I want to remind my loyal audience here that long before the slugs at Kos and Huffington got wound up about Obama abandoning the public option this little blog knew he would buckle. I said the health care debate was over on August 8th because he would surely shelve the public option, which makes "reform" laughable. Indications today are that the public option is dead because 3 Senators from tiny states don't like it and Obama doesn't have the stones to stand up to them.
Now it is August 16th. Before this is through one has to wonder what will be left that can be called reform? This bill should now be called the Saving the Health Insurance Cabal Act of 2009.
My hope now - though chances are slim - is for House progressives to join with Republicans and kill this rump reform bill entirely. The only aspect worth saving is the ban on denying those with pre-existing conditions. That can be a separate bill passed without the dishonest label "health care reform."
(The GOP needs to ditch the social conservatives by the side of the road. ASAP. There is a libertarian streak out that that the GOP is missing out on...Why aren't the libertarians taking advantage either???)
Two dipshits, one DEM one GOP:Two state senators refuse to take pay cuts - and my favorite part - one state senator actually said this about his pay:"What I get paid is personal. I don't discuss what I do personally. I don't choose to make anything I do on my personal side public."
No dude - what you get paid as a state senator is PUBLIC because it is our money that pays you, numbnuts.
Music - this week my favorite Independence Day /patriotic themed songs:
Obama decided early on to avoid what was seen as Clinton's mistake in 1993 (pushing the repeal on the military gay ban in the his first week in office) - and put gay rights on the back burner. "Back burner" is a generous assessment on my part as tangential evidence indicates that Obama might just prefer to ignore gay rights issues entirely.
In terms of cold political calculation the BHO Administration probably believed this was the correct move. He did not win because of gay rights concerns and there were, in fact, "bigger fish to fry" in January. Politically, I am sure the arguments against moving on gay rights around the Axelrod conference room table seemed solid. Gay rights advocates bought in and waited. But now Obama has spent his political capital with all but the most kool addled gay rights advocates.
For two reasons:
1. Obama continues to create an appearance of activity around his agenda and his persona. He's been everywhere, all the time, he's in our face on every topic from bank bailouts, to GM to hand washing. He has held forth on everything - including the NCAA and NBA tournaments. Yet, Obama promised over and over and over again to lead on gay rights. He has avoided and insulted instead. The disconnect became too much after his Justice Department defended DOMA last week. The defense itself is not the core problem. The apparent choice to make it nasty is. Throwing in incest and child molestation was excessive, unnecessary, demeaning and hearkened back to arguments against interracial marriage that centered on "mud people."
While Obama has nurtured the appearance of the over achiever at work, pushing Congress to repeal DOMA has been avoided and the attack on gay military personal continues unchecked.
2. It is not 1993. While gay rights is still divisive but much has changed in 16 years. In 1993 gay rights was still a backwater in the national consciousness. Since then we've had gay centered sitcoms, lesbian movie stars, gay athletes, and talk show hosts. There are two gay oriented cable networks. Gay marriage equality is the law in a handful of states. Now 60 plus percent of Americans oppose Don't Ask Don't Tell.
In other words, there has been substantial movement. When Bill Clinton bravely - and dangerously - took on the gay military ban in 1993 he was far ahead of the curve.
Obama remains behind it.
Obama bothers me for so many reasons. The main one being that he is not the product that was force fed the American people last year. At all. This should be obvious to all by now. Far from the amazing agent of hope and change - he's just another politician - with a rather gross and mysterious pedigree - who spends most of his time dancing with the money men who brought him when not heading out for burgers and going on date nights.
In the case of gay rights his duplicitous nature is not my biggest beef. It is his stinginess. Obama does have a public speaking skill set akin to FDR, Reagan and Bill Clinton. He can move the conversation with a speech. But Obama is stingy. He uses his "gift" only to move himself along - never the country. Obama's best speeches are all geared toward pushing Obama. He touches on great themes when - and only when - it serves him first. So what ever he said about race while embracing Wright last Spring was subsumed by the subtext which was: I've got to use my "gift" to save my ass.
In 1952 Nixon famously saved his political career after being accused of taking gifts from donors as he ran for V.P. the first time. He went on TV and made his "checkers speech" denying he'd taken gifts - except for one: His family was given a dog named Checkers. People loved it. It was early and brilliant political television and remains the go to example of American political career ass saving. For Dick Nixon, the rest, as they say, is history.
Here is all Obama had to do on gay rights: Address it head on and early on in a speech on ONE day using his "gift'. He could have said: this is where we've been, this is what ought to happen... and what is right for all of us, it will take some time but here is the down payment...then signed an executive order ending benefit discrimination. He then would have really bought himself some time on the more volatile gay rights flash points.
I urge everyone to read the entire post linked above.
Why didn't Obama take the action of a real leader? Simple: He isn't one and there was nothing in it for him. We've already learned beyond all doubt that values and campaign promises are meaningless to this President.
We should not be silent on the legal discrimination taking place in the United States right now. Gay and lesbian soldiers (and patriots) are being forced out of the U.S. Armed Forces NOW, Today, 2009, 110 days after the new commander in chief was inaugurated - a man who promised repeatedly to end this vile practice. Mr. Obama brags about how much he has accomplished so far - and yet on a basic civil rights issue that both he and his wife should, in theory, empathize with he is unwilling to take action.
The reasons for Obama's fearful inaction are clear to anyone who is politically astute. All civil rights movement garner severe blow back. The ignorance and bigotry directed at Gays is deeply embedded. Obama rightly fears distraction from his agenda and falling into the same trap President Clinton did after he was elected in 1992. Clinton moved quickly to fulfill his promise to end the expulsion of gays in the military. The blow back resulted in a half baked compromise called "Don't Ask, Don' t Tell". Obama promised to end this corrosive policy and allow all willing and capable men and women serve in the country's military. But he has done nothing.
Obama's fear of blow back does not make his inaction morally acceptable. Dan Choi's story is a good case in point. A West Point Grad, fluent in Arabic, who served an extended tour in Iraq. I suggest reading this link. Why is the American military be discharging capable people like Choi?
Sullivan is instinctively smug. Sullivan has too much to lose internally were he to admit that some of us did not lose our collective minds after 9/11 - scary as the weeks and months that followed were. Some of us applied our minds - then rationally opposed the invasion of Iraq on both moral and policy grounds. We thought it was a mistake, a waste of blood and treasure, an attack against the wrong enemy, badly planned (even in the run up it was clear Rumsfeld was mistaken to some of us), probably illegal, self evidently not about protecting us from those who had attacked us, and was - also self evidently - about another agenda all together. Millions of us thought the invasion of Afghanistan was a just war and Iraq disintegrated because Bush took his eye off the ball.
(Iraq may end up being a "victory" but only because W finally opted to fight the war...well...as if it was a war - years after the fact- and all invaded countries, over time, "settle down". What can't be ignored is the possibility that Bush's Iraq invasion was the moment the United States began the long downward slope that all great nations eventually ride. It was a moment of overreach. I am willing to bet the invasion will be seen by historians as a major the turning point in the life of America as a superpower. )
Sullivan got swept up by W's talking points about Iraq after 9/11. But we ALL didn't. He has since recanted forcefully - nevertheless he briefly rewrites history for all of us - to justify his mistake. Until the war began almost half the population opposed it. Millions took to the streets in the United States to oppose it. I was one. Phil Donahue was booted off MSNBC because he would not tow the line. "All" is a big word, Andrew.
Sullivan's use of the world "all" is hardly devious historical revisionism. He most likely did not even notice it as he typed. But it gets to his syncophantic heart. However sturdy the persona, those of his ilk always place personality before policy in the end. His obsession with Sarah Palin is a classic case of a writer informing us much more about himself than his subject. He continues to willy nilly degrade the Tea Parties with the word "tea bagging". He is a gold medalist in the Smug Olympics. (I do wonder what the psychology of gay men, like Anderson Cooper and Sullivan is when it comes to using "tea bagging" as a pejorative.)
One of those "life lessons" that being opposed to Obama throughout last year taught so clearly is this: People's egos, especially when their inner narrative is confronted with facts, will construct an alternate reality which supports whatever lies they are telling themselves - dismissing any and all information that confronts and rebuts their chosen narrative. Like so many bloggers who swooned for Obama, he cannot fully confront the reality of Obama. Even now. Sullivan's shifts are not evolutions based on new information. They are zig zags based on personality. Bush went from a moral man to someone he "misjudged". Andrew, you did not "misjudge" Bush. You never bothered to look at him in the first place.
Sullivan is now in the process of trying to save his self serving view of Obama.
Recently Sullivan has conjured a theory of "Obama's long game" - a justification he uses to excuse BHO's delay in coming to a decision about the releasing the torture memos. The point of the post being that Obama is smarter than you and me and therefore must trusted. He'll do the right thing "in the long run." This type of excuse comes right after "give him a chance" and right before "well, at least he's black."
The post linked at the top threads the most recent needle Obama has laid before his fawners. "Look how brave and transparent our guy is...sure he won't pursue the logical next step...but isn't he grand for releasing the documents." To be fair, Sullivan is clear in his opposition to torture of any kind. Still, one has to wonder at what point Sullivan's brain will connect the most obvious dots. By not prosecuting torturers Obama has become a party to what Sullivan rails against. As with A New Way Forward's pathetic "protests" about the banks - there is a refusal to see that the President IS the problem.
There is nothing brave about releasing the documents if the only result is to whip up fury against Bush and the CIA. What Obama did was actually cowardly. He flinched before both the Left and the Right - then got the hell out of Dodge...again.
Let me state without reservation: I think the documents should have been released - had to be released - and I believe prosecutions are in order. HOWEVER, (This is a big "however") if prosecutions are untenable - for whatever reason - then they should have remained secret. There is simply no reason to announce there may be criminals in our midst and, in the same breath, insist we will do nothing about it. This is cowardice, dressed up to look like decisiveness.
The result here is to open a wound and sit back and watch it bleed. If I were in the CIA I would be disgusted. Our intelligence community is now being raked over hot coals for apparent misdeeds. We do not get the catharsis of reaffirming our values by punishing those who crossed the line, and those who serve us honorably in the intelligence community don't either.
The same drama is aching along with the banks. The crooks are called out and then NOT punished. Meanwhile every decent person in the financial world gets slimed - because Obama and Holder refuse to punish those who committed the crimes. At some point one has to admit that the game of playing both sides off the middle serves to benefit the wrong doers. Since Obama does this with ease - one has to conclude he intends to benefit them.
He's an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks....
Eventually people like Sullivan will come to terms with Obama. Being smart and deluded are not mutually exclusive. Sullivan is smart. Denying some one's lack of principles by wildly insisting for a year- with no proof whatsoever - that he is a man with sublime wisdom based on principles is hard to recover from. It takes time. Egos are tender things. Meanwhile, bashing Trig Palin passes the time.
The some of us who did not check reality at the door last year, who knew all along that Obama was all hat and no cowboy, must keep speaking truth to the deluded.
Real men speak out. Cowards do not. Watch the clip below of McCain and know that Obama has yet to mention Hillary Clinton and repudiate Rev. Pflegger's nasty, sexist, racist, false attack on her. Will Olbermann have a "special comment" on Obama's silence on Monday?
