President Obama is NOT a Coward

Barack Obama is no coward. Just looking at a few things he's done in his life can tell you that beyond a doubt.

My diary at Daily Kos was a response to the cowardice I see in his administration, not in him personally. However, he's in charge and the buck stops with him, though I should not have used the word 'coward' to vent my anger at the lack of courage coming from the White House.

The Obama Administration is not as progressive as I would like it to be. President Obama is right of center himself. It would be foolish of me to think that he would represent all of the same things I do as a progressive. However, I feel he needs to be. His administration is under the false impression that America wants to be more like Glenn Beck than Howard Dean. Even when shown proof that the American people want more progressive action, the Obama Administration still insists on leaning to the right.

Obama has a win with the Health Care Reform Act but the law is incomplete and falls far short of bringing fairness and balance to our health care problem. Expanding Medicare to allow buy-ins is one way to achieve this goal, something he is against. For too long, we have catered and groveled before the for-profit health care industry. We've allowed this bullshit to continue because our leaders have bought into the whole 'profit before people' crap the GOP's been spilling since the bad ol' days of Ronnie Reagan.

Capitalism is as old and decrepit as communism. Communism crumbled under its own weight because people can't be trusted to be reasonable. If you put that much power in the hands of a few men, those men will become corrupt sure as rain in Seattle. Capitalism is on a different wavelength but still falls under the same premise. Put that much power in the hands of a few companies and those companies, and by default their CEO's, will become corrupt.

Years of oppression came to an end in the Soviet Union because the people finally saw what was happening to them. In 1976, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band played a concert in the Soviet Union to a television audience of about 145 million people. This allowed the folks to see how life was outside the fences. What followed was years of black market items like Levi's, rock music, and other Western goodies coming across the border. Soviet citizens saw what it was really like outside, not the bullshit propaganda the Politburo had been feeding them for 60 years. It was the beginning of the end of the USSR.

It's the 21st Century and here in America, we are having our own eye opener. The progressive movement is seeing what the last 60 years of rampant corporate growth with little regulation has done. We have banks engaging in criminal behavior that suck the life out of millions of homeowners with little recourse other than a gracious influx of new, taxpayer supplied, cash. You see, they're 'too big to fail'. The health insurance industry laughs in the face of the Democrats as they lobby and get their piece of the Health Reform pie, leaving only crumbs for the people the law is supposed to help.

The Soviet Union refused to see the changes happening in the 70's and 80's. They held tight to the old Lenin and Stalin bullshit to the very end when the people finally had had enough. Now, the Soviet Union is no more.

Will the Obama administration open its eyes and see which way the wind is blowing or will we have to endure another president who can only see as far as Wall Street?

Aren't we the people too big to fail?

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Remind me not to enter the lion's den....

...wearing bacon pajamas.

I posted a diary on Kos today. After basking in anger and disappointment over the lack of backbone from the Obama Administration, I took it upon myself to cast a metaphoric stone in his direction.

It was titled 'President Obama is a Coward'.

I'm lucky I got out with the hair still on my balls.

The last diary I posted got a grand total of 2 comments. The one before was a huge hit at seven comments.

As of this posting, I have 186 flaming hot, radioactive comments burning a hole in the back of my head.

Goodness! Do you think I struck a nerve?

I'm working on a more reasonable response but until then, enjoy the fireworks!

So Mote It Be (for now!),
David A.

Success is a good thing.

We didn’t get the public option through the Senate or the House this time. The blogosphere wanted it, the people wanted it, and it was the right thing to do. But we ran headfirst into a brick wall called conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is neither conventional nor is it wisdom. It’s expediency. It’s going along to get along. It’s cowardice disguised as toughness. It’s a short cut to your fifteen minutes of fame through a swamp of dirty money and dirtier dealings.

Some of the first tier progressive blogs are screaming bloody hell at congress members who went back on their pledge to vote no if the public option wasn’t part of the final bill. Some of them are preparing fundraisers to back primary challengers of these nefarious lawmakers.

I was one of the strongest advocates for the public option and was pissed beyond a doubt that Pres. Obama failed us. And he did fail us. If he had embraced the public option early on (like he said he would during the campaign) there would have been little grief. Sure there would have been opposition but after a few of his barn-burner speeches, he would have had thousands of people calling the holdouts to change their votes. Sen. Max Baucus would have been forced to include it in the Senate bill despite the caterwauling of the three Republicans in his little cabal. If the president had realized or, more to the truth, come to the conclusion that he would be getting NO help from the GOP last spring, his campaign would have easily carried the votes for including the public option.

However, he was bound and determined to be the ‘Bipartisan’ President. He was going to include both sides of the aisle in the discussions and the debate. The GOP went along just far enough to give the president a small vestige of hope for compromise then played him like a cheap banjo. Fault for this lies with the president and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Emmanuel has never been a friend to the progressive wing of the party. He has always been a dealer, a back room manipulator who only gets ahead by playing others as fools.

As progressives got more successful at promoting the public option, he took hold of the president’s ear and poisoned the well as far it was concerned. Polite noises were made in support of the public option to appease the masses but there was no grand speeches, no full court press. President Obama let the public option die on the vine to appease the corporate money that Emmanuel needs to keep his K-street cred (and bankroll).

So, do we get our panties in a bunch because we were denied the public option? Do we, like some of the high and mighty blogs of the Left go out of our way to punish those who would not support our cause? Believe me I would usually say ‘Hell, YES!’ but not this time. There are some lawmakers who deserve our wrath. Sens. Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska being the vilest of the bunch. There are others who pissed me off but their positions on other issues are important enough to keep them around. Besides, one of the worst parts of challenging in a primary is that you make your candidate vulnerable in the general election. You have to be sure you can win both elections or you shoot yourself in the foot.

The bill has passed. We didn’t get everything we wanted. We woke up on Friday morning after the reconciliation vote and the public option wasn’t under the tree. Now, we can piss and moan, sulk around the room and make life miserable for those around us. Or we can sit down and enjoy what we did receive. There are others ways to get what we want. Let’s work on those. Our time is limited; the season of campaigning for the 2010 midterms is upon us so we can’t waste a lot of time rehashing the past. There are other issues that need our attention right now. Economic reform, consumer protection, unemployment, lots more – the list is pretty big.

It’s always better to tackle the next big issue after you get a win than after you lose one. I hope the Big Blogs understand that. Here at this lowly flyspeck on the blogosphere, we do.

Shake it off. This is a win. Get back to work.

So Mote It Be,
David A.

Got your back, Spocko!

The Vulcan is at it again!

Over at Spocko's Brain, the intrepid Vulcan is taking on the Crap Demon again. A couple of years ago, he took on the piss and vile that is the morning show on San Francisco's KSFO.

Officer Vic making a point.

The hosts of that waste of radio waves are especially cruel and vile right wing trash. They tried and almost succeeded in taking Spocko off the 'Net. His ISP at the time was cowed into suspending his site by Disney, which owned KSFO. In a clear violation of the Fair Use provision of the Copyright laws.

The EFF got his back then, we should be there for him now.

Update: His email to Molly Peck, National Advertising Manager, Chevrolet may have been screened so look up Ms. Peck in Google and promote it. That way she'll see it when she googles her name. Try every avenue you can think of to bring this to light.

So Mote It Be,
David A.