Don’t Worry About the Left

Amen, amen, a-freakin-men.

Daily Kos: What bill do you think you're supporting?:

"And every time progressives shrug their shoulders and say, 'all right, we'll take whatever we can get', you empower those critics. Rather than draw a line in the sand and bolster the efforts of true reformists, you are leaving them high and dry. And the weaker progressives get, the more Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln and the rest of that bunch can do to make this not just a bad bill politically, but a bad bill policy wise.

It's clear at this point that if we get anything at all, it won't be much good. That's an obvious political reality. But every shrug of the shoulder helps make this even worse."

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Agreed, Russ, but why didn't you, jeez, I don't know... vote against the goddamn bill?!? Why are you conceding any power that you might have as a Progressive to Liebercrats?

Russ Feingold: In the News - Press Releases:

"“I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill to make sure this essential provision is included."

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Really, Rahm. Really?

We'll see how that works out for you and the President.

You are eternally fucked after this bit of snide bullshit.

Daily Kos: Rahm Emanuel: Don’t Worry About the Left

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Weren't these suppose to be the smartest people in the world?

Drew Westen: Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator:

"Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both."

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Still good to remember how evil and fucked up the previous overlords were, though.

Would have been nice to prosecute a bunch of them, but, nah, not enough time with all of the screwing-over-the folks-who-voted-you-in by the current bunch.

Report: Bush Admin Raised Terror Alert Based On Con Man's Al Jazeera 'Decoding' Scam | TPMMuckraker:

"The report deals another blow to the credibility of the Department of Homeland Security's color-coded terror alert system, and comes after Ridge's claim that the system was used as a political tool when he was DHS secretary.

The man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree. His former lawyer calls him a 'habitual liar engaged in fraud.'"

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And the remainders of this band of assholes has all but prevent any type of meaningful legislation from ever passing.

But I'm sure the feckless Democrats who call themselves "Progressives" will not do one goddamn thing about it.

Op-Ed Columnist - A Dangerous Dysfunction - NYTimes.com:

"Some people will say that it has always been this way, and that we’ve managed so far. But it wasn’t always like this. Yes, there were filibusters in the past — most notably by segregationists trying to block civil rights legislation. But the modern system, in which the minority party uses the threat of a filibuster to block every bill it doesn’t like, is a recent creation.

The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent."

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Grandpa McCain lying again.

Think Progress � Flashback: McCain Refused To Grant 30 Seconds Of Time During Iraq War Debate:

"Unfortunately, McCain’s memory is suffering. In fact, McCain has engaged in the very same behavior that he was criticizing Franken for yesterday."

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Sometimes I really wish the 'fiction' part was replaced with 'reality'.

From Uruguay to Hollywood: Watch the Video:

"Here's a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true.

An unknown producer from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a cool video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. The four-minute short, 'Ataque de Panico!' (Panic Attack) features ginormous (but slow-moving) weapon-wielding robots that blow stuff up."

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