Put down the Kool-aid and step away from the punchbowl

 

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I really thought saying “I told you so” would be more fun. From Michael Moore:

 

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It’s so, Mike. You fucked up and bet on the wrong pony. How’s that “hope and change” bullshit working out for you?

Maybe you should have learned your lesson back in 2000 when you said there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between George Bush and Al Gore. Stick to muckraking and stop endorsing bad candidates.

From another bad judge of character:

On Tuesday Barack Obama will announce a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan. A week later he’ll be in Oslo accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. Pretty good timing, no?

There should be some red faces in Oslo next week. I wonder how they’ll feel when Obama orders the bombing of Iran? Then he can put “first Noble laureate to start a war” on his resume.

 

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New Movement Survey #1

The time is right for a new movement.  The American middle class is sick and tired of getting trampled by the well connected who have our government by the balls.   But if we are going to get this baby off the ground, we’re going to have to do this right.   Successful movements have certain things in common. Timing is important.  But so is critical mass, messaging, leadership, discipline. To start off our exploration of movements that worked, I want to start with The Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution.  Those of you who haven’t seen HBO’s fantastic series John Adams should rent it ASAP.  The first several episodes are the important ones.  For those of you not familiar with the Reformation, check out this excellent introduction from PBS’ Empires based on the life of Martin Luther: Driven to Defiance and Reluctant Revolutionary.

Now, before we get started, I would like to conduct a survey.  This is not the first time we have tried to get our act together and we are not the only ones trying to do it.  Violet Socks is testing the waters as well.  But we continue to face resistance, from ourselves mainly, to actually doing something.  So, this survey is intended to help us figure out what we are doing wrong.

Notes and my humble opinion:

• Those of you who are hankering for a National Womens Party should give it up.  It’s DOA.  If you go that route, you will end up marginalizing yourselves and leave the rest of us without your critical mass.  Seriously.  I don’t want to be a part of a movement where we are already starting down the path to splitting ourselves up.  You can get everything you want from a new entity without making yourselves irrelevant from inception.  Sorry to be so harsh.  I could be harsher.  I am a feminist interested in equality.  Sentimental feminism bores me to fricking tears.  Don’t test my patience.  Feel free to disagree with me but before you do, first do a thought experiment and carry out your proposal to its logical conclusion.
• Yes, tea partiers are well intentioned but crazy.  If you are a tea partier, I share your frustration with the way things are.  But the tea party movement was started by Republican operatives and, I’m sorry, but Republicans have lost all semblance of credibility.  They are bent on destruction of our government and have been  successful at destroying it since Ronald Reagan got his mitts on it. Rush Limbaugh is an evil man.  Glenn Beck is both evil and stupid.  If you can’t see what is really going on in the tea party movement, please sit this one out on our threads.
• Think *VERY* carefully about how you want to construct your message.  I have seen what happens when a bunch of Conflucians or Reclusiveleftists or other left of centerists get together in a blog and decide to brainstorm.  It isn’t pretty.  Here is a taste of what *has* been successful:

• Think about how to spread the message once we have one.  Blogging isn’t the answer.  Most people don’t read blogs.  Also, the news media isn’t going to cover us until we are too obvious to ignore anymore.  THIS is the place to be creative.

Ok, GO!

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Martha Coakley for President Open Thread

I can’t reload that earlier thread anymore, so here’s a new one. From The Boston Globe:

Coakley: I oppose more US troops to Afghanistan

The Democratic front-runner in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy issued a statement saying, “I believe we should begin the process of bringing our troops home.”

Coakley has said repeatedly she trusted President Barack Obama but would wait to hear him make his case if he wanted to increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

Yet two days before Obama is scheduled to address the nation on the subject, Coakley said “based on what I know now,” she does not support a troop increase….

Coakley said she is “very concerned” the case for more troops still has not been made. And she believes there is no evidence Afghan President Hamid Karzai “is a legitimate or trustworthy partner.”

We need a President with guts. Of course the last time we had a President who had the courage to speak up to the generals, he was shot down on the street in Dallas.

Ray McGovern at Truthout:

as he studied the options, cost and likely outcomes, Kennedy came to see U.S. intervention in Vietnam as a fool’s errand. Few Americans are aware that, just before he was assassinated, Kennedy had decided to pull all troops out of Vietnam by 1965.

The Pentagon was hell bent on thwarting such plans, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara found it an uphill struggle to enforce the President’s will on the top brass. Senior military officers were experts at “slow-rolling” politicians who favored a course that the Pentagon didn’t like.
When in May 1962 Kennedy ordered up a contingency troop-withdrawal plan, it took more than a year for the military brass to draw one up.

[….]

Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, to whom fell the task of announcing President Kennedy’s death on Nov. 22, 1963, told James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that Kennedy’s mind was fixed on Vietnam the day before. Instead of rehearsing for a press conference that day, Kennedy told Kilduff:

“I’ve just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We’re losing too damned many people over there. It’s time for us to get out. The Vietnamese are not fighting for themselves. We’re the ones who are doing the fighting.
“After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. There is no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.”

Kennedy never returned from Texas and the war went on. Sadly, Obama is no John Kennedy.

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