressional leadership with him."

Can't answer those questions, unfortunatelty, because we're stuck with President Obama for another three years.

Maybe he is as smart as he is supposed to be and develops effective and real domestic policy.

You know, some change.

After all, it took a first year of missteps and mistakes for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to turn things around en route to two terms of mostly peace and prosperity.

And the president is going to get some new faces in Congress for sure -- they just might be mostly Republican.

Just logged onto HuffPo to see how the Massachussetts Senate race turned out and was greeted with this damning headline -- Coakley's Pollster: We're Hurt By White House Failure To Confront Wall Street.

The <A HREF="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/">story</A> was more damning than the headline.

Coakley pollster Celinda Lake: "If Scott Brown wins tonight he'll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they've got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street."

Clearly, spending his entire first year putting the focus on Health Care Reform and putting a priority on making Wall Street whole -- while millions upon millions have lost their homes and jobs -- was a big, big mistake and the chickens are coming home to roost in a way the White House does not seem ready to handle.

Next week's State of the Union address should be quite an event.

In many ways, Mr. Obama is fortunate it is happening now since, his administration and first term, desperately requires to hit the Reset button.

Would be nice to see a little discussion of all of this at ObWi. Frankly, I'm surprised the Senate race, with its huge implications, did not warrant a post.

Oh, well.

Jan 20, 2010, 10:39:32 russell wrote:

As of now, that's Senator Brown.

If folks voted for him thinking they were gonna see more confrontation of Wall St, they should guess again.

If the Democrats want to get anything through the Senate, somebody's going to have to teach Harry Reid how to knock heads.

With Brown on board, the Democrats hold an 18 vote majority in the Senate. If I'm not mistaken, that's larger than the Republican majority *at any time* in George W Bush's eight years as President.

The Republicans are out for blood, and the Democrats are not.

Jan 20, 2010, 12:00:48 DonaldJ wrote:

Does Obama know how to knock heads? I mean, aside from heads to his left? He's always been good about that.

Maybe Hillary would have been better on some issues. I dislike her on foreign policy, but then, look who put her at State. I think she'd have been a better fighter on domestic issues than he has been.

Jan 20, 2010, 13:05:49 tgott wrote:

To Donald's point, at the coffee table to my left, is the current edition of The Economist.

The cover features a pretty cool-looking cartoonish drawing of President Obama sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, a plaque touting his Nobel Peace Prize hanging on the wall, loyal First Dog looking at his master with wide-eyed wonderment, Obama's head cocked to the side looking on with a combination of confused bemusement and reluctance as a pair of red-white-and-blue boxing gloves dangle in front of him.

The cover's headline reads:

"Time to get tough"

Jan 20, 2010, 13:19:46 tgott wrote:

I must say some of the Dems I have heard on CNN and MSNBC are tone deaf.

Chief among them: liberal blowhard and Obama Apologist In Chief Keith Olbermann, who served a full hour of sour grapes.

On the other hand, Senator Jim Webb (Va.) released the first shot to the White House's bow with a statement saying it is time to put HCR on hold until the victorious Brown officially takes the late, great Ted Kennedy's seat in 10 days or so -- rather than ramming through some version of the health-care bill through Congress while the Dems still have 60 votes, as some Obama diehards have suggested.

Can you imagine the outrage -- forget from Republicans, but from the very Independents that keyed Brown's victory -- such a tone-deaf move would cause?

For starters, I'm not sure many of the same Senators and House members who were on board would be so now if they viewed their re-election in peril by going against the will of the people, as many of them no doubt do now.

It's one thing if HCR, as it stands now, was backed by a majority of Americas -- but it no longer is.

Barney Frank, bless his liberal heart, has enough political sense to respect the will of the people and, like Webb, came out with a statement just now saying no action should be taken on HCR until Brown is seated.

It's called listening to the will of the people -- something Coakley did not do, and something President Obama has not done, save those people who have made millions on Wall Street.

Jan 20, 2010, 13:21:15 tgott wrote:

And what a slap in the face to President Obama to hear the crowd chanting "Yes, We Can" -- "Yes, We Can!" -- during Brown's acceptance speech.

Jan 20, 2010, 14:22:32 tgott wrote:

Dean-Rendell in 2012.

Jan 20, 2010, 22:20:16 Slartibartfast wrote:

[quote]Chief among them: liberal blowhard and Obama Apologist In Chief Keith Olbermann, who served a full hour of sour grapes.[/quote]

I don't know that I'd characterize Olbermann that way. I'd probably just go for that he's more than a little overly full of himself, and has decided that he's just fine with lying about people like Brown in the name of Liberal Victory.

A self-important, bloviating asshole, in short.

The sad bit is I think he actually believes what comes out of his own mouth. I wonder if he writes his own material; I'd guess: yes, he does.

Jan 20, 2010, 22:26:55 Slartibartfast wrote:

If the Democrats want to get anything through the Senate, somebody's going to have to teach Harry Reid how to knock heads.

It looks to me somewhat like a middle-school orchestra, playing a major symphony without a conductor, where most of them haven't even read the sheet music. As far as passage of healthcare legislation went, anyway.

I'm not sure what this means, yet. It could mean that Obama was elected not so much because he promised to pass healthcare legislation, as much as that he was a Democrat and not a Republican, and that there was the added bonus of First Black President.

None of which are bad things, objectively, but there's going to have to be a strategy and tactics in place to get some of the legislation the D-side holds dear passed, and right now it looks kind of like the newly deheadcoached Cincinnati Bearcats trying to get some offense rolling in the Sugar Bowl: sadly lacking in execution, if not talent.

Which is just awful, because the Republicans aren't really any smarter. They do, though, know what they don't want.

Jan 20, 2010, 22:35:55 JanieM wrote:

[i] They do, though, know what they don't want.[/i]

Indeed they do:

[i]Obama tapped Southers, a former FBI agent, to lead the TSA in September but his confirmation has been blocked by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who says he was worried Southers would allow TSA employees to engage in collective bargaining with the government.[/i]

From msnbc.com this morning.

Jan 20, 2010, 22:55:31 JanieM wrote:

By the way Slarti, great analogies. Music [i]and[/i]sports. Cool! ;)

To keep from screaming, I retreat into abstraction, the abstraction in this case being the elusive definition of what it means to be a grown-up. These people (Congress in general and the Senate in particular), who are supposed to be doing the public business of the most powerful nation in the history of the world, remind [i]me[/i] a lot of the time of nothing so much as a bunch of middle-schoolers jockeying for position in the pecking order.

But it maligns middle-schoolers to imply that they're any worse than the rest of us; a lot of life works a lot like middle school, it turns out. (Nor do I exempt myself from being guity as charged.)

Jan 20, 2010, 23:35:23 tgott wrote:

"The sad bit is I think he actually believes what comes out of his own mouth. I wonder if he writes his own material; I'd guess: yes, he does."

I believe you are 100 percent, Slarti -- and Olbermann is definitely full of himself.

Actually, his material is fairly well-written. It's just that it becomes repetitive and grating, which, to me, simply weakens his message and, over time, he will become -- if he hasn't already -- the left's version of Bill O'Reilly.

One of the funniest things I saw last year was Ben Afleck on "Saturday Night Live" doing Olbermann doing one of his endless Special Comments.

YouTube or Google it if you get the time. Afleck shows some real comedic impersonation skills.

Jan 20, 2010, 23:37:47 russell wrote:

[i]I'm not sure what this means, yet.[/i]

I think it means a lot of folks voted for Obama because they thought the wheels were coming off, and they thought he'd make it all better.

He didn't get that done in a year, so now they're pissed.

I've actually been somewhat amazed by the strength of the mix of anger and enthusiasm that I've seen from Brown's supporters. A lot of them just hate the HCR bill, whether they know or understand what's in it or not. Most of them are just pissed off because the wheels are still coming off, and they think what's needed is someone to throw a monkey wrench in the works down there in DC.

So, I think they're gonna get their wish.

Jan 20, 2010, 23:38:57 russell wrote:

In other words, the monkey wrench is gonna be thrown.

Jan 20, 2010, 23:44:44 tgott wrote:

Janie: This being my day off, as my wife cuts one of her regular's hair downstairs, I have had MSNBC in the background and just heard the Southers news -- the GOP seems to have written the book on exerting authority as the party out of power.

Obama has brought much of this on himself.

As Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley just said: "To put your whole domestic agenda on the laps of Congress is a dangerous."
---btfb

Jan 20, 2010, 23:49:47 tgott wrote:

Meanwhile, today's NBC/Wall Steet Journal poll is particulary damning to President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

For starters, 54 percent of the country feels the nation is headed in the wrong direction.

And while Obama remains popular among 77 percent of those surveyed -- only half of that figure approve of his policies, an interesting disconnect.

Jan 21, 2010, 00:15:09 russell wrote:

Net/net, to me, if Scott Brown is all it takes to bring the Democratic legislative agenda to a screeching halt, then we have big, big problems.

Irrespective of the goodness or badness of that agenda.

It means that a party with the White House and historically very high majorities in *both* houses of Congress can't punch it's way out of a paper bag.

What that means is ineffective, incompetent government.

And what *that* means at this particular juncture is we're screwed.

I hope all the folks with a (D) next to their name find a way to locate their loins and gird them up, otherwise we're in for a couple of years of spinning wheels, followed by the return to rule of a party that doesn't particularly like governing in the first place, and is perfectly happy to let the whole place go to sh*t.

Time for the Dems to bring their game up.

Jan 21, 2010, 00:46:00 DonaldJ wrote:

Ah, Olbermann bashing--count me in. Even when he's right he's a blowhard. I guess he was one of the first public figures who started bashing Bush really hard, so one has to give him credit for that, but I find him difficult to watch.

OTOH, he's Ed Murrow compared to Chris Matthews, IMO. You can feel your brain cells dying every second "Hardball" is on, at least if Chris is talking, and he is, usually over his guests. (I haven't watched that one in a long time--few enough neurons as it is.)

Jan 21, 2010, 02:18:34 Slartibartfast wrote:

I don't watch "Hardball".

For scathe to be effective, it has to be funny to someone. I think Jon Stewart's got that sewn up; Olbermann's more in the quivering-indignation camp.

Jan 21, 2010, 03:40:25 nous wrote:

Olbermann is the mainline Democrat's Id, which runs to quivering indignation. I think that Glenn Beck is probably the leading contender for the movement Republican's Id. It's sort of like a propaganda war between Frank Burns and Charles Emerson Winchester III.

Agree that the Dems really need to let go of their inner Keith Olbermann and embrace their inner Jon Stewart.

Jan 21, 2010, 04:36:59 russell wrote:

I don't watch much TV, and I don't watch any talking head TV, so the only dose of either Stewart or Olbermann I get is the occasional YouTube clip.

The one thing I will say about Olbermann is that he took it to Bush at a time when pretty much everybody else in the country was asking exactly how many kisses they should plant on the man's behind.

So, as far as I'm concerned, he's made his bones.

Jan 21, 2010, 06:19:34 nous wrote:

Semi-heretical question...what if the Democrats, rather than continuing to wage a two-front war against both the Republicans and the blue dogs instead give the blue dogs more influence? On the plus side it could force them to put their reputations on the line for legislation they support and leave them needing to build coalitions instead of rewarding them for breaking 'em. And, again in theory, it would force them to think about differentiating themselves from their Republican challengers, especially when their current allies among the R's start bailing on them in the name of loyal opposition. This could open the door to compromises that drag things further left rather than further right and incrementally shift the political center.

On the con side I'm not sure what core progressive issues this might endanger. Any thoughts?

Jan 21, 2010, 07:16:56 tgott wrote:

"Agree that the Dems really need to let go of their inner Keith Olbermann and embrace their inner Jon Stewart."

Well said, nous.

---btfb

Jan 21, 2010, 07:21:24 tgott wrote:

Good to see publius take a break from retirement and put up a typically strong post, this one on the Democratic debacle.

Not that any ObWi front-pager is likely paying attention, but I think 80-plus comments here indicates a need for a domestic voice at The Kitty.

Jan 21, 2010, 09:51:01 Jeff wrote:

I haven't posted much at The Mothercat lately -- Erics' posts are pretty meh to me. Glad to see publius roll out for the Special Post.

Jan 21, 2010, 12:23:59 tgott wrote:

"It's sort of like a propaganda war between Frank Burns and Charles Emerson Winchester III."

Great line, nous.

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