Thanks

This just illustrates the knee-jerk reactionary nature of the wingnuts. If you disagree with them, it doesn’t matter your conservative bona fides, you become a liberal…

The reasoning in your posting got me thinking. When you go to drain the swamp and find your up to your a$$ in alligators what are you suppose to do?
Key posts in Obama’s administration are still opened. He is still managing a Cheney/Bush government. The election may have been won, but not with a plurality of the vote that would give him a mandate. The loyal opposition is anything but loyal, polarizing every issue on the table.
Pressing issues such as the economy, healthcare and the mess in the Middle East are eating into the political time.
I am by no means excusing Obama. The realities are he has some big alligators to deal with.

Posts like yours are fundamental in reminding the establishment about “draining the swamp”.
Keep them coming!!!!!

My guess is she would have had moose-sized safes in her office, and Todd would be spying on who he pleases. By the way, you are electing Todd when you vote for Palin. Sorta like electing Hillary when you voted for Slick Willy.

whatEVER obama does WILL BE objected to and obstructed by the Rs…
always. every time. it’s their job.

(you should always be specific, but i got it…)
…

so, no one else heard willie on ed’s show?

i thought he sounded like an old time racist, recalling the old meme about the blacks in the cities killing each other…

maybe it’s not that old either…

ah well…

Republicans don’t usually have new thoughts…

First, regarding your first statement at #11, you said “critics” but in post #32, you modify it as “republicans.” You can be one and not both.

As far as my “poison the well,” comment, your conclusion that critics don’t support Obama on anything is also a wrong conclusion.

The issues of criticism that have been presented are mainly issues that Obama specifically ran on to get elected; passionate issues, foremost of which was, for example, transparency.

(via Greenwald:)

It should also be noted that — as Think Progress documented yesterday — Obama’s position in denying access to visitor logs is a direct violation of his statements about the Bush administration’s practices in doing the same, and the same is true for his use of the Bush-era version of the state secrets theory.

Those who supported him in his campaign have indeed worked to support him, and are well within their purview to raise objections when the looming issues they based votes on are documentedly ignored or treated contrary to the promises. Nor, do I believe, is it a sound idea to require compliance with what you or other supporters deem a test of credibility before cogent and sourced criticism can take place.

When an issue is urgent and passionate people are involved, which the campaign for both parties did little to discourage, it should be expected that when a president acts contrary to his stated goal or promise, it is incumbent on him to make it very clear why he has taken that course in opposition to his promise, particularly the very issues he objected to as a candidate.

Make no mistake, the issues that helped to get Obama elected are large and pressing and when they are stifled, with poor reasoning as was telecom immunity, it establishes a strong wariness as was the case when the dems won in 2006 and promptly took impeachment off the table. That is infuriating.

From a progressive viewpoint, I’m less likely to comment on the paint job if the car is burning. Bush is still free with no prospect of investigation. I find no excuse for that, among other alarming events and actions.

After eight years of being lied to and abused, I’m not sanguine about being unceremoniously and euphemistically told that my concerns are either regarded as “looking to the past,” or “it’s all national security” and I have no right to know what’s being done in my own government.

(From the above linked Greenwald piece:)

Can anyone deny what the NYT and [wash] Post are pointing out today? This is what happened this week alone in the realm of Obama’s approach to “national security” and civil liberties:

Monday – Obama administration’s letter to Britian threatening to cut off intelligence-sharing if British courts reveal the details of how we tortured British resident Binyam Mohamed;

Tuesday – Promoted to military commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChyrstal, who was deeply involved in some of the worst abuses of the Bush era;

Wednesday – Announced he was reversing himself and would try to conceal photographic evidence showing widespread detainee abuse — despite the rulings from two separate courts (four federal judges unanimously) that the law compels their disclosure;

Friday – Unveiled his plan to preserve a modified system of military commissions for trying Guantanamo detainees, rather than using our extant-judicial processes for doing so.

It’s not the fault of civil libertarians that Obama did all of those things, just in this week alone. These are the very policies — along with things like the claimed power to abduct and imprison people indefinitely with no charges of any kind and the use of the “state secrets privilege” to deny torture and spying victims a day in court — that caused such extreme anger and criticisms toward the Bush presidency.

What would it say about a person who spent the last seven years vehemently criticizing those policies to suddenly decide that the same policies were perfectly fine or not particularly bothersome when Obama adopts them? How could that be justified? What should one say about a person who vehemently objected to X when Bush did it, but then suddenly found ways to defend or mitigate X when Obama does it?

Greenwald asks some very good questions:

Since that first week, Obama has engaged in one action after the next to preserve many of the key prongs, and the essential architecture, of the Bush/Cheney abuses of executive power and civil liberties. That’s just factually true. What’s the point of closing Guantanamo if we’re going to continue to keep people indefinitely in cages with no trial in Bagram, or if we simply transport a modified version of Guantanamo justice to the U.S.? How can a President who repeatedly promised vast transparency embrace the most extremist Bush/Cheney secrecy powers?

This is what I’m talking about. I borrow heavily from Glenn Greenwald because he expresses my frustration and anger much more concisely than I. To sum up, Greenwald again expresses my position perfectly (emphasis mine):

But unless the opposition of the last eight years was really just a cynical means for opportunistically weakening and demonizing Republican opponents rather than opposing policies that one genuinely found dangerous and wrong, then the actions of Obama are leaving no other choice but to object and object strenuously….If nothing else, refraining from objecting will ensure that this continues further and further.

If I strenuously object to it from bush, I strenuously object to it from Obama or anyone else. That’s the difference in being a progressive, imho.

If the Republicans are for it, do the opposite. You can’t go wrong!

I’m thinking about using this strategy to start up a mutual fund. I’ll call it the Backup Short Fund.

Anything I invest in, the fund will short.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

With proof!

Still no cure for BDS, yet?

Anonymouse. pointing to the failures of someone else is way easier than proposing solutions yourself.

Still no cure for BDS, yet?