Explaining the plan

And you’re surprised, why?

Musings from Sean, at Hiding in the Backwaters:

The White House on Obama’s promise to lift the ban on needle exchange programs:

We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change.”

And from America Blog:

Let’s see…

1. The candidate promised to lift the ban.
2. The White House Web site reaffirmed the president’s commitment to lifting the ban.
3. The White House Web site no longer reaffirms his commitment to lifting the ban.
4. The president now refuses to lift the ban.
5. The president actually affirmatively makes things worse by administratively supporting defending the ban.
6. The spokesman reiterates the president’s support for lifting the ban, some day, once Congress gets around to it.

Sound familiar?

I hate to say, “I told you so,” but “I told you so.”

HT: Joe.My.God

The danger of half way

Tim F at Balloon Juice nails it on why the Obama approach to fixing the civil rights abuses of the war formerly called against terror is so troublesome.

The President’s oath of office obligates him to fully respect the Constitution of the United States (or at least make a believable show of doing so, which most Presidents treat as the same thing). Disrespecting that oath represents a fundamental and often criminal failure by the President to carry out his duties.

George Bush left the next administration with a clever Sophie’s Choice in that the only way to stop pissing all over the U.S. Constitution is to upset the mother of all apple carts. Necessary steps would include, at a minimum, releasing the prisoners whom we can’t prosecute because we tortured them and then prosecuting the torturers.

Obama doesn’t like upsetting apple carts.

That nail the problem with Obama’s approach on a lot of things.  He doesn’t like upsetting apple carts. But sometimes doing the right thing is disruptive.

Separate the bills

Right for America, not the Senate

Less compromise, more governance!

Little boys and their tantrums

Keeping on the heat

Gibbs gets yet another question on the Obama administrations lack of attention to civil rights issues:

Good on Cox.  I’m reminded of the story of FDR who counselled advocates that it’s good they agreed with him, but the responsibility was theirs to make him follow through.  Obama has made many committments toward gay civil rights, restoring rule of law in Washington, etc.  The administration’s feet needs to be held to the fire to make things turn into reality.

A sea of change

Amazing what little tidbits nearly get missed, but it appears Obama is serious about a goal of a nuke free world.

Obama’s new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don’t need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that expand the American nuclear stockpile. For the past two budget years the Democratic Congress has refused to fund the Bush-era program. But Obama’s budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration program once and for all.

Why doing something matters

It is not acceptable to not prosecute.  Keith explains why.

GOP criticizes Democrats for wanting to address the economic crisis, fails to see self parody

By now many people have reviewed Eric Cantor’s idiocy on the Democratic economic proposals.

“As far as Rush, Rush has got ideas. He’s got following. He believes in the conservative principles that many of us believe in –- of lower taxes, of making sure that we turn back towards a focus on entrepreneurialism in this country, to promoting innovation and not stamping that out by over-reacting, if you will, which this town often does, to crisis.”

John at Americablog raises a couple of good points.  First off, saying that the Democrats are wrong to prioritize the economy probably isn’t “on message” for what the American public wants to hear these days.  Second, after all the whining about Rush Limbaugh not being the leader of the national GOP, it looks more than a little foolish for the number two guy in the House to keep referring to “Rush, Rush.”

But there’s something else here that merits some attention.  The Republicans speak of turning back toward a focus on entrepreneurialism in the country.

Perhaps a primer is in order on what “entrepreneur” means because it ties in to what has happened with the economy, the banking and Wall Street crashes, etc.

To be an entrepreneur typically means to employ some creative force and initiate, but even more so it means to manage and organize and most of all TO ASSUME RISK.

You understand the difference between entrepreneurship and what has been taking place in our large corporations and especially in banking, insurance and finance?  Patrons of privilege play with other people’s money as if it were a parlor game, assuming no risk to themselves of the consequences.  Stock goes up?  You get a salary and bonus.  Stock goes down?  You get salary and a bonus.  You make indefensible business decisions?  You get a salary and a bonus.  You drive a sector into bankruptcy and crisis?  You get a bonus.

These are the people the GOP has been protecting, and these activities are about as far from the entrepreneurial backbone of the economy as you can be.  Privatizing the profits and socializing the losses is not sustainable as government policy, and should never be attempted to begin with.

Obama needs to stick to his guns and the reconcilliation process is a wonderful tool wherever applicable, but it’s just as important to control the debate.  The Democrats can not afford to let the GOP redefine such essential terms and the principles they represent to cloud the history and distract people from what has really occurred.

Assuming the position

Sign up, I did.

This is from Moveon.org

Today, Dr. Howard Dean is drawing a line in the sand. A public health insurance option is the only way to guarantee health care for all Americans. And to show that we mean business, we all need to tell Congress we won’t settle for less.

I signed Howard Dean’s petition, and if 250,000 of us sign, he will personally deliver it to Congress. Can you join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/standwithdrdean/?r_by=15863-3657735-tzbNIKx&rc=confemail

Thanks!

Windmills

Sully on the tea partiers

Sullivan puts it pretty clearly:

My sense is that it is a delayed reaction in some ways to Bush, and his betrayal of conservatism. For all sorts of reasons, most of the current tea-partiers backed the GOP under Bush and Cheney, although some, to be fair, did complain about some of it. The pent-up frustrations behind conservatism’s collapse under Republicans were trumped, however, by the fruits of power, partisan hatred of “the left”, defensiveness over the Iraq war and torture, and, above all religious devotion to the Leader. Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they’ve gone nuts.

Think of someone like Glenn Beck.

He sat back and watched Bush preside over the worst domestic attack in US history, explode the entitlement state, engage in unending projects of nation-building in two of the most dysfunctional countries on earth, rip up the Constitution, and bequeath as his legacy a trillion dollar deficit, unprecedented domestic discretionary spending, a banking collapse and the worst recession in many many years. The right will take some time to absorb this but Bush was Carter II - with two full terms. All that rage at what has actually happened – bottled up by rank partisanship for years – has come bounding out. Hence the bizarre spectacle of a president just two months on the job being treated on the right as if he’s already Robert Mugabe. Throw in a little racial and cultural panic, add a world of genuine economic pain … and you have the Malkin surge.

Hat tip: John Cole

Jon Stewart on Obama’s ideas that screw vets of their medical benefits

Really guys…you KNOW better than this.

more about “Jon Stewart on Obama’s ideas that scr…“, posted with vodpod