The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is getting serious, by god. After historic defeats in Congressional elections this November, the trip-c is now turning to a Vermonter to get things done. Robby Mook has been the rising star in the national Democratic electioneering world, running Jeanne Shaheen’s Senatorial campaign next door in NH, and serving as Hillary Clinton’s campaign big dog during the presidential primary. When Clinton needed a win in a nailbiter, battleground state, she’d send in Robby who always deliver (e.g. in Nevada and Indiana). If she coulda cloned him, she would’ve taken the nomination.

Robby is a Norwich native and got his start in politics working for the VT Democratic House Caucus’s PAC back in the late 90’s before becoming the Vermont Democratic Party’s Field Director in 2002, where he was also my officemate. It was there that Robby clearly learned everything he ever needed to know, as his career went meteoric. Either that or he just figured at that point he had to do whatever it took to avoid having to share an office with me again. I mean, I used to sleep in that office. Couldna been the most fragrant of places.

But I digress. Here’s CNN on the DC Mookapalooza:

A former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, Mook will now run the campaign arm for the House Democrats as they gear up for the 2012 elections. Mook served as the DCCC’s independent expenditure director since May of 2010.

[…] Mook now faces the daunting task of picking up those seats lost during his tenure as the DCCC’s independent expenditure director in the 2010 midterm elections, when the Democrats lost their majority.

“I look forward to putting together another great team at the DCCC and working closely with our Members and candidates to win back the majority for Democrats in 2012,” Mook said.

A Black Whale–Nay, A White Whale!

see the white whale rise

from the depths of blackness

as if through some oil slick

or other unutterable aberration

making it both black yet white

good yet evil to confound

all logical hope of seeing

its true nature as it changes

from a beast that beguiles

unto a beast that beckons us

into a maddening vortex

where its mockery reigns

what kind of beast is this

to shame us as it takes us

down into an abyss so deep

no hand can lift its shroud

nor any earthly imagining

grasp its goodness or its evil?

see it breach and spout

and circle us again and again

as though a dizziness upon us

it wishes before it acts

then it will no doubt swallow

us whole with its great white maw

made blacker still to shadow

the treachery in its mission

the rendering of our vessel

once so sound and true

but now a hapless ghost

no longer able to heave to

nor come about before

its black white jaws descend

leaving only our pity’s sake left

to attempt to tell the tale

Peter Buknatski

Montpelier, Vt.

Right next door, in the “Live Free or Die” state of New Hampshire a Christian couple is seeking to remove a book on social economics from their son’s school curriculum because they don’t like the way the author represents Christ as having been a poor man on the fringe of society.

The book that Aimee and Dennis Taylor object to is “Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America,” (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich, who documented her experiences and reflections on our economy based on time spent actually trying to get by on minimum wage.  Ahead of its time in many ways, this award-winning book is pretty universally recognized for its seminal importance in drawing attention to the realities of American lives trapped in the economic race to the bottom.

In Nickel and Dimed, Ms. Ehrenreich briefly describes a tent revival meeting, recounting how it caused her to reflect on the emphasis that is placed on the crucified Christ rather than the exemplary life he is said to have led, teaching about social justice and choosing to live a common life among the poorest of the poor.  

“Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say,” she wrote.”

That view of the legendary life of Christ is apparently objectionable to some tightly-wound Christians; and rather than courageously stand-up for the value of a thought-provoking education, Bedford School Superintendent Tim Mayes took the low-road:

“I thought we could seek better balance in terms of covering multiple topics in personal finance, and maybe we were spending too much time on the one topic of working as a minimum wage employee,” he said Monday.

I’m very glad that he is so optimistic about the future of his students as to conclude that the topic of working as a minimum wage employee doesn’t even merit a single targeted reading assignment.

There is also the Taylors’ objection to the book’s “foul language,” of which there of course is none in other twentieth century literature of merit, not to mention most of popular culture everywhere.

I  went to “The Immaculata” Catholic high school for girls; and when I was a senior there in 1967, we were assigned The Catcher in the Rye  by Sister Mary Catherine. You’ve really got to wonder at the detour in pedagogical progress since then!

Be careful what you wish for.  The Taylors might not be so happy with the trend they are in danger of creating.  What if Muslim parents begin objecting to assignments that discuss 9/11, because some Muslims figure in that story in a less than flattering light?  Some might take the popular and flawed fundamentalist position that this is a Christian country; so, in their view, constitutional “waivers” and protections should go only one way.  

If school boards routinely cave to the widespread efforts by the Christian right to impose revisionism on their curricula, what hope is there for the future of American excellence on the world stage?  Where are the objections to this festival of ignorance, on the part of the Christian left; the ones who continue to live by those principles of social justice and tolerance that I was taught?  I know they’re out there and didn’t all die-off with the good sisters at “The Immaculata.”

There has been an impassioned outcry for Muslims to “do the right thing” and speak out against the terrorism of jihad fundamentalists.  We should be asking as well for Christians to rally against the fundamentalist Christian crack-pots, ginning-up hatred and ignorance from their platforms of self-serving righteousness.  Jesus must be spinning in his sepulchre!

Cross-posted at ASR with citation links.

As the Wikileaks drama has continued to unfold, my level of concern has steadily increased. Public figures (both nationally and locally) have called for the extra-judicial murder of the organization’s founder, Julian Assange, and members of Congress have begun using its existence as a justification to implement Internet censorship systems akin to those used in China (with Senator Lieberman going so far as to publicly hold China up as a model for emulation). Such horrifying realities brought me to realize that simply promoting and defending Wikileaks from behind a computer screen is no longer sufficient – the stakes are just too high.

After some reflection, I came to the conclusion that the most effective thing to do would be to organize a public rally in support of the right to a free press and in solidarity with Wikileaks in my community of Burlington, Vermont. Such an action would be especially effective, I reasoned, because it seems that the majority of people have yet to develop hardened opinions of the topic which have been integrated into their identities. Instead, as an almost totally novel phenomenon, undecided folks are looking to their environment for cues as to how they should feel about it. They’ve been hearing the drum-beat of “treason, egomanic, putting the troops in danger, etc.” from much of the mainstream media and political elite, so it is urgent that supporters of Wikileaks provide a counter-narrative. For all of the fence-sitters who feel sympathetic (but isolated, because the neo-McCarthyist mass media they consume is attempting to equate such sympathy with treason), to see fellow supporters publicly demonstrating (in the most literal sense of the word) their feelings could be just the nudge that is needed to push them into action.

To get the ball rolling, I created a Facebook event and sent emails to every activist and activist list-serve that I’ve come in contact with over the past few years. I followed up with phone-calls and made sure to stress how important I felt it was to turn out. Often, people are jaded about rallies because they are generally a show of strength on an issue about which most people already have a set opinion, so the impact of any one person’s attendance is negligible. Once I communicated the above idea that most people are undecided and that a public show of support could have a powerful effect, however, excitement began to grow. For a time, we picked the evening rush-hour on the one of Burlington’s major arteries, Williston Road, and met in front of the Staples Plaza. Several interested and enthusiastic people couldn’t make the rally itself, but generously donated their time, energy, and artistic skills the previous evening at a sign making party, so we had plenty for supporters to hold.

When I showed up at 4:15pm, it was about twenty degrees, snowing, and (it being northern Vermont) getting dark. I took out my first sign, emblazoned with “Honk 4 Wikileaks!”, and set up shop by the side of the road. Within a couple of minutes the first supporter arrived, and we soon had a contingent of close to a dozen heavily bundled people lining Williston Road in support of Wikileaks (including one man who saw what we were doing, stopped, and asked for a sign). The ideological diversity of the participants was truly staggering, and demonstrates breadth of the coalition that has formed around the website; standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the President of the St. Michael’s College Conservatives was an IWW Delegate. Though we came from many perspectives, unity was found in our common commitment to the defense of press freedoms.

The response to our rally from passing commuters was both encouraging and informative in a few ways. First, we received a lot of positive honks and thumbs-up – according to one of the group’s elders who has been participating in such actions for many years, we had one of the most positive response rates that he’d ever seen when sign-waving. Second, the many confused and interested stares we received confirmed the idea that lots of people are still unsure of what to make of the Wikileaks controversy. The fact that those people not only saw our commitment to brave the elements in support of the issue, but also heard their fellow motorists honking their support hopefully had a powerful impact on their perceptions and attitudes. Finally, as with any sign-wave, we received a few middle fingers. However, in at least one of those cases, the driver was obviously supportive of us while his passenger was flicking us off – I can only imagine that the rest of their journey was marked by interesting conversation.

By the end of rush hour, we were cold, wet, and exhausted, but also exhilarated because it was clear that we’d had a real impact. While packing up, a high-schooler approached us and asked about our protest, because she was doing a project on human rights for her class. We told her the story of Wikileaks and pointed her to the Collateral Murder video, and she thanked us for having provided her with a topic to work on. Even if we’d had no other impact, inspiring a young mind to dig into these issues made all of the planning, work, and cold entirely worth it.

While subsequently warming my hands (and insides) with a hot toddy, I reflected on how the day’s activities are reflective of the strategy that the defenders of Wikileaks need to adopt. We are of the Internet, and the Internet generation is widely “on the bus” in terms of Wikileaks; according to a recent poll, more than 50% of people aged 18-29 believe it is be Constitutionally protected speech. Unfortunately, that rate of support declines with every subsequent age cohort, bottoming out at 20% for those 60 or older. I believe this has much to do with the fact that, while the Internet is a primary space for young people, it is more peripheral to the lives of many individuals who were not socialized into it as children. As such, if we are to reach out to those people, we need to bring our narrative to the spaces they inhabit and media they consume – radio, television, and, most importantly, the street. It is my sincere hope that the number of spontaneous demonstrations will begin increasing dramatically in the upcoming weeks as the pressure mounts and the struggle to maintain our right to a free press reaches a critical stage. If you don’t take the initiative, who will?

While Radical ‘Hactivists’ Launch Cyberattacks Against Companies That Have Cut Ties to the Whistleblowing Web Site Over its Publication of Secret U.S. Diplomatic Documents, Others Call Into Question the Legitimacy of Sex-Assault Charges Against Assange and of the  Constitutionality of a U.S. Crackdown

JUST HOW MUCH FREEDOM DO ONLINE MEDIA HAVE? — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is driven into Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London after being arrested last Tuesday morning on a European Union arrest warrant issued at the request of Sweden, where the 39-year-old Australian is wanted on charges of sexual assault. Supporters of WikiLeaks charge that the sex-assault accusations are politically motivated and that Assange is being targeted by the United States for publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. While some conservatives have called for WikiLeaks’ shutdown, others say that the freedom of online media is at stake. (Photo: Stefan Rousseau/British Press Association)

(Posted 5:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, 14 December 2010)

NOTE TO READERS: When this column made its debut as a stand-alone site five years ago this week, questions about media freedom were very much in the news. At the time, the debate was centered around radio “shock jock” Howard Stern, who had announced that he was leaving terrestrial radio after 35 years to move to uncensored satellite radio, having signed a five-year contract with Sirius (Stern on Friday announced that he has inked a new five-year deal with the network — and that he plans to retire in 2015). Now, five years later, a debate over media freedom has flared anew — this over the freedom of online media, as a result of the WikiLeaks furor. While this column has made clear that it considers WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a rogue for threatening — then backing off from — the release of the site’s entire uncensored cache of secret U.S. government documents upon his arrest last week in London, the controversy nonetheless raises serious issues of how much freedom the online media have. — Skeeter Sanders, Editor & Publisher, The ‘Skeeter Bites Report  

===============

SPECIAL REPORT

===============

By WILLIAM FISHER

Inter-Press Service

NEW YORK — As pro- and anti-WikiLeaks forces draw their battle lines, and WikiLeaks’ impresario Julian Assange marks time in storied, overcrowded and very Victorian Wandsworth Prison in southwest London, a group of his supporters are taking a different tack.

No, they’re not hacking MasterCard or Sarah Palin. Instead they’re speaking out in no uncertain terms. Their message: On balance, the staggered release by WikiLeaks of some 250,000 diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world is providing a valuable public service for which some believe Assange is being persecuted with trumped up sex charges.

These champions of transparency and enemies of government secrecy are the small but vocal community known as the human rights and press freedom constituencies.

‘WIKILEAKS SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER,’ DEFENDER SAYS

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told IPS  that WikiLeaks “has played a critical role in giving the American people the truth about the lies the U.S. government has told about its wars, especially those in the Middle East and Central Asia.”

Regarding Assange’s arrest, he added, “Yes, the charges for which he is being investigated need to be investigated. Yet the irregularities in the proceeding are glaring. Why was the case dropped originally? Why was he allowed to leave Sweden?”

“Why was bail denied when he surrendered and his lawyers had let the police know he would do so when the warrant was served? Finally, is the hand of the U.S. the answer to these questions?” Ratner asked.

ACLU: PROSECUTING WIKILEAKS WOULD VIOLATE FIRST AMENDMENT

On Tuesday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley announced that the U.S. was considering criminally charging Assange for his role in releasing the diplomatic cables that have embarrassed Washington and many of its allies.

Two days later, Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson told ABC News she believed an indictment was “imminent.”

However, Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project, says she is deeply skeptical that prosecuting WikiLeaks “would be constitutional, or a good idea.”

“If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA’s secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans,” Shamsi told IPS. “Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome.”

RIGHTS GROUP SAYS CABLES CONFIRM YEMEN LIED ABOUT U.S. MISSILE STRIKE

Amnesty International staked out a similar position, noting that international human rights law permits states to invoke censorship only on narrow grounds such as national security or public order.

And even in cases where these criteria apply, “states do not have a blank check to keep information secret or to punish individuals for publishing it, simply by declaring the information to be ‘classified’ or declaring it necessary to restrict it as a matter of ‘national security’,” said the London-based group.

More substantively, it noted that one of the cables corroborates images Amnesty released earlier this year showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local civilians, including women and children.

“What we know, and what the WikiLeaks cable confirms, is that Yemen clearly lied to its people and to the world, and the United States thereby avoided a response,” Tom Parker, Amnesty’s policy director for terrorism, counter-terrorism and human rights, told IPS.

ARREST OF ASSANGE ‘UNDEMOCRATIC,’ SAYS RUSSIA’S PUTIN

Even some world leaders have weighed in on Assange’s case, with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin calling his arrest “undemocratic” and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva commenting that, “There is nothing, nothing for freedom of expression and against the imprisonment of this guy who was doing better work than many of the ambassadors.”

On Friday, Assange was moved to a segregation unit in Wandsworth Prison. He is due in court today (Tuesday).

Dinah PoKempner of Human Rights Watch says she “has no information regarding Mr. Assange’s personal actions in Sweden and thus no position on his arrest on charges of sexual assault other than that like any suspect in a criminal case, he should be accorded full rights of defense due under international and domestic law.”

However, she said that her organization is concerned about recent allegations from various political figures that the actions of WikiLeaks somehow amount to either “terrorism” or “espionage” in the absence of evidence of any intent to attack civilians or endanger national security.

“Threats made against Mr. Assange’s life are particularly reprehensible,” she told IPS, adding that, “Although the quantity of the WikiLeaks cable release is unprecedented, the nature of the material is not. Traditional media frequently reveal non-public government information of an embarrassing nature, and this can be in the public interest and in furtherance of the right to receive information in a democratic society.”

WORRIES PERSIST OVER SAFETY OF HUMAN-RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ABROAD

“We have expressed concern to WikiLeaks that care be taken not to reveal information that endangers lives, and we continue to monitor the disclosures to that end,” PoKempner added.

Human Rights First supports the debate over U.S. diplomacy that has been sparked by the latest round of WikiLeaks documents, but it shares the concerns of Human Rights Watch about the question of human rights activists who may be at danger if certain information is not redacted.

WikiLeaks says it has been especially careful in removing those names.

John Kampfner, the chief executive of Index on Censorship, associated with the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), says, “Good journalists and editors should be capable of separating the awkward from the damaging. Information that could endanger life, either in the short term or as part of a longer-term operation, should remain secret.”

CRITIC: WIKILEAKS DOING WHAT MAINSTREAM MEDIA AREN’T

In an editorial last week, he predicted: “Once this latest flurry is over, prepare for the backlash. Mr. Assange’s industrial-scale leaking may lead to legislation in a number of countries that makes whistle-blowing harder than it already is. Perhaps the most curious aspect of the WikiLeaks revelations is not that they have happened, but it took someone as mercurial as Mr. Assange to be the conduit.”

“Rather than throwing stones, newspapers should be asking themselves why they did not have the wherewithal to hold truth to power,” he said.

Of course, many publications certainly did, if only after the fact. As noted by Reporters Without Borders, which strongly supports the right to publish, “Any restriction on the freedom to disseminate this body of documents will affect the entire press, which has given detailed coverage to the information made available by WikiLeaks, with five leading international newspapers actively cooperating in preparing it for publication.”

EFFORTS TO SILENCE WIKILEAKS ‘WILL FAIL’

As Assange’s supporters rally to his side, one thing is clear: The genie is out of the bottle and can’t be put back, regardless of the pressures exerted on the whistleblower organization by corporations and government authorities.

Chip Pitts, past president and current member of the executive committee of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told IPS, “Assange’s arrest now further complicates and escalates the situation.”

“The ferocity with which the establishment has targeted Assange reveals its profound concern over the historic new trend toward global transparency WikiLeaks exemplifies: If the big thieves can’t keep their thievery secret, what will they do?”

# # #

Special Report Copyright 2010, Inter-Press Service. Republished Under Creative Commons license 3.0.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

C’mon. You know you wanna.

Hope springs eternal in the breast of Vermont Yankee supporters who maintain that, even after countless leaks, squeaks and outright collapses; even after the legislature voted to let it go, and even after the man who led that vote is seated as Governor, there still could be some way to keep the infernal thing in operation.  In today’s Free Press, VY spokesman Larry Smith and Brad Ferland of Vermont Energy Partnership both expressed the hope that the Legislature could somehow be persuaded to take up the matter again; and Steve Costello of CVPS says

“If it could be shown to be safe, we want it,

But there’s the rub.  Every story coming out of VY over the past two years has provided more reason to believe that it is definitely unsafe to operate the plant beyond it’s predicted closure date.

Apparently, supporters think that the sale of VY to a different entity could somehow put things right again; but simple commonsense predicts that any new owner of the antediluvian facility would most likely be regarding it as a strategic liability to be minimally maintained and mined for whatever tax credits or incentives might be available before an unceremonious death- dump on Vermont’s front stoop.   And a couple of years of marginally cheaper power are supposed to be enough to keep us on the hook? Please... we may be a rural state but we weren’t born yesterday!

Some, like Orleans Senator Vince Iluzzi envision a scenario in which the sale of VY to a different entity might allow the NCR (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to overrule Vermont’s Legislature and renew VY’s license unilaterally.

“Vermont may not have jurisdiction over Vermont Yankee,” said Illuzzi, who voted against the plant in the Senate this year and said if there were a new vote, he’s not sure how he would vote.

Now that would be really well-received by fiercely independent Vermonters.

Arne Gundersen, who advises the Legislature on all things nuclear, doubts that the NRC would intrude to such a degree, although he can well see Entergy courting any legal maneuver that might further delay the inevitable shut-down.

That’s a little like sending the Lusitania in to rescue the Titanic,” he said.

One thing is certain, before that glow-farm on the banks of the Connecticut River is finally shutdown, VY and her owners will have milked every opportunity available for delay.

Ah, the “new media”: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter… and yes, the dreaded blogs. Never has a bunch of simple software caused so much sturm, drang, und tail-chasing among so many political types.

Going second hand here, as GMD has been dropped from the Shumlin administration’s press release list (looks like we’re back… some sort of snafu), but news reports indicate that the Shumlin administration has made two communications hires: Sue Allen will be returning to the Pavilion as a Special Assistant to the Governor, and Bianca Slota will be the administration’s “Press Secretary.”

A couple of odd things, here. First, vtdigger reports that Slota will only be receiving a $45,000 salary – which is pretty tiny for such a key position. This suggests that Allen will be doing a lot of the heavy lifting usually associated with the titular Press Secretary position. The other odd thing is that Slota will, according to digger, “In addition to day-to-day press responsibilities… focus on new media and web-based communications”

So the administration’s new media professional is a reporter whose experience consists of being a TV reporter on Alaska local news and WCAX in the 5 years since graduating from the University of Maryland.

Y’know, call me crazy, but… I dunno. If you take baking seriously, and you want somebody to work for the biggest bakery in the state, you hire a – you know – baker. Right? If you need somebody to work on your car, you wouldn’t ring a bicycle mechanic, right? Am I off here?

But for its new media position (and a piece of a position at that), the administration goes with yet another legacy reporter, who will have a period of on the job training in a position dozens of people who actually work in the medium could’ve hit the ground running on.

The fact is that the list of obvious folks for such a position is huge: who wouldn’t want Essex Junction blogger Steve Benen, named by Atlantic magazine as one of the nation’s most influential pundits (ahead of such names as Lou Dobbs and Ezra Klein) on your team? Think you can’t peel him away? How about trying David Waldman, aka Kagro X, the former GMD front pager, current blogger for the dKos-sponsored Congress Matters site, and generally the go-to new media person nationally on the intricacies and vagueries of the Washington political process?

Too far removed from day-to-day Vermont governing? Fine. One obvious choice, then, is Cathy Resmer – long-time new media editor for Seven Days. She goes back to the very genesis of the Vermont blogosphere and has done tremendously creative things with the medium. Still pissed at Seven Days over the “ethically challenged” poll, then how about blogger/filmmaker/all-around-new-media-pioneer Bill Simmon of Burlington? Granted, Philip Baruth is starting a new job as a Senator, but how about reporter Christian Avard, who has not only been a blogger for this site, Huffington Post, and Raw Story – but who is also a professional print journalist at the Deerfield Valley News, and before that the late Vermont Guardian? There’s a crossover talent for you. Or how about vtdigger’s Anne Galloway for heaven’s sake?

Look, I’m sure Slota is a wonderful, talented, intelligent person. She’ll probably do fine. This isn’t about her, it’s about the administration that hired her. It’s the equivalent of hiring a novelist to be your print media person – one could say that their experience is related, except that it’s really not. It’s about the people in power still not taking this medium seriously. In hiring someone from outside the new media world as your in-house new media professional, you’re saying one of two things.

First, that you think new media is a trifling thing. Maybe just a bunch of facebook updates that anybody can do. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, though.

The second, more likely option: you’re hiring for a liaison. An ambassador. Somebody from your world who can travel to the mystic netherworld of new media and speak to the natives. Because new media isn’t something you do, it’s something external to be managed.

And that’s a shame – and a concern. A shame for the missed potential from such a legacy mindset. A concern because although, yes, sites like GMD have given the left a leg up on new media in Vermont, that situation isn’t going to last forever. And you better believe that the right in this state isn’t going to take long to figure out that new media isn’t some cosmic force to be communed with, it’s the new – and will very soon be the dominant – communications medium in America.

In the modern political landscape, you don’t just “liaise” with new media. You do it, you own your piece of it – or you fall behind.

When the dust settles, there is no in-between.

Cross posted from Rational Resistance.

We're still dealing with the aftermath of the deal Obama cut with Mitch McConnell the other day, even though it's really too early to tell if we're in the aftermath yet.

There's been quite a range of opinion, from overheated claims that Obama was always just a Republican in disguise or that he never planned to eliminate the millionaires' tax cut, end DADT, or promulgate real health care reform; to arguments that he actually made a good deal that we should all be celebrating, not criticizing, or that people need to understand that coming across as an angry black man won't help him get anywhere.

I think all of these claims are wrong, mainly because they're missing the point. People do feel betrayed, and with some justification. On the other hand, inspirational as his candidacy was, Candidate Obama was always just a moderately liberal centrist Democrat, and that is generally how he has governed. The sense of betrayal is more the result of disappointed supporters realizing that he didn't live up to their projections than his actual statements.

There are plenty of respectable liberal economists and analysts who make the point that the deal Obama made, given the circumstances, was the best he could have made; I suspect this is true, but there is some reason to question it.

The key phrase, though, is given the circumstances. To me, the question isn't why he made the deal he made, but why he let himself get maneuvered into such a position of weakness, and why he has repeatedly done that during his presidency.

What I've observed is that Obama has repeatedly failed or refused to take the initiative on issues that were important to him and to the Democratic base. For instance, take health care. In 1994, when Bill Clinton tried to pass health care reform he was attacked for setting up a shop in the White House to come up with a plan; it crashed and burned. Obama overlearned that lesson by deciding to just leave it all up to Congress. We know what happened: the Republicans spent the summer of 2009 lying about death panels; Senate leadership wasted their time trying to curry favor with people like Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Charles Grassley, who were never going to support anything; Obama tried to buy off special interests to get their support; but fundamentally Obama never changed his approach.

We have seen the same thing in the Middle East. Obama has failed to articulate a vision for peace in the Middle East and as a consequence he was forced to offer big payments to Israel in exchange for the hope at a token 90-day suspension of illegal settlements. We can actually be glad Netanyahu decided not to take the deal, even as it betrays Obama's weakness.

That's what happened with taxes. We're told that the polls still show that strong majorities of Americans don't support extending the millionaires' and billionaires' tax cut, but it's probably going to happen. It didn't have to, though. For months liberals have been saying that Obama should have introduced his own tax cut, he could even call it the Obama Tax Plan, that extended the tax cuts up to $250,000, lifted the FICA cap, and probably did a few other changes to make the tax system more progressive, and pushed it through Congress. It would have put the Republicans in the position of going into the election either voting for it or voting no on tax cuts for 98% of the American people. Back in September even Boehner said that if he had to he would have voted for that bill. So why not make the Republicans vote for it? Before the election is when he had some leverage, not after they won.

The same is true with the federal employees' pay freeze. I don't have an opinion on whether it was a good idea or not, but I'm sure it's something the Republicans would have wanted. They might have wanted it enough to trade something for it, but they didn't have to because Obama gave it up unilaterally. Would it have been worth enough for them to agree to extend unemployment? We'll never know, will we? For that matter, there are plenty of observers who think the Republicans, if forced to it, would have voted to extend unemployment benefits because they wouldn't have wanted to look like the economic royalists they are. I doubt that, but again, Obama never tried that, so we'll never know.

So where do we all stand? I'm not really sure. Obama has clearly mishandled this situation very badly. He will probably get the deal through, pretty much as written, but that remains to be seen. The price for the deal, though, is not just giving the Republicans the billionaires' tax cut. We've been hearing plenty of liberals who supported Obama who are now saying he has permanently lost their support. We also hear people saying it's time for a primary challenge.

I think this is misguided. History tells us that an incumbent president who gets a serious primary challenge loses, either during the primaries or in the general election. The list is a long one: Johnson, Ford, Carter, Bush. It could certainly happen to Obama in 2012, although much depends on how the economy is doing.

If that happens, though, we are not going to be trading an unsatisfactory President Obama for a preferable President Kucinich, Clinton, or some other liberal Democrat. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is not the strongest part of the party at the present time, so there's no guarantee that we will get a more liberal nominee. (If you'll remember, the only serious candidate in 2008 who was more liberal than Obama was John Edwards. I invite you to contemplate what a disaster that would have been.)

No. If Obama faces a serious primary challenge in 2012 the likeliest outcome is the election of Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, or some other vicious Republican. Do you seriously think that would be better than reelecting Obama?

If you do, please tell me what color the moon on your planet is.

A repost from a few years ago.  Enjoy 🙂

As you all know, the secular-hedonism forces in the country are doing everything they can to attack the valuable cultural icon of the Solstice.  To wit:

• People are refraining from saying “joyful Solstice,” replacing it with such heathen phrases as “happy holidays,” “happy New Year,” “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Chaunakah;”


• Our traditional solstice symbols, such as the star and wreath, have been co-opted by the forces of Christmas;


• Stores across the country have abandoned their stock of solstice-specific merchandise.  You can find Dradles, mangers and other merchandise, but nowhere can you find solstice-specific items;

Want to help end this anti-Solstice scourge?  We at the Department of Pagan Enthusiasm (DOPE) have prepared a short list of tasks you can incorporate into your everyday life.  See below the fold for this list.

Great.  So you’re on board with our pro-solstice campaign and ready to fight the scourges of the anti-Solstice agenda.  There’s a lot you can do to help:

1. organize letter writing campaigns: see a store that ignores our great and glorious Solstice?  Write them a letter.  Get your friends to do it, too.  Use phrases like “merchants of the forces of hedonism” and “supporting the powers of darkness;”


2. picket people who refuse to say “joyful solstice.”  Be sure not to just picket their places of business, but their homes as well.  If they object, leave sheaths of wheat on their doorstep.  They’ll get the message and shape up in no time;


3. see a tv program that doesn’t sponsor any pro-Solstice activities? write them letters, too, but also focus on their advertisers.  Ask the people who advertise on their show if they’ve ever had a bunch of angry pagans outside their offices.  If that doesn’t scare them, nothing will;


4. sabotage events supporting other holidays that exclude the Solstice: get a job as a mall Santa and eat lots of cabbage and beans before your shift.  If anyone asks, blame it on the elves;


5. bumper sticker your car: there are some great bumper stickers available form our shop: “Remember the Solstice!” and “12-21: not just a palindrome” are two of our best sellers.  But be sure to not stick to just bumper stickering your own vehicles.  Be sure to bumper other peoples’ cars as well.  Best to do this late at night so they drive around with our message of hope and peace for hours before they find out;


6. there is no number six;


7. see a manger scene? Get a bunch of “it’s a girl!” balloons and tie them to the hands of the wise men.  Tie them to the crib as well and make sure to put a pink bow on the baby’s head;


8. fight the snowmen: snowmen have been transformed from their traditional pagan status so as to no longer have their connection to traditional pagan rituals and rites.  They are no longer our allies and must now be seen as our enemies.  When you encounter a snowman, you may fight it through a variety of means.   Hair dryers are effective, but it’s difficult to find an easy to use outlet near many, so we recommend carrying a carafe of hot coffee.  Its effect is similar to that of “holy” water on vampires.  (vampires are neutral in this fight, so please don’t make your coffee with holy water.  It will be perceived as a threat by them, and the last thing we need is for them to ally with Christians);

We hope this update on the War on Solstice has been helpful.  With your help, we can defeat the forces of anti-paganism and bring society into conformity with our pantheistic tree-hugging dirt worship, which everyone knows, is the One True Religion.  And remember, if anyone challenges you, you’re doing this for their own good.  Just tell them that and everything should be fine.

I will end this message from the front lines in the culture wars with a traditional pagan litany:

Never give up.  

Never surrender.