I chose a rather inconvenient time to take a couple of mental health days. In truth, I didn’t really choose the days. This weekend just happened to be when my extended family could get together to celebrate Christmas. So, I’ve barely been online at all over the last 48 hours, as the White House and Congress have hashed out deals and signed bills on several things of significant consequence. I have noted the alarm with which the left has responded to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, but I haven’t had the chance to read the relevant language in the bill and make an assessment. I’ve read some of the usual hyperventilation from some of the usual suspects, but I need to check their opinions against the facts before I weigh in.
On the Omnibus appropriations bill, the White House sent out some talking points about the things you and I might like about the overall deal. The thing is, pretty much everything on their list is an example of protecting something the Republicans wanted to defund or abolish or frustrate. Half of the list is about obnoxious riders the administration successfully defeated. I can honestly say that the only truly positive (as opposed to purely defensive) accomplishment on the list is extra money for the Student Aid Administration to help them service college loans.
But, you know, they saved NPR and Planned Parenthood, and AmeriCorps. They protected the EPA’s budget and prerogatives. Head Start kept the extra slots that were created by the Recovery Act. They prevented a forced regression on Cuba policy.
These are all good things. But the midterm elections of 2010 created the problems we have now. The Republicans have far too much power in Washington and they’re exercising that power, almost without any conscience at all, to make the broadest possible attack on progressive ideals and principles.
Not only does this put the Democrats in a defensive crouch, but its inevitable that they’re lines will occasionally be breached. It’s just wave upon wave of demented avengers, many of whom are not even controlled by their leaders.
Elections have consequences, particularly when the winners of those elections appear to be suffering from the ill effects of the Rabies Virus.
But the midterm elections of 2010 created the problems we have now.
Self-inflicted wounds. I’m not satisfied Democrats have the wherewithal – or intelligence – to make a dent in the Reep majorities in Congress (the Senate has been operating on a “41-vote majority”). If they couldn’t win the battle for hearts and minds over the past two years, why the f*ck do you imagine them capable in 2012?
“self-inflicted” is a good word.
Juts look how badly they fucked up in Pennsylvania, backing a republican that everyone -democrats and republicans alike- hated, and ran him as their standard bearer.
now we’re back to Santorum and Santorum-lite.
It’s a voter-inflected wound. This government is the one the people — or the people who want to chose the government — want. It was not imposed from without by hostile powers.
Look at the person in front of you in the checkout line, or the person who drops their kid off before yours at day-care.
That’s the problem. A representative form of government will produce monsters, if it represents monsters, and works the way it’s advertised to work.
Bullshit. The job was to ‘educate and inform’, and the “leadership” of the “D”s failed miserably. From Nov 2, 2010:
Never have so few done so much damage with so little effort by expending so vast a sum and so much goodwill in so short a time. Idiots.
“If they couldn’t win the battle for hearts and minds over the past two years, why the f*ck do you imagine them capable in 2012?”
It’s the economy, stupid.
They had a difficult time making their case in a terrible economy that wasn’t visibly improving, and they’re going to have an easier time now that forward progress on the economy is apparent.
“put the Democrats in a defensive crouch”
The Democrats live in a defensive crouch. They’ve done so for years. They were in a defensive crouch when they had huge majorities in both houses and a popular president.
There is no “Democratic Party”. There’s a two- or three-party coalition, one constituent party of which has the power to comprise or break up a majority — and that’s who lives in a permanent crouch.
There aren’t enough leftists in this country for the “Democratic Party” you imagine exists to exist.
They were in a defensive crouch when they had huge majorities in both houses and a popular president.
You can tell by how they passed the most extensive body of progressive legislation in two generations.
You can tell by how they passed the most extensive body of progressive legislation in two generations.
Tallest midget in the circus and all that.
The Dems, bless-em, need to develop an offense for the upcoming election cycle, or no matter the outcome it will be more of the same. They seem to have lost the ability to tell folks what they are about. Of course, the corporate media does everything it can to keep them in a defensive mode, but where is Harry Truman when you need him?
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Greens Upset by Hostage Taking of Environment in GOP Bill
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I’d spare your sanity and ignore the whole thing. The usual intolerable sanctimonious little shits acted like intolerable sanctimonious little shits.
The obot twitter jihadis/scooby gang ignored the reality that the President has threatened to veto the last few defense authorization bills over the last few years multiple times over detainee requirements, and that a request to do so one more time is not going to cause the loss of eleventymillion jobs and the unemployment rate to go to 975%.
The firebaggers are openly lying about the creation of new powers created by the bill, none of which are new, none of which are even mandated to go into effect on anyone without broad executive discretion, and all of which have been “found constitutional” by the Supreme Court going back to the original AUMF.
The FEMA death camp crowd is lying about US citizens being rounded up and detained by the military.
And certain left-leaning mainstream news outlets (the NYTimes, the Guardian, etc.) are getting in on it too, since they get so jealous of their peers getting arrested in third world dictatorships and love to use the word “Orwellian” in their op-eds as much as possible.
All the while 50-75% of the Democratic party continues to be chickenshit little wankers and two-faces, continually hanging the President out to dry on Guantanamo, and the Republicans (contrary to the ridiculous sniveling going on above in this thread about their capacity to win and sabotage) have once again managed to accomplish something between jack and shit with their control of the House. Ooh, wow, if another Nigerian kid has a bomb in his pants, the military is allowed to get a crack at him. Unless the FBI says no. Such an accomplishment. And one that will clearly never ever be rolled back, since when do Democrats ever control both chambers of Congress simultaneously (oh wait, they will as of 365 days)?
I think that sums it up.
The concern about the mandatory-detention language – the section Obama issued the veto threat over, and which was removed. That really was horrifying.
Stupid firebaggers can’t even take yes for an answer, though. Obama has not put a single person – not one – into military detention in his term of office, despite Congress repeatedly trying to make him. Once again, he stood up and swatted away their efforts, and now he’s going to go on doing what he’s done all along – having the FBI arrest terror suspect, trying them in federal court, and sentencing them to federal prison. This is happening because of Barack Obama and the determined stance he has taken.
The most important thing to Protest People is their self-image as Protest People. Good luck finding even a single one of these people who will so much as acknowledge that it is a good thing that Obama isn’t putting people into military custody.
I love people whose principles about military detention are so strict that it doesn’t even matter to them whether people are or are not being put into military detention.
I don’t think the concern is so much whether Obama is putting people into custody, it’s whether any president has the power to do so. The presidency under W gained a lot of scary power at the expense of individual liberties (like FISA law and etc) and a lot of people were hoping to see some of that rolled back.
Just because Obama doesn’t do it doesn’t mean the next president won’t.
You and that other Joe can go bleep yourselves. Firebaggers, eh? Do you even know why people have a problem with the bill? My guess is you don’t. All you know is that Greenwald hates it, so you are for it. So the ACLU are firebaggers now too? Good to know.
Emphasis mine.
Your pejorative references to progressives only began when your blind adoration of Obama turned you into a Rockefeller Republican. I remember when you didn’t think Hillary Clinton was progressive enough.
Pretty funny now, huh?
In typical Boo fashion, he rides in with his bromides about “the left” and “hyperventilation” and the like without even bothering himself with reading the legislation. (BTW, I don’t believe a word of Boo’s denial of reading anything. He read it. But I accuse him of rather wanting to maintain plausible deniability so that he can lecture of neither confirming nor denying.)
Well, two days later and we haven’t heard another peep about this again. Why not? I guess it goes against the “Vote Obama” propaganda. I read the legislation and it says exactly what “the left” says it says: indefinite, untried detention for US citizens (“supporters” of whatever) on the whim of the president (Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland) until “hostilities” have ended.
Also, the Democrats created the tidal wave elections of 2010 with their milquetoast, tepid, all-things-to-everyone strategy of appeasement and fellatio. So don’t stand there and act like 2010 happened in a vacuum. It didn’t!