There has been a great deal of what I’d deem as stunning TV lately. Obama addressing House Republicans in Baltimore comes to mind. More on that later. Yesterday, Admiral Mike Mullen addressed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians serving in the military. His testimony was stunning:
Rachel Maddow had a great segment exposing John McCain’s hypocrisy in saying that he’d change the policy if military leaders said we should. Well, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs just said it. Now what, John?
The nation’s top two military officials just called for the end of DADT. The President of the United States has made it clear what direction he wants to go in. These are different times we are living in. If you need to ask where the change is in the Obama administration you aren’t looking hard enough.
This is a good thing. This is a step forward. Kudos to President Obama, Admiral Mullen, and Defense Secretary Gates. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, who originally argued in favor of DADT, has signed on with his support of Mullen and Gates:
In the almost seventeen years since the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed. The principal issue has always been the effectiveness of the Armed Forces and order and discipline in the ranks. I strongly believe that this is a judgment to be made by the current military leadership and the Commander in Chief. It is also a judgment Congress must make. For the past two years, I have expressed the view that it was time for the law to be reviewed by Congress. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I will be closely following future hearings, the views of the Service Chiefs and the implementation work being done by the Department of Defense.
These are the kinds of things that make me smile. Progress.
First a personal note. I’ve been quiet around here due to some business travel followed by the worst kind of sickness. Two things I learned from my trip to Vegas: Fold aces preflop (lost with them in every way imaginable) and poker rooms and planes are flu breeding grounds! Ugh.
On to the topic du jour. While I was away we had a potential candidate to challenge Jennifer Garrison in a Democratic Primary for Secretary of State, Sharen Neuhardt. We had the ODP force Garrison out of the race and anoint their own candidate in hopes of avoiding a base revolt in the fall. Garrison responded by abandoning the party all together and announcing she wouldn’t seek re-election to her house seat either.
Boo fucking hoo. Good riddance I say. To those chirping about how this throws control of the house into jeopardy I say get better candidates in more districts and get to work. I give two shits about controlling a legislative body if those in control don’t subscribe to the basic underlying ideals of the party they pretend to serve. I’m not a big fan of putting Republican Lite candidates into “reddish” districts just to have more people at the Statehouse with Ds by their names. I think ODP got that message loud and clear. Kuddos to them for making the tough call here.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with moderates in the party and there will be those who disagree on one issue or another. What is unacceptable to me is to allow the worst kind of wingnuttery to exist in our own party. Those demons must be exorcised. Jennifer Garrison was no moderate.
Two big takeaways for me here. First, blogs deserve a shit ton of credit on this one. Not all of it, mind you. The activist communities within pro-choice and gay rights circles deserve the bulk of the credit, but blogs banged this narrative home for MONTHS. This is a big win for progressive blogs.
Second is that one of the biggest “progressive” organizations in the state, Progress Ohio has some serious egg on it’s face in all of this. They made the conscious choice to provide political cover for Jennifer Garrison in the form of an interview with my old boss and Executive Director Brian Rothenberg. The rationale was – and no doubt still is – that this was an effort to help pass HB 176, which was a bill to outlaw workplace discrimination based on sexual identity.
The gay community did not appear to be impressed by this identity cleansing apology tour given the recent moves by the party to stave off a complete meltdown in turnout come November. Additionally, HB 176 from what I can tell is stuck in the Senate Rules Committee. Probably going nowhere. All those involved knew of this impending fate before laying their valuable political capital on the line.
It was a political risk to be seen as providing cover for someone regarded in progressive circles as completely unacceptable as a statewide candidate. I questioned the move at the time and was very critical of both Brian and my former employer Progress Ohio.
It’s clear now the political capital spent both by the organization and Brian was not only wasted, but detrimental to the overall goals of the group. These are the types of candidates and officeholders that Progress Ohio was formed to combat. I personally look to them to lead the way to ensure Democrats give us the best most progressive candidates and leaders available. In this case, they’ve completely failed me and others who might support them. The party establishment has now gone so far as to purge this person completely from the Democratic ranks while you are stuck with this parting shot which will exist online in perpetuity:
Had Progress Ohio stayed true to it’s goals and not tried to triangulate on this one, they’d have come out smelling a whole lot better. As it stands, this one gets chalked up as an unmitigated failure. My hope is a great deal of hard won learning will come of this and some serious introspection will occur.
A lot has been made of what Garrison will do with her $300,000 cash on hand now that she isn’t running for anything. Maybe she can donate it to Progress Ohio for services rendered. At least they tried to help her rehab her image. She may be owed a discount.
President Obama, in his weekly address, comments on the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision that we’ve been discussing here at PG:
So let me get this straight. You can ship jobs overseas. Set up a foreign corporation. Then use said foreign corporation to affect U.S. elections. There should be teabaggers in the streets over this one, but don’t hold your breath. Their trumped up corporatist astroturf rallies don’t really give fuck all for Democracy.
Anthony at ODB breaks the news that former candidate for Congress in OH-07 Sharen Neuhardt is considering a run for Secretary of State to oppose Jennifer Garrison in a Democratic Primary.
This may have been a bit lost in the shuffle of President Obama’s visit to Ohio, but it’s an interesting development and an important one. Jennifer Garrison desperately needs a primary. Despite the bewildering cover this conservative wolf in Democratic sheep’s clothing received from the largest progressive mouthpiece in Ohio, there is a large grassroots sentiment opposing Garrison on a statewide ticket. The gay and lesbian community is especially outraged, as is the pro-choice community.
Of course, this is all rumor until we here at PB confirm it. I am comfortable stating that what Anthony is hearing is correct*. I’ll also add that I’m hearing this was a true grassroots draft movement from progressives unhappy with Garrison as a candidate. Neuhardt was asked to run and is currently gauging support in the form of pledges to make a decision which way to go.
If I were advising Sharen, I’d say jump in. She shouldn’t underestimate the amount of grassroots support that is out there in the form of disgruntled Democrats unwilling to accept a Blue Dog™ candidate on a statewide ticket. Whether that will translate in to money and allow her to run an effective campaign is something that she’ll have to judge, but when it comes to lining progressives behind her to fight to win she’ll have no problems.
It’ll be an uphill battle, no doubt. Jennifer Garrison – for whatever reason – appears to be one of the chosen. Sharen can win for the same exact reason that Jennifer Brunner can win. They’ll both have an army of supporters ready to do the dirty work to get them both elected. They are kindred spirits in this respect. Much more so than Brunner/Garrison. Hell, those two don’t even belong in the same sentence much less the same office.
Let’s hope the draft movement and pledges go well so we can have a real choice for Secretary of State among Democrats. Garrison is wholly unacceptable as a statewide candidate if you care about Democratic values in Ohio. 100% No-Can-Do.
*Sorry Anthony. I couldn’t resist. (Inside blog drama joke for those wondering)
ODB is on the ground in Elyria while us others are watching on TV, but it’s pretty clear to me that with this speech in our state the President got his groove back.
In what can only be deemed a depressing week with the loss in Massachusetts, President Obama came out swinging and undeterred. Brushing off the Brown victory and quibbling in Washington over health care reform like he did his shoulders during the campaign.
The speech was consumed almost entirely of fighting words – in campaign style. The energy was palpable. The ad libs were smooth and genius.
We’d be good to follow his example and get our mojo back. It’s one year since we made history. It’s one fourth of a term for this President. We’ve got miles to go before we sleep. The rat bastards were never going to give up easily anyway – even in defeat.
Stunning development in campaign finance laws. We are now of, by, and for the corporations folks. Simple as that:
Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
5-4 along expected partisan ideological lines.
I understand this also applies to labor unions and other groups, but you don’t have to be a day trader to know that corporations will clean the clocks of labor unions in tossing money at races.
Weak. That’s the first word that comes to mind. Uncoordinated would be the second. They take the time to run a “first to know” blogad campaign (over there to the right), then don’t do anything with it? I don’t remember being the first to know anything. The only email I got from the campaign was a forward of a media advistory email about the announcement and a mention of the streaming – with no link to it!
The kids on da interwebs might call this a #fail.
I was going to embed the live streaming for PB readers, but embed code was not available unless you viewed the source code of the page on the campaign website. A note to Ohio lefty blogs about embedding the announcement would have been nice. I’m sure the campaign would want PB readers to see it, since we are the lefty blog with the most traffic in the state.
Team Strickland and Or Skolnik (“New Media Director”) need to step up their game. Give us a call or pay attention to those who have and are doing it right. They cleaned your clock on this one.
Does any of this matter at this point? Hell no. Kasich is not going to win the race because he had over 20k view his Ustream.tv video stream. Ted is not going to lose because only 200 viewed his. My point here is if you are going to do new media then do it right. No half stepping. The ‘fern should also figure out Twitter usernames too. Somebody get him a cheat sheet!
Now…for the real important stuff. Yvette was very solid. Great speech. I think she’ll campaign well for the ticket and motivate and inspire many. I was impressed, not having known much about her before. She won me over. I never did get too excited about Ted really, so he needed a little excitement brought to the ticket. Lee didn’t do that in ‘06 for me really. Sorry.
If I look at both tickets I think Dems are in a pretty good place right now.
If you haven’t watched this yet today you should. Required viewing to remind us how far we’ve come and to call on our better devices to continue to fight for social justice and a more perfect union:
I was shocked to find this claim by Republican John Kasich in a recent article at CNN:
“I think I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party.”
Yes. You read that right. John Kasich invented the Tea Party. Not just the recent tea party phenomenon. You know, the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging wingnut sychophant party that descended upon us this summer. No. John Kasich invented THE “Tea Party™”. The original one.
I was very doubtful until I found this archival footage of the actual Boston Tea Party:
It is tough to tell at first, so we had our crime lab digitally enhance it. I think this show pretty clearly that John Kasich did indeed invent the Tea Party™:
It seems almost inconceivable that Dems would lose Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate in Massachusetts. The only problem is the race is a tossup, GOP grassroots money and boots have been flowing in for days, and desperation is setting in.
President Obama campaigning was the first big desperation move. This is the second and may signal the death knell.
Unreal. I wouldn’t try to call this race, but will not be surprised at all if Coakley loses. This type of 11th hour desperation is usually the sign of a loser. Think Blackwell circa 2006 and McCain circa 2008.
File under “Duh” of course, but here’s more confirmation that Kasich’s main campaign platform of eliminating the state income tax is dangerous:
COLUMBUS — Legislative analysts have determined that a proposal to phase out Ohio’s income tax — a key issue in the 2010 governor’s race — would cost state and local governments and libraries more than $800 million next year.
Losses would rise from $814 million to more than $12 billion by 2020, according to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission analysis obtained by the Associated Press. The commission reviewed the proposal because it’s been introduced as a bill in the Ohio House.
Former U.S. Rep. John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor, has made a gradual phase-out of the income tax central to his campaign platform.
Again, the question is simple. Which programs will you cut? Which prisons will you close and what law enforcement will you lay off? What social services will you end, John? At some point these questions will need to be answered. $800 million next year opens up the gap that Strickland closed. $12 billion by 2020?
Damn…
So I get back from a week in the Dominican Republic to find Modern absolutely whacking the Kasich camp, right-wing tax foundations, and wingnut bloggers alike. Safe to say he’s had a good week. I’ve enjoyed catching up on everything. Anytime you post a “Many Levels of FAIL” graphic something good is going down. Getting off the island a day before the big quake and finding Modern on this big of a roll were both epic wins. Epic.
I also hear that John Kasich is a new media ninja. LOL
Glenn Beck recently addressed a false rumor that he was killed in a plane crash over the holidays (video after the jump). Apparently a “major news organization” called his business partner to get a statement on his fatal plane crash.
Why won’t Glenn talk about this obvious rumor like he did the obvious rumor that he was killed in a plane crash? Maybe it was just to make the eat chili and Ex-Lax and take a dump at Katie Couric’s house joke.
Here’s a clue. Your latest attempts to build on the failed narrative from the last campaign that Obama is soft on terrorism is fraught with danger. I know it is tempting and nearly a tourette’s like tic with you guys, but you must know that you are entering a world of pain with this one. A world of pain.
Let’s imagine for a minute that you even have ground to stand on. We’ll act as if your current criticism for delays in White House comment on the Detroit crotch bomber aren’t met by a 6 day delay by Bush commenting on Richard Reid. Reid’s failed shoe bombing happened on December 21, 2001 – just 3 short months after 9/11. Bush commented on the incident on December 28. A full week later. He thanked the stewardess and said it proved we were all on high alert. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft commented that intelligence agencies were sharing information with the American people in order to “enlist our assistance”. I’m sure this instilled a great amount of confidence and a warm secure feeling among the American People.
Let’s also pretend your Obama bashing for taking a vacation doesn’t immediately remind people that George W. Bush was on vacation for the entire month of August in 2001 as dire warnings were coming in that al-Qaida was “determined to strike in the U.S.” and Zacarias Moussaoui was learning how to fly a jumbo jet.
Again, Bush took a solid month off tying Richard Nixon for the longest Presidential vacation. Yet some wingnuts want to holler about too much golf and such nonsense. We’ll just act like this month long vacation while dire warnings of an imminent attack came in never happened. Guess what Bush was doing the day after the PDB entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US” was published?
Golfing.
Tip: If you are reading the “right-leaning” blogs in Ohio, stop. You won’t get any meaningful narratives that will stick. You’ll get a zinger or two here or there, but they are usually destroyed at will by us on the left. We’ve done it so much and with so much effectiveness we’ve begun to bore with it. Hell, we’ve even stopped reading them for the most part. It’s too easy.
Let’s also dismiss the entire notion of fixing the problem with intelligence agencies sharing data so that they might thwart future attacks. In a speech in February of 2003, then President Bush pledged to make information sharing an important tool in the “war on terror”. It wasn’t until 2007 that the Bush Administration published The National Strategy for Information Sharing. So much for a sense of urgency.
It all begs the question, really. How will you create a narrative about being soft on terrorism when your record shows you’ve been as ineffective over the course of two Presidential terms as you might claim this President has been in a quarter of one? Despite, mind you, the lack of a major attack on the country which you so proudly proclaim is your record of success.
Whose fault might it be that agencies don’t share data well enough to prevent a crotch bomber from getting on a plane bound for Detroit? Didn’t you have this fixed in the time between 2001 and 2008? It was obvious Republicans were working on this for years…or were they? I’ll stipulate they may have been a bit distracted by a war being waged on trumped up evidence in a country not related whatever to the current threat. A war which was spinning out of control and leading to unprecedented electoral defeat for the GOP. We’ll mark this down as duly noted.
So go for it. Bring on the soft on terrorism charges. They’ll be like political boomerangs on fire. They’ll revisit you and torch your narrative like a rich banker’s son’s nuts.
Go right ahead. Enter a world of pain if you must. Go down the road of reminding the American people how it is that the party in power during the most catastrophic attack on American soil is somehow able to now point the finger at the other party’s President and proclaim “soft on terror”.
