Yay! I’d have been the biggest Obamabot on the planet.

And, even if he was unable to get universal health care completely, he’d have fought for what was RIGHT.

Well, that was a nice fantasy.

Carry on!

Edit

France.

“NEW ORLEANS — A conservative activist who posed as a pimp to target the community-organizing group ACORN and the son of a federal prosecutor were among four people arrested by the FBI and accused of trying to interfere with phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office.
Activist James O’Keefe, 25, was already in Landrieu’s New Orleans office Monday when Robert Flanagan and Joseph Basel, both 24, showed up claiming to be telephone repairmen, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office said Tuesday. Letten says O’Keefe recorded the two with his cell phone.
Flanagan, the son of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Flanagan in Shreveport, and Basel asked for access to a phone at the reception desk. Then they asked for access to a phone closet so they could work on the phone system. The men were directed to another office in the building, where they again said they were telephone repairmen.
They were arrested later by the U.S. Marshal’s Service. Details of the arrest were not available. A fourth man, Stan Dai, 24, was also arrested, but Letten’s office said only that he assisted the others in planning, coordinating and preparing the operation.
Federal officials did not say why the men wanted to interfere with Landrieu’s phones or whether they were successful. Landrieu, a moderate Democrat, declined comment Tuesday. She has been in the news recently because she negotiated an increase in Medicaid funds for her state before announcing her support for Senate health care legislation.
Bill Flanagan’s office confirmed his son was among those arrested, but declined further comment.”

If you are progressive, the Democratic majority we have now is not all that much better than the last Administration.

It’s just one reason, there are many others, that some progressives are targeting Rahm Emanuel. Dems are stuck with Obama, so tackling Rahm, who is the cheerleader for a win is a win, is seen by some as the next best thing.

I’d love a progressive candidate, JB, but I’d settle for someone competent who could lead at this point. The US has big challenges. We simply can’t afford the current ineptitude.

If Obama is the problem does that mean there is no expectation other than to watch the decline until the republicans take over in the next election.
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I hear you chigeeng. I am so disappointed in the Obama and the Democrats that I am about to go on political sabbatical. I’ve been pushing my Congressman to hold out for the public option and other improvements to the HCB, but you know? It won’t happen. Reid and Pelosi and the White House won’t do the right thing, so what’s the point. Unless a progressive candidate can be discovered, we’ll all be simply sitting out the next election, I fear.

From an excellent piece by Christopher Hayes in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091123/hayes) :

“The filibuster has been reformed before, most recently when the Democratic majority in 1975 voted to bring the requirement to end debate from sixty-seven votes to sixty. As a constitutional issue, the Senate makes its own rules, which means a simple majority vote can change them.”

“As I write this, there are almost certainly fifty-one votes in the Senate for a healthcare reform bill with a public option and good subsidies, the Employee Free Choice Act, and cap and trade. But there aren’t sixty votes for any of those.”

If he is correct, we could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by passing a real health care reform, by just extending Medicare to everyone. We need a dramatic success to survive November 2010, which is a critical election for many reasons, including redistricting in 2011.

Should be given in a barn where the surroundings are better suited for what will be thrown our way.

I was already verging on hopelessness after reading The Family of Secrets by Russ Baker, an exceptionally well documented compendium of the Bush family’s ascent to power. Although focused on the Bushes, it really has much broader and more ominous implications about how our political system really works. It is 500 pages long, with another hundred pages of references.

I had the pleasure of meeting Russ during last December’s Nation magazine cruise, and just finished reading his book about a week ago. It is not clear how we can overcome the systemic disease of corporatism afflicting our political system. But at least it will give you a clearer idea of the enemy’s methods and hidden power.

“Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the Bush-era architect of the massive bailout of ailing financial firms, will testify alongside his successor Timothy Geithner at Wednesday’s hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

snip

In addition, former New York Federal Reserve chairman Stephen Friedman will testify. He resigned in May 2009 amid a controversy over his role as a director of Goldman Sachs and his purchases of the firm’s shares.

Also scheduled to appear are Elias Habayeb, the former CFO of AIG’s financial services division, and Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Habayeb spent months negotiating with the counterparties — banks that had bought $62 billion of credit-default swaps from AIG — to accept discounts of as much as 40 percent on the dollar, reported Bloomberg News in October. In the end, the New York Fed instructed AIG to pay them par — or 100 cents on the dollar — a decision which has sparked endless debate.”

I’m with those who say we better hope the Republicans can’t take over, as that would be a disaster.

The Audacity of Oops!

Ya’ gotta love it. And let’s remember Mr Buckley endorsed Obama.

How I remember that little “dress down” of US Steel. I was cheering JFK just as loudly as the rest of the little people. In all honesty the people back then really believed that JFK had their best interests at heart regardless of his class. This is not what I’m hearing about Obama.