Kiss my ass, Ed!

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From Politico:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell says discouraged liberals need to “get over it” and support the Democratic Party, before they regret it.

“This isn’t about President [Barack] Obama,” Rendell said on MSNBC’s “Last Word” Monday night. “It’s about whether the Democratic Party, not perfect, but certainly bent on trying to preserve theories in government and progressive practices, is going to be in charge of the Congress or the Republican Party. And it’s not the Republican Party of old. This is a scary Republican Party.”

Of conflicts the left has had with Obama, Rendell said, “We ought to get over it.”

“If we’ve got some issues with President Obama, save them for another day,” he said.

Exactly what day would that be, Ed? In 2012 you’ll be telling us the same exact bullshit, and doofuses like BTD will be promising to hold Obama’s feet to the fire after the election.

But if Obama wins (please God, no!) he’ll just spend another four years punching hippies while his toes get frostbite.

I say fuck that and fuck you Mr. Rendell.

BTW – we still haven’t forgotten when you formed HOUND:

We have formed HOUND (Hillary-Obama-United-Not-Divided) in response to the creation of PUMA (party unity, my ass — or its cleaned up moniker, People United Means Action).

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Get over this:
— — — — — — — — — — ‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^› — — — — — — — — — —

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

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Eleanor Clift at Newsweak:

Obama’s background as a community organizer may be hampering him as president. While his supporters still like him, they’re not so sure he has what it takes to bring about the hope and change he promised and excited the base. A community organizer empowers people to do things for themselves, and in government, you have to lead and order and direct, and that’s not Obama’s style, even though Republicans call him autocratic and Rush Limbaugh calls him “Ayatollah Obama.” Obama has had a lot of success in politics and academia, and on the mean streets of Chicago, by reaching consensus, and he expected to apply that life lesson now that he’s at the pinnacle of power, and it didn’t work.

Name one instance where Obama had success by reaching consensus. One. (Getting himself elected doesn’t count)

{{crickets}}

Barack Obama’s job as a community organizer was to get African Americans in Chicago’s South Side registered to vote and to the polls to help Mayor Harold Washington in his battle with the Daley Machine. Now that’s not a bad thing, but it was just a political hack job, not some higher calling.

When Washington died, Obama packed up and left for law school. When he came back he immediately started getting cozy with the Daley Machine.

BTW – Does this mean that being a community organizer is NOT a qualification to be POTUS?

Who is this guy?

Peter Rouse

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The news today is that Rahmbo is deserting a sinking ship and some guy named Peter Rouse is replacing him as White House Chief of Staff.  Here’s more on Rouse:

It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator — still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office — was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts’s intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn’t want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.

“Pete’s very good at looking around the corners of decisions and playing out the implications of them,” Obama said an interview when asked about that discussion. “He’s been around long enough that he can recognize problems and pitfalls a lot quicker than others can.”

Pete Rouse is the Outsider’s Insider, a fixer steeped in the ways of a Washington that Obama has been both eager to learn and quick to publicly condemn. The meticulous workaholic rose through three decades of unglamorous legislating to become arguably the most influential Democratic aide in the Senate when he worked for then-Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.).

Yep, the smartestest guy to ever run for POTUS had to be told not to vote for a rabid wingnut SCOTUS nominee.  Some liberal.

This next little bit gives away more than intended:

With help from Gibbs and Axelrod, Rouse wrote a detailed memo for Obama’s first year in the Senate.

David Axelrod is Barack’s Turdblossom. Obama’s rise coincides with his association with Axelrod, who is the king of astroturf.

We’re supposed to believe Rouse went from chief of staff to the Senate Majority Leader to the same position with a freshman senator all because of some old law school connection? Bullshit. Rookie senators don’t snag guys like Peter Rouse to run their offices. The fix was in long ago.

More on Tom Daschle from Matt Taibbi:

When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger.

Wouldn’t that make Rouse a pimp?

Once you learn to fake authenticity, the rest is easy

---

From the Telegraph article How Barack Obama invented himself containing an interview between Obama biographer David Remnick and Ta-Nehisi Coates:

TC Right. How does that play into his political career? I wonder how, again, to the extent that there was a choice to identify as multiracial, not necessarily black.

DR It is a huge theme in his political career. Every step of the way race plays a gigantic role. Every time he runs for office. When he ran for [Illinois] state senator he committed an act of impiety against the long-standing regulars there by refusing to step back from [incumbent] Alice Palmer, who had a much deeper relationship to the community than he did. When he ran for Congress in 2000 he ran against the former Black Panther Bobby Rush, and somebody extremely popular on the south side; an act of impiety. He lost two to one, and it was an ugly, ugly race, in which Rush and another opponent really were putting it out on the street that this guy is inauthentic – not black enough, was the phrase; that he’s an outsider; he’s not really one of us, he doesn’t have our experience, etc, etc, etc. Which is a complete denial of the black experience in America, which is immensely diverse, whether it is people who are from the Caribbean or from Africa or from… This subject dogs him all the way; it doesn’t begin with the presidential race.

TC Since you mention Bobby Rush: there is a great scene in your book where Rush harps on how Obama walks, his bob, as we tend to call it, and he jokes that Obama did not walk like that before he came to Chicago, and that he acquired this kind of way of walking.

DR Yes. Bobby Rush is not a young man any more; his health is not the best. He is very tall and very skinny, and he is the cock of the walk. Why? Because he is the one guy who beat Obama; and he beat him soundly. So, here he is in his congressional office: it’s very nice that Barack has won finally, and he’s mocking him, and then he gets up and he just sashays across the office. And he said, you know, back then he didn’t walk like that when he ran against me. You know, he’s accusing him, even to this day, of inauthenticity; as if we all don’t learn, as if we are born with walks and all kinds of things.

TC There is also a great scene where – and forgive my language – one of the guys basically says, you mother——, you’ve got to learn how to talk.

DR Exactly. Obama was smart enough to hire some people that knew their way around, as they called them in Chicago, taverns and clubhouses; he didn’t just bring his Harvard friends. And they would yell at him: they said you go into these black churches and you talk like you are teaching law at the University of Chicago. But he hadn’t learnt it yet. You know, it’s like being a musician: you don’t get to be Sonny Rollins by picking up the saxophone five or six times; you do it over and over and over again in your woodshed. And that is what is amazing about Barack Obama, how quickly he got to the level he did as a politician. He had the bug. We think of him in exalted terms, and should in many ways, but he is also a politician who believes.

A politician who believes in what? Getting himself elected?

I remember the first time I saw Obama addressing an African American audience during the primaries. He was talking like he was trying to imitate Dr. Martin Luther King. Then he started channeling Denzel’s portrayal of Malcolm X:
.

.
Obama sometimes “talks the talk” of a progressive Democrat too, but it’s pretty hard to walk the walk when everything about you is as phony as a $3 bill. If you want to know who Obama really is, follow the money. It leads right to Wall Street.

But we already knew that.

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Is Obama a great politician?

Is he live or Memorex?

I was reading the comments to this post at TalkLeft and saw this exchange between Big Tent Democrat and a commenter:

Obama is a good pol (none / 0) (#16)
by Big Tent Democrat on Sat Jan 16, 2010 at 10:50:52 AM EST
Carter is not.

At the least, Obama will reinvent himself and bounce back like Clinton did in 1996.

[ Parent ]

I’m sorry (none / 0) (#17)
by Ga6thDem on Sat Jan 16, 2010 at 10:54:01 AM EST
but Obama is not a good pol. If he was the party wouldn’t be looking to get smacked in the next two elections.

Obama doesn’t have the political skills that Clinton had. Obama is terrible at policy much like Carter and in the end that’s what matters. Obama can’t seem to produce good policy and that means to me that he’s not a very good pol.

[ Parent ]

He;s been badly advised (none / 0) (#18)
by Big Tent Democrat on Sat Jan 16, 2010 at 10:56:17 AM EST
Not only is he a good pol, he is a GREAT one, for himself.

Even now, his approval numbers are holding up while the Dem Party collapses around him.

Now I don’t want to pick on BTD because I generally agree with him, but when it comes to Obama his judgment is seriously flawed. The most obvious proof of this was his decision to support Mr. One-derful because he was the “media darling.”  Hello?  The media are NOT our friends.

But what BTD says in the comments above is not something unique or unusual – we have heard for nearly three years now that Obama is a gifted politician with superior oratorical skills. I previously discussed the myth of Obama’s ability to speechify, but today I want to examine his alleged “mad skillz” at politicking.

Obama won his first election in Illinois by eliminating the competition from the ballot. That might be the “Chicago way” but it’s not what we normally think of as a political skill. Once in office he carefully avoided controversy by voting “present” something like 130 times.

Obama ran for Congress in 2000, trying to unseat Bobby Rush.  But he got his ass handed to him by the former Black Panther who said:

“Barack Obama went to Harvard and became an educated fool. Barack is a person who read about the civil-rights protests and thinks he knows all about it.”

Then around 2003 Barack became magic. The Democrats gained control of the Illinois State Senate and new Senate President Emil Jones let Obama boost his profile by claiming sponsorship of a number of bills other Democrats had been pushing for years. When Obama ran for the Senate in 2004 he was trailing Blair Hull in the Democratic primary until allegations Hull had abused his wife magically surfaced in the media.

Obama’s opponent in the general election was going to be Republican Jack Ryan, but dirty details of Ryan’s sex life magically surfaced and Ryan was forced to withdraw, leaving Obama facing perpetual also-ran Alan Keyes. Notice a pattern? In the only race determined by the voters where Obama faced a quality opponent (without any skeletons) he lost.  Badly.

So what things did Obama do as a U.S. Senator that demonstrate his political skills?

{{crickets}}

Obama’s run for the White House keyed on several things, none of which was his political skill. He received massive amounts of money from Wall Street and other big-money special interests. He was the media darling. He was supported by the Democratic party establishment.

Even with all those advantages he got fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, who cleaned his clock in the debates and kept winning primaries by double digits long after the media had anointed him the “inevitable” winner.

In the general election Obama was trailing John “Crypt Keeper” McCain until the financial meltdown magically reminded people how bad the Republicans were at running the country.  Obama won an election any Democrat without felony convictions should have cake-walked, but his approval ratings peaked during his inaugural address and it’s been downhill ever since.  Sure his approval ratings are higher than those of the Democrats in Congress, but nobody ever loved them anyway.

So, other than the “Beer Summit” can someone please provide an example where Obama has even demonstrated average political skills?

Anyone?

Bueller?

Bueller?

Failure was the plan

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Many of the posts and comments urging progressives to support the health care reform bill are based on a false premise. When you remove that false premise you realize that all the arguments for passing this horrible bill are bogus.

Right now Left Blogistan seems to be in agreement that the current version of health care reform is a horrible bill. Months ago I quit paying close attention to exactly what is in the bill because it was already bad and kept getting worse. The current argument among progressives is whether or not they should support a horrible bill.

Some people blame Joe Lieberman, others blame Harry Reid, or Rahm Emmanuel, Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Republicans, tea-baggers or even Hillary Clinton.  There are some newly-minted PUMAS accusing Obama of selling out but others are still in denial and want to believe that Obama tried to do the right thing but misjudged what he was up against or was badly advised.

Whether they blame Obama or someone else, their arguments contain the same false premise. That false premise is the idea that Obama and the Democratic leadership actually support health care reform, but the Republicans and the Blue Dogs have joined forces with the lobbyists to obstruct them.

Obama and the Democratic leadership DO NOT support health care reform.  The problem isn’t that they’re apathetic about it, it’s that they are actively opposed to it.They aren’t opposed on ideological grounds or because they want to see people suffer, it’s just a simple conflict of interest.  There is no financial incentive for them to reform our nations health care system, but obstructing and opposing reform is very lucrative.

This health care reform clusterfuck was not an accident, it was planned.

Suppose you had a co-worker who on a daily basis kept “accidentally” spilling her coffee on your desk, messing up what you were working on and making you miss deadlines? What if your supervisor was a clumsy oaf who unintentionally grabbed your breast or your ass 2-3 times a week? How about if your boss kept making mistakes on your pay, invariably shorting you 10-20% on your sales commissions?

Assume that each of these people apologized each and every time it happened, and always sounded very sincere. How long would it take before you realized that they were doing it intentionally?  Not long I would hope.

The conservative movement has been on the rise most of my adult life. They have been well organized and heavily funded, and even before FOX News was created they had their own propaganda network in the media.  The Republican party is their political arm, but the real power isn’t the politicians, it’s the wealthy corporatists.

Their primary goal is returning this country to the golden age that existed before the New Deal.  No unions, no  government social spending, and no regulation of banks and business.  Because this country is still officially a democratic republic we still have elections, but the corporatists have been successful at rigging the outcomes in their favor.

With the exception of the Big Dawg in 1992 and 1996 I watched Republicans run rough-shod over Democrats for decades. As the minority party in Congress they have been able to block progressive legislation and judicial appointments, but when they became the majority that’s when the Democrats really got steamrollered.

I used to get frustrated watching the Democrats get outmaneuvered tactically and many times I shook my head in disgust as they made concession after concession. The worst part was when they surrendered without a fight. I wouldn’t have minded losing quite so much if they at least put up a fight.

Because of Iraq and Katrina you could sense that the public mood had turned against George Bush and the GOP by early 2006. But even though polls showed the war was very unpopular the Congressional Democrats were reluctant to push the issue. But in spite of doing everything they could to lose the Democrats won big.

But when Nancy Pelosi took over as Speaker of the House one of the first things she did was declare that impeachment was off the table. I couldn’t understand why the Democrats did nothing to stop the war or end the lawless behavior of the Bush administration.  The Democratic leadership couldn’t maintain any discipline.  It was very rare to see a Republican voting for a Democratic bill, but there were some blue dogs that voted with the GOP more often than they voted with their own party.

Then one day the light came on in my head. It was about the time that Alberto Gonzales was telling the Senate he couldn’t remember a single thing about his job as Attorney General.  Then the “loyal Bushies” started stonewalling with claims of privilege and by pleading the Fifth.  There was ample evidence to justify a special prosecutor or the appointment of a special committee to investigate.  But all the Democrats did was make a little noise and then drop it.

That’s when I realized they didn’t want to win.  They were like the Washington Generals – the team that always played the Harlem Globetrotters – they got paid to lose.  The Democrats would say the right things, but when it came time to vote they let the Republicans win.  They would make speeches scolding bankers and then turn around and deregulate Wall Street.  They pretend to be on our side, but their loyalty goes to the big money special interests.

I’m not saying there aren’t any good Democrats in Washington anymore, but they are an endangered species.  The Democratic leadership has gone over to the enemy, and that includes Obama, Pelosi and Reid.  Why would they do something like that? During the Watergate investigation Mark Felt/DeepThroat supposedly told Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money.” That is where the truth is.

The pressure for health care reform has been building for years. It was obvious after the 2006 midterms that the Democrats were going to re-take the White House in 2008 and health care costs have been spiraling out of control for the past couple decades. Add in Hillary as the presumptive front-runner and even Stevie Wonder could see what was coming.  So the corporatists shifted their attention to the Democratic party.

Last year what party and which candidate got the most money from Big Pharma and the health insurance companies?  I’ll give you a hint – it was the same party and candidate that got all the Wall Street money.  They gave him millions back in 2007 when he was a rookie Senator to start his campaign  and they spent  lots more buying him the nomination.

You didn’t really think all those career Democrat politicians in Washington suddenly got starry eyes and tingly legs just because they heard Obama make a speech did you?  The party insiders helped Obama because Obama had rich and powerful friends that asked them to help Obama.  The same thing goes for the media.  Early on Obama was getting more media attention than he deserved, and it was mostly positive.

After decades in Washington shilling for the special interests Senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd could barely raise enough money to compete in Iowa.  Even though they were both regulars on Sunday morning news shows their campaigns got little attention.  Richardson, Vilsack, Kucinich and Gravel were even worse off.  During 2007 the six of them combined raised about $25 million.  Obama raised that much in the first quarter of the year.

They took a light-weight politician with virtually no accomplishments and hired David Axelrod to turn him into Candidate Obama.  He was nearly perfect for them, an unscrupulous man with no core beliefs except his own ambition.  Best of all from their point of view, Obama doesn’t have the strength of character to defy authority.

During the campaign Obama resurrected “Harry and Louise” to attack Hillary’s plan, and criticized her for proposing health insurance mandates.  He also promised to televise the health care reform discussions on C-Span.

People think that after he took office Obama made secret deal with Big Pharma and the health insurance companies. That’s not true.  There might have been some specific details to discuss but the basic outline of the deal was made when Obama sold them his soul in exchange for being President.

Despite his promise to consider all the options Obama made sure single payer got buried. Max Baucus helped him in the Senate and the A-list progressive bloggers cooperated to keep the subject taboo on the front pages of their blogs.

So they’ve supposedly been wheeling and dealing on health care reform for months now, and some parts have changed quite a bit but other parts haven’t. (Keep in mind the speed and efficiency with which the FISA revision and TARP moved through Congress without major changes. Nancy and Harry were in charge back then too.)

They started with a “robust public option” and after weakening it until it it was meaningless they still took it out. There was a provision for a Medicare buy-in for people 55-65 years old. Lieberman liked it, then demanded it be taken out. The House version included the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

Who will be covered and how much will it cost? Fuck if I know, but whatever the current version says will change again before it’s over. But one thing hasn’t changed.

Mandates.

I’ve seen my state government mandate the purchase of insurance, but this is different. If you drive a car in California you have to buy auto insurance. When that law took effect the insurance companies saw a big jump in profits. But you’re not required to drive a car. If you own a business that hires employees you have to buy Worker’s Compensation insurance. But you don’t have to be self-employed.

Obama and the Congressional Democrats are proposing to solve the problem of people without health insurance by making them buy health insurance from private companies. That is truly unprecedented and historic.

Will there be effective cost controls and guaranteed coverage? I wouldn’t bet on it, 30 Democratic Senators voted against allowing the importation of cheaper prescription drugs.  It doesn’t appear they give a fuck about us little people.

They have generously included subsidies for the working poor (the non-working poor already have Medicaid) but all that means is that they will use tax dollars to help cover their premiums.

Right now the health insurance companies are paying out in benefits about 2/3 of of what they collect in premiums.  The remaining 1/3 goes to overhead and profits, and the health insurance companies are very profitable. Soon they will have their profits guaranteed by law and subsidized with tax dollars.

That was the plan from the beginning.

The primary beneficiaries of the plan are the health insurance companies. They invested millions and they will get back billions.  The plan does nothing to reform the system. This is not half a loaf, it is a windfall for the health insurance companies disguised as reform.

The Democrats didn’t try to write a better bill. They didn’t want one. The Democrats wanted this bill because the people they work for wanted this bill.  Unfortunately we aren’t the people they work for.

I expect the bill to pass.  The Democrats aren’t worried about public opinion or job security.

The A-list bloggers can’t stop it, just like they couldn’t stop the FISA revision.  They’re as useless as tits on a boar hog. All it took was a David Axelrod whispering sweet nothings and promises of insider access and they abandoned the idea of a democratic, grassroots progressive blogosphere and became the disseminators of White House talking points.

Health care reform is a big shit sandwich and we’re all gonna have to take a bite, but the A-listers deserve a double helping for all the help they gave the cooks.

The worst part is that despite the humiliating way they were exploited and discarded most of the progressive bloggers will go crawling back to vote for Obama and the Democrats because “the Republicans are worse!”

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B-plus? Are you shitting me?

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I didn’t watch the 60 Minutes interview with Obama because a) 60 Minutes quit being a news program years ago and b) listening to Obama talk is bad for my digestion. I’m glad I watched a rerun of White Christmas instead because I probably would have smashed my television if I had heard this:

President Barack Obama, in an interview that aired Sunday, gave himself “a good solid B-plus” grade for his first year in office.

Obama must be using the same grading system they used when he was at Columbia and Harvard Law School. But if he deserves a B+ then what the fuck does a D look like?

It used to be that a C was considered “average” but nowadays it is considered barely adequate. But if a B is now the average grade then Obama deserves no better than a C-minus or a D-plus.

Even at that I’m being very generous – he deserves an EF for EPIC FAIL.

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CORRECTION:

Apparently Obama was on ABC talking to Oprah and not on 60 Minutes when he put himself on the honor roll. I didn’t watch that show either.

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Violet Socks reacts here.

Lambert reacts here.

The Purple Avenger offers a right-wing response here.

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Doublethinking History

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I dropped by Hullaballoo the other day and saw this post by Digby reacting to a post by the Littlest Cheeto denying the existence of buyer’s remorse in the Kool-aid Kingdom:

Ferchristsake. Please, please spare us any more Drudgico stories about “the left.” Dredging up the primaries is nothing more than cheap link bait, designed to create a story where none exists. The left has been pushing Obama hard from the moment he took office, which seems to come as a surprise to the denizens of the village who assumed that everyone would spend the next four years sitting around playing the “I Got A Crush on Obama” Youtube on a loop while muttering “yes we can” under our breath. The only one who who seems to have actually done that is Tom Hayden, and when he finally looked up he felt, like, so totally betrayed.

Clinton and Obama are both mainstream Democrats who occupy exactly the same political terrain in the party and always did. That’s what made the primary so bloody. It was about personal identification, style and aspiration — the differences between the two camps were never about policy because there was no substantial difference in their policies.

I said the other day that there are two basic types of Obama supporter:

1. The Kool-aid Drinking True Believer – Believes that Obama is a unique and special leader of the type that only comes along once every generation or so, and whose impact is transformational and destined to be of historical significance. Thinks Obama is a genius with Jedi-like political skills that mere mortals cannot even comprehend. Is certain that Obama is one of the greatest public speakers in history and thinks the ability to motivate and inspire people made Obama the best candidate for President. Is grateful to be part of a movement that is going to forever change the way Washington does business.

2. The Cynical Pragmatist – Has no illusions about Barack Obama. Knows Obama is a politician and expects him to lie and break promises. Supported Obama because he thought Obama had the best chance of winning because he was the media favorite. Expects and is content with modest, incremental changes in government policy. Thinks Hillary would have done everything pretty much the same as Obama has done, but believes a McCain/Palin administration would have been really bad.

According to Digby, Tom Hayden is not only a Type 1 Obot, he is the one and only Type 1 Obot in existence. All the rest of the Obots are Type 2’s, and they are neither surprised nor disappointed with Obama’s performance thus far. In fact, everything is going exactly as they expected it to go. Really.

Most of the commenters on Digby’s post agreed with her, but there were a few of those paranoid shrieking hold-out PUMA types that showed up and started harshing everyone’s mellow with their usual lies and disortions, trying to re-litigate the primaries again.

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since the Great Purge of Left Blogistan.  For several years the left side of the blogosphere had been mostly united in opposition to George Bush and the Republicans, and we were looking forward to the Democrats regaining control of the White House and extending their majorities in the House and Senate.  The conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton was the “establishment candidate” and the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but there were a couple other contenders on a slate a eight candidates.

Then virtually overnight the supporters of Hillary Clinton became pariahs at the lefty blogs they had called home for years.  Even before Edwards left the race anyone who spoke out in support of Hillary or who offered even mild criticism of Obama became the target of insults and derogatory comments from Obama supporters.

I have been arguing politics since I was  kid and I never saw anything like it.  The hostility and ferocity of the Obot comments was only exceeded by their vulgarity.  Even during impeachment craziness of the nineties the Republicans were not as unhinged, and the Obots were attacking fellow Democrats.

There was no mutuality to these attacks.  They originated from the Obots, they were unprovoked and even when Hillary supporters tried to fight back they were outnumbered and got little or no support from the blog administrators.  At Cheetoville and other blogs were diaries and comments could be rated by other members, the Obots worked together to “rec” pro-Obama posts and “troll-rate” pro-Hillary posts.

I don’t have to remind you of how toxic the atmosphere was at Cheetoville and other lefty blogs.  The Confluence was founded as a refuge for Hillary supporters fleeing the insane hatred of the Obots.  But they weren’t satisfied with  driving us away from our old blog hang-outs, they tried to follow us here and continue their attacks.  They failed, thanks to a strict moderation policy and the vigilance of Katiebird and the other original moderators.

We haven’t forgotten the Great Purge, nor have we forgotten the cult-like behavior of the Obots.  We recall the way Obama was portrayed as a messianic figure while Hillary was demonized and belittled.  We still remember the way voters were accused of being racists because the voted for Hillary.

Attributing what took place to “personal identification, style and aspiration” makes it sound like we all had a collective bad-hair day.  I don’t identify with either candidate, but I have more in common with Obama than I do with Hillary.  I’ve noticed that the Obot stereotype of a Hillary supporter is a white female high school graduate in her 50’s who never paid attention to politics until Hillary ran for President.  They imagine these hypothetical Hillary supporters are racist “vagina-voters.”

Digby’s explanation makes even less sense if all the Obots are Type-2 Cynical Pragmatists.  If Obama and Hillary “are both mainstream Democrats who occupy exactly the same political terrain in the party and always did” and the Obots expected that as President either one would bring about the same modest, incremental changes, then what the fuck was all the insanity about?

On the other hand, if the typical Obot is a Kool-aid Drinking True Believer,  then their behavior can be explained as religious fanaticism.  It still doesn’t excuse or justify what they did, but it provides a motive.  It also explains why that conduct still continues to this day.  Cynical pragmatists don’t conduct holy wars, but fanatics believe they have a monopoly on righteousness.

So why are so many Obama  supporters now claiming that they are and always have been cynical pragmatists?

Reality bites, and it has sunk its fangs into the collective hindquarters of the Kool-aid Kingdom. They have tried to be patient, and they have rationalized and made excuses for almost a year now, but they don’t have much to show for it.  But they can’t admit they were wrong either.

The Obots didn’t come up with all that cult worship stuff on their own. It was the result of the Obama campaign’s use of very sophisticated psychological manipulation. Remember the people fainting on cue at Obama rallies? That’s very similar to what you see with faith healers in holy-roller churches.

They used imagery of Obama as a messianic figure and reinforced it with a narrative the depicted Obama’s life as if he was destined to be president. They used the psychological techniques on young people who thought they were smart and sophisticated and never realized they were being used. They manipulated the blogosphere too.

Although Obama never actually said he was the new messiah, he did make a lot of promises. It’s not just that he has failed to keep those promises, it’s that in many cases he has done the complete opposite of what he said he would do. Even worse, his attitude towards those broken promises is similar to a guy who tells a girl “So what if I said I love you? You should have known I only said it so you would sleep with me.”

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Another Obama Myth Busted

Mythbusters

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I thought there was something fishy about that whole “unprecedented number of death threats” bullshit. It turns out that (once again) I was right.

You may have missed it yesterday because of the wall-to-wall coverage of Sarah Palin, but on Thursday the House of Representatives questioned Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan under oath regarding the White House party crashers. From the Washington Post:

Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) wanted to know whether Obama faced a greater threat to his security than past presidents.

Sullivan said that published reports claiming that Obama faced a 400 percent increase in death threats were incorrect. “I’m not sure where that number comes from,” he said. The number of threats against Obama, he said, “are the same level as it has been for the last two presidents.”

Over at Talking Points Memo the Obots simply refuse to believe the truth. Here’s a sample:

This statement is unbelievable, plain and simple.

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If Obama was indeed receiving many more death threats than any other President, what Secret Service director in his right mind would admit that? It’s like saying, “We’re swamped here! We might miss one!”

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Of course Secret Service won’t reveal extent of threats to O. It would just encourage those are waiting in the wings to do something dangerous. “Hey, I can be the one millionth person to threaten him!” Sad to realize how racist our country still is.

They just can’t let go of that racism meme can they?

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Der Kriegsnobelpreisträger*

Warmonger-in-Chief

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From Robert Scheer at Truthdig:

HERE WE GO AGAIN

It is already a 30-year war begun by one Democratic president, and thanks to the political opportunism of the current commander in chief the Afghanistan war is still without end or logical purpose. President Barack Obama’s own top national security adviser has stated that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida members in Afghanistan and that they are not capable of launching attacks. What superheroes they must be, then, to require 100,000 U.S. troops to contain them.

The president handled that absurdity by conflating al-Qaida, which he admitted is holed up in Pakistan, with the Taliban and denying the McChrystal report’s basic assumption that the enemy in Afghanistan is local in both origin and focus. Obama stated Tuesday in a speech announcing a major escalation of the war, “It’s important to recall why America and our allies were compelled to fight a war in Afghanistan in the first place.” But he then cut off any serious consideration of that question with the bald assertion that “we did not ask for this fight.”

Of course we did. The Islamic fanatics who seized power in Afghanistan were previously backed by the U.S. as “freedom fighters” in what was once marketed as a bold adventure in Cold War one-upmanship against the Soviets. It was President Jimmy Carter, aided by a young liberal hawk named Richard Holbrooke, now Obama’s civilian point man on Afghanistan, who decided to support Muslim fanatics there. Holbrooke began his government service as one of the “Best and the Brightest” in Vietnam and was involved with the rural pacification and Phoenix assassination program in that country, and he is now a big advocate of the counterinsurgency program proposed by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to once again win the hearts and minds of locals who want none of it.

The current president’s military point man, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, served in Carter’s National Security Council and knows that Obama is speaking falsely when he asserts it was the Soviet occupation that gave rise to the Muslim insurgency that we abetted. Gates wrote a memoir in 1996 which, as his publisher proclaimed, exposed “Carter’s never-before-revealed covert support to Afghan mujahedeen—six months before the Soviets invaded.”

Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was asked in a 1998 interview with the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur if he regretted “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” and he answered, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” Brzezinski made that statement three years before the 9/11 attack by those “stirred-up Muslims.”

Lot’s of people have questioned whether Obama has a long-term relationship with Zbiggie B. dating back to his days at Columbia.  I dunno, but there are lots of names in Scheer’s piece I associate with “massive fail.”

BTW – I quit reading Truthdig last year when it went full Kool-aid. I guess it didn’t work out so well for them.

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*That’s German for “The Nobel Peace Prize Warrior” (h/t MABlue)

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