A recent change of the guard in the Massachusetts Senate race force the President to reveal he is working. We, the American people, are waiting, just as we have been for months and months. For a full year, countless citizens have felt as though they were patient. Yet, the President did not seem to have their interests at heart. True change has not come. Countless constituents anticipate none is forthcoming. Three hundred and sixty five plus have gone by and the American people are tired of being patient.
MSNBC’s Ed Schultz talking at the AM950 Blue State Bash on Saturday night to a crowd of progressive talk radio fans in Minnesota lets go with both barrels at Robert Gibbs, at Barack Obama, at the “people who have infiltrated the Democratic progressive movement“, and at the whole delusional idea of bipartisanship.
“I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him,” Schultz said. “And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb the same way Senator Leahy got it on the Senate floor. I told Robert Gibbs, I said, ‘I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out.”
“I’m telling you, you’re losing your base,” he continued. “Do you understand that you’re losing your base? And that the American people don’t want public option, the American people want single-payer!?’“
Jon Walker makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday’s Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.
Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won’t let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is an article that was originally posted on my blog a few days ago. I’m posting it here at DD as a followup to my previous diary about the need for ballot access reform.
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A few days ago, I discussed the need for ballot access reform as a crucial first step in opening up the American political system and removing the shackles placed upon it by the Republican and Democratic parties. Today, I’d like to discuss another equally important element of political reform which I believe is a necessary co-requisite to ballot access liberalization: electoral fusion.
Fusion balloting, which is also referred to as cross-endorsement or open ballot voting, refers to the practice of allowing multiple political parties to nominate the same candidate for the same office. This cross-endorsement can open up several possibilities for minor parties operating within the constraints of a political system like ours here in America, in which two parties are dominant: these minor parties might, for example, choose to cross-endorse candidates nominated by one of the two major parties, or to cross-nominate each other’s candidates, or to run their own candidates without any cross-endorsements, depending on what their political and strategic priorities are. At present, fusion balloting doesn’t affect most voters because it’s only allowed in eight states: Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Oregon South Carolina, and Vermont.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is an article that was originally posted on my blog a few days ago. I’m reposting it here as a self-introduction of sorts for those of you who I haven’t ran into over at Daily Kos, as well as an invitation to participate in what I hope will be an ongoing dialogue about the general need for political reform.
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Over the last few decades or so, America has gradually trended toward the kind of stagnation that has laid low great empires throughout history. This is reflected in the gradual erosion of the American middle class and the increasing stratification of wealth within our country over the last few decades, as our elected leaders have prioritized the interests of concentrated wealth and the handful of individuals who control it over the interests of the people. The stagnation in which we are currently mired is a function of the death grip on political power maintained by the Republican and Democratic parties, who have been allowed to game the political system to their advantage to an extent not seen in any other democracy. As I have stated elsewhere, I believe that if we are to steer this country away from disaster we must first clear the path for economic and social reform by achieving fundamental systemic changes to break the two-party duopoly and replace it with an open multiparty democracy. One of the first, and certainly one of the most important, elements in that systemic reform must be the liberalization of ballot access laws at the federal and state level.
After taking time out from blogging, I decided that it’s time to start crafting the points discussed by Jeff Roby in his entry, “For a Full Court Press“. This obviously isn’t going to be completed overnight. It should be designed with as much input as is reasonable and with time enough to include all the relevant details while listening to all interested parties. But we do need to get the ball rolling now. Already, some states have seen their filing deadlines for Congressional races pass. If we’re to lay the groundwork for the Full Court Press, and test it out on at least a smaller scale this year in preparation for 2012, this is the time to do it.
In the year 2010, the Republican party has finally, officially, re-discovered racism.
In between demanding to see President Obama’s birth certificate so that he can prove for once and for all that he is NOT a secret Kenyan Muslim and Republican demands to be able to racially profile all Muslim-Americans who might be mistaken for a terrorist based on appearance, name or faith, the Republican party has re-discovered racism in America, and all because of this comment by Democratic Senator Harry Reid.
Despite many, many acts on their own part that could be considered racist, Republicans finally became aware of the existance of racism in America again when a Democrat supposedly did it too.
When Obama needed the votes of progressives to get elected, his message was Change We Can Believe In. But now that he no longer needs us, now that he has power, he has a very different message for progressives . . .
That blunt message is echoing from one end of the Beltway to the other, from the White House to Capitol Hill, it’s echoing from K Street to Wall Street and across the corporate media airwaves. Corporate power must not be challenged. Don’t even think about it. Byron Dorgan got the message. Chris Dodd got the message. Robert Wexler got the message. We all got the message.
2 AM and she calls me ’cause I’m still awake,
Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?
I don’t have to tell you what her latest mistake was, I don’t have to tell you when she made that mistake, I don’t have to tell you because she wasn’t the only one who made that mistake. 100 million other Americans made the same mistake on November 4, 2008, they believed the lies, they voted for liars and frauds and career criminals up and down the ballot.
So here we are.
“Pragmatic” progressives tell us we can’t jump the track, the corporate media tells us we’re just cars on a cable, the “Christians” tell us life’s like an hourglass, glued to the table, so go to church unless you want to be damned to Hell for eternity like the Muslims and the Jews and the heathens in Africa and Asia. Well we’ve seen this movie before, we know who the killers are, we know who the victims are, we know who the warmongers are, we know who the hypocrites are, we know how it ends, we know how it always ends, but no one can find the rewind button, no one can ever find the rewind button.
What needs to be done in 2010? What can the left do in 2010 to ensure a better, stronger America for ALL Americans?
Before deciding what needs to be done, first we must remember what we are fighting for.
Paul Wellstone
July 21, 1944 – October 25, 2002
The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power. Government must remain the domain of the general citizenry, not a narrow elite.
~ Senator Paul Wellstone
“Politics isn’t about big money or power games; it’s about the improvement of people’s lives”
~ Senator Paul Wellstone
“I think this is really a good example of the commercial calculus and ties taking precedence over everything else. It’s sort of like the almighty dollar is triumphing over a lot of other values that we have as a nation.”
Pre- existing conditions? They are still in there, only now, instead of getting denied they get to jack the price up 3X and you’ll be FORCED to buy something, and without competition who are you gonna choose? THEY WILL ALL CHARGE THE SAME CLIMBING PRICE!
Yearly caps? They are STILL IN THERE!
Death Panels? For Profit death panels, you betcha.
And loopholes, loopholes, loopholes!
I’m sorry, but Obama is NOT FDR. This is NOT the same political climate as when Social Security was passed or when Medicare was passed. Hell, this isn’t even the same century!
So get over the fact that you have been TOTALLY SCREWED at this point and do something about it. This bill, as it stands, is so poisoned it should be killed and began again from the start, no matter how long and painful it might be. This CAN be dealt with in a year or two when the Conservative Wing of the Democratic part loses in droves, because that is coming one way or another.
I am PISSED, and you should be pissed too, cause we’re getting SCREWED on this deal. The ONLY winners are the political class and the special interests. Consumers are getting sold down the river.
Last night on Hardball, when discussing why he was opposed to bringing Gitmo detainees over to a supermax prison in Thomson, Illinois, freshman Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) defended the use of waterboarding on detainees — with a slight twist.
Schock: “I would not limit our intelligence agencies’ ability to get information from people. If they have a ticking time-bomb or some critical piece of information that can save American lives, I don’t believe that we should limit waterboarding or quite frankly any other alternative torture technique, if it means saving Americans’ lives.”
For the moment, leaving aside Schock’s boilerplate right-wing justifications for why he believes waterboarding is a good thing, I will give him a small, small modicum of credit for admitting what Dick Cheney will not — that waterboarding does, in fact, constitute torture. I would even argue that Schock went one step further than even NPR, whose ombudsman Alicia Shepherd explicitly banned the use of the word “torture” when referring to waterboarding or other brutal interrogation methods authorized by the Bush Administration.
That said, Schock still has no idea what the hell he’s talking about, and calling it torture instead of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is mostly a cosmetic change when he’s still advocating for a reprehensible method of interrogating detainees. He engages in the same denialism that Cheney does by stating earlier in the interview that “there have been no torture techniques, no alternative interrogation techniques, nothing negative in a bad way has happened at Guantanamo Bay,” despite the evidence from multiplereports that say otherwise. He also justifies the use of torture with the “ticking time bomb” theory, even though counterterrorism experts have roundly debunked that scenario as a myth, and the fact that torture does not yield accurate or reliable information anyway (to say nothing of the evil and moral repugnance of the practice itself).
Still, while I doubt this young Republican’s admission will have any appreciable effect on the public’s opinion of torture (which, sadly, is supported either “often” or “sometimes” by a majority of Americans, including 47% of Democrats), Schock’s words do clearly illuminate exactly what right-wingers are cheerleading. If only every major media outlet would muster up the same honesty to call torture precisely what it is and the courage to unequivocally condemn anyone who supports it.
