CPAC Swag

I really get a kick out of Rachel Maddow.

Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way!

I know I've pointed out numerous time in various places the extreme measures that the G.O.P. has been employing since last year to completely and utterly delay, if not derail, the legislative process. Holds have been placed on every single nomination on not just cabinet level nominations, but on all levels, many of whom are not in the least way controversial. The filibuster has been invoked on over 90% of all legislation, including bills that are eventually passed unanimously, such as a bill to extend unemployment benefits with passed the Senate 90-0. And it is the Senate where this is a unique problem. Here is just one example: Craig Becker has been nominated to serve on the National Labor Relations Board; Senator McCain has placed a hold on his nomination back in July and that hold is still in effect. During this time Mr. Becker has answered over 280 submitted written questions from various senators and is still awaiting confirmation. A hold on a nomination, from a purely theoretical viewpoint makes lots of sense. A senator places a hold, so that a nominee can be more thoroughly vetted. Whatever committee that senator sits upon can then ask the nominee questions, hold further hearings and get more testimony from references, for or against, said nominee. But it is being used for sheer political reasons at this point. That was why we did not have a Surgeon General during the H1N1 scare. That was why there was no one in charge at the National Travel Safety Board (and still isn't) when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day. (Mr Southers, the nominee for the position withdrew his nomination on Jan 20th, in frustration perhaps? - Thank Jim DeMint for that.) At President George W. Bush's one year mark there were 70 nominees still awaiting confirmation, which shows that both sides play this game. But at President Obama's 365th day in office there were 177 nominees still awaiting confirmation. What's worse is that dozens and dozens of those nominees are slated to work in areas affecting the U.S.'s safety and foreign policy - in the midst of two wars! There is no one at the head of the Office of Legal Counsel (that would have been the guy in W's administration who wrote the torture memos.) There was no undersecretary for the Western Hemisphere, whose duties include coordinating our response to events in South America, during the constitutional crisis in Honduras.

What puzzles, as well as alarms me, is that people in this country do not a) care about this or b) are simply not aware of this. The rest of the world has certainly taken notice as U. S. embassies around the world sat empty due to the lack of an ambassador, China hasn't been fully engaged on currency exchange policy due to staffing shortages in the Treasury Department... And why? Because the senate G.O.P. has the legislative process hog-tied and locked up in a closet in an attempt to paint the Democrats as unable to get things done.

By the way, do know how many of the 280 written questions submitted to Mr. Becker were submitted by Senator McCain?

Z E R O !

Disappointed

I know that there were not a lot of good options that were present to President Obama concerning Afghanistan and the course we should pursue there. One of the options that I pretty sure were never put on the table for discussion was complete and immediate withdrawal of all of our troops. What is most disappointing is the way that the president is embracing the Bush doctrine; it may not be a full-on, twenty second, bromance kind of hug. It's more like an awkward, uncomfortable embrace with your aging great-aunt who smells funny, but it's an embrace, none the less. Tuesday's night's speech was probably the most un-inspiring, flat, lifeless speech that I've ever heard President Obama deliver. I would like to think that his heart wasn't really in it and that deep down inside that he didn't really agree with the orders our military are about to carry out. I don't know if this decision is the product of pressure being exerted by the pentagon and our military leaders. If so, this decision flies in the face of George Washington's ideal of a civilian commanding our military; the armed forces are supposed to answer to the president, not the other way around.

What really would be immensely disappointing is the idea that this decision was made to give political cover to the Democratic party in the upcoming elections in 2010 and 2012. If the president were to order a complete withdrawal of our forces from Afghanistan to begin immediately, the Democratic party would be vulnerable politically. The GOP would portray us as soft on terror, unwilling to make the hard decisions to keep America safe, unwilling to listen to the advice of our military's generals, etc. I am not ready or willing to embrace this idea. I do not think that President Obama, while a shrewd and polished politician is willing to sacrifice the lives of young American men and women and add billions upon billions of dollars to the deficit for sheer political gain. My cynicism hasn't plunged to that depth yet.

One thing I must say though is that while I am disappointed with this decision, I am not at all surprised. I am very much a liberal and Obama was not my choice for president during the primaries. The two candidates who I was most willing to vote for were Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. They had both dropped out of the race when we were voting the primaries in Connecticut. I voted for Hillary Clinton. Obama, I thought was always too much of a centrist; he's not really a liberal. He always said he would, as president, defeat al Qaeda and give the war in Afghanistan the attention it deserved, that this was the region that should be our focus in the war on terror and not Iraq. So while I do not feel that this is the decision that the president should have come to in his deliberation on the situation in Afghanistan, and by proxy Pakistan, I cannot say that I didn't see it coming. And I still voted for him, in spite of this fact. He was a much better choice than Senator McCain - I cannot and don't want to imagine the mess the country would be in if Barack Obama had not been elected. I hope that we stick with the withdrawal schedule the president has come up with for 2011. It's not as soon as I'd like to see the troops come home, but if we stick with that timetable, hopefully the cost of this war, in both monetary and human cost, will not be too high.

Wingnuts Unite!

If you were wondering where all the the crazy-ass, right-wing, nut-bags are hanging out online these days, they are congregating here.

Yahoo! Buzz was probably envisioned as a site where people of similar interests can converge and have a conversation. ...Or even as a place where lively, healthy debate could be held in a public forum. I'm sure that's what it was until the crazies took over. But now there is never an article where somehow the discussion doesn't get distorted into a hateful denouncement of the Democratic Party and President Obama, no matter what the subject.

No, really...

Don't believe me? Here's an article about Jessica Alba. Here's one about the Octomom. Here's one about Donald Trump taking control of his casinos; you don't even have to scroll down the page for that one... And these aren't even political stories.

The political stories are the ones where the hate is served the same way I like my coffee: hot and bold. Don't get me wrong; I think that people should be allowed to say whatever they please and are entitled to their opinions. What troubles me is that the loonies that congregate to these pages are so off-base, uninformed and hateful that it's down right scary.

Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at this discussion about President Obama setting up a new regulatory agency to protect consumers. If you don't want to click over to that page here is one of the insane rants, posted by a person who calls himself "AMERICAN" whose avatar picture is the iconic Shephard Farey Obama image with a sniper sight superimposed over it:

"ARE YOU PEOPLE STARTING TO WAKE UP NOW !??!?!?!

YOU ELECTED AN ISLAMO FASCIST D!CKTATOR NAMED OBAMA.

A DEVIL IN WOLF'S CLOTHING, IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.

OBAMA'S ONE GOAL IS TO ULTIMATELY RUN THE WORLD AS AN ISLAMIC STATE.

HE IS USING OTHER FOREIGN DICTATORS TO OFF THE RESISTANCE OF JEWS, CHRISTIANS, AND EVEN SOME ATHEISTS.
THIS IS WHY HE NEEDS IRAN'S REVOLUTION TO FAIL.

ONCE OBAMA HAS ELIMINATED REVOLUTIONS, HE WILL BGIN TO TAKE OUT CUBANS, KOREANS, VENEZUELANS, ETC WHO HELPED HIM BECOME THE NEW ONE WORLD LORD.

THE WORLD IS HEADING INTO A NEW DARK AGES THANKS TO OBAMA...


IF WE DO NOT FIGHT BACK NOW"

It's just insane... what's even crazier than that rant is the fact that as I am writing this there are five people who are agreeing with this hateful windbag. There are over 300 comments in that thread and the overwhelming majority of them are along the same lines.

Esquire, my favorite magazine, had a great article that touched on this. In that article it talks about the board of county commissioner from Warren County in Ohio who turned down $373,000 of stimulus money that was supposed to go towards addressing trasportation needs in the county's rural communities. One of the commissioners was quoted in the story saying, "I'll let Warren County go broke before taking any of Obama's filthy money."

Wow!