musings, reflections, & opinions on life, politics, spirituality, and just about everything else
May 9, 2013
Quack Quack Quack . . .
May 13, 2013… I flew by and posted a piece on the above date about ObamaCare and the Health Exchanges and no one seems to be home around this empty nest to wish to comment… Although, Thanks for the “Likes” from @lobotero and @cmaukonan Oh well.
In closing: Be Well!
~OGD~
Ultimately as liberals and progressives I think we get stuck in our definition of words. There are some people who define liberalism as a static rather than dynamic concept. But I would put out there that liberalism as a concept is dynamic and does nothing more than reflect the milieu of any given era in civilization.
Let’s take the oft talked about Greatest Liberal of all time FDR. FDR was a great liberal, but he interred Japanese Americans, which isn’t liberal at all. Social Security was a liberal policy, but just for white men when it began. Just saying.
Let’s look at R.M. Nixon for a minute, an arch conservative with fascist tendencies, who committed a political crime, that dude created the EPA and his signed into law NEPA thanks to Scoop Jackson, another flawed liberal in Washington State politics, he supported Vietnam but was a great environmentalist. They usher in an era of deep research into ecological restoration. Nixon reflected his era,because of the pressures around him. That era demanded some action on the environment, which was considered a liberal cause.
Let’s look at t Jimmy Carter for a minute, you define him as a liberal, but under his administration the airlines were deregulated, this is not what we would consider today to be a liberal policy position. Indeed he was reflecting his era, his time. And many of the Carter policies were liberal.
We all know that under Clinton, Welfare was effectively gutted, and that was an indication of what was to come, the deregulation of financial services. People love Clinton now, b/c the economy was so great back in the 90’s and everyone wants to go back to that, but at the time, Clinton’s policies were just reflecting the era, sometime his policies could be considered quite liberal, The Federal Acquisition and Streamlining Act of 1994, a very liberal policy that expanded the numbers of minority businesses competing for Federal Government contracts. It was a very important micro-economic policy.
Barack Obama is no different from those Presidents, he reflects this era. This returns us to my original statement, but what I am describing is our dynamic concept of liberalism which has changed over time. His agenda is mostly liberal. But not everything his administration proposes or accomplishes is liberal. I think that is because as people we too are more complex than that, we are not one dimensional and we are not static beings. We evolve and change as do our expectations of civilization. This is just another step up in our continuing growth as humans. As we continue to evolve as people, our government will evolve with us.
Crossposted at DAGBlog and TheAngriestLiberal
Let’s get this out there, Rep. Joe Walsh is discrediting a good name. The Joe Walsh I remember, played guitar had his own band and sang songs like All Night Laundromat Blues.. this guy, well he just doesn’t seem like he is that much fun and he is trashing what is otherwise a very good name! I know I almost voted for the real Joe Walsh in 1980, the best part was I saw him in concert twice that year, man that was a great Eagles tour. Oh, I digress, because this Joe Walsh is definitely not that Joe Walsh.
May I present you with the video, Chris Matthews versus Rep. Joe Walsh, Illinois 8th district, dufus.
Crossposted at TheAngriestLiberal
Wow, things happen when you are on vacation, and by things I mean Baby Jane Hudson Hamsher’s blog meltdown the other day has turned into a thing of absolute wonder. It was very dramatic wasn’t it, her Baby Jane Hudson style meltdown, dumb m-fers, really? Yeah that is the way to win an election, start another big fight on the interwebzz between like-minded people, that definitely gets us to where we want to be, wait, wut?
This ridiculous behavior is just all too familiar to me, I still haven’t really gotten over the 2000 election. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning people I argued with back then who said they wouldn’t vote for Al Gore, who had become one of the more powerful Vice Presidents of our time, in terms of his mastery of government and his ideas of reform and modernizing government via the ever-changing world of technology. He brought in an era of reform among the ranks of government. Most people may or may not remember his Reinventing Government initiative, it was a program that worked, it was the result of Al Gores hard work and his experience in congress. Yet what was with the crowd that insisted Gore and Bush were essentially the same, and why are they doing it again after all they should have learned from the Bush fiasco Presidency. We can safely say there would have been no Iraq War if Al Gore had been President during 9-11. And yet here we are, discussing one more time how awful times a million the President is and his supporters are soooo stupid to ruin his chances like this, by supporting him, err or something. It has now reached the crazy stage, in fact since Hamsher and that other crazy irrelevant guy Pat Cadell are actively working to make sure this President isn’t reelected, how liberal could either one really be? Yes, we know the answer, not liberal. These shoddy analysis are pushed by the media. They rely on manufactured controversy to get better ratings, and that is their only goal. The problem with the “primary Obama” as led by Baby Jane is they seem impervious to facts, they seem unable to understand party politics, they just hope that the President will be in a primary race. That isn’t going to happen and if anyone thinks it will it is because they actually have their head planted firmly in the sand. The Party has her candidate and it will not be Alan Grayson or Dennis Kucinich. It is time to accept this fact and move on. I am hoping we won’t let a faction of “the always pissed off crowd” disrupt this election. I don’t know if they have the power to do so, but they certainly believe they have the power to do so.
Baby Jane Hamsher seems no different from Ralph Nader, she is a professional gadfly. She is a woman scorned no doubt about it, I believe the blogger Eclectablog that he was sent an email from one of her employees basically saying she is going to crush him, and keep him from getting paid writing gigs on the internet..it is kind of comical in a sad sort of way. Does anyone really have that kind of power on the internet? I mean this isn’t William Randolf Hearsts era anymore, so the email comes off as ridiculous. I am not convinced anyone has that kind of power to crush a voice on the interwebzzz. How can anyone take her seriously after this kind of behavior? The over-the-top anger seems so like TBag in its apparent irrationality. And this draws us right back to the Baby Jane Hudson metaphor; Baby Jane Hudson, a former child star whose light went out long ago, her one and only goal in life was to become relevant again, one more time, this time she wouldn’t blow her chance, except that she did, because she always blows her chances.
What I don’t get is the end game, because certainly if they help sweep in more Republicans, progressivism will be even further from the doorstep of American politics. Because my instinct tells me that if you really are progressive you would want to prevent a Republican from being President, because in this day and age they simply have proven to be a threat to America. I mean hell, they are willing to play chicken with the economy, i.e. debt ceiling fiasco. Republicans are holding a gun to their own heads and ours by their willingness to take the entire nation down in order to win a Presidential election, which is surreal and might I add unpatriotic! And shouldn’t we be rallying people around this fact rather than fighting over whether or not there will be a primary challenger for this President? (There will be no primary… it just isn’t going to happen).
Personally, I wish the war between progressives would end, ugh it is sooo tiring, and boring as the same issues are rehashed over and over again with no solutions in sight. Baby Jane is relegating herself to obscurity, by her own actions, and for what? Just to be a contrarian, a gadfly, a rabble-rouser? She never does explain why we are dumb mfers? Nor does she adequately explain how supporting the President is really hurting his chances, is it opposite day and no one told me? Well we will never truly be able to understand Baby Jane’s motives but I think they have more to do with making money rather than any real political agenda, she is just doing it the Rush Limbaugh/Scientology way, by building a base of fanatic followers who don’t ever think for themselves. Yikes what way to make money.
Cross Posted at The Angriest Liberal
I feel I need to make something clear here. I do not dislike Obama at all. He is most likely a very nice person.
But I do feel he is not a very good president.
Then again we have had a very long list of lousy to mediocre presidents and I am kind of wondering if maybe that isn’t the whole point.
Our gal, Lisa!!
Politico reports, she was “the only Republican to cast votes for all four items on President Barack Obama’s wish list: a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a tax cut compromise, the START treaty and cloture for the DREAM act.” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46695.html#ixzz18vqfOQK8
They forgot to add, though, she supported us on First Responders, too! Ouch — where’s the party loyalty, eh? Now as we know, Lisa’s years of faithful Senate service were rewarded by the Republicans backing notorious incompetent Joe Miller for her otherwise safe seat, and they all rallied around imbecilic Joe as nominee, the teabagger choice of Sarah Palin. With Lisa sitting in the Senate right down the aisles from them!
But game Lisa cleaned their clocks with her write-in campaign, as to which Joe naturally lost his crackpot Alaska Supreme Court challenge only yesterday. After, that is, Republicans raised money to help the bearded nullity try to put an end to Lisa’s uphill chances. In vain, and it’s enough to make a girl feel unloved.
So should bygones be bygones? In other words, who is Lisa stroking now, her old Senate chums who stabbed her in the back without warning? Many have wondered whether she’d faithfully rejoin the fold after all, even though sometimes people do react badly after being spit upon by friends. Well, ponder no more, gentle readers, as her above votes above provide your answer to that!
Ah, lady in red! They say, uh, “hell hath no fury!!”
When we were young Joni Mitchell told us:
you haven’t really changed…
It’s just that now you’re romanticizing some pain that’s in your head
You got tombs in your eyes but the songs you punched are dreamy
Listen, they sing of love so sweet, love so sweet
When you gonna get yourself back on your feet?
Oh and love can be so sweet Love so sweet
but after a decade of Reaganomics, that whole dreaming thing seemed a bit darker:
The street was loud
From an angry crowd and
I thought of you, I
thought of you
Dreamer
Land of the free
No hungry bellies
Impossible
Impossible dreamer
Have you spent the week wishing President Obama would stand up to the Republicans? Are you stupefied by the prospect of a Congress that won’t extend unemployment benefits and continue a middle class tax cut, unless the wealthiest get an even bigger tax cut? Can you barely sit still for a Senate unable to ratify an utterly uncontroversial treaty required for a thousand a half reasons, but mostly to lessen the chances we we will all be blown away by some fool and nuclear weapons? Because the Senate has not extended tax cuts for the wealthy?
Don’t be.
For: IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From: Daryl Issa, Chairman, House Oversight and Government Reforms Committee
To: AMERICA
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