Liberal Street Fighter details how Hillary Clinton has sold women out to Emperor Dobson and his minions on Plan B, an emergency contraceptive safer than asprin. He gives a blow-by-blow account on how she cut a deal with the Republicans to release her hold on the nomination of Lester Crawford in exchange for his decision to make a decision about Plan B by September 1st.
However, after she released her hold and Crawford was confirmed, Crawford broke the deal and delayed his decision for a public comment period, so that Emperor Dobson and his allies can rant, rave, and froth at the mouth over how icky and dirty S-E-X is.
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The Men of God at the FDA
One of the men who serves on the FDA’s advisory board is Dr. David Hager, a mysogynist who opposes birth control, abortion, and believes women should pray to God to cure PMS. Furthermore, he once anally raped his wife as she was having an epileptic seizure.
The fact that a mysogynist like Hager serves on the board of the FDA and that few (edited from none; thanks to Paul Rosenberg) in the Democratic Party congress or house besides Henry Waxman have uttered a word of outrage is amazing. If we as a party cannot express our collective outrage when someone like this gets appointed, no wonder Frank Rich thinks we’re irrelevant as a party.
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Crawford breaks a promise
Up for nomination as FDA commissioner and egged on (I suggest) by Hager, Lester Crawford dragged his feet on a promise to issue a ruling on Plan B. Their “concern,” made up, of course, was that Plan B was not appropriate for girls under 17 because they couldn’t understand the directions. Hillary placed a hold on his nomination.
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Hillary caves in
Crawford cut a deal with Clinton that if she released her hold on his nomination, he would issue a ruling by September 1st. But once she released her hold, and Crawford was confirmed, Crawford broke his promise again. He delayed his ruling indefinitely to solicit comments from the public. This is a ploy to get Emperor Dobson and company frothing at the mouth and give himself cover to deny the use of Plan B without a prescription.
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Conclusion: Hillary’s poor judgement
Hillary should have known the first time that Crawford was not a truthful person and that she couldn’t trust anything he said. But she failed to recognize that and got burned.
Back in my response to Tom Kertes, I mentioned that Hillary did not have good judgement skills. If this were a single instance of poor judgement, I would overlook it. But, as I wrote in my previous diary, this is hardly the only instance of Hillary making bad decisions.
Being able to govern involves evaluating people and judging whether they are truthful or not. Hillary failed to make an obvious judgement that Lester Crawford was a known liar who would say anything to get confirmed and then do whatever he wanted to.
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The tunnel vision of the netroots and what we can do
To be fair to Hillary, after I have slammed her all this time, she did vote against Crawford. Russ Feingold, for one of the few times in his career, cast a vote I don’t agree with and voted to confirm him. Only 13 Democrats voted against him.
While I agree with Liberal Street Fighter’s criticisms of Hillary in regards to her poor judgement, I think there is a larger issue here than just Hillary.
Here at Kos and elsewhere, we have a major weakness — we have tunnel vision. We focus singlemindedly on one topic for a long period of time, while other topics go by the wayside. Right now, for instance, is a perfect example — 6 of the recommended diaries at Kos are about the hurricane. A week or two ago, there were 4-6 recommended diaries at a time about Cindy Sheehan. At the start of June, it was all about pie.
The Crawford nomination is a classic example of how the GOP can sneak issues through while our eyes are on Cindy, or Gonzales, or the pie wars, or whatever the fad of the day is. The reason so many people are ranting and raving about how the Democrats are only focused on one issue and appeasing the right on the rest is because we engage in tunnel vision here as well.
Right now, we are in opposition, and our job is to oppose every step of the way. That means that every time a Republican opens their mouth in front of the camera, we should have our keyboard drawn and ready to respond. I would like to see people read the Senate website every day to see what new bills hit the floor and what our senators are saying. And I would like to see more diaries about what the Sunday morning shows are saying and fire back hard when necessary.
If you play chess, if you use tunnel vision and block out one half of the board, a “hidden piece” on the other half can come out of nowhere and capture your queen. The Crawford nomination and subsequent betrayal is not just a matter of Hillary selling us out; it is a matter of us not paying attention. We must get our eyes back on the ball.
typically moiv posts her diaries at LSF and then comes over here two days later and does the same.
🙂
I would have posted it here, too, but this time you saved me the trouble. Thanks for reading it, and for taking the trouble to write a great response. 🙂
It is hard for me to take my eyes off of Katrina though right now. You have changed my daily routine though. I will read the Senate Website daily….terribly lazy and illogical of me that I haven’t been doing it daily already. Sometimes I tend to be dense and easily led! Gee, isn’t that how I got into this damn mess in the first place?
And keep up the good work in Crawford. I understand completely why so much focus is on the hurricane right now.
For the record, Hager anally raped his wife a lot more than just once.
No one is more ostentatiously moral than those who are least moral. That’s something I really wish the GOP fanbase would get through their heads. Genuinely decent people don’t have to spend every waking hour talking about how decent they are; it just shows.
This man is such a controlling individual. He seems to have a hypnotic effect over the people he works with, similar to Rove. I wonder if he is really running things behind the scenes sometimes.
You are so right–we act like a flock of birds. I guess everyone wants to be where the action is–but we really should be more disciplined. There would be awesome power in these blogs if we acted as you suggest.
But, I’m concerned about the lack of blaming, finger-pointing, and self-righteousness in your diary. Are you aware that you are implicating yourself when you say that “we” act in such a fashion?
Now c’mon, aren’t you really pissed off at some group of other posters who are breaking all your pet blog rules and need to be taken to school? No? Spoilsport! 😉
It doesn’t work. All that does is encourage cognitive dissonance. I filter stuff out myself and hand out 0’s when someone goes a-es–t over their issue being ignored and disses other posters.
I have some ideas in mind, I will think about them and write about them sometime this week.
Not only are we easily distracted, but we are often REactive instead of PROactive. We might spread this out, not only to be keeping an eye on what the SOBs in DC are up to, but as moiv does so well, keep a close eye on our local statehouses as well.
Perhaps we could assign folks (er, I mean get volunteers) to keep watch over certain topics (the entire Sentate/House is a bit much for any one person) and that way we could cover a wider swath and avoid too much duplicate effort — what do ya’ll think?
I was thinking along those lines myself.
Awesome — let’s get on it then, eh?
😉
I’ll be looking for your diary and will be happy to work alongside you to make this happen – just let me know how you’d like me to help! Thanks for writing this up!
about you Austin liberals is that you guys all know what/when/how/where/why the Mofo’s are doing what they are doing in your neighborhood 24/7. You guys all run around and tell each other too. Kind of makes you all hard to jack with too much for too long.
We do try — since we got the freakin’ lege right here in town, they do get the watchful eye, as you say, 24/7 — I’m suprised the repugs didn’t try to relocate the capitol along with the redistricting mess! 😉
I will tell you this, when the shubster was gov, he did not spend a whole lotta time in Austin (outside of the gov’s mansion, that is) — gee, I wonder why?
You stay safe and dry, lady, and make sure you’re ready for any tornados that come your way!!
MovingIdeas:
Too many people chasing the same information. My answer is my sig line.
Er, huh?
Not sure what your point is here? Could you elaborate?
Sorry. I always seem to start at the end.
The information, and the people and organizations are already out there doing the work. So how to reduce duplication of effort? Rather than creating yet another site, I think people need to step back and actually see what’s out there.
Really frustrating.
I don’t think (EH, correct me if I’m wrong) that anyone is advocating creating yet another site, but to make better use of what we’ve already got — which is what you seem to be saying as well, and I agree!
Perhaps what is needed is information coordinators/facilitators? First step would be so survey what is out there/already being done and who does it the best and then cull and expand on best practices and people’s efforts.
Are we sort of on the same page?
Planning is everything, and the first step is as you’ve said: assessment. I’ve suggested using ePluribus as the facilitators (I prefer “reference librarians), and asked for opinions over there.
I always come back to the notion of a portal as an effective way to meet the need. Front door through an interactive map, with succeeding categorical layers.
Imagine the power of opt-in cross-referencing. Enter the data once, user decides who it goes to. Hit the portal, select DNC, MoveOn, and AlterNet. News comes to you by topic. Want to give money? Transparent link to ActBlue provides payment options the same way: user chooses.
[Voting system diary here. Pay no attention to the writing, the concept is what counts. “-) ].
Interesting ideas, as currently it seems I find my way about the netroots by random discovery. I’d be delighted to see some sort of overview of D-leftie blog interconnections and info sources.
Some sort of “portal” “interactive map” seems worthy of discussion… anything to improve efficiency of “our” system.
This diary makes several good points.
The herd mentality on liberal blogs—expected on the right but completely demoralizing on the left when encountered by those of us on the left who have been on the left for forty years.
Hillary’s political skills- isnt it time we just admit it was BILL not Hillary who possesses the transcedent political skills in that family? That type of skill doesnt rub off. She is basking in his popularity and will lose a national race as sure as I am sitting here. Not a red state victory possible within a country mile of her campaign. And surely most all swing state losses as well. A disaster waiting to happen.
Tom Kertes is clearly advancing his own self interest as a political consultant. At least he has the decency to be up front about it. Everything else he wrote in defense of Hillary was pretty much garbage. All I believed in his diary was that he is interested in a piece of her campaign. Period. All else was dissembling the truth to fit his desire for a job.
I never read his diaries before and dont plan on following him in the future. He belongs on DKOS imho.
I would add one more to the list of tunnel visions -Howard Dean as some kind of Democratic savior and even more ridiculous, a savior from the left. While I applaud Dean for subliminating his own presidential ambitions for the good of the party, he is not a leftist, he is not truly visionary (that I can see). But he is a good flame thrower and he speaks an unvarnished version of the truth as he sees it. Basically, he opposed the War in Iraq from the start and he raised money on the internet. Both good, but meaning what in the big picture?
I think you’re partially throwing that round peg at a square hole. Blogs have expanded exponentially in just the past 8 months, and even though there are minimal cross-references (blogrolls), there is simply too much information chasing too few eyeballs.
Is that tunnel vision? No. It’s keeping your eye on your own ball to the exclusion of the 100 other balls in the air. That leaves the readers to determine which one is the most important and taking appropriate action.
Yes, there is entirely too much overlap and wasted energy, time, and money inside this “progressive” shell. That’s to be expected at this point in the evolution of the medium. The issue going forward is to design tools to make it more effective, and use those already available.
Keep your eye on that ball. We are definitely not ready for September, much less ’06 and beyond.
I was thinking along the lines of monitoring the bills going through the House and Senate along with the work that the House Democratic committees are doing. That way, we can be on the same page as they are and we can supply information to opponents of GOP incumbents who run their mouths off.
that a president should be able to choose his own cabinet with minimal interference from Congress, and stand or fall on their performance. It’s a respectable attitude, I think, but maybe he needs to accept that when the White House is filled with sociopaths, old ideas have to adjust. He may be a little too absolutist in his view on this, but it’s a respectable one that I can’t fault him on.
Hillary, OTOH, is the opposite case. She’s made a career of accommodating the bad guys and taking “stands” based on whatever she thinks some constituency wants to hear. She lost me way back during the Women’s Rights meeting in China, when she ranted about China’s “one child policy” being a human rights violation against women. As far as I’m concerned, China took heroic action to enforce a responsible population policy. This was the least of that country’s human rights violations, but it gave Hillary a chance to pander to the womens’ rights contingent.
If she’s nominated I’ll have a hard time voting Dem. She will get a good chunk of the soap opera fan vote, I suppose, that would either not otherwise be cast or would go GOP. But the price is just too much. This country needs strong medicine (to put it as mildly as possible) if it is to survive as any kind of democracy, and Hillary ain’t it.
He opposed the Bolton and Gonzales nominations, so he’s coming around.
tunnel vision going on, here in the blogosphere there are so many tunnels, so many sources and channels of information, that the restrictive effect of duplication of effort on any given site, (or group of sites), is greatly reduced.
We are typically human, and like everyone else we tend to want to believe what we want to believe and talk about what we want to talk about. It’s natural. Sometimes too much duplication on a favorite blog is annoying, but that’s one reason why it’s so great that there are hundreds of thousands of other blogs we can search out and review. I typically read the central stories and scan the rest on maybe 15-20 blogs and 5-10 newspapers everyday, plus a little (increasingly bad but still influential cable news TV). Certainly I’m not up to speed on everything going on; this Bush regime perpetrates such a constant stream of crimes against our country and the rest of the world that no one person would be able to assimilate it all each day. So some of us get some information and others get other information and all in all if we can communicate well with each other across a broader spectrum of contacts then our community at large can get more things done more effectively through our sharing.
I’m somewhat in favor of less duplication on sites, but I have strong reservations about trying to implement a plan to accomplish it. The reason for my caveat, my reluctance to urge against repetition of content is that sometimes we need to be saturated with the truth and emotion and the significance of certain issues and events. We need it for our psyche in the same way that we need radical political activists to remind us that outrage and civil disobedience are sometimes the most legitimate and relevant way we can stay in touch with, not lose sight of, those fundamental principles and beliefs we stand for and revere. (I’ve been pleased to see so many diaries and stories across many blogs talking about Cindy Sheehan. We need to bathe in the strength and purity of her emotion, and we need to be reawakened to the visceral horror that is this war in order to better battle against it, and her story, her personal experience, brings this home like nothing else can.) So, in my mind, duplication of effort or exposure is not, in itself, always a bad thing.
I thought I was going to make just a short comment but it went gaga on me.
My goal is to compliment the work of the Sheehan diarists and whatever the next topic is that gets blogged to death. I think it is pointless to create conflict over a topic that is the topic of the month, like the hurricane, for instance. But there are a number of diverse issues here, and we should always try to make sure everyone feels welcome.
I agree with your idea completely. Despite all the words I used above, I really just wanted to make the point that sometimes heavy duplication on a particular issue is good for us because of the “saturation” aspect of it and how it can help reinforce our connections to our own principles and beliefs.
I’m going to wait at least a week before really throwing this plan into high gear. I’m going to develop a vision for the country and go from there. I have some ideas, but with people focused so much on New Orleans and the situation deteriorating, I might not get people’s attention as much as I might in a week.
In the meantime, I’m going to highlight how Bush’s war in Iraq led to the underfunding of many disaster prevention and relief programs. Attytood wrote an excellent piece about how Bush cut funding for levee maintenance in New Orleans from $36 million to $10 million. I’m going to argue that Bush gives much more priority to Iraq than he does to disaster management and propose a Marshall Plan to help rebuild this country.
There are lot of good points in the diary, and the comments. But this bit is really pointless:
That’s just advocating what the diary presumably is opposing, is it not?
The job of good opposition isn’t just to scream “NO” a lot. Its to methodically point out the failings of the ruling party, to deflect the worst of it, to bear the mildest of it, and at every step, explain what you’re doing to the people.
Getting in a huff because nutjob Robertson calls for assassination hurts Robertson’s credibility only slightly. Its not like our side gave him much to start with, and his side doesn’t trust a thing we say. It does us no favors — unless we lay out how this is a pattern with Robertson (as some great posters have indeed done, and a bit of MSM too).
The key is to have our own agenda. Rather than playing puppet to Rove, we should have our own attack plan.
To pick up on the chess analogy from the diary — yes, looking two moves ahead would be a great improvement for us. But the goal isn’t to defend all our pieces. It isn’t to attack all their pieces. Its to ignore some threats, counter other threats, and take down their king.
If all we do is criticize their inane misgovernance, because we can truthfully, we’re damn well doomed.
We need a plan, an achievable goal, and then pay attention to every move they make — not so we can “counter” it, but so we can incorporate it into our own plan.
Otherwise, we’re little more than the US Soldiers in Iraq, waiting for the enemy to show themselves so we can strike back, wandering into ambushes, allowing ourselves to be picked off one at a time… and making no real progress towards a future we all want.
We have to develop a vision for the country and then point out how the GOP’s policies fall short of that vision. And as you point out, we have to have a plan.
Right off the top of my head, besides the vision thing, here are some possible goals:
“Define the Bush administration”, and identify it’s weaknesses, it’s vulnerabilities. I identify the main weaknesses of the Bush regime as follows;
It’s arrogance,
It’s constant deception,
It’s false spirituality,
It’s predilection to use force.
They can be tripped up on all these things if we’re smart.