Ruh roh. Looks like ACORN may be getting $100 from my wingnut friend Joe C. We made a wager (I don’t forget these things – someone still owes me a bottle of bourbon from the 2008 Presidential…cough…Keeler…cough). The wager came after I made fun of those on the right getting lathered up by an article taking comments out of context to indicate (they thought) that Obama was leaving open the option of not running for re-election.
President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
Is the Copenhagen Climate summit dead on day 2? Developing nations are furious over what is being dubbed the “Danish text”, a draft agreement that apparently gives rich nations every benefit while putting the UN’s role in the background. This has thrown the talks into disarray.
We seemed to be going into these negotiations from a position of authority and renewed worldwide leadership on the issue after the EPA ruled greenhouse gases a danger to public health and paved the way for President Obama to act as the Supreme Court has ruled he can.
If rich nations such as the U.S., U.K., and Denmark are not willing to come at this process with a fundamental Kyoto-like stance it might all be useless. We appear to be willing to give away the store to the World Bank. Among the concerns are that the new agreement would:
• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;
• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;
• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.
This leak could be great news though if the pressure brought to bear over it causes the draft document to be abandoned and forces the hand of those wanting to force it upon the rest of the group. Hopefully we can take a step backward and re-engage the process in a meaningful way. President Obama needs to take the lead on this. Now is the time and executive action is needed.
Add to the base pandering list one Jennifer Brunner. Jennifer decided to go the route of the panderers even before Obama’s speech, which she spent being featured at a women’s forum. We call that pot shots from the cheap seats. If you have a strong principled stand against the President’s plans in Afghanistan you might want to have a forum on that during an important speech.
Hell, if you had a principled stand against escalation in Afghanistan you might campaign against the candidate who said in the campaign that he’d do just that. Jennifer, if I remember correctly, didn’t do that. My recollection is she was a supporter of the candidate, now President, who said he’d send more troops to Afghanistan.
Where was the wringing of hands back then? Why the wringing of hands now? You want attention. I get it. Anti-war libs are jumping with joy. The GOP is attacking YOU and not Lee. I get all that. I also get that you are now one of the crowd who seems to have conveniently forgotten what this President specifically campaigned to do. A campaign you so vigorously defended at one point.
You need to take a broader look at this. There’s no real long term gain in staking out this position and hanging on to it. For every anti-war lib you gain you lose a moderate or pragmatic progressive.
Brunner’s latest release reads like a staffer got peanut butter in the chocolate. A release about using bailout money for infrastructure jobs (not a new idea) gets confusing when the campaign again takes a shot at Obama:
President Obama informed the American public the next day that he plans to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan with a definite timetable to begin withdrawal, starting in July of 2011. Despite the future promise of relief, I would rather have our soldiers building bridges and schools right here in Ohio than in Afghanistan.
Earth to Jennifer Brunner. Soldiers are trained to fire weapons at targets, not pour concrete. You can argue all you want about bailout money, stimulus funds, and infrastructure improvements. All good stuff and it’s hard to disagree with your call to focus on main street instead of wall street (hmmm, where have I heard that before!?). What you should stop doing is trying to get more mileage out of your break with the President on Afghanistan. It’s starting to look pathetic.
Speaking to the nation from the White House Treaty Room at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, on Oct. 7, 2001, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban regime and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan:
The long awaited speech on Afghanistan strategy moving forward is tomorrow night at 8pm. Come back then as we’ll be doing a live chat during the speech as well as just before and just after. We’ll probably open the chat room at 7:45.
Early reports are that the speech will include a “surge” of about 30,000 U.S. troops. This seemed very likely from the moment I heard he was giving the speech at West Point. You don’t go to The Rock and announce withdrawal.
Jennifer Brunner has a diary up at Kos and is taking questions from readers. She’s advocating a withdrawal strategy which seems to break from what Obama will be saying tomorrow night.
Much more on this leading up to and after President Obama’s speech. This article in Proceedings has been a good read.
The Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske, BizzyBlog’s Tom Blumer, and BizzyBlog Commenter Joe C. are all dumb as boxes of rocks. They read the following quotes and come to the conclusion that Barack Obama is not going to run for a second term in 2012:
“You know, if – if I feel like I’ve made the very best decisions for the American people and three years from now I look at it and, you know, my poll numbers are in the tank and because we’ve gone through these wrenching changes, you know, politically, I’m in a tough spot, I’ll – I’ll feel all right about myself,” Obama told CNN’s Ed Henry.
“I said to myself very early on, even when I started running for office, I don’t want to be making decisions based on getting re-elected, because I think the challenges that America faces right now are so significant,” the president also said.
“Obviously, if I make those decisions and I think that I’m moving the country on the right direction economically, in terms of our security interests, our foreign policy, I’d like to think that those policies are continued because they’re not going to bear fruit just in four years.”
Seriously. Is there any wonder all you get over at Bizzy’s place is disjointed conspiracy theories, outright lies, clever half-truths, and misleading headlines? Does Steve Kraske know he’s stooped to this level? Damn, people. Reading comprehension. Try it on.
The President is clearly saying that he is more concerned about correcting the problems of the country than getting re-elected. He’s not saying he WON’T RUN! That’s the headline, but Kraske came up with “Obama says it: There’s a chance he won’t run in 2012″. You could have guessed that this is now running through Free Republic and other wingnut forums like castor oil through a bad bowel movement.
I’m surprised we didn’t run into any of these three in line at CampStupid.
Listen. I’m going to make this easy for you – and possibly profitable. I’ll bet you a $100 each that Barack Obama is the Democratic Candidate for President in 2012. Take me up on it in the comments.
Embarrassed. That’s how you’d feel if you were a wingnut blogger and had any sense of self awareness whatsoever. Those who have written vile, racist tinged posts about President Obama’s Veteran’s Day activities and visit to Fort Hood have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. Their hatred so blinds them that a clear sense of reality is simply out of reach.
They want to portray this President as uncaring, insensitive, and without compassion. No matter what the truth may be. It’s nice to get an unfettered view into the real President Obama to counter these sycophant wingnut lunatics. James Meek gives us just that. During a visit to friends graves in Arlington National Cemetery, James had a chance meeting with our President:
What I got was an unexpected look into the eyes of a man who intertwined his roles as commander in chief and consoler in chief on a solemn day filled with remembrance and respect for sacrifices made – and sacrifices yet to be made.
I’m sure the cynics will assume this was just another Obama photo-op.
If they’d been standing in my boots looking him in the eye, they would have surely choked on their bile.
His presence in Section 60 convinced me that he now carries the heavy burden of command.
Choked on their own bile indeed.
President Obama earlier this evening addressed troops in Alaska on his way to Asia. He continues to embody everything a Commander in Chief is supposed to be. His strong, but measured words are precisely the temperament we need in the Oval Office. He told the troops he would not hesitate to deploy force to protect the nation, but that he would not risk their lives without a clear mission and exit plan. Such words must be some comfort to even those Republican supporting service members in the ranks. They now have a leader who both appreciates their service and treads lightly on decisions that will put them in harms way.
Attempts to portray President Obama as uncaring and without compassion should be met with mocking laughter. Those would would make such arguments have no grip on reality.
More evidence that privatizing the military is a recipe for continued disaster:
NYT: Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater continues to operate in theater despite the ability of the great American men and women in uniform who are fully capable of handling any security mission given to them by President Obama. Mr. President, why are these goons still on the taxpayers payroll?
