“All that is required is leadership.” (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
Gee, Rachel, maybe you shouldn’t have been such a Hillary basher last year. She’s pushing for State Department employees to receive the same benefits for same sex partners as for married spouses. Click through to watch the video.
Dismay over Obama's Turnabout on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (Time)
The endorsement of "Don't ask, don't tell" by the Administration marks the latest rightward tack by Obama. The President denounced many of George W. Bush's national-security policies during the campaign, but in office has adopted more conservative positions, including endorsing military commissions to try purported terrorists, and declining to release a second batch of photographs depicting alleged U.S. maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. His stance on "Don't ask, don't tell" may be more surprising, because Obama aides have made clear the President wants the ban lifted eventually.
Obama Not Being Trotsky in Disguise: Good or Bad? (by Pareene at Gawker)
Obama's philosophy of government is all about, in Rahm Emanuel's phrase, "the art of the possible."… Kevin Baker's essay in the upcoming Harper's, "Barack Hoover Obama" [subscription required] … addresses the inkling of dissatisfaction we have each time we hear that [Rahm] Emanuel phrase repeated: don't you have, right now, a rather historic opportunity to redefine what the "possible" means? “… “We are back in Evan Bayh territory here, espousing a ‘pragmatism’ that is not really pragmatism at all, just surrender to the usual corporate interests. The common thread running through all of Obama's major proposals right now is that they are labyrinthine solutions designed mainly to avoid conflict… They bear the seeds of their own defeat.”
Annals of Worshipful Mindlessness (by Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
In a story about the Obamas' "date night" that included attendance at a Broadway play, we learn the following: “Then it was up to Broadway, where they had tickets at the Belasco Theatre for ‘Joe Turner's Come and Gone,’ a play by August Wilson about a man coming to terms with the history of slavery. ‘I'm nervous, excited, honored,’ said Andre Holland, who plays character Jeremy Furlow, before the show. ‘It's like in Shakespearean times, when the king would come to the show.’”…
This is part and parcel of the undue reverence and obeisance offered to the U.S. president ("the biggest standing ovation of the night"), as the ultimate representative of authority, a notably mistaken and dangerous state of affairs. Given the actual behavior of almost all U.S. presidents for the last hundred years (and longer), including the numerous wars and interventions they have instigated and the millions of innocent people they have caused to be murdered, to say nothing of their actions on the domestic front, those presidents may be entirely deserving of many responses; reverence and obeisance are decidedly not among them.
Arthur gives the quote by Evan Thomas of Newsweek that I mentioned on Monday, comparing Obama to God.
Limbaugh: Obama has "god complex," "imposing his values" on U.S. economy and "destroying it" (County Fair, Media Matters for America)
The habit of skepticism (by John Caruso at The Distant Ocean, thanks to Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
[T]here's scarcely a sentiment in Obama's Cairo speech that wasn't already spoken by George W. Bush. And yet when Obama offers the same platitudes—sometimes in the exact same words—credulous liberals are seized by fits of swooning and enraptured praise just shy of glossolalia. Obama's speech wasn't some epoch-defining moment of transformation from a "transcendent leader"; it was a moment of polished stagecraft from a consummate salesman for American empire and corporate capitalism. It was the same old wine in a lovely new bottle, from someone who's already shown us repeatedly that his words aren't matched by his actions. And had it been their arch-nemesis George Bush giving this speech instead of the Anointed One, they'd have had no trouble seeing that.
One can only hope that some day these people will embrace the habit of skepticism for all politicians, not just the ones on the other side, and finally and fully accept that fine words alone mean nothing at all—no matter who speaks them.
Bronstein on Obama and the press: "This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we're not" (SFGate.com, via Poynter Online)
"You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology," writes Phil Bronstein. "But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?"
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
