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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

Archive | September, 2011

Coulter and Ingraham to Palin: ‘Fish or Cut Bait’

By on 07 September 2011

“[A]t some point, Sarah Palin has to take some responsibility for her supporters as Ron Paul must for his. Palin’s dragging out the tease on her decision has compounded the problem and we’ve reached a breaking point.” (via Eric Erickson)

This is long time in coming and much deserved.

Sarah Palin’s celebrity tease has made her besotted fans look stupid, which isn’t the worst of it. Live by fan politics, be humiliated by it.

Women in national politics need to behave as if they’re ready and prepared to lead if they’re going to get covered and have a say in the national dialogue. It’s the 21st century and political cheerleaders shouldn’t be taken seriously.

After a tremendous 2010, Palin had a chance to take the clout she’d earned and make a difference for Tea Party conservatives. Instead she chose celebrity and money, which is her choice. However, because her fan base is so lacking in critical thinking and objective goals that have anything to do with political solutions, but instead simply live to blow smoke up Sarah’s perpetual political trial balloons, they’re making her rich while adding nothing to the national debate.

In Iowa over Labor Day weekend, Palin reached back into what used to be her strong suit when she was rising in Alaska. She challenged Republicans on “crony capitalism,” also saying the Tea Party crowd needed to stay true to their message. Her fans are left to wonder what might have been if she’d taken the clout she’d earned in 2010 and hooked it to this message. Instead she chose talking head status without any hint of seriousness or policy prowess.

Ingraham and Coulter did a service to conservatives by calling Palin out. She’s been using her fans for months and months to serve her own purposes and it’s long past time they said “enough is enough.”

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Rick Perry’s National Coming Out

By on 07 September 2011

Gov. Rick Perry, come on down. According to Molly Ball of Politico, debating isn’t something he relishes; instead, he ducks avoids them: “he skipped debates entirely against his general election opponent in 2010.”

After winning the Ames straw poll, Michele Bachmann’s candidacy is on life support. Even her departing campaign manager said so, but it’s unlikely she’ll go out quietly, which could make tonight’s Reagan library debate very interesting. As for Mitt Romney, it will be interesting to see just how he handles Gov. Perry, because he’s definitely changed the game. One thing slick Mitt can’t afford to do is allow his adversaries to see him sweat.

Today begins an important time for Gov. Perry, whose poll numbers have eclipsed Mitt Romney with conservatives, and made Rep. Bachmann an afterthought.

So it’s interesting that a man who’s supposed to be Mr. Tea Party is showing his establishment cronyism, with Perry’s Super PAC “Make Us Great Again” causing quite a bit of chatter. See the New York Times:

A new Super PAC with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican presidential nomination, a sign that outside groups are likely to play a pivotal role in the party’s selection of its candidate.

[...] A new Super PAC with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican presidential nomination, a sign that outside groups are likely to play a pivotal role in the party’s selection of its candidate.

[...] Virtually all of the top Republican candidates for president are backed by Super PACs organized by donors and former aides, as is President Obama, underscoring the central role the groups are likely to play in the battle for votes and campaign dollars.

According to several reports, Perry’s Super PAC plans to spend multimillions in Iowa to secure his position in that state.

Tonight’s jousting will be interesting and Gov. Perry will have to make sure he doesn’t pull a TPaw on Mitt Romney. With little experience on the field of debate battle there’s all kinds of things that could go wrong.

Perry may be the longest-serving governor in Texas history, but voters there are largely unaccustomed to seeing him go head-to-head on stage with his rivals. He’s done it just four times in the decade that he’s served as governor — and he skipped debates entirely against his general election opponent in 2010. – by Molly Ball

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Pres. Obama at Lowest Point in Polls, But Candidate Obama is Just Getting Started

By on 06 September 2011

It’s grim.

Just 43 percent now approve of the job he is doing overall, a new career low; 53 percent disapprove, a new high.

Really, really grim.

“Obama is no longer the favorite to win re-election,” Hart said, explaining that a head-to-head score will usually conform to the generic one, especially when so many believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But memories seem awfully short. Regardless of Obama’s numbers today he remains one of the most formidable politicians in modern times. So, without a challenge from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party no one should count him out. It doesn’t seem the presidential election of 2012 has Democrats worried about Obama’s Republicanism or the fact that they no longer stand for anything, while morphing two parties into one gigantic non-choice.

When you imagine Rick Perry, the negative ads on “Sonogram Perry” targeting women write themselves, though that’s hardly his only political albatross.

No one can win the presidency without women and no matter the ideology, Independent and even moderate Republican women will not vote for Rick Perry, at least not in any numbers. He’s a Republican turn-off and a Democratic turn on.

Mitt Romney needs a Tea Party veep, it seems to me, or someone like Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley (who could aid a Perry nomination, too). But the wingnuttery of Republican primary voters may prevent the possibility.

Pres. Obama really doesn’t deserve to be reelected. But he could be in spite of himself and thanks to a Republican Party that can’t get a grip on reality, but also because Democrats and progressives don’t seem that incensed that Barack Obama has destroyed the Democratic brand.

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Fox News Channel Strikes Again, Edits Hoffa’s Speech

By on 06 September 2011

This is one of the sleaziest, most dishonest things I’ve ever seen Fox News do. People need to start seriously asking what’s going on with a news organization that would try to pull something like this. – Charles Johnson

HOFFA: Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!

There was no “don’t retreat, reload” gun metaphor standing by itself. No crosshairs gun poster targeting specific politicians.

Instead, after talking about getting out the vote, Teamster’s Hoffa said Democrats have to take these SOBs out. No regrets, said Hoffa.

The “Morning Joe” crowd needed smelling salts and expected Pres. Obama to denounce Mr. Hoffa. They played a silly Obama kumbaya speech from 2010 about civility, while Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and Willie Geist weren’t interested at all in Hoffa’s full quote.

This is the way it’s done when a powerful get out the vote organization starts revving up its base.

Pres. Obama would be nuts to say anything, given how badly he needs labor, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Jay Carney made some sort of statement to pacify politicos today some time.

But this latest stunt by Fox News is fitting considering the continued behavior of Chris Wallace and his cohorts, because they’re double standard of “fair and balanced” is only going to get worse as 2012 gets closer.

Civility is overrated. Ask our founders.

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Chris Wallace Proves (again) Why He’s the Worst Anchor on TV

By on 04 September 2011

… But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. [...] – Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Fox News Channel and Chris Wallace won’t be leaving the “cult” anytime soon. In fact, today is representative of how they keep the cult alive, along with the mythology that helps promote, but also hide, the rancid reality of Republicanism today, not only where the economy is concerned, but also on matters of national security.

If you want to get an idea of how awful Chris Wallace is as a news man, today was another example. While discussing Cheney’s book, Mr. Wallace danced around 9/11 without ever once mentioning the killing of Osama bin Laden and the mission Pres. Obama approved to get that job done. It’s the exact opposite approach he took with former Pres. Clinton one day in 2006, with the entire spectacle today on Fox representative of the worst of today’s national security media mendacity.

What’s even worse is that Chris Wallace allowed former V.P. Dick Cheney to once again embellish, some would say continue to perpetuate a historical lie when compared to the facts, his role on 9/11. I’ve written about it before, in 2007 and in 2006, with the second link to 2006 giving you an example of the types of questions Wallace asked former Pres. Bill Clinton compared to how Wallace tip toes around Dick Cheney.

So, take yourself back…

It’s 9/11.

All hell has broken loose, with hijacked planes bearing down on the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C. and outlying areas and and the financial center of the United States, New York City.

V.P. Dick Cheney has been whisked to the bunker for safety, but according to Mr. Cheney, he’s also in charge of events.

What kind of man lies about his role on 9/11?

Unfortunately, it’s now becoming legend, as Mr. Cheney once again regurgitated his story to Chris Wallace, who did nothing to challenge his version of events.

From a very important Vanity Fair article back in 2006, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes” (the salient section about Cheney being proved a liar on page 18).

Nasypany starts walking up and down the floor, asking all his section heads and weapons techs if they are prepared to shoot down a civilian airliner if need be, but he’s jumping the gun: he doesn’t have the authority to order a shootdown, nor does Marr or Arnold, or Vice President Cheney, for that matter. The order will need to come from President Bush, who has only just learned of the attack at a photo op in Florida.

[...] A former senior executive at the F.A.A., speaking to me on the condition that I not identify him by name, tried to explain. “Our whole procedures prior to 9/11 were that you turned everything [regarding a hijacking] over to the F.B.I.,” he said, reiterating that hijackers had never actually flown airplanes; it was expected that they’d land and make demands. “There were absolutely no shootdown protocols at all. The F.A.A. had nothing to do with whether they were going to shoot anybody down. We had no protocols or rules of engagement.”

In his bunker under the White House, Vice President Cheney was not notified about United 93 until 10:02—only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. Yet it was with dark bravado that the vice president and others in the Bush administration would later recount sober deliberations about the prospect of shooting down United 93. “Very, very tough decision, and the president understood the magnitude of that decision,” Bush’s then chief of staff, Andrew Card, told ABC News.

Cheney echoed, “The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it’s an order that had never been given before.” And it wasn’t on 9/11, either.

President Bush would finally grant commanders the authority to give that order at 10:18, which—though no one knew it at the time—was 15 minutes after the attack was over.

Rewriting Bush-Cheney history has been happening a lot in the Obama era.

Now segue to Wallace interviewing former Pres. Bill Clinton in 2006. While Wallace today didn’t bother to ask Cheney why former Pres. George W. Bush said he was “truly not that concerned” about bin Laden. As you can witness by former Pres. Bill Clinton’s response to Wallace’s blatant bias, love him or hate him, the Big Dawg didn’t take Chris’ crap when Wallace tried to sandbag him on 9/11. Here’s the excerpt, since minds have gone soft as we approach the commemoration of the horrific tragedy next week.

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

CLINTON: OK..

WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir?

And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response.

I understand that hindsight is always 20/20…

CLINTON: No let’s talk about–

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.

Clinton takes on Fox News bias:

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke. So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no…

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?

I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke?

I want to know how many people you asked…

WALLACE: We asked — we asked…

CLINTON: I don’t…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you asked them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?

You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch’s supporting my work on climate change.

And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.

WALLACE: But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you’ll see half the questions are about that. I didn’t think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

CLINTON: You launched it — it set me off on a tear because you didn’t formulate it in an honest way and because you people ask me questions you don’t ask the other side.

WALLACE: That’s not true. Sir, that is not true.

CLINTON: And Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony…

WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: No, I want to finish this now.

WALLACE: All right. Well, after you.

CLINTON: All I’m saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew Al Qaida existed then. And…

WALLACE: But did they know in 1996 when he declared war on the U.S.? Did they know in 1998…

CLINTON: Absolutely, they did.

WALLACE: … when he bombed the two embassies?

CLINTON: And who talked about…

WALLACE: Did they know in 2000 when he hit the Cole?

CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.

Now, I’ve never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.

And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.

And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.

The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.

And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.

The entire interview from 2006 is instructive. Because whatever you think of Clinton, and his third way-ism, NAFTA and other policies that were destructive to progressive economics, while paving the way for Obama’s Republicanism, at least the man didn’t use kumbaya bipartisan excuses to keep from fighting battles that need to be fought. Bipartisanship for Clinton didn’t require caving to wingnuts out of fear of partisanship or because he might scare off Independents.

As for Dick Cheney’s other claim today on Fox News Sunday that Obama’s made the economy worse, said with a straight face and without a hint of irony, Chris Wallace didn’t challenge him on that either. The fact that Bush-Cheney kept the wars off the budget, gave massive tax cuts that produced no jobs, while blowing the surplus Clinton left them, with the list a lot longer than this, none of this was on Chris Wallace’s mind either.

That’s because Mr. Wallace feels more comfortable catering to the Fox News audience, so presenting facts over ideological fluffery isn’t his top priority. He does prove why they’re the least informed, because he and others on the network make sure of it.

Simply, do you think there was a liberal bias in the mainstream media? – Chris Wallace to former V.P. Dick Cheney

Maybe Mr. Wallace should try his luck at comedy, because as a journalist, “fair and balanced” or otherwise, he continues to fail.

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Sunday Early Bird News Round-Up

By on 04 September 2011

Good morning and welcome to Sunday, I’m Stacy and I’ll be your host.

On this day in history, September 4, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

I’ve perused the internets for some good reads, to save you the trouble:

~The AP is reporting that the CIA worked with Moammar Gadhafi’s intelligence services when we rendered terrorism suspects to Libya to be, you know, tortured. Part of the reason the U.S. is so nervous about the “Arab Spring” is that as word continues to leak out about how we enabled these dictator’s repression of their own people, it’s a good bet the governments that are eventually formed will ensure that they are never again beholden to the United States for anything.

~Late last week a WikiLeaks cable was released which seems to raise the question of whether Iraqi civilians were massacred by U.S. forces, followed by a cover-up. For all those people in the media who were saying “there’s really nothing new in the WikiLeaks documents,” here you go. But don’t expect David Gregory or Candi Crowley to discuss this today on the Sunday talk shows. No, instead, we will hear more endless speculation about whether or not Sarah Palin is going to enter the 2012 race.

~Yet again, President Obama sides with big business and ties the hands of the EPA by putting a halt to tougher smog/pollution rules. Why? Because the Republicans and the pollution lobby opposed it, that’s why. So, now that Obama has done their bidding are they grateful and willing to compromise on something? No, of course not. Now, they want more environmental regulations rolled back.

~The head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, is hoping for a bold new jobs plan from President Obama next week. Is there some other Obama he knows who is coming out with a job creation plan?

~A very interesting interview with Gen. James Cartwright by Josh Rogin over at The Cable. It demonstrates several things about Obama’s leadership style and how Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen did everything they could to ensure that Obama had no other choice than to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan rather than take the advice of Cartwright and Joe Biden, who believed that a surge would accomplish little and instead advocated a smaller U.S. footprint. And guess who turned out to be right?

~The total deterioration in ties between Turkey and Israel is not only bad news for the region, but is bad news for the Obama administration. The administration apparently expended a great deal of effort to get the two sides together, but was unsuccessful, again demonstrating to the entire world that the U.S. no longer has the influence it once did in the Middle East.

~Dana Priest has another great piece of investigative journalism [part of the Top Secret America series of articles] in the Washington Post. The article describes how the Joint Special Operations Command has morphed into a very large, top secret army that seems to operate without any accountability to anyone.

~The American Spectator’s Matthew Vadum thinks that registering poor people to vote is unamerican because they are nonproductive and a burden on society.

Sorry puppy, this cat is so over you:

~The S&P continues to give triple A ratings to subprime mortgage-backed securities. You know, the same ones that helped spawn the global financial crisis.

~Between January and June, approximately 24,000 Afghan soldiers went AWOL.

~There is no state in this country with a more deplorable, ethically-challenged implementation of the death penalty, than Texas. And yet few are raising questions about this particular case, where Governor Rick Perry denied a stay of execution of a man (Cameron Todd Willingham) who many say, was innocent [based on scientific/forensic evidence]. While all the talk of Perry’s extremism, swagger and gaffes are interesting, when will someone in the elite mainstream media ask Perry about this directly?

~As everybody who has electricity is aware, Dick Cheney is doing the talk show circuit in order to generate buzz for his egotistical tome, In My Time. Putting aside the fact that only in this particular democracy could a former Vice President go to each cable news station and openly boast about his role in an impressive list of crimes and deceits, here’s a question- when is someone in the elite media going to actually ask him a tough question? Have you noticed that the David Gregory/Jake Tapper/Bob Schieffer types seem totally intimidated by Cheney? While Glenn Greenwald posted this commentary about how Cheney is profiting off “the fruits of elite immunity” last week, if you didn’t see it, it’s worth a read.

~Political whiz and democratic consultant Joe Trippi is now doing public relations work for the autocratic, un-democratic, human-rights-abusing Kingdom of Bahrain.

~You know, I truly love doing the news round-up but sometimes as I read all these stories, I find myself getting utterly disgusted with not only the Washington, D.C. polls and lobbyists, but also the navel-gazing media who pander so shamelessly to them. Imagine if the MSM actually did their job?

~Did the Obama administration snub The General Who Can Do No Wrong? While focusing on these petty tit-for-tat episodes is a favorite pastime of the beltway, if the Obama administration really has or had suspicions about Petraeus’ motives, then perhaps they shouldn’t have placed him at the head of the Central Intelligence Agency?

~Is anyone in the White House reading all these commentaries about what a capitulating wimp Obama is? Anyone? All signs point to Obama putting forth a meager, uninspired jobs plan after Labor Day. You know, so the plan will have a little something that Republicans everyone will like.

~Now here is a story absolutely no one can relate to- a private unmanned space ship funded by the billionaire CEO of Amazon, was destroyed during a test flight due to a systems failure.

~Obama’s union problems are about to get a whole lot worse.

~The administration continues to flail around in its latest efforts to prevent the Palestinians from going to the U.N. this month in a bid to declare statehood.

~The President’s Chairman of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, is exhibit A with whats wrong with our economy. GE is doing a wonderful job creating jobs- overseas.

~A happy story: The penguin Happy Feet was successfully reintroduced into the ocean off the south coast of New Zealand.

The End.

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Progressive Notes: Must See Save SS Vid, Shea Porter on Government, Nurses Storm Congressional Offices, and Other Doings

By on 03 September 2011

Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.

Strengthen Social Security, the umbrella organization devoted to protecting SS, Medicare and Medicaid, has launched a fantastic easy to understand video explaining what Obama is proposing and how it will directly impact you and your family. I urge you to email this video to everyone you know regardless of party. Also sign the petition as well from this great organization fighting the good fight. Petition here.

Video:

Did you know the Left held 400 protests across America for jobs in August? Rebuild the Dream has really been at it, mobilizing 10,000s to protest members of congress who won’t lift a finger to help a struggling nation. Here is a video compilation of news clips showing some of the most awesome protests:

And National Nurses United stormed into 60 congressional offices that has gained much local media attention. Some 10,000 nurses participated. Their mission is centered on social justice and are opening soup kitchens and more.

NNU in Boston:

NNU Soup Kitchen in San Francisco:

In 2010 the radical Right swept out many good public servants. One was Democrat Carol Shea Porter, who lost her congressional seat to the Tea Party. This week Porter wrote a defense of government op-ed. How refreshing. She is running again for congress. We need more folks like this willing to defend government not demonize it. She notes:

…two tea party presidential candidates also have made inflammatory remarks about our government.

The Hill reported that Michele Bachmann “likened America to the sinking Titanic,” and said, “We have gangster government.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, “When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation … And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”

This is not responsible leadership. These are outrageous comments, meant to denigrate our federal government. ..

She then hits Norquist and quotes Truman:

… Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, got almost every single Republican in Congress to sign his no-tax pledge even though he was clear about his intention to hurt our ability to administer this great nation. “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

How can this great country recover and grow with this kind of attitude? How can we pay our bills and invest in technology, infrastructure, and medical research with this blind vision? How can we handle natural disasters like Katrina or attacks like 9/11 if we drown our government? How can we educate or defend ourselves, if we drown the major sources of government funding?

Harry Truman said, “No government is perfect.”

We the people have to keep striving, but we need leaders who encourage progress, not defeat, and confidence, not despair.

In California a group called Consumer Watchdog has launched a campaign to get 700,000 signatures in order to have the state vote on establishing a public option for everyone. States are taking the lead on trying progressive solution to healthcare.

Good news. Remember Goodwin Liu, the progressive Scalia who was nominated by Obama for the federal court but blocked by the GOP several months ago? Well California Governor Brown nominated him to the California Supreme Court and he was approved, making the California Supreme Court the first ever in America is be a majority Asian-American court! This leaves Liu an active jurist and is well placed to be someday picked to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Elizabeth Warren gave a speech this year on the middle class and the moral need to save it with real regulations by the government on the banks, markets and such. Here is a snippet and video. Emily’s List has sent it out to boost her candidacy:

America’s middle class is in deep peril. I chose public service at this moment because I believe that Americans deserve better. We deserve a financial system that works. Not one that’s stacked against hard working families and that puts so much risk into the larger economy. We need rules that work for all of us. The recent financial crisis was a reckoning. A profound moral testing…

Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel has some choice words for the Tea Party and how radically nutty the GOP has become. And boy he is right.

On Right wing nut watch what a week! Rep. Cantor (R-Va) as usual stone cold as ever. This time he wants any FEMA funding for Irene to be paid for with budget cuts. And cuts from which program? FEMA of course. He wants to slash funds from first responders. And yes under Bush Jr. Cantor voted for FEMA spending without ever asking for matching cuts.

Rep. Ron Paul’s remarks on FEMA are outrageous and are causing him all kinds of grief here in Texas. He said that after Galveston was struck by the 1900 hurricane, which killed 8,000 and leveled the city, they did not need any FEMA then. Uh actually the federal government did wind up sending troops, tents for the homeless and food among other things. The government undertook one of the greatest civil engineering achievements in history: the raising of the Galveston island by 16 feet above level along with the construction of a massive seawall barrier. And that action saved thousands more lives. Poor Rep. Paul needs a history lesson in his own backyard:

Even if Obama had better numbers right now you got to wonder, given the extent of voter suppression being implemented, how do Democrats and progressives make electoral gains? Case in point- in Ohio and Florida the GOP has banned early voting on Sunday. Why? because Sunday is when black churches mobilize to cast their ballots. I think it is another issue for the DOJ to consider. Shameful.

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Queer Talk: Tell me what you see

By on 03 September 2011

I’ve never met anyone who included in their introduction something like: “Hi, I’m Chris, and I’m transgender.” Or “bisexual,” or “gay,” or “lesbian.” Or “heterosexual.” I’d wonder a bit if they did. But the general presumption in our society is that you’re heterosexual. There is a great deal more awareness now that such thinking is, in fact, a presumption, not a fact. But it still happens, regularly.

How people see those of us who are LGBT, or don’t see us, is a factor in gaining equality. One example is provided by John Aravosis, at GayAmericaBlog, “The ethics of outing Apple’s new CEO”. Tim Cook is that new, and gay, CEO. Aravosis quotes Reuters’ Felix Salmon:

All too often, secrecy surrounding someone’s sexuality is imposed upon that person by the straight society surrounding them. It’s the ‘I don’t want to hear about it’ attitude which … contrasts quite sharply with the overt displays of straight employees who happily plaster their cubicles with photos of their spouses and children or unselfconsciously talk about the attractiveness of members of the opposite sex.

Aravosis adds a recent experience of his own, in a restaurant, when

the maitre’d … sat me down in the waiting area … and made a joke about sending me any cute single girls who might walk in alone. I almost said to him ‘send me the cute guys too,’ but then thought twice about it because I just wasn’t sure I was in the mood to come out to the maitre’d.

How many straight people are presumed gay when they enter a restaurant, and feel the need to clarify? Zero. It’s not the same as being gay, the playing field is not even.

How people see LGBTs is not always about a presumption of heterosexuality. Sometimes it’s by way of being judged, or by being ignored or avoided, especially when acknowleding us doesn’t fit some of society’s preferred framing. Also via AmericaBlog, Liz Newcomb writes about ”Heroes of the Month: Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen”:

When an LGBT person is involved in a crime, whether as victim or suspect, attention focuses on that person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. But when LGBTs do something heroic, a ‘don’t ask don’t tell policy’ reigns, as if the good deeds would be tarnished somehow by an acknowledgement that the do-gooder is LGBT. …

The Larry King trial is an example of the former. Larry King was the 15 year old gender non-conforming boy shot point blank in front of his classmates by 14 year-old Brandon McInerney. … Yet whenever you read about the trial, it is not McInerney’s acts, but Larry’s gender non-conformity that seem to be on trial. …

And by the way, a mistrial was declared this Thursday, when the jury couldn’t reach agreement. Bil Browning, at Bilerico, sums up: “It looks like the gay panic defense has worked again.”

Back to Newcomb, when she turns from how LGBTs are seen related to a crime, to how we’re seen when we’re the “do-gooder”:

The acts of Torill Hansen and Hege Dalen illustrates the tendency to keep LGBT heroism in the closet. Hansen and Dalen, a married Norwegian lesbian couple, rescued 40 young people from certain death at the hands of the gunman Anders Breivik while coming under fire themselves. Hansen and Dalen were scarcely mentioned in the mainstream U.S. press. Yet they displayed extraordinary bravery in a dramatic situation … .

Newcomb provides some details of the actions the couple took, and “heroic” is not an overstatement. Commenting on the lack of attention by the U.S. media, she writes:

… it is impossible to pinpoint exactly why their story was not picked up by the mainstream media here in the U.S. One British commentator identifies three reasons for the neglect … (1) a reluctance to portray women as rescuers rather than the rescued; (2) an inability to view lesbians in particular as heroic; and (3) an unwillingness to deal with the issue of gay marriage. To sum it up: ‘married lesbian heroes would just have made … heads explode.

Presumption and avoidance are frequent in how LGBTs are “seen.” Here’s another example of the judgment view. From The Dallas Voice “Boy Scouts boot lesbian mom, troop leader”:

We already know that the Boy Scouts of America can and will kick out gay Scouts and Scout leaders. …

That discriminatory policy was in the spotlight here locally again when gay father Jon Langbert was ‘decommissioned’ from his role as … leader of the annual effort to raise money by selling popcorn … for his son’s Cub Scout troup.

Now there’s this story to prove that the Boy Scouts’ homophobia isn’t gender specific.
After six years playing an active role in her son’s Boy Scout troup in Potomac Falls, Va., Denise Steele has been kicked out after another Scout’s mother discovered Steele is a lesbian.

The entire story is worth reading, but I’ll skip to the “now that we see you as non-heterosexual, we judge you unworthy” part. Assistant Scout Master Skip Inabinett discovered Steele was lesbian.

Inabinett started with a letter to a friend of Steele’s whose son was also in the troop: ‘If what you said about Denise Steele being an active sexual is true, do you feel comfortable talking with her about stepping down/resigning as an ASM … as her friend, this may be an opportunity for you to share with her about Christ’s love and … that we need a savior.

Inabinett went to the top of the Boy Scout organization, and got the preferred response, one which has a U.S. Supreme Court decision behind it. In 1981, the Court ruled that the Boy Scouts have the right to exclude the gays. And, obviously, the lesbians.

“Tell me what you see” (with a nod to the Beatles) when looking at LGBTs, and I can make fairly good guesses regarding your perspective about our right to equality.

( Photo via Photobucket )

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Dash of Dan: Rosemary Cornbread

By on 03 September 2011

When I was younger (yes younger) I spent many a summer in Vermont.

I’d pack up my things and for two weeks trade in skyscrapers for green mountains, passing trains for crickets, and bialys for…well let’s just say beyond New York, you won’t find these.

This was all made available through the Fresh Air Fund, a program that gets inner-city kids to the country with the generosity of volunteer family hosts.

My family had relatives up in northern Vermont, and they owned a farm. So for a weekend we stayed.

The white  farmhouse had a porch facing a cornfield, on the other side was where the cows would graze and a  large barn  where they were miked. I was so charmed by the farmhouse, with its old family photos, classic wooden floors, and antiques.

One night we all ate dinner together, flaky chicken pot pie (made from scratch), a summer salad, cold glasses of milk, and warm corn bread. The recipe below is my ode to that night, to that farmhouse, and to that family, whom I’m still in touch with to this day.

 

Recipe:

 

1/3 cup of vegetable shortening, plus more for the pan       2 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon unsalted butter                                                            3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup corn kernels (I used frozen ones)                                        1 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour                                                                         1 cup milk

1    tablespoon freshly chopped rosemary                                 1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup sugar

 

* Preheat the oven to 425 degrees                   *Coat and 8-inch square baking pan with shortening

  1.  Melt butter in a medium pan over medium-high heat. Add the freshly chopped rosemary and corn. Cook, stirring occasionally, until rosemary is fragrant and corn has softened; some of the kernels will also be a  light golden brown. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.
  2. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir in the cornmeal. Using a pastry blender cut in the shortening until it resembles coarse meal. Add milk, eggs, reserved corn/rosemary mixture; stir to combine. (Don’t overmix!)
  3. Transfer batter to the prepared pan and bake until top turn golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, roughly 18-20 minutes. Let cool slightly on wire racks, and cut into squares.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

Since summer is coming to a close, how has yours been? Any summer memories you’d like to share? Consider this an open thread. I’m always here for questions or comments, corn bread in hand.

 

 

 

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Progressive Notes: Obama to Breathers- “Choke on It!”

By on 02 September 2011

Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.

Smog!

Boy every day has another great jaw dropper doesn’t it? Today Obama told the EPA to halt stronger regulations on smog pollution. Obama claims, like every major Republican candidate, that such regulations would harm the economy. What a laugh, and a betrayal to the health of the people. The best part is now we won’t even get Bush’s rules on this but those going back to 1997 which were even weaker.

Ozone kills thousands of Americans per year. Science proves that. This move is so blatantly craven by Obama it is nauseating. Worse POTUS is parroting Right wing talking points, the same ones used by Rick Perry and the rest. More:

…the White House announced that it’s not going to have any new rules. On a call with reporters, White House officials argued that it doesn’t make sense to put out new rules in 2011 when there’s going to be another scheduled review of the ozone science in 2013.

But critics say that this reasoning is flawed. For one, notes Amy Royden-Bloom of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, if the EPA did issue a new ozone standard this year, then it could always just postpone its next scientific review until 2016, in line with the law. Second, notes Frank O’Donnell of Clean Air Watch, there’s no reason to think that a brand-new ozone standard will actually be issued by 2013. That’s just when the scientific review is due. Crafting new rules will take longer than that, given the inevitable delays and lawsuits. “I’d say three years, minimum,” says O’Donnell. (When I asked White House officials about this, they said they weren’t sure how long it would take.) And third, says Paul Billings of the ALA, it’s not clear that the science on ozone and human health will change dramatically between now and 2013 — if anything, the case for regulating ozone is likely to get stronger.

So what happens now? Right now, most states are still operating under the old 1997 standards. The EPA had earlier directed states not to follow the (somewhat stricter) 2008 Bush standards, because it was working on even tighter rules. But now those tighter rules aren’t happening. As Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies told me, the EPA now has the option of directing states to follow the Bush-era rules, but that seems unlikely, given the White House’s preference to wait until the 2013 review. Which means states would keep operating under the old 1997 standards, which are more lax than even what the Bush administration had proposed. “We would have stricter protections right now if we had just followed the Bush-era rules back in 2008,” says Becker.

And it’s unclear whether the ozone rules will get updated anytime soon. Becker notes that with each delay, the political debate over ratcheting up the standard becomes fiercer and fiercer, because the costs of compliance of any new rule will go up. And if a new president hostile to environmental regulation comes into office — Rick Perry, say — then the EPA may never get around to issuing new ozone rules.

Get it? A great gift to big business today and possibly one polluters will have for many years to come.

Good thing groups are filing suit against Obama’s latest poor decision. Of note the American Lung Association is filing suit for all us breathers out there who do not want to get cancer from poor air quality.

Right before Obama’s big jobs speech comes this big gift to polluters, some think to placate the Chamber of Commerce for 2012. With zero jobs for August Obama came out with the GOP meme that regulations are indeed bad for the economy. Seen this movie before? It ends badly for Democrats usually.

UPDATE: Get this. Some folks are happy:

Industry officials and Republican leaders crowed about the news. “This sudden admission by President Obama that ill-considered regulations do, in fact, have a negative impact upon our economy is a welcome breakthrough,” Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of its Energy and Power Subcommittee, said in a statement. “With the president’s change of heart on regulations, we welcome his support in having our pro-jobs and pro-growth measures signed into law.”

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Pres. Obama and Sarah Palin have A Lot in Common

By on 02 September 2011

No two people represent the preening, whining celebrity culture of our politics more than Mr. Obama and Mrs. Palin.

After Speaker Boehner stiff-armed Pres. Obama, I was waiting for this predictable storyline to surface. It’s fitting it comes from Roger Simon.

Who cares? The White House cares. Very much.

[...] Yet the White House did not see this as an obstacle. “With all due respect, the POLITICO-MSNBC debate was one that was going on a cable station,” the White House source said. “It was not sacrosanct. We knew they would push it back and then there would be a GOP debate totally trashing the president. So it wasn’t all an upside for us.”

There was actually no upside for Obama at all. In fact, the scheduling was a softball for Republicans, who decided to turn the whole thing into a bench-clearing political brawl. The problem for the President is that he came out looking feckless, as usual, with the added insult of further demoralizing many Democrats and progressives who have had it with the White House.

The whole thing was handled like amateurs are in charge of the Administration, with the news now coming out that the White House is pissed it all fell apart. Bill Daley is either incompetent or Pres. Obama remains the most gullible man in Washington. Simon’s article has Boehner’s office denying they had any deal on a speech. So, there you have it.

…and speaking of amateurs, seque to Sarah Palin, who’s still garnering press for her never ending presidential teasing. Her latest political tantrum surrounding her speech in Iowa resembles the same thing going on from the Obama White House. Fox News delivers the bad news for Palin’s ridiculous posturing over a presidential run:

All in all, most voters — 74 percent — think Palin should stay on the sidelines in 2012. Just 20 percent think she should run for president.

Sarah can’t afford to announce her candidacy at the point because she’d be humiliated, further destroying the myth that she has a chance at the nomination, which she does not.

Michele Bachmann is the one who ended up making history this year, being the first conservative female to win a straw poll, caucus or primary in Republican history. This happening while Mrs. Palin destroyed the clout she built up in 2010, while making herself look unprofessional by playing in her own presidential sand box as 2012 passes her by. It’s also Bachmann who has the best shot at demeaning Rick Perry, which is an easy thing to do given his ridiculous positions that will cause Independents, women and many suburban Republicans not to vote at all if the GOP is stupid enough to nominate this man.

Looking to 2012, Palin has been easily upstaged by Bachmann, Perry and Paul, while Obama’s economic fumbling and lack of messaging over his first term has delivered a playing field ripe for Republicans.

CHARLIE COOK: “The thing is, I think a placebo would have an excellent chance of winning. I think this is the Republicans’ race to lose. You can’t nominate a placebo, you have to nominate a real person and whether who they nominate can do as well as a placebo.”

If they nominate Rick Perry, lose they will.

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Two Parties = Too Few Choices Part VI

By on 02 September 2011

Joyce L. Arnold: Liberal, lesbian, Independent, equality activist, writer.

The Left, Dr. Seuss & Glittering

“Why won’t America embrace the left?” is the question put to Michael Kazin in a Salon interview last week. Whatever you think of Kazin’s analysis, one reason the Two Party Front for the Oligarchy remains in control is because the Left has, in significant ways, failed in the “embracing” department.

Of course, there are efforts on the Left – party and election reforms, new party creation, issue focused efforts. Over this series of articles I’ve highlighted several, and provided links to many others. In this post, I want to think a bit about how the Left does “movement,” with special attention to Kazin’s interview. (emphasis mine throughout) According to the Salon article, American Dreamers,

(the) new book by Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, … covers nearly 200 years of struggle for civil rights, sexual equality and radical rebellion. His book explores the way the national conversation has been changed by union organizers, gay rights activists and feminists. He also writes about how their techniques have now been adopted by the Tea Party movement. … he argues that, although the left has been successful at transforming American culture, when it comes to practical change, it’s been woefully unsuccessful.

Kazin says:

It’s easier to get people to think about things differently than it is to construct institutions that alter the basic building blocks of society. When leftists talk about having a vision of how things might be different, they attract an audience and create a new way of perceiving things. Its (sic) a different issue altogether to go up against entrenched structures of wealth and political power.

Looking at what the Left has accomplished:

A lot of the major movements for equal rights that we celebrate – the black freedom movement, the women’s movement, the gay liberation movement – were all started by people who were considered to be radicals in their time. …

Regarding another characteristic of “leftist activism,” it becoming a “career” for some:

The people who organized the labor movement in the 1930s were often skilled workers, but there were also professionals like lawyers and journalists. The problem, of course, is when the movement is perceived as a movement of the better-educated, wealthy, privileged elite … . That image is a problem the left … continues to have because it has been cut off from a lot of ordinary working people.

In response to a question about how the internet has changed the Left:

The Internet … (is) good for meet-ups more than movements. Even the word ‘movement’ has gotten away from the idea of making change. … As wonderful as the Internet is, it doesn’t obviate the need for some of the old things that movements need to grow – like face-to-face organizing. …

‘In order for the left to be successful,’ Kazin says, ‘it needs to build institutions that involve people who are not intellectuals and professionals, and ones that aren’t full of people who only talk to each other.’

Ouch. I think he’s correct that this is a part of the Left’s problem. Of course, echo chamber conversations are not limited to the Left.

Finally, Kazin is asked to identify his “favorite American leftists”:

I have been made fun of recently for saying this, but I think Dr. Seuss has been greatly overlooked as a leftist. He wasn’t a propagandist, but many of his best-selling books … show that he had a leftist political message.

A Seuss Socialist Party? Not likely, but Kazin makes a good point in looking outside the explicitly political arena for ideas and inspiration, even as he also argues that cultural change isn’t necessarily political change. But they are related. He says:

The United Auto Workers was … established in the 1930s with the sit-down strikes in Flint, Mich., … when the workers occupied the factories … . It was a very imaginative event that was organized by members of the Communist Party.

“Imaginative events” have characterized Leftist movements: the sit-in’s and protest marches of the anti-Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement. The more in-your-face measures of Act Up, demanding attention to the devastation of AIDS. Concerts. Vigils. Confronting Electeds – ways not only of involving the non-career activists and non-privileged, but also ways by which those non-privileged can push and lead movements.

A recent, “imaginative event,” as reported by Thomas Vinceguerra, ”Glittering Rage, in the NY Times

There is the former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista, signing copies of ‘Rediscovering God in America’ at an event in Minneapolis. Suddenly, an attendee withdraws a Cheez-It box filled with sparkly glitter and dumps it on the authors.
‘Feel the rainbow, Newt!’ he says as he is hustled out of the room. ‘Stop the hate! Stop the anti-gay politics!’

Welcome to ‘glitter bombing,’ the latest act of political theater … .

The Gingrich glittering, on May 17, was followed by Codepink pouring

“glitter and bunches of long, thin, curly strips of pink paper … on Tim Pawlenty … Two days later, a lawyer, Rachel E. B. Lang, sprinkled Representative Michele Bachmann … . Then, on July 21, a contingent … spread glitter at the headquarters of … a Christian-oriented counseling practice run by Mrs. Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. …

‘I disagree with Barack Obama on a lot of things,’ Ms. Lang said after her confrontation with Mrs. Bachmann. ‘If he were here, I would glitter him, too.’

Citing Dr. Seuss and engaging in “glittering” aren’t the kind of things that, by themselves, will change the two party duopoly. But such out of the Insider box thinking and actions are a part of how movements are created, and how they change and evolve. Because that’s a fundamental part of what has to happen, too: the movements to change the existing political system have to be willing and able to change and be changed themselves. When they don’t, they become a part of the problematic system.

Below are some links to additional reading (with thanks to those who provided two of them), as well as to the previous posts in this series. I like adding some of what you are reading. And I very much like reading your thoughts.

Articles and Opinions

Billy Bragg: Music Needs to Get Political Again
Government attacks are attacks on selves (Thanks to Art Pronin)
The Democrats’ Rural Rebellions (Thanks to nightrain37)
The Election March of the Trolls
Why I’m not voting for Obama in 2012

Posts in this series:

Grading the Electoral College
Two Parties = Too Few Choices
Two Parties = Too Few Choices, Part II
Two Parties = Too Few Choices, Part III
Two Parties = Too Few Choices, Part IV
Two Parties = Too Few Choices, Part V

( Photo via WatchingFrogsBoil )

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Adieu, Summer

By on 01 September 2011

We tore out ivy, weeds and overgrowth this year, planting anew across the yard. It was a labor of love. The companion to the beautiful grass pictured here is fennel flowering. The waxy leaves give it a fairyland look, which the dragonflies adore, as do the butterflies, which were plentiful because we planted just for them, as we did for the hummingbirds. It’s been such a lovely summer, as we settle into our new habitat, complete with canopy on our deck, potted plants, rose and all sorts of native bamboo, too.

It’s hard to see the season give way to fall, with select trees already beginning their turn.

The nearby high school already had cheerleaders out practicing with the football team, timing their introductions so they’re ready for the first big game.

Long weekend coming up, so if you’re traveling, be safe; same goes if you’re partying, which we will be. Birthday coming, though I do appreciate Speaker Boehner, Pres. Obama and the NFL scheduling their events around little me.

The floor’s now yours, any topic goes. Just enjoy the conversation, as we bid summer adieu on this first day of September.

Some thoughts to get you started…

I’ve stopped pretending that the president’s jobs speech scheduled for next week is going to matter. I’m tired of speculating about what it will contain and whether its proposals will be big or small, bold or timid. … – Ezra Klein

Here is what all voters, and especially independents, despise and disdain in a politician — weakness. Nobody wants to see their leader get beat to a pulp every night and then bow his head again. There is no secret, brilliant strategy. This White House is in a bubble. They think they’re winning when the roof is about to cave in. – Cenk Uygur

“I do think this is a really big debate and I think the White House was out of bounds…in trying to schedule a speech during a debate,” Carville said on “GMA.” … “Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate and I’m not even a Republican or even close to being a Republican,” he said, adding it will be a “barn burner.” – GMA

PS – Thanks to spincitysd who, as people got sidetracked this summer, has turned In the News into his own private blogging paradise. Anyone can post anything, cross-post from your blog, too. Don’t be shy, chime in! I don’t always have time to comment, but I read every single diary.

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Progressive Notes: PPP Has Obama Losing Union Homes, Women, and More

By on 01 September 2011

Art offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.

PPP polls have been dead on accurate for several years now. And boy does their latest show trouble for Obama 2012. Their latest has 54 percent disapproving of the president. I sure wish the folks in the WH would read real polls sometime.

Why? Because yet again the base has problems. Obama must change the dynamic:

He’s under water in union households at 44/47. He’s also under water with voters under 30 at 45/48. The Northeast tends to a pretty dependable region for Democrats but Obama’s under water there at 47/49. Obama’s usually been able to hold his ground with female voters but he’s under water with them too at 45/49. And even with African Americans his approval rating’s down to 76%, about as low as we’ve ever found it.

I wrote a blog post last week about how Democratic enthusiasm was at a year long low. Now it’s at a lower year long low with only 47% of the party’s voters ‘very excited’ about voting this year compared to 58% of Republicans.

The debt deal has truly created a increasing political crisis for Obama, with the base deflated and most voters feeling Obama is weak and does not know how to fix our problems. See Florida, the infamous swing state. Obama’s approvals in Fl are at 27 percent and it threatens Dem Senator Bill Nelson’s re election prospects.

Perry may mobilize the base, we can hope. If I were a Democratic big donor right now I would be getting alarmed about my investment.

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Presidential Humiliation in Headlines

By on 01 September 2011

How does this happen?

That 1979 feeling is getting more intense, just ask Independents.

The President asks to address a joint session of Congress on GOP 2012 debate day at the Reagan library, but instead of accepting and using the speech against the Obama during the debate, Speaker Boehner makes history by refusing Pres. Obama, who then has to reschedule his speech.

Mr. Obama’s infamous multi-dimensional chess is not only missing a strategy, he’s been faked out of his board. The most embarrassing aspect is that the White House set this up.

(Click on the picture to read the reporting.)

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