A thought occured to me last night:

Congressional republicans have a stated (through Rush Limbaugh) goal of causing our president to fail.

Obama's publicly voiced support of a public option for health care has been lukewarm at best.

If he were instead to loudly insist on a public option, wouldn't that serve to harden opposition?  Could it be that his tepid support is to avoid painting a bullseye on the measure?

Now since he has only gotten minimal republican support as it is, I'm looking for him to stiffen his support of a public option.  This will put the blue dogs in the position of failing to support thier president.

 

 

 

 

I got beaten to the punch posting about Bill Moyers' excellent video essay last night.   It did get me to the Moyers page at PBS.org, and I was watching some Journal episodes I'd missed.

On one he had a segment on

http://catalogchoice.org/

This is an easy, FREE way to opt out of unwanted mail-order catalogs that clutter your mailbox, house, and landfills.  Not as good as a do-not-mail list, but still a step in the right direction.  Just one statistic:  A 1.2 - 1.5% order rate is considered good for companys "prospectng" with these catalogs.... >98% end up in recycle bins, or worse landfills.

 

TPM is showing ads against Card Check. The ones with a picture of our President, and the words "protect the secret ballot". It would probably violate the terms of TPMs ad agreement if they asked you to click on them, so I won't do that. I will state that every time someone clicks on one of those ads, it takes a little money out of the anti-EFCA war-chest, and moves it into TPM's ad-revenue account. What you choose to do with that knowledge is your business.

TPM is running an ad for a scam.

I realize Josh has little control over what ads are posted on TPM. When I noticed one for a well known scam( "Google pays me $173/hr") I thought I'd warn my fellow TPMers.

This ad is NOT associated with Google,  It claims that you can make money "posting links on google", whatever that is supposed to mean.   Here is a link to a discussion of this scam on a google forum:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/AdSense/thread?tid=310b60ceedc1cd07&hl=en

 

Recently the GOP has been making lots of scary noise about Mr. Obama's recovery, budget, and health care initiatives.  They are throwing words like Socialism, Marxism, and Communism around like it was the second coming of Joe McCarthy.

 

We should not dismiss these warnings.  For we have already become much like the USSR.  We are fighting two wars based not on dire necessity, but on promoting our ideology.  Our current military spending currently exceeds that of the rest of the world combined.  The current economic crisis shows that we are on the verge of spending ourselves out of existence, and THAT is the way in which we are coming to mirror our cold war nemesis.

 

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I have been a quiet, but generous (for my means) supporter of Mr. Obama during his campaign. I really don't do the whole "social networking" thing. I have never agreed with with all of his positions, but even when I disagreed, they seemed to be based more on evidence, and less on emotion; more on facts than popular opinion (gas tax repeal anyone?). Today Mr. Holder made comments in public that violated this tradition of fact based policy. A departure that has finally motivated me to break my silence.

Despite treating most of the constitution as nothing more than annoyance, the one amendment the Bush administration did manage to respect was the second. Allowing the "Assault Weapons" ban to expire was one of the few cracks of light in eight years of gloom.

Now we hear Mr. Holder speaking (presumably for the administration) about reinstating this stinker of a law.

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My first blog entry (on TPM or otherwise) so please be gentle, and you will still respect me, right?

 

John McCain from last night's debate:

"Yes. Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country."

 

Dear Senator McCain,

You have made a lot of noise about how you are not President Bush, and how it is time to change the way things are done in Washington.  Senator McCain YOU are not running against President Bush, OR the way things are done in Washington.  You are running against Senator Obama, who has seldom if ever agreed with President Bush, and does not represent the beltway establishment.

Eight years ago YOU ran against president Bush.  Four years ago, you were in a position to run against him again.  Considering the mess he'd made of Iraq, even a better position than in 2000.  You chose instead to take the stage beside him, endorse his bid for reelection, and endorse his foriegn policy, his domestic policy, and his economic policy. You became his houseboy in the Senate chamber, voting overwhelmingly to support the Bush agenda, and working to convince other senators to do likewise.

Of course it is understandable that you failed to challenge a siting president of your own party in time of war. It simply isn't done. The good of the country be damned, only a maverick would have challenged George Bush for the 2004 Republican nomination.

A maverick would have spared us the last four years of the Bush administration.  Would have spared the lives of hundreds if not thousands of our brave soldiers. Would have spared the human rights of the prisoners we still hold without hope of trial, and those we have tortured. Pity that the Republican party contained no mavericks in 2004.

 

Regards, and good luck during the remaining years of your Senate term.

Kevbo