Teddy Kennedy of 1978, who stood up to challenge Jimmy Carter no matter the cost, he might have one opinion of Barack Obama’s presidency.
I remember that Kennedy, while I stood in gas lines in New York City and watched how helpless America looked during the Iranian hostage crisis.
Today we can’t even talk about something as bold as a primary challenge to Pres. Obama, no matter that he’s earned it. The money juggernaut of Obama reelect is one reason, but with even progressives proclaiming no one can challenge Obama because he’s the first African American president, as Markos Moulitsas did with Keith Olbermann recently, it puts Barack Obama in a very special class of his own; one that elevates the politician over policy prescriptions that shore up our country’s overall health.
The Tea Party crazies wouldn’t be interested in this type of political etiquette, if you will. They want to win the argument through legislation, while managing to change the entire economic debate by taking on the GOP establishment and forcing an outcome the insiders couldn’t have come close to getting on their own. Tea Party outsider muscle helped Republicans beat Pres. Obama and his entire economic and political teams combined.
The Kennedy who endorsed Barack Obama in the star studded media extravaganza, covered by cable with full fanfare that would have been embarrassing to Edward R. Murrow, what would he think today of Obama’s presidency?
Sen. Kennedy proudly passed the torch, but Obama’s presidency as it stands today, well, it’s hard to imagine this is what Teddy had in mind.
Things aren’t getting better because the administration doesn’t even recognize that they are – that their boss is – the problem. – John Aravosis
“… We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” – President John F. Kennedy (September 12, 1962, at Rice University, Houston, Texas)
I cannot begin to express the joy I’ve had in watching this American passage, remembering the wonder of this visionary journey and accomplishment. Betsy Mason over at Wired has an amazing piece and photo gallery on what NASA did to train the APOLLO astronauts. Thanks to everyone at NASA and all the supporters of this amazing feat, as we all await the next journey, provided Congress understands that investment, research and development is critical for America’s future. There’s absolutely no evidence at this point our politicians get this fact.
Thinking about the anniversary of the moon landing today, I’m reminded of what is required to make the seemingly impossible manifest.
When Pres. Bill Clinton ruminates about the wondrous explosion of economic growth in the ’90s he experienced as president, he never forgets to cite the amazing technological expansion of the internet that helped make it happen. He often says how he just put the pedal to the metal and exploited every aspect to help it work for America as he led the country to peacetime prosperity and a booming economy that left George W. Bush a record surplus.
Thinking of both Pres. Kennedy’s vision and Clinton’s initiative to harness what was happening in technology, is something that leads me to be unforgiving of the wasted opportunity for what Pres. Obama’s presidency might have meant to this country.
When Pres. Obama won the presidency things had turned sour economically, so what he inherited was a horrendous mess, including wars waged off the budget and a country whose leaders were disrespected around the world. His presidency held the hope that all that was about to change.
With the American people behind him wholeheartedly when he was inaugurated, the press cowed and the world waiting for greatness, Barack Obama had a once in a generation opportunity to do big things, really big things. Like tackle our energy challenges, which would impact us domestically, as well as our foreign policy and military priorities, a situation that has bled this country dry of resources we’ll never recover. He could have harnessed business leaders of industries, mayors and governors to commit to having their cities be bullet train depots, so we could finally get high-speech rail from New York to the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, from north to south and across this country, creating jobs by the thousands along the way, including side industries of workers and support, with the results manifesting a new way to travel, at least for America.
People in Europe have been traveling this way for years.
All of a sudden a tax on gas wouldn’t be so onerous. “Drill, baby, drill” a bad memory of bankrupt celebrity politicians and their fans.
But to imagine, implement and sell a nationwide building extravaganza focused on changing our energy focus Mr. Obama would have had to have had a vision. He did not. Instead he doubled down on military actions, reneged on campaign pledges to remove the stench of the Bush-Cheney legacy by doubling down on drone attacks, starting another war in Libya and continuing rendition and allowing “secret” prisons to continue. If you want to see the final gasp of “hope and change” read Jeremy Scahill’s article about Somalia. Our Nobel Peace Prize President now turned to ash.
So, as we all trudge into another presidential election cycle we’re stuck dealing with meager men and women running for the highest office in the land and the world, people who talk to interest groups, factions and fans, without having the core character to speak about a larger human purpose.
John F. Kennedy spoke of choosing to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, but then he did something about it at a time when American limitations didn’t exist. When leaders dreamed of big things and stuck their own neck out to sell them for the good of the country, not because it would help them win the Independent vote.
We are still a great nation, but we are now led by smaller men. …and women, because you can’t have a country in the mess it is today without a collapse of leadership from all quarters, including We The People. At some point the American public has simply got to walk away from the current political class to say enough is enough.
Last View This image of the International Space Station was taken by Atlantis' STS-135 crew during a fly around as the shuttle departed the station on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. STS-135 is the final shuttle mission to the orbital laboratory. Image Credit: NASA
Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged.
It cannot possibly be a coincidence that with Rep. Michele Bachmann surging we now are privy to a potentially devastating report about the presidential candidate allegedly popping pills to alleviate pain.
Women have worked for over one hundred years to be taken seriously and considered as strong candidates for commander in chief. One has to wonder if this was leaked to make voters question her health, but also her strength. Headaches are not considered by most to be something serious, maybe even a frivolous complaint by someone with a weak constitution.
With such incredible details, it seems obvious Mrs. Bachmann has a very serious problem:
The Minnesota Republican frequently suffers from stress-induced medical episodes that she has characterized as severe headaches. These episodes, say witnesses, occur once a week on average and can “incapacitate” her for days at time. On at least three occasions, Bachmann has landed in the hospital as a result. Ads by Google
“She has terrible migraine headaches. And they put her out of commission for a day or more at a time. They come out of nowhere, and they’re unpredictable,” says an adviser to Bachmann who was involved in her 2010 congressional campaign. “They level her. They put her down. It’s actually sad. It’s very painful.”
As someone who has worked tirelessly to cure myself of migraines, I find this report alarming.
There is something horribly wrong with a professional person who isn’t dealing with deeper issues that trigger a migraine. As the Daily Caller reports, she’s been hospitalized and had to recuperate at home, away from her job, because of them, after having been incapacitated by them. Being treated with medication is dealing with the symptoms and staving off the results of something in your life that precipitates the event.
You cannot get rid of any health issue without finding the root of the cause of your problem, whether it’s diet, lifestyle, maybe a spouse or even your job.
Now, I don’t pretend to know any specifics about Mrs. Bachmann’s debilitating pain issues, but as someone who once had to live with migraines from the time I was a kid, had to perform while throwing up off stage between numbers because of them, as well as having my long ago past riddled with 24-hour vomiting over 3 days before they broke, I sure as hell know the answer isn’t medication, which offers no definitive solution. Thankfully, I cured myself. Solving the riddle of pain means discovering what in your life is causing the stress that leads your brain to the pain seizures of migraines.
But if you don’t, can’t or won’t, pills it is. At least today there are new drugs that make the days of injections a memory.
Of particular concern to some around her is the significant amount of medication Bachmann takes to address her condition.
The former aide says Bachmann’s congressional staff is “constantly” in contact with her doctors to tweak the types and amounts of medicine she is taking. Marcus Bachmann helps her manage the episodes.
Sources who spoke to The Daily Caller said they did so because they are terrified about the impact the condition could have on Bachmann’s performance if she actually became president. They also worry that the issue could blow up in the general election campaign, giving President Obama an easy path to re-election.
The drugs that kept Pres. John F. Kennedy alive went well beyond migraine medications, as historian Robert Dalek wrote in “An Unfinished Life,” which was just one of the hundreds of sources I relied on for my one woman show on J.F.K. If he had run for office today, let alone been president, there is no way he could have kept his double digit list of medications a secret. He had his women, his doctors and all the drugs that kept him alive:
Anesthetic procaine, for his Addison’s disease
Cytomel, for thyroid deficiency
Lomitil
Metamucil, now there’s a commercial for you
Paregoric
Phenobarbitol
Trasentine, to control his colitic diarrhea
Testosterone, to increase his energy and boost his weight after bouts of colitis
Penicillin, for urinary tract flare ups
Fluorinef, to increase his salt absorption due to Addison’s
Cortisone
Tuinal, for insomnia – a side effect of the cortisone
Antihistamines, for an array of allergies
Codeine
Steroids… Oh, and Vitamin C and calcium.
J.F.K. also had lots of doctors who gave him his “vigah,” including injections. They also led to rumors that Nixon tried to steal his medical records. He had an allergist; an endocrinologist for his Addison’s disease; a gastroenterologist for his colitis; a urologist, because he’d gotten a urinary tract infection from venereal disease; an orthopedist for his degenerative spine, but no one knew.
What this report is meant to conjure up is Rep. Bachmann’s physical frailty. It’s a political attack by “former aides” trying to take the bitch out.
There’s a reason Tim Pawlenty had a former aide of Bachmann do an op-ed hit piece in Iowa. A reason Rick Perry is being pimped by the conservative boys’ club. It’s not that he’s got anything Michele Bachmann hasn’t. He’s chock full of crazy, too. But at least he’s not a f*#!ing girl.
… Today’s intellectual consensus thus fiercely opposes public infrastructure. For example, while it’s always nice to talk about repairing bridges, in 2009, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) pointed out the truth of the Obama administration’s stimulus program: “Larry Summers hates infrastructure. And some of these other economists — they don’t like infrastructure. … They want to have a consumer-driven recovery.” – Public pays price for privatization
If Pres. Obama is going to change the current economic trajectory he has to do something concrete, literally.
[...] We need to look to the political coalitions behind our immense public works and ask which coalitions today support the current infrastructure rhetoric. Seen through that lens, the real trend in infrastructure today is not building more of it but privatizing what exists.
After all, building infrastructure implies the ability to build things here and being able to use the power of taxation to finance them. Privatizing infrastructure requires the ability to securitize revenue flows. Which one do you think modern America does better?
Privatization takes inherently governmental functions — everything from national defense to mass transit and roads — and turns them over to the control of private actors, whose goal is to extract maximum revenue while costing as little as possible.
Republicans have long advocated this in the name of free markets — saying that privatizing government services reduces the size of government. Democrats express more mixed support, but they sometimes go along for the privatizing ride.
Yet it isn’t true, as a general rule, that privatization shrinks the public sector. When investor demand for high returns is combined with the natural monopolies of public assets, what often results instead is citizens finding themselves saddled with high fees and poor service.
Even more perniciously, selling infrastructure such as toll roads puts the coercive power of the state in the hands of private actors. We have great public assets built by prior generations. We should and could be building a better country for our children, rather than liquidating what we have. [...]
In response, Cato comes down on the side of no art, applauding Gov. Sam Brownback for eviscerating the Kansas art budget.
The elite D.C. media, new media, talking heads, gleeful Republicans, and spineless Democrats all weighed in… and then New Yorkers had their say, including Barbara Walters.
According to the one-day poll, conducted Wednesday, just 33 percent of voters in New York’s Ninth Congressional District think Weiner should resign from the House, while 56 percent do not think he should resign. – Poll: Weiner’s Constituents Don’t Think He Should Resign
Rep. Weiner is not resigning, in spite of the chattering class calling for it.
An ethics investigation may reveal more, though I doubt it because they take too long and even Charlie Rangel survived his, but there’s no reason to jump unless there is something indictable. Again, see David Vitter. The worst is over for Mr. Weiner, regardless of what may ensue from the Democratic establishment.
If John F. Kennedy had been held to today’s standards he would never have been president, with his White House behavior something the press would have ravaged him over today, perhaps rightly so:
Since they had not lived together before marrying, Jackie was unprepared for what she called Jack’s “violent” independence — by which she meant not just his habit of going off with his male friends but, more important, his thinly disguised promiscuity. … “I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives. Men are such a combination of good and evil.” … Jackie’s unhappiness was no inducement to Jack to restrain himself. In the summer of 1956, while she was int he late stages of a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, Jack went on a yachting trip with George Smathers in the Mediterranean, where he enjoyed “a bacchanal, with several young women getting on and off the boat at its ports of call.” … In 1958, when younger brother Ted got married, Jack was caught on tape whispering to him “that being married didn’t really mean that you had to be faithful to your wife.” – An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek (pgs. 194-195)
The bad news is Rep. Weiner’s campaign to keep his job and weather his stupidity isn’t going to be easy.
The good news about the revelatory photos is, congratulations, Tony, and Barbara Walters agrees.
Walters acknowledged that she had seen the picture “days ago.” As the women discussed the authenticity of the picture, Elisabeth Hasselbeck offered a theory: If Weiner hasn’t denied it was his, then it must be flattering.
“It is,” quipped Walters.
… “What he did was unfathomable,” she added. “I just heard a statistic which is 56% of his constituents want him to remain in office. And he’s been, if you’ve followed him, a very effective, outspoken, sometimes angry, certainly passionate congressman … the personal stuff is between him and his wife.”
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, said “of course” Weiner’s actions make it tough for Dems in ’12. That’s malarkey, especially in the Senate, where Dems were in trouble long before Weiner’s wiener went wide.
Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare-ending budget scheme, the House could be in play for Democrats.
Pres. Obama’s problems are economic not moral, with any trouble he’s getting from Democrats who think he’s compromise and capitulated of his own making.
We can now also put to sleep any notion that Breitbart was going to uphold his words on the “Today” show, where he said he’d hold the photo as insurance in case Weiner went after him.
In fact, two nights ago, Andrew Breitbart went out drinking with Anthony and several others — and according to Anthony, showed the picture to numerous people, even leaving his laptop computer unattended with the picture on the screen for long periods of time. One of those people was right wing flamethrower Ann Coulter. Here’s Anthony’s photo of Coulter reacting to the picture; notice that his computer is apparently there, but Breitbart is nowhere to be seen. – Charles Johnson
Johnson goes on to allege Breitbart handed his phone around the studio. As I tweeted yesterday, did Breitbart actually believe that talk radio shock jocks wouldn’t leak the photo?
Breitbart and the shock jock statements now sound laugh out loud hilarious. Needless to say, neither Breitbart or Anthony “regret” the release of the photo.
The Washington political establishments of both big parties are not hip. But they deliver verdicts differently. Republicans are permanently self-righteous and allow disgraced politicians like Vitter to keep on keeping on. Democratic self-loathing doesn’t allow for that and with so many Blue Dog Democrats now holding sway it will take the strength of Huma Abedin and the dogged tenacity Weiner’s has exhibited on the House floor to weather the party’s wrath, which they both are intent on doing.
In fact, much of the defense of Weiner is actually for Abedin, who is respected as a “substantial” woman of great substance and character. She’s the one encouraging her husband to dig in, which contrary to Roger Simons and Jay Newton-Small and others, does not require she make an appearance.
“She loves her husband very much. She is committed to her husband and her marriage,” the close friend said. She’s adamant that her husband does not resign, and is optimistic that he can continue his career as an elected official. “I think people have weathered worse,” said the source. “They are still talking all the time about what to do [to survive the scandal],” the source said, adding that they plotted his political comeback while at the hotel. – Weiner on wife support, Huma has his back
The calls for resignation were a mistake, especially looking at new generations of potential politicians waiting in the wings. Social media mistakes will be common to many good people coming up the ranks in politics, which Krystal Ball represented in 2010. But it shouldn’t be a deal breaker, nor should we continue to expect what never can be delivered: perfection in our politicians.
Weiner’s no Jack Kennedy and he’s no Bill Clinton. But at least his wife Huma is carrying his child and his cheating is virtual (at this point, though it really doesn’t matter if it crossed over after his X-rated exposure). You can’t say that about Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, David Vitter or the scores of other politicians who’ve been unmasked.
If Weiner had only paid a prostitute he wouldn’t be in this trouble. The Washington political establishment, including the media, can handle the oldest profession pitfall; they just can’t wrap their heads around virtual sex.
“She loves her husband very much. She is committed to her husband and her marriage,” the close friend said. She’s adamant that her husband does not resign, and is optimistic that he can continue his career as an elected official. “I think people have weathered worse,” said the source. “They are still talking all the time about what to do [to survive the scandal],” the source said, adding that they plotted his political comeback while at the hotel. – Weiner on wife support, Huma has his back
Ed Rendell proclaimed today on “Morning Joe” that Rep. Weiner is a dead politician walking, my words not his. If he is, Democrats better understand who wins here and it isn’t them or progressives. So far DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has kept quiet, even amidst RNC chair’s Reince Priebus’ hypocritical judgment, which only applies to Weiner, not Vitter or other Republicans who have been caught up in scandals, with Vitter’s solicitation of prostitutes actually a crime.
As both Rendell and Mike Barnicle know but are conveniently fogetting, if John F. Kennedy had been held to today’s standards he would never have been president, with his White House behavior something the press would have ravaged him over today, perhaps rightly so:
Since they had not lived together before marrying, Jackie was unprepared for what she called Jack’s “violent” independence — by which she meant not just his habit of going off with his male friends but, more important, his thinly disguised promiscuity. … “I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives. Men are such a combination of good and evil.” … Jackie’s unhappiness was no inducement to Jack to restrain himself. In the summer of 1956, while she was int he late stages of a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, Jack went on a yachting trip with George Smathers in the Mediterranean, where he enjoyed “a bacchanal, with several young women getting on and off the boat at its ports of call.” … In 1958, when younger brother Ted got married, Jack was caught on tape whispering to him “that being married didn’t really mean that you had to be faithful to your wife.” – An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek (pgs. 194-195)
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, said “of course” Weiner’s actions make it tough for Dems in ’12. That’s malarkey, especially in the Senate, where Dems were in trouble long before Weiner’s weiner went wide.
Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare-ending budget scheme, the House could be in play for Democrats.
Pres. Obama’s problems are economic not moral.
Now, giving Andrew Breitbart control over your life because you were stupid is Rep. Weiner’s own fault. But any notion that Breitbart was going to uphold his words on the “Today” show, where he said he’d hold the photo as insurance in case Weiner went after him, should be at the very least questioned, while I admit to believing he leaked it on purpose, no matter what he says.
In fact, two nights ago, Andrew Breitbart went out drinking with Anthony and several others — and according to Anthony, showed the picture to numerous people, even leaving his laptop computer unattended with the picture on the screen for long periods of time. One of those people was right wing flamethrower Ann Coulter. Here’s Anthony’s photo of Coulter reacting to the picture; notice that his computer is apparently there, but Breitbart is nowhere to be seen. – Charles Johnson
Johnson goes on to allege Breitbart handed his phone around the studio. As I tweeted yesterday, did Breitbart actually believe that talk radio shock jocks wouldn’t leak the photo?
Earlier today, a photograph resembling one that I had withheld from publication in the Weinergate saga was released without my knowledge or permission.
Prior to the publication of our story on BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com this past Monday morning, it was necessary to show the pictures I had received from our source to several news producers, including several at major news networks, to prove that the additional material I described really did exist, which some have continued to doubt.
This morning, I showed a photograph, which our source claims Weiner sent her, to radio hosts “Opie and Anthony” of the Sirius XM radio network on my mobile device. Somehow, without my knowledge or permission, apparently a picture was taken of my mobile device, and subsequently published by Opie (Gregg Hughes) on Twitter.
His co-host, Anthony (Anthony Cumia), stated today:
“In regards to the photo of Anthony Weiner that was leaked by members of The Opie And Anthony show on 6/8, I want to make it clear that Andrew Breitbart had no knowledge that this photo was being made public. A phone with the photo was being displayed and a camera in the studio caught it. It was then uploaded to twitter [sic], again, without Andrew Breitbarts [sic] knowledge.”
I regret that this occurred.
Needless to say, neither Breitbart or Anthony “regret” the release of the photo.
The Washington political establishments of both big parties are not hip. But they deliver verdicts differently. Republicans allow disgraced politicians like Vitter to keep on keeping on. Democratic self-loathing doesn’t allow for that and with so many Blue Dog Democrats now holding sway it will take the strength of Huma Abedin and the dogged tenacity Weiner’s exhibited on the House floor before to weather the party’s wrath that continues to build.
The calls for resignation remain a mistake, especially looking at new generations of potential politicians waiting in the wings. Social media mistakes will be common to many good people coming up the ranks in politics, which Krystal Ball represented in the last cycle. But it shouldn’t be a deal breaker, nor should we continue to expect what never can be delivered: perfection in our politicians.
Weiner’s no Jack Kennedy and he’s no Bill Clinton. But at least his wife Huma is carrying his child and his cheating is virtual (at this point, though it really doesn’t matter if it crossed over after his X-rated exposure). You can’t say that about Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, David Vitter or the scores of other politicians who’ve been unmasked.
If Weiner had only paid a prostitute he wouldn’t be in this trouble, as David Vitter proves. The Washington political establishment can handle the oldest profession pitfall; they just can’t wrap their heads around virtual sex.
Texan4Hillary offers his perspective as a movement progressive activist.
Humphrey speaks at 1948 Dem convention on civil rights:
This past January the media swooned for Reagan’s 100th birthday. Well this week we progressives are the ones recalling the 100th birthday of one of the greatest liberals of the 20th century: Hubert Humphrey.
Humphrey was known as the “happy warrior” because of his famous 1948 speech at the Democratic National Convention. He was 37 and mayor of Minneapolis at the time. The party was split over civil rights for blacks. He told the party:
“To those who say this civil rights program is an infringement on states’ rights,” he thundered from the convention podium, “I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
The motion carried. The Southerners walked out and ran Strom Thurmond for president. When Harry S. Truman won nonetheless, Democrats were on their way to becoming the party of civil rights. Hubert Humphrey catalyzed that change.
The New Deal liberal lost a brutally close 1968 election against Nixon for POTUS. Many say if given a few more weeks Humphrey would have won. Imagine how different this nation would have been had Humphrey not lost.
With his loss he returned to the Senate. He pushed for New Deal policies to get people to work. But some Democrats like Carter moved away from New Dealism. From FDR. Truman. LbJ. And so, faced with opposition from top DC Dems on jobs programs he tried another tact:
In 1976 he joined Representative Augustus Hawkins, a Democrat from the Watts section of Los Angeles, to introduce a bill requiring the government, especially the Federal Reserve, to keep unemployment below 3 percent — and if that failed, to provide emergency government jobs to the unemployed.
… 70 percent of Americans believed the government should offer jobs to everyone who wanted one. However, Jimmy Carter — a new kind of Democrat answering to a new upper-middle-class, suburban constituency, embarrassed by industrial unions and enamored with the alleged magic of the market — did not.
“Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities or cure illiteracy or provide energy,” President Carter said in his 1978 State of the Union address, a generation before Bill Clinton said almost the same thing, cementing the Democrats’ ambivalent retreat from New Deal-based government activism.
And here we are today. Reaganism has brainwashed a generation. Reagan is Obama’s hero. From 1968 came Nixon, Watergate, Carterism, Reagan, and of course today’s moderate Republican Democrat Obama. We owe alot to Humphrey. He did so much.
Champion of the middle class Elizabeth Warren faced nothing but pure disrespect when she answered questions to GOP congressmembers. Right wing Congressman McHenry (R-NC) called Warren a liar. These men treated her like dirt, and Warren’s face said it all:
Hey- women are tired of being treated like garbage by the guys in our political system! In Texas the spirit of Ann Richards is alive and well among many. State Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston (D) had quite the event on the House floor this week. She:
…delivered a riveting speech condemning a flyer handed out on behalf of the Texas Civil Justice League that used a graphic picture of a child nursing at a woman’s breast to question whether pending legislation would create “a nanny state.”
In a session in which the House “has spent 30 to 40 percent of its time kicking the reproductive organs of women down the road,” Thompson took issue with lobbyists using a picture of a breast in calling attention to legislation.
“I am really disgusted,” she said. “I am really ashamed. Some of you may find these funny. I find these hateful. They foster violence and disrespect towards women. I am appalled that the Texas Civil Justice League would go so low to get at a piece of legislation.”…
Thompson pounded the podium as she finished her speech with an admonition: “Men, if you don’t stand up for us today, don’t you walk in this chamber tomorrow.” She received a standing ovation.
House Speaker Joe Straus, who by coincidence had scheduled a reception for the women lawmakers Thursday evening, said he “did a lot of listening” as women trickled into the event. ” He agreed the flyer was in “beyond poor taste.”
“I do think all of us need to be mindful of how we treat each other,” he said, adding that it had been an extremely stressful session. “People are away from their families for 140 days and we have worked hard with a lot of challenging tasks.”
Lee Parsley, president of the Texas Civil Justice League, apologized for the flyer, which he said was disseminated without his approval. “I am very sorry the offensive piece exists at all and that you had to see it,” Parsley said in a letter distributed to lawmakers.
We have video of her awesome speech :
The result? The formation of the Women’s Caucus in the Texas House. Top Democratic and Republican representatives will now join forces to try and put a lid on the defamation of women .
PPP partnered with Progressive Change Campaign Committee to do polling in key battleground states where Democratic senators face tough races. They polled in Missouri, Ohio, Montana and Minnesota. The results were the same in every state: touch Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security and the voters will punish you. Senator McCaskill in Missouri has been running around with a plan to slash the budget worse than Ryan. Wake up McCaskill and others:
In Missouri, a poll conducted by PPP, a Democratic-aligned polling firm, showed that cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would be especially unpopular.
The poll in Missouri of 1,050 likely voters found that 19 percent would support reducing Medicare expenditures while 77 percent opposed Medicare trims.
The survey question was phrased this way: In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose cutting spending on Medicare, which is the government health insurance program for the elderly?
A similar question on Medicaid found that 32 percent would support cuts to reduce the national debt while 63 percent would oppose them. For Social Security, 17 percent would support cuts; 76 percent oppose them.
Florida’s Governor Scott is boosting Dem fortunes in the state. Austerity never wins votes with the electorate. Last week red Jacksonville elected its first Dem mayor in 20 years, and to boot he is their first African American and the guy is also a former aid to President Clinton. Minorities poured out to vote, enraged by the cold hearted governance of Scott.
Hillary at Blair House, April 4, 2011 (during a bilateral with Shimon Peres).
Morning, news junkies.
First up… a personal note of congratulations to my blogger friend, Lake Lady, who on Wednesday was elected mayor of her small town in MO. Mayor Lake Lady, you are a true inspiration! Throughout your campaign, I’ve been reminded of this quote from Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Once the politics are over, we can assess the policy with clear eyes. And I think you’ll find that the failure to put the 2011 budget to bed in the last Congress cost the economy $60 billion.
ABC News asks the $64,000 question: Where were the women in the budget debate? Here’s the other $64,000 question, the one that the MSM–as well as most of the prog blogs for that matter–won’t ask: What happened when Nancy Pelosi and “This is what a feminist looks like” Obama were at the Stupakistan table? (The war on women didn’t start with the Republican midterm gains…it just got an upgrade from easily ignored tropical storm to Cat 5 hurricane.)
The Atlantic’s James Fallows has a couple of posts up on the “uncertainty tax” that the possibility alone of a government shutdown has imposed on government operations, particularly at Hillary Clinton’s State Department… the first post is called Third World on the Potomac, followed up by Government-Shutdown Watch: An Inside View. The good news: Whether or not there was a shutdown, Hillary’s meeting with the highest-ranking woman in the Chinese government, State Councilor Liu Yandong, got the okay to proceed as planned next week. The not-so-good news: According to a reader whose wife works at the State department and wrote in to Fallows (see the “Inside View” link above), “it seems as though the government has been doing nothing this week other than preparing for the shutdown.” Another interesting tidbit from Fallows’ reader:
A semi-hard news tidbit: the disagreement over Planned Parenthood is a smokescreen to hide the fact that they can’t agree on the numbers. What I find so troubling about this is that the WH has met the Republicans about 70% of the way, yet Boehner keep moving the goal posts. Why the WH can’t this storyline into the media is beyond me. But then again, as Dan Balz observes today, we are seeing perhaps yet another example of a cerebral leadership style that is still not working.
I’d also like to say that when it comes to the kind of intelligence that matters, cerebral is as cerebral does. It’s not mere lack of ideas that is plaguing our politics, nor is it as benign as the sanitized “cerebral style” meme would like you to believe. What is plaguing our politics is lack of action and political will. Simple and reasonable ideas like ones on closing the corporate tax loopholes only get floated by the Bernie Sanders in our political class, precisely to be designated as outside the realm of what’s achievable in our current political system.
Speaking of political bankruptcy, and to link to James Fallows again… he has written an excellent takedown of the “brave and serious” Mr. Ryan, in which he elaborates on his contention that Ryan’s budget proposal is neither brave nor serious but rather “partisan and gimmicky,” which — as Fallows notes — would be par for the course as far as these sorts of plans go, if it weren’t for the laudatory way it has been received.
Meanwhile, here are the two descriptors Krugman uses for Ryan’s plan: Ludicrous and Cruel. From the link:
It came very close for “Rawhide,” Pres. Reagan’s Secret Service code name.
A remarkable report from CBS News adds to the history of this day.
At 2:27 pm EST, thirty years ago today, Pres. Ronald Reagan was shot and critically wounded, though the American public didn’t know how grievously at the time.
Hinckley’s visits to Williamsburg also trigger notification to Sarah Brady, whose husband James, was critically wounded during the assassination attempt. James Brady was the White House Press Secretary at the time. Sarah Brady is an alumna of the College of William and Mary.
“Every time he gets out for a 10-day period,” Davis quoted Sarah Brady saying of Hinckley, “I get a call so I know to not go to Williamsburg then. I love going there. But I obviously don’t want to cross paths with John Hinckley.”
“If it hadn’t been for them, we would not have passed the Brady Law, and then the ban on assault weapons, and on cop-killer bullets…How many people are alive today because of Jim and Sarah Brady? How many? Countless.”
New audio recordings, which you can hear on the video above, reveal just how close Reagan came to having his life ended.
“I hope you’re all Republicans,” Reagan quipped with the GW trauma surgeons who saved his life. Their response: today we’re all Republicans.
The assassination attempt bonded the American people to Pres. Reagan, which is likely one reason why Reagan had no problem getting a second term, but more importantly, escaped impeachment hearings over Iran-Contra, a convoluted scheme which would have revealed real crimes and misdemeanors.
The mystique of the Kennedys, J.F.K.’s presidency cut short, along with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy’s brilliant stroke to create the myth of Camelot after Pres. Kennedy’s assassination, is all part of why John Fitzgerald Kennedy remains our nation’s most popular president in modern times, the last 50 years. It was also the ability he had, through Ted Sorenson‘s brilliant wordsmith carvings, to make his rhetoric cut a swath through history that reminds us of his soaring vision.
It’s at moments like these I reflect that if John F. Kennedy were running for president today he could not be nominated let alone elected. His health would have come into focus, with the prescription drugs and injections he utilized to keep functioning simply something today’s American purists wouldn’t have accepted. Kennedy was targeted by the Right plenty (including Human Events and right-wing radio), but his secrets, including his serial womanizing, would never have been kept quiet today. There are also no journalistic giants that a president would dare have as an open confidante.
What Reagan got for his coming centennial is his two sons, Michael his step-son, quarreling over whether he had Alzheimer’s in his second term, which Ron Reagan has asserted is possible. He’s hardly the first, but he is the closest eye witness to history he claims proves it. However, the question that should haunt Reagan’s legacy is why wasn’t he impeached for Iran-Contra? If ever there was an impeachable offense this had the potential.
It seems the Nixon resignation and Ford’s disastrous presidential pardon led to squeamish Democrats who didn’t want to “put the country through it,” so they worked hastily to wrap it up, but inadvertently paved the way for William Jefferson Clinton’s railroading and impeachment over consensual sex, because Republicans know how to hold a grudge. If Nixon had been impeached we might have actually seen what real crimes and misdemeanors meant and the pain of proving it in the well of the Senate, instead of reducing impeachment to a sex police action by Republicans bent on revenge.
John F. Kennedy lived in a different era and his short presidency with its iconic photographs, historic changes that coincided with the tumult of the 1960s, all of it, juxtaposed against the smallness of today’s politicians and the timidity of their vision, assists J.F.K. in standing alone. He may also be the last war hero president, of a justifiable war, this country will ever see.
Dr. King’s rhetoric was forged in fire and brimstone on the altar of confrontation. King was destined to pave the way, not just for Barack Obama, but for another Democratic president back in his day, which is why I run this piece I wrote years ago every year on this day. It took the collision of two great men to dismantle the prejudice of America’s political history, even if civil rights remains a scarred wound that doesn’t take much to rip open.
Some believe that President Kennedy’s presidency was owed, at least in part, to Dr. Martin Luther King. In a moment of stunning political pressure inside his own camp, candidate Kennedy reached out to Martin Luther King when he was convicted of a probation violation after participating in a diner sit-in in Atlanta, Georgia. Forever the political pragmatist, Kennedy saw the light, with a big push from Bobby, and interceded on behalf of King to get him released from Reidsville Prison. That, as some tell it, changed history. King as an ally brought out the black vote, helping to defeat Nixon. But there were many other fault lines in 1960, including Texas, Illinois, but especially West Virginia, that played their part, too. So I’ll let you be the judge of whether King helped elect Kennedy. He sure didn’t hurt him. Neither did Kennedy’s pledge to right the wrongs being done to blacks.
However, once president, Kennedy was simply too obsessed with foreign policy issues to turn his attention to the home front. He just didn’t get the importance of King’s fights down south, at first, especially when juxtaposed against the crisis brewing overseas. The challenges escalating between East and West Germany kept JFK’s attention focused on nuclear confrontation, then came the Cuban Missile crisis. But eventually, JFK began to finally understand that the home front matters as much as what’s happening “over there,” especially in the face of horrible prejudice. Kennedy was a man who could change and he did.
Known as the Birmingham Campaign, King altered history and shifted Kennedy’s thinking along with it. His famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is now legend. It was King’s incarceration in Birmingham that led Coretta Scott King to call President Kennedy, which resulted in him interceding once again on King’s behalf, forcing the Birmingham bigots to allow King to talk to his wife.
The March on Washington and King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” worried President Kennedy at the time. He was understandably concerned about violence breaking out, but eventually King won him over.
Watching the brutality in Birmingham and the subsequent political push from King and other civil rights leaders changed Kennedy forever. Months before King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, on June 11, 1963, JFK proposed action that would offer “the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. had gotten through to Kennedy, revealing something from which J.F.K. had once been distanced, a world away.
A foreign policy adviser to four Democratic presidents, Mr. Holbrooke was a towering, one-of-a-kind presence who helped define American national security strategy over 40 years and three wars by connecting Washington politicians with New York elites and influential figures in capitals worldwide. He seemed to live on airplanes and move with equal confidence through Upper East Side cocktail parties, the halls of the White House and the slums of Pakistan. … Mr. Holbrooke’s expansive career began in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where he served as a field officer, and included appointments as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as one of the youngest assistant secretaries of state in U.S. history. When Republicans were in power, he was a banker, a journalist and a best-selling author. His most prominent role was as a presidential wartime problem solver, to which Mr. Holbrooke applied an unwavering energy, a flair for diplomatic improvisation and a hard-charging style that could yield dramatic breakthroughs but also generate bitterness and enmity, even among his American teammates. Although the consequences of his forceful personality were laid bare in his efforts to stabilize Afghanistan and Pakistan, leading to tense disagreements with leaders of those nations and fellow U.S. officials, Mr. Holbrooke never stopped trying to address the insurgencies that threaten both countries. … – Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The quote is from Rajiv Chandrasekaran, whose article on the tenaciously combustible Richard Holbrooke gives you an idea of the life he lead. Author of parts of the Pentagon Papers, Holbrooke was the architect of peace in the Balkins, as well as Pres. Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and served under four presidents going back to John F. Kennedy. Sect. of State Hillary Clinton called Mr. Holbrooke one of America’s “fiercest champions.”
Mr. Holbrooke’s countenance in the press always seemed set to permanently perturbed, so that when you saw him laughing it looked like a welcomed unleashing. At least that’s how it looked from the outside.
Following Mr. Holbrooke’s diplomatic career was like living a vicarious dream. The craft of diplomacy has always been a curiosity to me, likely because I grew up in the heat of Vietnam. It’s a war that left an impact on everyone who lived through it or was touched by the people who fought it, dodged it or tried to help the nation maneuver through it.
I got the pleasure of not only meeting him, but speaking with him one night about Afghanistan, which gave me a very tiny glimpse of the force that was Richard Holbrooke. It was an event at New America Foundation, with my friend Steve Clemons as host. Mr. Holbrooke’s wife, who is a board member of NAF, Kati Marton, is a firebrand intellectual I only saw in action once, when during another NAF event she took apart Flynt Leverett on something he was saying about Iran. The flash of passion and rhetorical heat from her seemed a kindred lash equal to something her husband might also deliver. It was through Ms. Marton’s book event at NAF back in October 2009 where I met her husband.
It was during a time when a kerfuffle was brewing in the press about a visit Sen. John Kerry had just made to Afghanistan, which didn’t include Special Envoy Holbrooke. He was standing with Steve Coll, Cliff May and a small group, including myself, and at one point when he learned I was a political writer he engaged me on the subject of Sen. Kerry. From the report I wrote back in October 2009:
“Our involvement in Pakistan is not altruistic, it’s strategic,” Holbrooke reminded May. When May continued, talking about the Pakistanis not being very happy with the aid package, Holbrooke pressed a question a couple of times. “You know who started that?” May didn’t answer. Holbrooke repeated the question, then added, “the military.” With much of what’s going on in Pakistan having to do with internal politics as much as anything else, Holbrooke also mentioned briefly his long friendship with ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, as well as the internal dynamics of the stretched tensions in Pakistan.
I asked Mr. Holbrooke whether he believed the Afghan winter would impact the runoff election. That started a monologue that would last around ten minutes. Once the runoff of Nov. 7th happens, Holbrooke said there is about a two week envelope, with the winter’s impact in the north, thus the Tajiks. (Abdullah is Tajik and is from the north; Karzai a Pashtun from the south.) Continuing, he said that we got Karzai to agree to the runoff “by the skin” of our teeth, by “this much,” changing metaphors and holding up two fingers to show less than an inch. “Of course, we got it,” but it was very close, he added.
Then I interjected another question, starting with “John Kerry–”, with Holbrooke interrupting me immediately, saying “Can’t say enough about John Kerry.” … Holbrooke continued heaping praise on Sen. Kerry, stating what had already been reported about Kerry meeting with Obama after he got back. Holbrooke talking about all the serious work he’d been doing in the area and how long it had been going on, with everyone working in concert. Holbrooke, Secretary Clinton and Amb. Eikenberry also had a 40 minute conversation with Kerry as well.
At one point he added that he’d seen a caption, he believed on CNN, that said “Ambassador Kerry?”, then chuckled. Now, some would have tried to construe this as a snide aside, however, Holbrooke was obviously making a good-natured comment about Kerry’s diligent efforts, while also making the point of how everyone worked different angles together. To add, today Politico has a piece on Secretary Clinton’s vital role in giving Sen. Kerry the Afghan mission and spotlight.
“The Administration worked seamlessly on this,” Holbrooke added, nodding his head.
The interchange, however small, is one that meant something to me, because the work he did was so important and looking in on it for so very many years I respect it tremendously.
There have been countless articles written by front line foreign policy writers about Mr. Holbrooke, so there are no illusions as to his rambunctiously bombastic style. Needless to say he’s not everyone’s favorite guy.
“He’s the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met,” Vice President-elect Biden told President-elect Obama. From what I know through others few would disagree.
I guess it’s a quality that helps when you’re doing the diplomatic work of the angels in a militaristic world.
“If you’re not on the team and you’re in his way, God help you.” – Pres. Obama (quoting one of Richard Holbrooke’s friends and admirers)
For those people checking in after their Christmastime weekend festivities, this post will come as a stunner. It’s written by the former personal attorney and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Clarence B. Jones. A man who has a book coming out in January heralding Dr. King’s transforming impact, which seems like the jumping off point of comparison used to level a devastating critique of Barack Obama’s presidency.
Mr. Jones is a Scholar in Residence, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. According to his bio at Huffington Post, His personal, insider’s account of the 1963 March On Washington, Behind The Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation, will be released January 2011 from Palgrave Macmillan.
A snippet of his post is below, which really should be read in full:
[...] And, so it is with Obama’s continued squandering of the extraordinary support he developed for his election as President.
It is not easy to consider challenging the first African-American to be elected as President of the United States. But, regrettably, I believe that the time has come to do this.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist nor have a PhD in political science and sociology to see clearly that Obama has abandoned much of the base that elected him. He has done this because he no longer respects, fears or believes those persons who elected him have any alternative, but to accept what he does, whether they like it or not.
It is time for those persons who constituted the “Movement” that enabled Senator Barack Obama to be elected to “break their silence”; to indicate that they no longer will sit on their hands, and only let off verbal steam and ineffective sound and fury, and “hope” for the best.
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012. …
One can only imagine the incredible thought and intense contemplation that went in to making such a profound challenge to Pres. Obama, something that is a long time coming. Only a man of considerable weight and an African American could do it and hope to be taken seriously, let alone gain any traction at all.
The speculation about who could possibly make such a challenge matter began a long time ago, but it is shoved aside before any conclusion is drawn, because of understandable trepidation and fear of the reaction of the African American community. No one has named anyone who would dare come forward to do it yet.
The media would not make what Mr. Jones is suggesting easy.
The positing of the possibility may even rally people closer to Mr. Obama, though this hardly matters, because without someone of weight coming forward to write of the possibility of challenging him the current depressing situation has no hope of shifting.
It seems impossible it was just two years ago when people thought Obama’s election had squelched conservatism, but now it’s enjoying a revival not seen since Jimmy Carter faltered in 1979, which led to the Reagan era that conservatives hail to this day. Democrats still have nightmares over what they believe a presidential challenge cost them in 1980, even if it was Carter’s weak presidency that is really to blame, so the naysayers will be sure to bring that up saying a Republican win in ’12 can’t be let to happen. A primary challenge to Obama seen as a gimme to the Right by many.
However, Mr. Obama’s electoral map is stunningly abysmal after the Democratic midterm collapse, so regardless of his personal likability, his political incompetence even if he could win in ’12 is so total that progressives should be asking themselves just what is gained even if he wins?
Things are dire for Democrats and it’s Pres. Barack Obama who set it all in motion.
After the midterm catastrophe and after witnessing the appalling political incompetence of the Democrats under Obama’s lack of leadership and feckless messaging, followed by absolutely no plan for the lame duck session or a gaming of how to fight the Republicans using basic Democratic principles to stand firm, it’s clear that Mr. Obama is not only not going to change, but there’s no hope he’ll do anything other than join Republicans in their disastrous policy prescriptions, making America’s troubles worse.
Democrats, liberals and progressives, Blue Dogs too, will have to decide if Barack Obama is more important than the relevance of the Democratic Party and the principles to which people pledged their lives to make manifest for the good of this nation.
Political soul searching is certainly called for, it’s just a question of whether Democrats today have the courage and strength of character to do it.
… On the front left running board, Clint Hill focused on the overpass ahead, looking for signs of anybody who might attempt something from that ideal vantage point. About ten people and two police officers. No problem. He moved his gaze to the left, to the flat grass area that formed Dealey Plaza, where just a few people were standing and waving. Directly across from Hill, on the front running board, Agent Jack Ready was scanning the clusters of people standing on the sidewalk and seated on another grassy slope on the right-hand side of the street. The four motorcycle police were back in position a few yards from the gents, their growling engines drowning out the cheers and greetings from the few spectators. Suddenly, above the noise of the motorcycles and beyond the screams of the adoring crowd, a sharp crack blistered through Dealey Plaza. … .. – The Kennedy Detail, by Gerald Blaine (with Lisa McCubbin), pg. 212
If you’ve never been to Dealey Plaza it’s hard to fathom just how incomprehensible the left turn Pres. John F. Kennedy’s motorcade made that day in Dallas. There’s nothing about it that makes sense. Not that anything about Pres. Kennedy’s assassination lends itself to comprehension.
You’d have to be someone of the darker life arts to concoct such a malicious conspiratorial act against our country, which is exactly what someone did.
I’ve spent my entire life researching and studying John F. Kennedy, because of the lens I had through my older brother and sister who were old enough to understand and comprehend what it meant when he was murdered.
As many old time readers here know, I wrote and produced a one-woman show in L.A. a few years ago entitled “Weeping for J.F.K.,” which chronicled the intersection of my siblings and my life and just how John F. Kennedy melded into it. The research into countless books, which I began reading decades ago, has been never ending. Beyond Jack the man, what happened on this day almost five decades ago is an event I’ve studied since I was old enough to do research, along with the life of the man who captured America for one brief shining moment in a decade that I’m proud to have come of age in.
The latest book, The Kennedy Detail, is a fascinating and historic addition, because it compiles the story of Pres. Kennedy’s Secret Service Detail for the first time. That these men finally broke their silence adds an invaluable perspective and we are forever in their debt. The pain they’ve carried silently must have been unimaginable to relive again, though that it was healing has to be a final comfort.
For me, commemorating this day will be something I do every year of my life.
Pres. Kennedy’s murder was the beginning of a political odyssey for me that no matter what I was doing at the time was remembered. The cataclysmic catastrophe our nation suffered when Pres. Kennedy was targeted for assassination for who he was, as well as what his brother Bobby stood for in his life and as his partner in politics, a moment that impacted my older siblings profoundly, which trickled down to me from my big brother in a way that altered the course of my life and is why I’ve followed politics since I was a kid.
This day will never be laid to rest for some of us, no matter the protestations of the certain, meaning no disrespect to anyone sure, or of those believing the “magic bullet,” the Warren Commission or that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Symposiums with Mark Lane, among other things, forever disabused me of these theories when I was very young.
Perhaps Leonardo DiCaprio can give the horrific event serious perspective where so many others have failed. The film “Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination,” based on the book written by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, is set to be released in the 50th year commemorating Pres. John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Based on the story that mafia godfather Carlos Marcello confessed that he ordered Kennedy’s assassination to his confidant Jack Van Laningham, who was actually a deep cover F.B.I. informant (whom DiCaprio will portray). It’s a tale that’s been around for years and years, which deserves full airing by someone serious enough to respect what it means.
So, the mystery lives with us, the tragedy of a fallen leader in a decade of collapsing idealism all pushing me forward through life into unknown territory of what makes leaders like Kennedy, as well as F.D.R. and Truman versus celebrities like Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. That moment when candidate Obama was passed the torch by Pres. Kennedy’s brother Teddy in a moment of political emotion now simply hangs in the distant ether like a mirage.
And no matter what is said of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, having studied him thoroughly, I also know full well that he was the last human who fits the mold of statuesque superman hero, or someone who’d want the silly title. Not only was he so very human, but also deeply flawed, with a cold-hearted calculating brilliance owned by a man who was insatiable about life. That’s likely because he knew his own would be fleeting. His constant fight for life through incomprehensible pain and debilitating health challenges that were enough to kill anyone, simply made him fight harder to survive.
But what I think of most of all on this day in the last years is that in our current political and media climate the likes of a John F. Kennedy would never have been given a chance to serve. Our moralistic hubris defying anyone intellectually brilliant with a corporeal appetite to match the opportunity to try and juggle both in the light.
What would have been said about Jackie Kennedy’s smoking or her disdain for First Lady duties would have represented a collective wail of suffocating self-righteousness.
Pres. John F. Kennedy simply wouldn’t be today. The moralistic mental midgets on the Right wouldn’t allow it. Mind you, John F. Kennedy had to fight the Right back then too, including wingnut radio and even Human Events, but the current crop of self-righteous complainers aren’t satisfied until someone is brought to his knees. It would be sex over science and the moon, dumbed down politics over intellectual curiosity that took us beyond what we’d dreamed we could be. Political jealousies of what they can’t understand driving them to destruction.
But we all now know we lost more than Pres. John F. Kennedy this day so many decades ago. It was the beginning of the gutting of our national soul.
It led to escalation of Vietnam, Nixon, Watergate, and the cowardice pardon that led this nation to believe we couldn’t stand to hold our own accountable. The country couldn’t take it was the line and the Democrats sucked it up. It led to the tenuous presidency of Jimmy Carter, the calamitous Teddy Kennedy presidential gamble, then 12 years in the wilderness until William Jefferson Clinton came along to teach Democrats how to win again. It also led to Democrats letting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get away with unspeakable malfeasance, all on the notion that our nation isn’t tough enough to stand up for our own values.
The Right came gunning for Clinton, too, using a coordinated conspiracy to attempt a coup through impeachment, then the Left tried to humiliate him off the national stage by calling him a racist. However, no one has used a gun, though there are sinister forces targeting Pres. Obama today, with people showing up packing at rallies against a foe that only exists in their minds, the place where all hate resides.
We’re a different nation today than when Kennedy reined. It remains to be seen if we’ll end up a country John F. Kennedy could recognize if he came back to visit the country that to this day still remembers he was about much more than his name.
You get a free trade deal. ….and you get a free trade deal… And you get a free trade deal! That should be the banner accompanying Pres. Obama on his trip today.
This video is why I used to look forward to watching “Hardball.” Before Chris Matthews was taken ill with a permanent case of Clinton derangement syndrome, his blue collar, working-class sensibilities, minus his overly pious religiosity, made his show must see TV. What he’s talking about here is what I mentioned yesterday about what splitting the union vote cost Democrats. It cost us Joe Sestak. The job losses in what is called the “rust belt,” which Matthews refers to as “Scranton to Oshkosh,” have been decimated by the decline of American building power. It’s these people that Barack Obama just might have lost for the duration.
Ironically, one of the Left’s arch nemeses Patrick J. Buchanan was on this case over 16 years ago, talking about the decline in the manufacturing base and what it would eventually do to this country.
No one will ever be able to sufficiently explain to me why Pres. Obama’s first action as president wasn’t to begin a green energy jobs moon shot to match J.F.K.’s target to get to the moon. Or better yet, why “Bullet America” wasn’t launched, with the goal of constructing a coast-to-coast bullet train to connect fly-over country with everyone else. I’ll simply never understand the puny priorities of Mr. Obama, which led the only place it could on Tuesday given the needs of this country.
Pres. Obama has no vision. He’s transactional all the way.
Ducking out as quickly as he could after the midterm carnage and beginning his to Asia, planned long before reality landed because someone in the White House showed a political pulse after it was too late, Pres. Obama has a plan. It’s not a good plan, but he’s on a roll of disastrous consequences so doubling down shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Ford has launched an aggressive advertising campaign against the South Korea free trade agreement (FTA), which it argues would lock in unfair trade between the countries. In newspaper advertisements running within and outside the Beltway, Ford argues that for every 52 cars Korea ships to the U.S., the U.S. “can only export one there.” The ad states: “We believe in free trade, and this isn’t it. In fact, Ford has supported every trade agreement approved by Congress since 1965 — until this one.” [...]
While the GOP is seen as reflexively more free-trade, Ford Vice President for International Governmental Affairs Steve Biegun said the company has received strong support from Republicans in Congress on the trade deal. The company is the only U.S. automaker that did not accept a bailout from the government in the aftermath of the financial recession, and is seen as having clout on Capitol Hill.
South Korean auto producers sold 552,000 cars and light trucks in the U.S. in 2009, many of them made at U.S. plants, but Ford sold fewer than 3,000 cars in South Korea that year. Ford argues the reason is non-tariff barriers and other unfair rules. ..
I swear to God, it’s hard to be surprised anymore. The economic policies and priorities of Pres. Obama and his administration couldn’t be much worse. After his “shellacking” all we’re going to get is a more drastic right-ward tilt, something that never cured anything and only exacerbated our challenges.
“I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism… of working of the Carter Center into international affairs and to some degree domestic affairs. …” – former Pres. Carter speaking to Brian Williams
No single Democrat turned more people towards Republicans than Jimmy Carter. He created the Reagan Democrat class through his incompetent presidency, with no politician rivaling the disaffection of his own, though right now Barack Obama is working on a close second.
The disdain I’ve always felt towards Mr. Carter’s presidency, though in no way personal about a man who is obviously well meaning, is founded in many things, but mostly in his hypocrisy, which is revealed through his hubris today. As a self-proclaimed Christian, pride comes before the fall, though Carter’s fall is three decades old history. Carter’s foreign policy on the Iran hostage crisis, but especially the Desert One debacle, making many feel we had become a lumbering giant that couldn’t shoot straight, our very reputation at risk, ultimately ushering in the Reagan era.
The Carter Administration’s impotence was underscored by the Iranian hostage crisis, which Mondale recalled as “four hundred and forty-four days of hell.” – Jane Mayer
This latest episode of Carter pimping his own post presidency reminding me again of an anecdote Mika Brzezinski told on “Morning Joe” not too long ago about a day when she was swimming in a heated Camp David pool with Pres. Carter, dressed in a Speedo no less, during the energy crisis, with snow on the ground. This from a man who wearing a sweater told us all to sacrifice.
Pres. Carter recently also floated yet again that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy was responsible for killing his health care bill out of spite, when anyone who knows history is aware that Carter’s health care bill didn’t have a chance in 1980, regardless of Kennedy’s alleged ill will towards his nemesis. But Carter’s humongous ego must be sated.
That Mr. Carter’s embarrassing self-infatuated arrogance about his own post presidency importance comes as former Pres. Bill Clinton convenes the Clinton Global Initiative is a fitting backdrop for a man who remains as clueless today about his own part in destroying the Democratic brand and putting the Left in exile for twelve of the longest, bleakest years we’ve seen. Carter ignoring Pres. Clinton’s monumental feat that has some wondering if the Clinton Global Initiative has replaced the U.N.
That many Democrats who voted against Pres. Carter, becoming Reagan Democrats as I did, still do not regret that vote is once again justified today through Carter simply being Carter. But as I’ve said before, Carter made me a Reagan Democrat, and Reagan made me a liberal for life.
Politicians are all arrogant egotists who love reading their own press clippings, usually believing only what’s good and railing against all that’s bad. However, because the press and much of the public who were alive and participating in politics in 1980 remember what a presidential debacle he was, Mr. Carter feels the need to toot his own horn about what came after his humiliating defeat. He’s now an embarrassment to himself, but also the many people who work diligently endeavoring to make the Carter Center a proud monument to a man who just can’t get no respect, but has only himself to blame for that fate.
The Netanyahu government is already intensifying its analytic efforts not just on Iran, but on a subject many Israelis have difficulty understanding: President Obama. The Israelis are struggling to answer what is for them the most pressing question: are there any circumstances under which President Obama would deploy force to stop Iran from going nuclear? Everything depends on the answer. – Jeffrey Goldberg
The whole premise begins on the foundation that PM Netanyahu believes Iran’s nuclear capabilities is the world’s problem. The weakness of this is that while that is so, there is not a consensus that Iran poses an existential threat to world peace. It’s over that divide the Israeli government and the U.S. stand, which makes Ehud Barak’s battle plan plausible. But Jeffrey Goldberg’s article should be seen as nothing less than Israel’s warning to the world, though I’ll leave you to decide how much stenography versus baiting versus fearmonger is involved in Mr. Goldberg’s intense rhetorical napalm*. “If (Pres. Obama) is a J Street Jew, we are in trouble,” doesn’t exactly fold into my brain as something simply added for color.
Israel won’t need or ask for our permission nor should they, besides, after Goldberg’s article it’s not like the possibilities haven’t been publicized. PM Netanyahu knows that no matter what Pres. Obama says he will not strike Iran. “All options on the table” means squat as things stand today for the U.S. in the region, as not only are our hands overflowing, but cramping from too much juggling.
But none of these things—least of all the notion that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will soon order the American military into action against Iran—seems, at this moment, terribly likely. What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)
In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.
Several Arab leaders have suggested that America’s standing in the Middle East depends on its willingness to confront Iran. They argue self-interestedly that an aerial attack on a handful of Iranian facilities would not be as complicated or as messy as, say, invading Iraq. “This is not a discussion about the invasion of Iran,” one Arab foreign minister told me. “We are hoping for the pinpoint striking of several dangerous facilities. America could do this very easily.” (Jeffrey Goldberg)
The cold reality is that Israel’s national security issues have never been further apart than the U.S. It’s not about our friendship, which is not in doubt, but about strategic and practical benefits and risks considering our own role in the greater region today, but especially looking at our gargantuan commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will not end in the near future. But of course that doesn’t mean we won’t be drawn in.
But more importantly, Israel feels that Iran is a mortal threat to their sovereignty and very existence. The U.S. does not have the same fears and foreboding. It’s that simple a line, with nothing more important for PM Netanyahu than protecting Israel, which is the only job that matters.
Jordan’s King Abdullah warned of in 2009, that if there wasn’t a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians war would be the outcome. For the record, there isn’t anyone who can convince me Iran cares one whit about the Palestinians, no matter what is being pantomimed.
Goldberg outlines possible worldwide ramifications of an Israeli strike:
When the Israelis begin to bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, the formerly secret enrichment site at Qom, the nuclear-research center at Esfahan, and possibly even the Bushehr reactor, along with the other main sites of the Iranian nuclear program, a short while after they depart en masse from their bases across Israel—regardless of whether they succeed in destroying Iran’s centrifuges and warhead and missile plants, or whether they fail miserably to even make a dent in Iran’s nuclear program—they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.
A couple of things. There is nothing that can “rupture relations” between Jerusalem and Washington considering domestic politics as Pres. Obama begins to run for re-election. Hate to be crass, but wake up and smell the coalition counters. American Jews, no matter what their ambivalence towards Israel, are very unlikely to stand on the side of the “bomber-boys.”
Additionally, say good-bye to the two-state solution forever, with Israel’s very existence put at peril. The “Zionist experiment” and Pres. Harry Truman’s risks finally proved a bridge too far in a hostile region where Israel stands alone. Think Humpty Dumpty and spilled yoke everywhere.
Mr. Netanyahu didn’t pick Avigdor Lieberman and his war council mistakenly. Israeli neoconservatives like PM Netanyahu think Israel stands at a crossroad anyway, so if Ehud Barak orders a strike against Iran it will be because Israel feels she has run out of options and has no choice. Whether that’s true or not, there will be very few political leaders in the U.S. who have the courage to argue it and PM Netanyahu knows it.
“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” he said. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran.” Israel, Netanyahu told me, is worried about an entire complex of problems, not only that Iran, or one of its proxies, would destroy Tel Aviv; like most Israeli leaders, he believes that if Iran gains possession of a nuclear weapon, it will use its new leverage to buttress its terrorist proxies in their attempts to make life difficult and dangerous; and he fears that Israel’s status as a haven for Jews would be forever undermined, and with it, the entire raison d’être of the 100-year-old Zionist experiment.
PM Netanyahu feels like he’s got nothing left to lose. If you hear Janis Joplin singing you’re not alone.
“In Israel, we heard this as nine months from June—in other words, March of 2011,” one Israeli policy maker told me. “If we assume that nothing changes in these estimates, this means that we will have to begin thinking about our next step beginning at the turn of the year.”
I just wish everyone would quit equating John F. Kennedy with this situation, in whatever manner it’s being done to draw out the drama. There is no equivalency here and the drama is very clear. Israel’s position with Iran is not close to Kennedy’s with Cuba, and Ben-Gurion talking to Kennedy on qui pro quos is irrelevant to the situation, as is Jeffrey Goldberg ending his piece with the falsely ringing finale about what Pres. Obama does in this situation will or will not make him a “great president” in Israel’s eyes, which is not only a condescending coupling, but the mother of all traps for the United States.
TM Note: The term “rhetorical napalm” was written somewhere recently and I immediately thought of it in context with the Middle East. I’ve borrowed it here and will again, though I can’t remember who wrote it first, so this is the best I can do to give credit for the brilliant word coupling.
[...] The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites. It has also lessened the focus on assisting African-Americans, who despite a veneer of successful people at the very top still experience high rates of poverty, drug abuse, incarceration and family breakup. … Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end. Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white. The need for inclusiveness in our society is undeniable and irreversible, both in our markets and in our communities. Our government should be in the business of enabling opportunity for all, not in picking winners. It can do so by ensuring that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes. … – Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege, by Senator James Webb
Oh, the irony. Pres. Obama blames the media for finding himself on his political heels. How perfect. His administration is the victim. Perhaps, but only of their own feckless incompetence and political stupidity.
“He jumped the gun,” Obama said of Vilsack, “partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles.” – Huffington Post
The whole thing has Josh Marshall very upset. Obama central is in a tailspin. His “analysis” always centered somewhere inside the Obama administration’s inner ego, after all it’s good for business to blow smoke up the boss, once again Marshall misses the story, but also the irony embedded in his own political analysis, if you want to call it that. It wouldn’t pass the smell test in junior high cub reporting class.
[...] as Josh Green ably notes, most of Breitbart’s scoops center on race and/or race-baiting…
Marshall inadvertently admits everyone knows Andrew Breitbart, who is now calling himself “public enemy number one,” focuses his “scoops” on race. Remember the ACORN take down? What Marshall can’t bring himself to admit is that not only did the White House political shop miss it, but why. They were too busy running Pres. Obama’s “the ideological battles that we fought during the ’90s that were really extensions of battles we fought since the ’60s” political strategy. The one that ducks ideological confrontations that matter at all cost, replacing Democratic principles with bipartisanship compromise no matter what, including when you have a majority in both houses of Congress.
Nothing to see here, says Josh Marshall. Recommence fluffing.
The wider media, including die hard Obama supporters Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and even Eugene Robinson, have sensed a seminal moment in the Obama presidency, and they’re freak. The Obama administration’s foundational moral cowardice revealing something even more distressing and recognizable if you’re a Democrat.
Having lost the job in Georgia she loved, Obama has found a new and bigger position for Shirley Sherrod, where photo ops can be grabbed and capital cashed in. There’s something stunningly patronizing about offering Ms. Sherrod a job in Washington, D.C. where she will be charged with expanding her reach to bridge the racial divide for all. Though it is a job that has remained unfilled since Pres. Obama was elected, because the man in the White House doesn’t want to fight the battles of the ’60s, even if it was those battles, which Sherrod herself fought, that helped put him in the presidency. Again, with the irony.
Thank the gods Martin Luther King, Jr. and Pres. John F. Kennedy didn’t operate like Barack Obama.
Instead of “changing the ways of Washington,” Pres. Obama and his administration have proved conclusively they are unequipped and unprepared to even recognize the ways of Washington. If they were they would never have fallen for Andrew Breitbart’s bait in the first place. “Changing the ways of Washington” first requires that you recognize them.
A vase in and of itself means nothing without the opening, the space it has in the center that can be filled to manifest its purpose. A leader isn’t a leader unless he or she is filled with purpose and the courage to take on the toughest issues when presented with a golden opportunity.
Pres. Obama, after first throwing Ms. Sherrod under the bus, has dragged her out only to pass the buck to her.
Helen Thomas announced Monday that “she is retiring, effective immediately,” according to a statement from Hearst newspapers. – The Hill
A great career ends in controversy.
Thomas was wrong, her comments remarkably tone deaf for someone who has covered politics for decades. She has paid the price and goes the way of Don Imus.
People need to know when to retire. Of course, I could say the same thing about John McCain as well as others who are long past effectiveness and sanity, in some cases.
Meanwhile, Glenn Beck who invokes Mein Kampf when talking about Barack Obama’s presidency, and other right-wing screed provocateurs who use hate speech to make a living remain gainfully employed.
… Do you think David Halberstam would have played water sports w/ Rahm Emanuel & then proudly giggled about it afterward on his Twitter feed… – Glenn Greenwald
“It’s one thing for people to think that you’re crazy, but it’s bad when they think you’re incompetent and crazy, and that’s the way we look.” – Israeli general, via Jeffrey Goldberg
Goldberg links to the same article in Haaretz that I did late yesterday.
Talking about Israeli reaction, Goldberg cites the political machine of the “freedom flotilla.” That’s what is so alarming and frustrating about the IDF’s reaction.
Facing a furious international dispute and widespread condemnation, Israel on Wednesday began expelling hundreds of activists seized from a flotilla of ships challenging its three-year blockade of Gaza. – Israel Begins to Expel Activists It Seized on Flotilla
It takes wiser leaders than are currently being coddled in Israel today to fight the Middle East political battles, instead of being sucked into a situation where Israel reacts exactly as their enemies hope.
Unfortunately, Pres. Obama is also looking out of control in the exchange. I agree wholeheartedly with Steve Clemons, because Obama didn’t have any plan beyond threats about settlements. He was under the naive impression that laying down his word would be enough. It’s cost him dearly and put him on his heels:
…Obama’s equation for moving Middle East peace forward was just too quaint and simple. Even though Israel is completely dependent on American security guarantees and aid and is genuinely a client state of the United States, the pugnacious prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, flamboyantly rebuffed Obama’s call to stop settlements. Obama, with some twisting and modification of his position, has essentially forfeited the match to Netanyahu.
During the early part of the John F. Kennedy administration, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev beat Kennedy in similar challenges and began to doubt Kennedy’s resolve and strategic temperament – leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, Netanyahu has become the Khrushchev of the Obama administration – and one wonders if a crisis lies ahead in which Obama will have to reassert his primacy lest the world think that Israel runs the United States and the Obama presidency. [...]
What Steve doesn’t go into, though he clearly knows, is that politically, with Rahm Emanuel having fits over courting Netanyahu, his chief of staff showed Obama’s hand in the second invitation to the White House. For political reasons, Emanuel believes Obama is desperate to get Mr. Netanyahu’s approval on camera for fear his Jewish support will disappear going forward.
The United States indeed does need “to reassert (our) primacy lest the world think that Israel runs the United States.” There’s just no evidence that anyone in either political party has the political will common sense and American resolve to do it.
UPDATE: Below is a readout of the press gaggle on Air Force One with Bill Burton on the subject of Israel.
MR. BURTON: Well, I’m not going to get into the specifics of the conversations that we’re having with Israel, but I will say it’s important to the President and to our country that we don’t see the same kind of events unfold like they did the last time. So we are talking to our partners and are hopeful that we won’t see a repeat.
Q Does he feel confident then that they’re on the same page, that there’s a shared sentiment that something like this shouldn’t happen again?
MR. BURTON: He feels confident that we’re having productive conversations with them.
Q And also the flotilla report, the inquiry that’s going on, the fact-finding effort, what’s the status of that? Do you know when that report might come back?
MR. BURTON: I don’t have a timeline on when that report will come out, but like we said yesterday, the President supports a credible investigation into what happened here.
Q On talking to your partners, has the President spoken to the Israeli leadership since he spoke to them on that day — I think Monday?
MR. BURTON: There’s, of course, conversations that happen at different levels in the government. I’m not sure as to whether or not the President himself has spoken to folks in Israel. I can check on that for you.
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