Whoa. Relax, dude.

It won't happen if you don't get off YOUR ass and harass CONGRESS! You think we are going to get anything done with only Obama on the frontlines while the rest of us "blog" our frustration. Yes, that's always worked. Voters need to wake the f**k up - our complaceny is the reason Congress gets away with their crap. Stop with the posting and get to calling, writing or as Clearthinker (oh boy!) suggested, FAXING! - By the way - not mad at you - just your post.

(Rick Warren my ass)

Obama tends to take the long view on issues which is frustrating to those who want it all now. I'm surmising that, to Obama, social issues in particular and their associated (mis)perceptions cannot change overnight. However, momentum can be gained in directions of tolerance by gaining the ear of an influential religious leader like Rick Warren. Granted, that's a repugnant thought to people like me who don't subscribe to faith-based religions. Repugnant or not, Obama's strategy has merit.

After enduring eight years of neo-Dark Ages, it's understandable that some want change, all of it, to happen immediately when Obama takes office. Shove a progressive agenda down the throats of the naysayers just like Bush did with his crackpot neo-con agenda. That approach, as we have seen, will foment more polarization and intractability and make realizing a progressive agenda all the more difficult.

It's important to keep the pressure on by writing, calling, and faxing representatives. Getting into a frenzy without considering the long view may be cathartic in some way, but it does nothing to build momentum toward the kinds of changes many of us want to see.

So, with all you sneering at honor and principle and doing the right thing, just what the hell is it, exactly, that you want him to do? Abandon any attempt to lead people and, instead, jump way out ahead of public opinion and ram a bunch of change down people's throats before they're ready for it? Yeah, that always works great. Ask the Shah of Iran. Yep, no chance at all that that would generate the kind of electoral backlash that would save the Republican Party from its own efforts to self-destruct.

Or maybe you think he should just avoid the inevitable backlash by declaring a Dictatorship of the Progressive People, put all the Republicans in re-education camps and rule by decree while we build Glorious Progressive utopia at the barrel of a gun?

The most self-defeating, destructive and dangerously naïve people are invariably the ones who think principle, honor and fairplay are naïve. People who act on the basis that "the ends justify the means" invariably fail to accomplish the ends they purport to seek and generally only succeed in making things worse. (And, in countries where they don't "play by Marquis of Queensbury Rules," getting themselves deposed and/or executed.)

The ends one actually obtains are the product of the means employed to obtain them.

I am MAD AS HELL and I am going to use LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS to show it because it's not ALREADY CLEAR ENOUGH!

I like the passion... Keep it up. (Let's direct a little heat against big Finance, Credit Card Co's, and the Phil Gramms...)

Fired up!
{Clap-clap...}
Ready to go!!
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