On beating dead asshat horses...
For some time now, as Obama continues to lard his administration with mostly Clinton retreads (a piece of less-than-brilliant decisionmaking which is causing him problems, as I type...) I have been concerned that the euphoria of his/our win needed badly to be tempered with a reality-check or twenty.
IMHO, he is further up shitcreek than any president since Lincoln. And the boat is springing leaks daily. Richardson is gone. Emanuel is by no means out of the woods, and the cynical political charade which Blago has (so far) successfully ginned up, has gotten a lot of support from stupid democrats and intelligent republicans, who seem to think that Harry Reid and his "racist" friends keeping Burris in the Senate Rules Committee cloakroom long enough for the Illinois legislature to move on Blago will somehow cause the American government to collapse, and all of our genitals to fall off. (Okay; the repubs don't really believe that; they, to be blunt about it, give fuckall about Reid's "civil rights". They just want him sitting in the Senate when the roof falls in on Blago.)
This last one, looks like it has a short shelf life, since the price for playing "Let's seat Burris because it's LEGAL!" poker is going to go through the roof as soon as the Illinois legislature gets rolling on Blago. But these are not the worst of Obama's worries.
I think Iraq is going back on the front burner, big-time. And some very tough decisions will have to be made about whether or not to send troops back into the cities to try to stop the RE-surge following bush's successful effort to put a temporary lid on what used to be Iraq, long enough to let he and the rest of the failed petro-posse get out of town.
Given recent events in Gaza, we don't need to talk about the great progress in the rest of the mid-east which Obama is inheriting from Bush, right?
And then, there's the economy...
The point is, Obama is going to have to hit the ground running, or he's going to get swamped with all of this. And while we aren't sitting in on the transition team meetings, we bloggers DO matter.
And there is waaay too much bandwidth being wasted on bashing the likes of Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, etc., while these other things are eating us like Melanomas. Palin is gone. No threat to us in the immediate future. And I suspect, not in 2012 either. The country didn't just reject John McCain, we rejected Palin's mindless cheerleaderism, especially since it was commingled with a Neanderthal social consciousness.
Coulter is just...bag-lady-squatting-in-her-own-pee crazy. Anymore, I don't like looking at pictures of her, and I don't like reading about her, even when it's criticism.
There are progressive blogs devoting more time to recipes than to the fact that things have gotten so crazy that some democrats are calling for Reid to resign because he wants to keep a political hack like Burris, who was chosen by a governor who is probably going to be impeached next week, out of the U.S. Senate. It's insane.
I've dumped on Reid many a time for his comfort zone with Bush's bloody idiocy, but this time he's doing good work, by keeping Burris from being seated. (other than provisionally; which is probably what will happen)
We need to be talking about this. We need to be arguing about this. But other than Kos, Huffpo, Driftglass, and a few other blogs, there is not much being debated. (FDL has a thread on it now and then, but Hamsher's leading the Chicken Littles about how dire will be the results if Reid&Co. do manage to keep Blago's chosen hack out of the Senate.)
Folks, it's time to put down the Chardonnet and start to get dirty. Blog KoffeeKlatches Gloating and beating up on the assholes who've contributed so much to the sitch we're in, may be fun, but we need to be talking about the day-to-day realities of a new president coming in who has a TON of problems to solve. Those people I've named, are, generally speaking, in bad cess with American voters. We need to give them a slap now and then, en passant, but trust me, we have a brand new set of problems to deal with, and none of them are named Limbaugh or Malkin.
Leave off the recipes for pork loin, and let's find a recipe for getting Obama through the first six months without his administration imploding in our faces.
4 comments:
TB,
You and I can agree on a lot - but I still have to disagree with you on Reid's stonewalling.
As noted before, you folks in IL had the opportunity to take down Blago and take away his power to appoint - either by passing a law, impeaching him (already!) or running a special election. But, it looks to this out of stater that everyone wanted the next guy to do something. Mix in Reid's OWN MEDDLING (or shall we call it "influence peddling"?) and we are where we are now.
To deny Burris puts Reid squarely in the GOP racist camp, it sets very bad and dangerous precedent and proves my point that this is all PERSONAL politics -- not constituent politics. The result, the peoplez of IL are less one of their constitutional representatives - an intolerable situation (and unconstitutional one at that). No matter how it turns out now, Reid has royally f-ed this up and made the new Prez's job even harder!!!
No matter the outcome, Reid should be dumped as Leader tout-suite.
As for the rest of your post... right on. Now, how do we get people talking and framing the right way? Progressives are still speaking to (or against) the framing put in place by the SCLM and no one seems to want to change that.
Regards friend,
SP
Well, Tanbark, the folks over at the Today Show certainly took your post to heart and cancelled Ann's scheduled appearance. Good work dude! :D
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/05/ann-coulters-today-show-a_n_155393.html
SP, thanks for the good post. :o)
I'm willing, even eager, to see a new majority whip in place. Nothing Reid can do will erase the years of bending over for bushCo.
But Burris, for me, is a red line. Blago's choice of him had nothing to do with Burris's "qualifications". He's a willing cattle prod for Blago to use on the dems.
This also has jack to do with "rule of law", as some people are shreiking. It has to do with whether or not the democrats have the right to put on hold Blago's appointment of a man whose very thought processes are, unspinnably, for sale. The idea that unless they seat this corrupt little ticking time-bomb from a vengeful Blago, our legislative system will keel over, is nonsense. All they have to do is use lawful procedural action to put Burris back in the Senate Rules Committee cloakroom for a few weeks while the Ill. legislature removes Blago from office. Once that happens, how much support for Burris will we be hearing? The yowls about "legalitiy" will be reduced to whimpers, as the new Ill. Governor appoints someone whose skin-pores will have been vetted for cleanliness.
And down the road, no Burris for the repubs to point to, when Fitz's indictments fall on Blago like a Steinway piano.
What a terrible outcome, n'est pas? :o)
And all from "due process". :o)
Thanks, Myrtle. :o)
Re: the media leash-tug on Coulter (finally) for her hate-mongering:
ever' little bit helps. :o)
BTW; don't know if you saw this or not, but it's funniest photoshoppe I've ever seen. A piece of pure genius, it, along with the text, shows why Driftglass deserves the award for best individual blogger:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/01/he-dangles-baby.html
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