Dijamo: I've let you have your say and chosen not to argue with you, even though you are as bad as anyone for selectively choosing quotes. I read Paul Krugman, both his blog and his columns, daily. I read half a dozen newspapers and as many websites, daily. I take the energy I used to put into my books, which were very well researched, and put those skills to researching my blogposts.

To compare them to "fiction," is the kind of remark I would expect from someone so determined to discount every single thing Obama does, much as Jane Hamscher does. It has become a cottage industry.

The truth is that no matter how passionately you believe any one thing or any other thing when it comes to politics, the REALITY is that you have to get your ideas past almost 500 congressmen and women from districts all over the United States, and then must contend with the most polarized and interest group-driven Senate seen since Reconstruction.

The fact that President Obama has gotten ANYTHING done in those odds is astonishing.

Even he does not think that the bills he has signed are perfect, but in my next blogpost, I'm going to show how no major piece of legislation ever is IN THE BEGINNING. Social Security, alone, took many versions over decades to cover the amount of people who are covered now. The version FDR got through congress would be unrecognizable to most of us.

This is the reality of politics; and it clashes against the idealism of politics. And if you cannot reconcile the two, then you will be unhappy with every single thing that is done.

Health care reform might not have been the end-all and be-all that activists wanted, but starting NOW, if you have a child with a pre-existing disease, they can be covered. If you are desperately ill, your insurance company can't cap your benefits or suddenly cut you off from coverage. If you have a young person about to turn 21 who is graduating college and can't find a job--you will get to keep them on your family plan for years longer. If you are a senior citizen, you no longer must face the infamous "donut hole" in your medication coverage.

For each one of the millions of people who fit those descriptions, their lives have now been changed for the better, and without a "public option." For Obama to have tossed health care overboard for the plan embraced by firedoglake and other absolutists would have meant many more years of misery for those individuals.

We do what we can, when we can, and we know we will be back later to do more, but to throw out the good because it's not perfect is idealism I don't need.

Yes, the stimulus plan was too small. I guess you are aware that the sainted Paul Krugman was demanding TWO TRILLION for a stimulus he would approve of.

YOU TRY TO GET THAT THROUGH THIS CONGRESS.

As Emmanuel said, Paul Krugman has never tried to pass a bill in his life. OF COURSE two trillion would have been much better and gone much farther, but THERE WAS NO WAY this congress would have EVER approved of it.

You do what you can when you can, and try to come back later to do better.

This is the dirty, rotten, down-to-earth political reality in this country, right now.

Without any stimulus whatsoever, things would have been much worse.

Those who have turned on the Democratic president because he refused to stand with purity behind PERFECT health care and a PERFECT stimulus--knowing FULL WELL there was NO CHANCE they would be passed, must live with the consequences if we wind up with a President Palin or a President Gingrich in a couple of years.

See how far you get, then, with health care reform, stimulus plans, help for the unemployed, and all the other issues that idealists cling to.

That is ALL I'm trying to say here.

And that is not fiction.

Fox News just donated ONE MILLION DOLLARS to the Republican governor's association to help in campaigning, thanks to "Citizen's United." This means that a so-called news network, which can control information regarding the candidates of their choice, can now blatantly use their air time and their donations to shove their influence--AND CONTROL--over the governments of 50 states and Washington, D.C.

If I'm going to bitch and moan and piss and howl, it's not going to be against my own president and my own party when we're up against this kind of blatant influence-peddling. With Fox News-approved candidates winning the White House, governorships, and congress, in part because Democrats couldn't stop dumping on their own president and attacking one another...Well, just think about what that would mean to the things we all believe in.

Maybe he's not the perfect liberal and maybe he's had to compromise to get anything passed with HALF of a congress, but if a Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich were in the White House, Republican governors were redistricting like crazy to seed more Republicans in congress, and the Dems were shoved out of any decision-making influence, then the Bush years would start looking like Nirvana.

Not exactly rigorous scholarship.

This is a typical right-wing argument--it completely glosses over the facts and misinterprets what really happened. She did not LATER realize the error of her ways and decide to be a better person, and what she did is not only NOT "irrelevant" but HIGHLY RELEVANT to this case.

When she took this farmer to a white lawyer, and the lawyer refused to help him, THAT is when she realized that she'd been looking at him, and at the case, all wrong. She THEN PROCEEDED TO GET HIM THE HELP THAT SAVED HIS FARM, as both the farmer and his wife have attested in numerous media statements and interviews.

You want to compare THAT to a bank robber? This is the kind of logic that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Clearly you have not paid attention to what really happened; only the knee-jerk reaction to defend the reprehensible likes of Andrew Brietbart.

And you want me to respect research done by an author who FOOT-NOTES HER OWN BOOKS WITH FOOT-NOTES FROM HER OWN BOOKS???

Gimme a break.

What blows my mind is the flat-out refusal to trust ANY news source other than Fox because "it's liberal biased"--no matter what it is, but when they get these horrible viral e-mails full of crap, they take that as flat-out FACT. Again, I tell 'em, leave me alone with this crap. But when they send 'em anyway, I snopes.com or otherwise send a dozen sources to prove 'em wrong and you would be AMAZED and the mental calisthenics they will go through in order to believe it anyway.

I remember arguing with a right-wing friend about the racism displayed by some people at Tea Party rallies, and he kept arguing that he had NEVER seen ANY indication of that and literally did not know what I was talking about. That's when it dawned on me that Fox news literally did not cover it, and if that's all he watched, then he literally did not know about it. No point in arguing with someone who lives on a desert island.

Hoppy--I'm well aware that profit drives the news, but what I'm saying is that I think that this is a wake-up call to the blog-driven 24-hour news cycle not to automatically trust the latest Fox News Outrage Du Jour, but to understand that they literally splice-and-dice, cut-and-paste in order to make points. I've seen examples where they've literally flipped words in a sort of video photo-shop in order to make someone appear evil.

What I'm saying is that they have been given a free pass by the mainstream media and far too much credibility for far too long. I think this is a wake-up call. Fox News may get by with hiding their mistakes, but the MSM can't do it, and the viewers expect better and will demand it.

Hey, buddy, I didn't say ONE WORD about the horrors the right wing accused the CLINTONS of, the awful jokes, the "Who murdered Vince Foster??" that was so rabid it caused Ken Starr to actually INVESTIGATE.

Being disrespectful to the office of the presidency was HARDLY introduced by liberals, since Republicans were calling FDR a socialist and communist back in the '30's.

I am not talking about insulting presidents.

I am talking about racism. Since you clearly do not wish to discuss the topic at hand, then I'm done discussing this with you.

"SO, you attack everyone who disagrees with your leftist in chief as a racist, because that's the only reason they could possible dislike him."

When I get an e-mail that compares Michelle Obama to a gorilla, what, exactly, does that have to do with "disagreeing" with Obama's health care reform, or his strategy in Afghanistan, or his Stimulus program?

When I get an e-mail that depicts Obama as a witch-doctor in exaggerated tribal gear, his face and body made even darker than he really is--what, exactly, does that say about health care reform?

When I get an e-mail calling the president of the United States a "tar ball" as a joke, knowing full well the "tar baby" derogatory term used during the Jim Crow days, how does that apply, exactly, to the deficit?

These attacks are racist. They have NOTHING to do with "disagreeing" with Obama.

I read conservative op-eds and blogposts EVERY DAY; I can list the names and have many times in e-mails to conservative family and friends, and yet, NOT ONCE, has a conservative family member or friend mentioned EVEN ONE liberal blogger or op-edder that they have read even ONCE, much less regularly.

Frequently, I sent links or copy over great op-eds that I find that have been written by conservatives, and I send them to both liberals and conservatives on my list. HOW IS THIS CALLING THEM RACIST BECAUSE THEY DISAGREE WITH ME?

I have had many stimulating debates with friends and family who are conservative, and sometimes, we each make good points. I love them and they love me. But this kind of crap that I see in these viral e-mails, these constant attacks on whether or not he was even born in this country, how he hates America, how he wants to destroy it, how he hates the troops--all this stuff--this has nothing to do with disagreeing with his policies and everything to do with something far deeper at play here, and I can only surmise, when those same people continue to send me these childish and stupid and nasty racial caricatures, that it is racist.

These are the kinds of things they are sending to one another; by the time I get the e-mail, it's been forwarded so many times you can barely scroll down through the hundreds of names.

So don't presume to tell me that I am critical just because someone "disagrees" with Obama. We are Americans and we disagree. So what? This is something deeper, and you know it.

Joe Wood--you are, of course, absolutely correct, and I have written about that before as well. I'd have to dig around to find a post I did on it last summer, I believe it was, on my own painful comeuppance on this subject. I can tell you flat out that I had some pretty bad feelings when the OJ verdict came out, and I have no qualms about admitting that.

Within the black community, I'm told, there are often prejudices--preferences for lighter-skinned over darker-skinned in terms of beauty, and so forth. So yeah, this is human nature, and I'm not trying to say IT'S ALL YOU NOT ME, so I'm sorry if it came across that way, as regards Tea Partiers.

My point is that the op-eds and blogposts I've read so far have dealt strictly with the public, more shallow aspects of this issue. I haven't seen anybody deal with this undercurrent that is thriving in the viral e-mails, because that is where the hypocrisy lies.

Thank you so much for this! I've been mulling a blogpost for several days, and yesterday, I was so upset I was throwing the "f" word all over Facebook and you KNOW that's no my usual style!

I'd just seen so-called "pundits" criticize Obama because they were skeptical that he could even GET BP to agree to the $20B escrow account; then, when he not only got them to agree to it the following day, but also $100M to go toward the salaries of the oil platform workers who would be without work during the moratorium on drilling--what did they do? Bitch because he hadn't waited and given the speech AFTER he got the agreement, rather than before! IOW, they were so busy covering their own WRONG asses that they couldn't be bothered to actually give the man credit for standing by his word and accomplishing what he had said he would do, much less give him the benefit of the doubt that, just maybe, he might be true to his word on the other things.

AND THIS WAS FROM LIBERALS. I didn't even HAVE to tune in to Fox news. All I had to do was read the blogosphere and watch MSNBC. All I saw, anywhere, was bitch, bitch, bitch on our own president. Nobody, it seemed, had the man's back.

I'm not saying he's been perfect or that I haven't gotten angry as well--far from it. What I am saying is that this CONSTANT savaging of him by members of his OWN PARTY could very well cost him the WH in 2012 and then what? Do those who are so sure that standing on principle is the right thing to do, REALLY think a President Palin would do A BETTER JOB?

There is a difference between self-righteous, overblown standing on purity, and GOVERNING. He does what he does with less than half a congress. He has no choice but to compromise his own principles to do it. Politics IS a dirty job. It is REAL WORLD--not ivory tower.

Neither Rachel Maddow, nor Keith Olbermann, nor Chris Matthews, nor anybody here has to run for office and work with a congress in which half of them are hostile and about a third of the other half are practically Republicans.

If they did, they would be singing a different song, believe me. Or else, they would accomplish absolutely NOTHING while in office. I'll take incremental progress over none at all any damn day of the week.

As far as others sympathetic to Carville because he's from Louisiana and he cares, I would like for you to find for me references to his outrage on-camera following Katrina when Bush's response was deemed to be "lackadaisical." I was not able to find any, and yet I could find many in reference to Obama.

I'm just saying that when your vitriol over the head of your own party reaches the point that your words are being used in fund-raising ads by those who want to defeat him and put their own president in his place, then maybe you need to ACCEPT THE CALL FROM THE ADMIRAL that he has tried to set up.

Again, the issue here is not that the Democrats, Pelosi, Reid, President Obama, the MMS, the Dept of the Interior, the VOTERS and BP or whoever as well as DECADES OF DEREGULATION FOLLOWING REAGAN'S "GOVT IS THE PROBLEM" hell else DID NOT FAIL here.

They all obviously are accountable for this tragedy.

My subject for this blogpost is the question of the meaning of leadership.

The Republicans are masters of media leadership--swaggering in front of the cameras in photogenic settings, giving stirring speeches, making bold patriotic pronouncements, and then walking off the stage and DISAPPEARING.

My point is that this president has been working far harder behind the scenes than he gets credit for, and that dispatching the kind of on-scene operation that is detailed in the TPM memo is far more impressive than standing in front of kleig lights in Jackson Square and then walking off to leave a city to founder.

You pick your leader. I'll pick mine.