This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

I’m with Marc Ash here – I still like President Obama, for a number of reasons, not just the ones he outlines here – personally, I think the President is doing an amazing job, especially against a disjointed Republican party that’s intent on just stopping any positive improvements he can make because they know the whole “saddle him with the problems and then blame him for all of it when he fails to fix it” isn’t going to work. He can fix it, he has the agenda, and he has the people behind him – they have to stop his activity and slow him down at all costs so they can continue to blame him for any negativity in the state of affairs.

President Obama also has to deal with a fractured Democratic party, a good portion of which is too conservative for its own good and unwilling to get in line behind some of America’s most needed priorities, like health care, jobs, and climate change. He’s got a lot of gridlock to deal with, and yet he manages to spend time pushing his agenda – and all without the help of his party, which is so busy defending itself.

Anyone who enrages Republican wing-nuts as effectively as Barack Obama can’t be all bad. In fairness, he does it without trying. In fact, just the opposite, he reaches out to them, which infuriates them all the more.

…

All of which can be argued to be “business as usual” for the American President. I guess what I like about Obama is that I get the sense that he would like to, for lack of a better word, change things. The missing link here is what kind of pressure is Obama facing behind closed doors? Even in the public realm we’re seeing unprecedented resistance to Obama’s attempts at reform, from conservative Republicans and Democrats alike.

I like the things Obama has tried to do: Health care reform, foreclosure mitigation, his comments on the outrageous decision by the Supreme Court’s five corporate lawyers to essentially duct-tape a for-sale sign to America’s electoral system. All of these things are a departure for an American President. He is indeed trying.

What concerns me are the things Obama has agreed to: An extension of the US Campaign in Afghanistan, an acceptance of the Bernanke-Geithner “Wall Street must be saved,” mantra, a don’t-ask don’t-tell policy on torture past and present.

I guess what redeems Obama for me is that he agrees to these things without losing his disdain for them. I wanted change, and in fairness change really hasn’t come yet. The intriguing thing is that Obama may actually want these changes too, and seems to. My impression is that he is meeting resistance in a number of significant forms.

Ash dives into the nature of the presidency and of how Obama may not have completely met up to the sweeping progressiveness that brought him into office (part of which I think is somewhat imagined frankly – I think a lot of progressives and liberals – myself included – made him into a super-liberal that he really never was, and never sold himself to be) but he’s pushing as hard or harder than anyone else could in this situation.

Ash also calls out a group that I’ve mentioned before too – fellow progressives.

The tea party crowd is merciless and relentless in their condemnation of Obama, but there is another group that stands just as ready to indict and convict Barack Obama: Progressives. Progressives are just as unyielding in their judgment of Obama, just as determined to derail, to thwart, to oppose, what they see as unacceptable governance. Progressive social objectives may be better reasoned and better argued, however, at the end of the day we may be seeing a Faustian synergy developing between two groups with diametrically opposed social agendas. Progressives and tea-baggers working on separate but parallel tracks to discredit the same president. Strange bedfellows indeed.

We now have a bona fide intellectual in the Oval Office – such things are rare. This is a man of understanding and insight, but his power to achieve change for good is not greater than the dedication of his supporters. Obama has to rally his supporters through a visible commitment to action, and his supporters must be willing to stand tall beside him.

[ I Still Like Obama ]
Source: Reader Supported News

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

I caught wind of this article over at TruthDig and was immediately drawn to it – partially because I’ve been seeing yet another spate lately (and this happens from time to time) of people who sincerely believe that having the human decency to respect the wishes of others with regard to the labels and terms you apply to them is “political correctness,” a term that’s essentially spat out by folks who believe they should be allowed to say whatever they want about whomever they choose without having to face the consequences of their actions.

Mind you, these people tend to be largely white, middle-class, Christian males (although they’re not exclusively) who have a horrible case of exposed privilege – their privilege shows in spades, and it’s very clear that as soon as you hear someone dare say something like “you shouldn’t put so much power in words,” or “words have the meaning we give them,” and so on (statements which are philosophically true, but…) that they’re of the crowd who believes their personal speech and ignorance should never be impeded by the impact that those words have on others.

Holding this privileged mindset generally requires the kind of “willful ignorance” that Martin Luther King Jr thought was one of humanity’s most dangerous characteristics – the ability to ignore decades; in some cases centuries; of connotation, history, slander, and slur-use of words in order to “ironically” use them whenever they see fit and then place the responsibility of being offended or concerned at the use of the word on the person or group that’s been victimized by its use.

Essentially the silent follow up to “you shouldn’t put so much power in words” is “I can say whatever I want – the fact that you’re offended or it’s hate speech to you is your problem.” Again, this is a tactic from the privileged in order to continually – without blatantly – subjugate anyone different from them. As there usually isn’t a similar dagger-term for the privileged group, they can sit in a place of privilege and “reclaim” a word (see Sarah Silverman’s horrific – but honorable – attempt to reclaim the word “retard” at the TED conference that’s subsequently been defended by the haughty progressive white male who isn’t progressive because they believe in social justice, but because they believe in their own superiority and ability to resolve the world’s problems in their own image) because they – again from a place of superiority and privilege – feel like they’re doing the minority group a favor by liberating a slur-word from it’s negative connotations.

In the wise words of JSmooth, who does amazing pop-culture, music, and politics videos for IllDoctrine.com, “If you’re not the original target of an insult, you can’t reclaim it.”

That brings us to the Tea Party Convention – which as any of you who read Not So Humble know I loathe to call a “convention,” since it’s more a gaggle of political thuggery and name-calling more than it is an actual convention with sessions, working groups, ideas, and solutions to real-world problems – where good old boy himself Tom Tancredo decided to take pot-shots at the so called “cult of multiculturalism” by suggesting that the only reason the President got elected in his landslide win was because there’s no “test” or “gate” to keep people out of the polls.

That’s right – he’s advocating the return of Jim Crow-style poll tests and taxes. Now of course, he’s missing the point – that highly educated people tend to vote overwhelmingly progressive – but as much as “education” and “ignorance” is his guise, what he really wants to do is keep the poor, disinfranchised, and the minorities from the polls because they tend to vote against him and his interests. And people wonder why the Justice Department still monitors elections closely in southern states (those with histories of this kind of poll-gating) to this day.

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, writing for TruthDig, has some excellent points:

Tancredo is wrong. United States political history reveals our long-standing tradition in this area. In “Before the Mayflower,” Lerone Bennett Jr. recounts how literacy tests were first employed at the federal level as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures adopted literacy tests once African-Americans were granted citizenship rights under the 15th Amendment, as part of the voter registration process. As practiced, the literacy test became notorious for denying suffrage to African-Americans. Adopted by a number of Southern states, the tests were applied in a patently unfair manner and were used, along with the poll tax, to disfranchise many literate Southern blacks while allowing many illiterate Southern whites to vote.

The literacy test—combined with other discriminatory practices that kept African-Americans from attending schools, from particular modes of transportation, from attaining mortgages and from careers in public service—effectively disfranchised the vast majority of people of color in the South from the 1890s until after the middle of the 20th century. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to by federal legislation in the 1960s. This legalized discrimination caused suffering and turmoil for all parties involved, especially during the slavery period and the Jim and Jane Crow segregation era. Tancredo’s call for the return of literacy and civics tests suggests that those (black and brown) who voted for Obama are incapable of making informed political decisions and are influenced primarily by identity politics. Moreover, it denies the fact that the majority of voters who elected Obama were white.

Then there’s the issue of affirmative action. Like many other reactionary politicians, Tancredo has fallen victim to the misperception that affirmative action policies have done away with institutional racism and moved society beyond equal access to opportunity and into an era of “reverse racism” and discrimination. This has resulted in anti-affirmative action legislation such as California’s Proposition 209, Washington’s Initiative 200 and Ward Connerly’s various racial privacy initiatives.

During the presidential campaign, Obama responded to this issue in his “A More Perfect Union” speech when he stated: “… we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap.” This misperception that Obama is an unqualified leader who benefited unreasonably from such legislation allows many to assert that a heightened focus on diversity is tantamount to a case of the emperor’s new clothes. Also wrong. Statistics on affirmative action show that white women, such as Tea Party Convention keynote speaker Sarah Palin, have been its greatest beneficiaries, while unemployment rates for African-Americans and Latinos, 15.7 percent and 13.1 percent respectively, rival those experienced by these groups during the Great Depression.

As usual, the conservative right and the psuedo-center libertarians are more than ready to shoot themselves in the foot and bury everyone else because of a misguided interpretation of a few pieces of fiction by Ayn Rand about some kind of inherent social equality that exists when you oh-so-conveniently ignore the fact that it simple doesn’t.

I’ll let Marcia sum it up, since she brings it back around to the issue of privilege, which is near and dear to my heart:

Beneath this fiery rhetoric, Tancredo is calling for tea partiers to retain the twin social privileges of being in the company of people like themselves while avoiding spending time with people they’ve been trained to mistrust. These social privileges are, of course, only corollaries to the tea party’s more blatant call to retain economic interests that, according to UCLA law professor Cheryl I. Harris, the law has established and protected through its construction of white identity. In her article “Whiteness as Property,” Harris explains that the legal construction of whiteness defined and affirmed who is white, what benefits and privileges whites enjoy and what entitlements to property arise from their status. Harris’ work reminds us that we must pay attention to claims like Tancredo’s because they show how whiteness can be used strategically as identity, status and property depending on situation and goal. Here’s a quick translation of Tancredo’s message: Privilege needs protecting.

They’re very interested in protecting their privilege, in keeping the veil right over their eyes. How interested are we in removing it?

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

Senator Richard Shelby, Republican from Alabama, managed to hold up the entire business of the Senate recently – and for what? The same things that Republicans are supposedly against: pork barrel spending, earmarks, and special interest money. Oh yes – the conservatives in Congress are only interested in smaller government and less spending when it has to do with people who aren’t them or their friends:

Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Ala.) decision to place a “blanket hold” on all presidential nominations until a pair of billion-dollar earmarks for his home state are fast-tracked has reignited the debate over the parliamentary tactics being deployed by the Republican Party. It also has thrust into the spotlight the clout that major defense contractors often wield on the political process.

On Thursday evening, news broke that the Alabama Republican has taken the extraordinary measure of holding up at least 70 “nominations on the Senate calendar” — essentially threatening to filibuster the confirmation processes if they came to a vote. The move has spurred a series of recriminations from Democratic officials who see it as yet another instance of over-the-top obstructionism of the president’s agenda.

It also has turned inquisitive eyes towards Shelby himself.

What is Shelby really mad about? Oh yes – the old Northrop Grumman-EADS versus Boeing tanker deal: the one Boeing cheated to win and then EADS cheated to win after it was discovered that Boeing had cheated. The big reason though is that EADS has promised to give the oh so valuable jobs associated with the contract to southern, Republican states that are suffering the most thanks to the Republicans’ economic policies when they win the contract. All they have to do is get the Defense Department to sign on the dotted line and Shelby’s state, for example, could see thousands of jobs – where Boeing, whose plants are in largely blue states like Washington, suffer as a result.

See the political gamesmanship at risk here? But the trick is that this is so important (and Shelby is a huge beneficiary of donations from EADS and their interests) that Shelby is willing to hold up the business of government until it’s resolved:

According to a review of campaign finance records, Shelby’s political action committee received $7,500 in donations from EADS’s PAC during the past two election cycles and an additional $21,500 from Northrop’s PAC since 2000.

[UPDATE: The investigative journalism group Center for Public Integrity looked at all political action committees associated with Northrop Grumman and concluded that Shelby has received at least $108,233 in contributions since his first Senate election in 1986.]

Airbus Chairman T. Allan McArtor, meanwhile, donated $1,500 to Shelby in May 2009. Samuel Adcock, EADS Senior Vice President of Government Relations, donated $1,000 to Shelby in 2003. A fellow lobbyist and top executive at the company, Ralph Crosby, donated the same amount that same year. One other EADS employee, Bacon Douglas, donated $1,500 in 2003.

The strongest connection between Shelby and EADS, however, may not involve campaign contributions. The senator’s former legislative director, Stewart Hall, is a major lobbyist for the defense contractor — he was signed up by EADS North America in 2006 while a member of the firm the Federalist Group. During that time period, the Federalist Group was given $240,000 to help advance the company’s legislative interests. When Hall left for another major lobbying firm, Ogilvy, he brought EADS with him — receiving $160,000 in compensation for his work for the company.

There you go. I think the Press Secretary’s response is accurate:

Briefing reporters on Friday morning, white House Press Secretary Roberts Gibbs called Shelby’s actions to strongest reflection to date of how badly Washington is broken.

“I guess if you needed one example of what’s wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold up 70 qualified individuals to make government work better because he didn’t get his earmarks,” Gibbs said. “If that’s not the poster child for how this town needs to change the way it works, I fear there won’t be a greater example of silliness throughout the entire year of 2010.”

[ Richard Shelby Senate Hold Puts Spotlight On Defense Contractor Ties ]
Source: The Huffington Post

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

From the “we already knew this” department, the President recently called out the Republicans for exactly who they really are: the party of no. No ideas. No plans. No agenda. No fixes. No sense. No grasp on reality. No desire to work for the American people.

President Barack Obama attacked Republicans as “obstructionists” Wednesday, telling a gathering of Democratic lawmakers that the party of no has resisted his policy proposals because they are trying to score political points during a hotly contested election season.

For two years, Obama said in response to a question from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), who remarked that Washington “looks broken to the American people,” the Republican Party has packed “20 years of obstruction” into one by trying to filibuster nearly every piece of legislation that has come up for a vote. Obama noted that Republicans have tried to filibuster more legislation in 2008 than in the “entire 1950s and ’60s combined.”

“If you want to govern, you can’t just say no,” Obama told lawmakers gathered at the Newseum for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Issues Conference. “It can’t be about just scoring points.”

But this is precisely the problem – the Republicans are all about obstruction because all they have to do is hold off the President’s agenda and keep economic and job conditions poor in America while distracting the American people from the very real progress that’s been made thanks to the President’s economic policies and the stimulus programs in order to win points with their base in the 2010 elections.

They’re not trying to bring new ideas to the table, they’re just trying to make sure that the hope for a better America that came in with the President’s election and the wave of Democrats that swept into Congress at the same time is denied at every turn – every chance they can get to stop progress and keep America in the hole it’s been in since President Bush — and those same Republicans in Congress, most of them — started digging, the more they can play on the short memories of their base and claim that “nothing’s changed” and somehow it’s not their fault for getting us there. The entire Republican agenda has devolved into making sure their base is energized, thanks to the senseless, far-right racist ramblings of the teabaggers, while their Congressional delegation is tasks with holding up any and all legislation at all costs.

It’s a brilliant plan, one likely to pay off come November, unless we can expose these tactics for what they are: obstructionism without sense – even if the reins fell back into Republican hands, they’d have no idea what to do with them, and likely wind up strangling the middle and lower classes in order to give away power hand-over-fist to their best friends.

[ Obama: Republicans Are Obstructionists ]
Source: TruthOut

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

I’m definitely one of the people who watched the Q-and-A at the House Republican retreat with the President and yearned for that Obama to be the one who governs from the White House. We caught a glimpse of him again during the State of the Union, and we saw him out in full force when he was striking down talking-point-driven Republicans who asked questions that were devoid of substance and designed only to provoke a response – he handled them with class, poise, and dignity, and laid the smackdown when he had to. I was more than impressed.

Shortly thereafter, Republicans were in a tizzy, trying to come up with more talking points to back up the ones that the President had just shot down on national television like so much skeet at an NRA convention, trying to hilariously claim themselves victorious for even asking the questions in the first place. When cornered, they admitted they shouldn’t have let the Q-and-A be broadcast, because the President said he would be candid, direct, and pointed, and he was: shining the light on the cockroaches of the Republican party and their political degeneracy and watching them scurry away from the light was one of the best things I’ve ever seen….and a long time coming.

RUSSERT: Tom Cole — former head of the NRCC, congressman from Oklahoma — said, “He scored many points. He did really well.” Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”

Additionally from ThinkProgress:

Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months,” writes the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder. “Debating a law professor is kind of foolish — the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president.”

Owned.

[ Republicans Dismayed by Obama’s Strong Performance, Say it was a ‘Mistake’ to Let Cameras Roll. ]
Source: ThinkProgress

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!

This post was originally published at Not So Humble. Click here to read the post in its original habitat!

Why is it that when the Republicans want to take someone on, they can never manage to do it cleanly and in front of the American people over the issues they care about, and instead resort to things like breaking in to someone’s office or dressing up like a pimp to try and deceive someone gullible enough to believe they’re honest? I mean really.

No, seriously – the guy who dressed up like a pimp and went around from ACORN office to ACORN office in an attempt to get someone gullible or silly enough to take them seriously enough to offer them tax advice that naturally would be illegal because of their illegal profession, and then subsequently somehow managed to light a firestorm over it (for some reason this is like a late night infomercial salesman managing to find someone stupid enough to fall for their prank and then everyone gets up in arms about the person who fell for it and not the prank) got himself busted trying to play secret agent and breaking into Loiusiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office.

James O’Keefe, the snot-nosed thug in question (who likely wouldn’t last an hour in jail if it weren’t for his well heeled and well-connected friends/parents who likely bailed him out immediately) and a couple of his buddies trying to pose as telephone repairmen – without proper ID or clearance of course – apparently tried to break into the office and tap Senator Landrieu’s phone. For what? Who knows, but, as the media is missing, that’s not the important question. The important question here is why the conservative right is acting like this, and why they’re fostering this kind of scorched earth “ends justify the means” politicking by breaking the law – instead of simply coming to the table?

You can do inflammatory documentaries without circus acts and scare tactics and pseudo-secret agent antics. The trick is to use this little thing called evidence and investigation: two things O’Keefe has clearly never heard of.

[ ACORN Smear Journalist Arrested for Alleged Attempt to Bug Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Office ]
Source: AlterNet

[ Fake ACORN Pimp Arrested in Attempt to Bug Senate Office ]
Source: NewsWeek

phoenix is the author of Not So Humble and an unabashed progresssive who isn’t afraid of any or all of the labels thrown at him. Head over to Not So Humble to read more!