Speaking out or ruling against or voting against... hmm... what distinctions. Holding a politician to the standards of a judge would make a impotent politician.

yeah pretty much, on all accounts, but that is besides the point....

i live just north of DC, so it's inescapable, there is constant talk about it, let alone some connections, like Eric Holder who is the nominee for Attorney General, his wife who is an obstetrician delivered both of my boss' kids, so living here now or like !@#$%! did downtown, it's impossible to not talk about

its always more of the same.. y'all should have voted your yourselves.

so man, troll-appeasing aside, what do you think of eric holder? i mean richard cohen on the post today came down hard on him for that marc rich pardon alone-- mountains out of molehills? or wuss factor? your thoughts?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...120102403.html

not really appeasing when it's kinda true, least for me, i am bored and otherwise

i think the marc rich thing is all on bill clinton, holder had no personal motivation on it, obama knew it would come up and if he didn't think he could get confirmed he wouldn't have asked, like wtih larry summers, no way he was gonna be confirmed with the outcry from women's groups, so he made the much smarter move of getting tim geithner for treasury

no i mean when porky tries to be a twat i don't think he's asking for a reasoned response-- he's just trying to be a twat when he's bored with his life. i just find it funny because his argument don't hold water as an argument, it's just a kind of venting he does, and you gotta let him. but i digress.

re: summers, i heard some ridiculous shit about him from some women's groups on npr, that obama was not pro-women if he chose summers-- as if some random ass coment he made trumps his skill at saving us from ruin. in any case, summers is a fucking genius, even with this foot-in-mouth disease. reminds me of that story of lincoln being told that grant was a drunk, and he said find what grant drinks and send a barrel to each of my generals (he was the only one winning at the time). some people's priorities, ayayay... anyway, geithner looks like the soft-spoken, concilliatory, politically palatable choice for sure and he's well respected, i just hope he listens to summers.

about holder, sure he can be confirmed, but it strikes me that cohen makes this to be some kind of tragic flaw, oedipus sleeping with his mother kind of thing, and i really don't know if this is a good argument he's making (he can't stand up to power, he's the next alberto gonzales) or if it's just partisan bullshit. gotta think on it...

well i am more a deflating type, and self deprecation is the best weapon against tension, historically it works, then again, people hide money in Switzerland, so either way i am not earning enough money on the side

better than switzerland, invest in gold!





you can even travel with it without declaring it ;)

I agree with the principle that being politically 'competent' and 'respected' is going to be crucial to getting the job done. Although by so openly favouring a certain political view (the appointment of Jones, keeping Gates in charge of the Pentagon) seems far more like a tactical move, than it does a meritocratic one. All politics is tactical of course, but when that tactic seems one designed to allay fears from his critics within the Republican and centre-right ranks by sending out a message of 'business as usual', it does rather call into doubt the strength of Obama's commitment to so many of his pre-election promises.

I don't think the message is "business as usual", not at all. The message (the way I read it anyway) is that things will get done early and effectively. Jones, in spite of his Chevron board, was an early critic of the Iraq war. Perhaps for different reasons than say a peacenik would be, but still, he's against it.

After Obama won the primaries in the summer and started campaigning for the general election, I got an email from a friend in Belgium-- he studied here and he follows American politics. He said he was disappointed that Obama had pulled back from his more radical positions earlier in the campaign.

I answered by saying that this is a huge country that tends to be very conservative; you cannot win from the fringe-- it was logical he'd tack to the center. One thing is to mobilize MoveOn members, another is to gain the trust of independent voters.

The way I see it, and maybe I'm wrong, but the way I see it is that Obama is going to be able to accomplish much more ruling from the center and creating a bipartisan coalition-- it's his style and it's always been his style to listen to all sides of the issue. He's never been an ideologue but a pragmatist.

I want health care. I want the war to end. I want green energy. I want a revived middle class with good paying jobs. I want America to become again an example for the rest of the world instead of a protofascist nation of torturers. If he accomplishes all this by making deals and compromises, I'm all for it. I love Voltaire's phrase that the better is the enemy of the good (often quoted as "the perfect is the enemy of the good"), and it applies here.

This country needs some***major repair***. It needs a collective push towards a better place, and nothing ever gets done here because of polarized partisanship and bickering and ridiculous "culture wars".

Obama is not going to squander his chances of accomplishing some really important things by taking a "down with the man" approach a la Suchfriends, or even like Jimmy Carter who surrounded himself only with people that were loyal to him. Sure Carter was a good man, but he's not remembered as the most effective President--even if he actually achieved good things and is very underrated.

So yeah, the ideologues are going to be disappointed with Obama. No question. He's not going to go into the left pole to polarize the right. He's for finding common ground with an aim to get results. This he has been proclaiming since his famous 2004 speech, and with this he's been consistent. I want to wait and see what he does before I'm disappointed-- but so far, I like his strategy and his unusual approach-- Not demanding the head of Lieberman on a plate? He surely is a bigger person than a lot of us.

So, the goals are "liberal", but the methods are non-radical, is what I see.

--

ps- don't forget that he's put melody barnes, a confirmed "progressive", in charge of domestic policy. http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/24/...-announcement/
it's not the arrival of socialism, but i'm looking forward to seeing more social protections for the poor, hungry, at-risk, etc., as well as a beefing up of the rachitic middle classes.

Do you know what tanked the Clinton administration?

yeah, term limits, though they seem to have overcome that problem as usual.

So lets see..

The Bush I administration was just a continuation of what was left of the Reagan administration which was then replaced by the Clinton administration but came back as the Bush II administration, and now apparently a good portion of the Clinton administration is coming back with Obama....


more
of
the
same

It's clear that, even given his cabinet, Obama will not be a new Bush. However, speaking from the outside looking in, I know that a large element of European interest in Obama stemmed from what we saw as his commitment to at least engage with fresh ideas. I personally was under no illusion that Obama himself was any kind of leftist radical (within the framework of British politics he'd fit soundly into the Conservative benches). However I was at least hoping he'd find a place for more progressive thinkers. Whether he decided to implement their ideas is another thing entirely, but to not include them in his supposedly bipartisan cabinet seems like a real missed opportunity, especially given the evident enthusiasm of so many that voted for him (and not just those of your hard left) to try and move to step away from such already tried and by-now distrusted ideas.

those people are there, just not at the most visible level. start looking at the subcabinet positions, people who are being groomed to take over one day. for now, sure, it's a team of superstars, but their underlings is where it's at.

take for example samantha power, who is one of the most outspoken intellectuals against genocide (and called hillary "a monster" while working as an advisor to the obama campaign). she was fired for her comments, and after hillary was called to the state department, power was rehired to oversee the state department transition-- ha ha ha ha. trust me, she's going to do things for darfour, congo, etc-- but give her a little room to maneuver or we'll end up with another clinton-style somalia.

check out her bio-- i've seen her speak and i have to confess a mad crush on this super-smart redhead. ok she's not a total beauty in the face but i could listen to her talk all fucking night.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Power

her agenda-- that's the real agenda after the major bollocks is dealt with, you see?

That's interesting. I have to confess that I wasn't aware that Power's had been rehired. She'd appeared on a number of BBC news programmes during her initial spell with Obama and, like you, I was mightily impressed with her. Certainly if he's able to keep people like her on board and hopefully elevate her over a period of time, that would definitely suggest to me that things were moving in the right direction. But that doesn't change the fact that, for me, while he's clearly up to the job intellectually, I still have to wonder about he has the stomach for a fight with the political Establishment. And I'm not talking about a fight based merely on gesture, or for the sake of it, but one in response to circumstances where, as is currently the case with the economic crisis, it really is necessary.

that ship has already sailed, the establishment is altered. this article reflects very closely my own opinions, only better-- see what you think:

http://www.alternet.org/election08/109436/clues_obama_won't_govern_center-right/?page=entire

let me highlight a coupl e of crucial paragraphs:

"Obama ran a campaign that clearly and unequivocally described priorities that will turn American in a fundamentally progressive direction. His cabinet picks indicate that he will surround himself with people who have experience and can competently manage the government. They also indicate his absolute commitment to unifying the country to make change. But they do not in any way diminish the fact that America is demanding -- and Obama intends to enact -- a sweeping progressive program the likes of which we have not seen since the New Deal."

and

"Finally, writers and pundits who focus on Obama's cabinet picks to show he will govern from the "center right" need to have a look at history. Like Obama, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln all installed people in their cabinets who they believed to be effective managers who could deliver. They all had their share of outsiders and progressives, but many were old Washington hands. Yet all of these Presidents faced historic challenges that demanded and enabled them to make fundamental change. And all of them were guided by progressive values that were sharply different from those of Bush, Cheney, and Delay. Obama shares and articulates those values more than any political leader since Robert Kennedy died forty years ago."

and a fragment:

"Barack Obama will not govern from the "center right", but he will govern from the "center". That's not because he is "moving to the center". It's because the center of American politics has changed. It has moved where the American people are."

the full argument, of course, reads better, as it explains the shift in what is this new "center".

---

now, can anyone be 100% sure of anything? of course not. but by all reasonable expectations, this is not a return to the past.

I'm sorry, I was looking for a more thorough answer than the cynical rhetoric of the outsider. I wasn't asking you.

I predict that Obama will begin in the center as he is now and will steadily move to the left as the administration moves on. This is what I was referring to in learning the mistake of the Clinton presidency which came out the gate advocating strong liberal policies which were either shut down (his health care plan) or backfired (gay rights in the military, NAFTA). Was it no wonder the republicans went for his jugular his second term over Monica Lewinsky?

re: james Jones

What about Obama’s National Security Adviser, General Jim Jones? He looks like a fine upstanding marine.
WW: He is a man of great stature, physically and figuratively, in Washington. He is a Washington ‘heavy’ but if you look at his record, nothing much ever happened. Things went south in Afghanistan pretty rapidly when he was supreme commander of all Nato forces in Afghanistan. When he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, a lot of the marines’ overpriced underperforming hardware programs, such as the V-22 [vertical takeoff troop transport plane] and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle were endorsed and continued happily along. He seems to have been mostly a placeholder when he had these very senior and important positions.
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew12032008.html

That sounds like a good plan. I hope you're right.
I don't think that he'll be bullied into any particular stance by his cabinet. He is a strong-minded individual with a focus that is amazingly refreshing after 8 years of doubt, uncertainty, and stupidity.

His cabinet appointees seem to be from both ends of the spectrum. And Rahm Emmanuel will definitely give some lefty perspective to everyone in the cabinet.

My eyes got a little blurry when I saw those couple of appointments, but I feel pretty confident that things will go in the right direction. Time gives me perspective.

Thanks for the link. I read it with interest but have to take issue with certain sections. Obama is said to have fought a campaign based on moving the US in a 'fundamentally progressive direction'. This being the same campaign where the concerns of the middle class dominated all others, with (from memory) absolutely no mention whatsoever of a growing body of Americans living beneath the poverty line. It was also a campaign in which Obama asserted an entirely dogmatic commitment to Israel and even out-Cheneyed the previous Bush administration with his all too comfortable talk of launching a nuclear strike on Pakistan. (A position even Sarah Palin was advised by her party to distance herself from) Obviously, none of these points suggest that Obama is merely an extension of the Bush (or even the Clinton) regime, but does a continuation (nee strengehtening even) of America's partisan backing of Israel, an incredibly hostile to Pakistan and an apparent blindness to its nation's poor really constitute a progressive move both for America's foreign and domestic policy? I'm prepared to agree with the article in so far as its pointing to a shift among the American people in favour of a fairer, less stratified and less bombastic society. However i see little so far either in Obama's rhetoric or his actions to suggest that he's particular committed to such a shift himself.

How is not taking the nuclear option off the table to suggest that he would be comfortable to use it? And how can you accuse him of dogmatic commitment without any evidence that he has done anything more than appeal to s skeptical Jewish voting demographic? Are you not picking and choosing for Obama what his first term will consist of before its time?

well, see, in america, unlike in england, the working class doesn't like to call themselves "working class", they call themselves "middle class", and if you call them otherwise you're pidgeonholed as an elitist. and in fact this working class achieved middle-class living standards at some point in history-- living standards which have sharply eroded in past decades. so this is a semantic issue.

same with mentioning the poor-- when obama talked about "spreading the wealth", the repukes tried to paint him as a socialist-- remember that fake unlicensed wannabe-millionaire plumber protesting tax increases for what he one day wanted to be while ignoring the offer of tax cuts for what he is today? (see "joe the plumber"). people like to think themselves better off than they actually are (is an unlicensed plumber considered "middle class" in england?)

so in america if you say "let's give money to the poor" you get called an advocate of the welfare state. if you call for improving the conditions of the "people making under $50,000 a year" and the problems of people "living paycheck to paycheck", and you fight "predatory lending", and "protecting the rights of workers to organize", "raising the minimum wage," "balancing work and family", and calling for universal health care, etc, then you indeed are tackling the problems of the working poor, just from a different, non-socialist approach. americans tend to dislike "handouts" but are ok with people getting their "fair share" when they work. what can i say, it's the national ethos. but the problems of the middle class are a lot like the problems of the poor, today. in fact a lot of "middle class" people are just one paycheck away from poverty.

so yes, they are dealing with issues like poverty--- again, i refer you to melody barnes, who will be in charge of domestic policy

start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_Barnes and follow links to her previous affiliations and career. the proposal for "green jobs" that obama adopted comes from the center for american progress, for example.



obama never said let's nuke pakistan, he said he'd enter pakistan to kill osama if pakistan couldn't do it-- later he's refined his position in "with the permission of the pakistani government if they can't do it", etc. there was some kind of nuclear weapons gaffe.

see: http://www.nysun.com/national/obamas...-strike/59807/

at the time, biden was his opponent, ha ha ha.

anyway, obama has a clear understanding that the real front on this fucking "war on terror" (i hope it doesnt end up like the war on drugs, war on poverty, war on etc) is in the afghanistan/pakistan border. he stood out from early on calling for teh withdrawal of iraq to finish things in these other two taliban-infested countries.

and yes, pakistan is a horrible country with a rich elite and a starving population that's utterly fucked up from decades of the u.s. propping up its military dictatorships during the cold war and beyond, and that-- that is beyond my understanding

it was hillary who said later (i think i was at the AIPAC conference?) that she'd nuke IRAN if they nuked israel first.

please note, i'm not too excited about hillary's pick for state, but i can see the rationale for getting here there. see for example: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the...wering_th.html (you might need login, sorry, but try anyway). still i have my reservations, like i had when obama asked for lieberman no to be publicly impaled.

regarding support for israel, let's face it-- israel is a longtime u.s. ally, there are millions of well-organized pro-israel jews in america (no rotschilds, but still). so we're sticking to this alliance. plus, it's the only democracy in the region (in spite of the apartheid, human rights abuses, etc-- ok-- that's what permanent war gets you). clinton was very much pro-israel yet the palestinians loved him, he got arafat in the white house, remember? so you can be pro-israel but you can negotiate the peace. now remember that israel is not just netanyahu and ariel sharon (i know, it's serious) and those demented settlers, there are other important factions and ideologies in its political life, but unfortunately things have moved to the right in recent years. so let's see what happens.


ok, i wrote a super-long reply; i hope that was sufficient for the time being.

Also on the note of change (which I believe is a G minor):

http://crooksandliars.com/cernig/cleaning-stables-state

"You Mean We Can Talk Back?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...d=opinionsbox1

Nobody in power of a nation armed with nuclear weapons can ever take such a threat 'off the table'. to do so would be to render having them entirely pointless. However in a statement (discussed later in this post) Obama went quite a bit further than to merely suggest that they were in his possession and available for deployment, in principle.

I suppose i am guilty of trying to anticipate how his first term might progress. but I'm only doing this based on my reading of decisions he's made so far. I don't see anything wrong with this. surely, anyone who voted for him did so because they had some kind of an idea how he'd act in certain situations before those situations had actually occured.


One of the most interesting things to have come out of this election for me are the very cultural distinctions you mention between Europe and the US. Certainly within Britain, and I'd assume much of the rest of Europe, the term 'working class' is treated very much as a badge of honour. Even those who fall firmly within the 'middle class' bracket tend to look desperately for some kind of way in which they can describe themselves as 'working class'. To describe oneself as a socialist however is now less popular than it was, although even in that case i believe Europe is far more sympathetic to its tenets than is the case in the US. And so while I'm reluctant to say that Obama's refusal to use the word is a purely sematic one, I do acknowledge the potential cost to his campaign were he to start talking freely about the 'working class'. (And no, 'Joe the Plumber' wouldn't be described, in Britain at least, as being a part of the 'middle class'.)


LOL. OK, so he said it, then he diodn't, then he did say it but he didn't mean it quite the way people took it. To be honest, I think too much is made of politicians on-the-hoof comments. (And that even goes for Palin's gaffe while waiting in line to order a cheesesteak.)



Personally I think that so long as the so-called 'war on terror' continues to turn a blind eye to Israel, it'll never really get to grips with the core grievance of the muslim world. Unfortunately this has reached such a bloody stand-off that I now believe that Israel probably does require Western protection. However i also believe that this help has to be provided on the condition that Israel plays its part too. Equally, I think that the US's overt support of Israel (even when in the eyes of the rest of the world it is clearly overstepping its legal remit) offers a veil of credibility to muslim extremism that would be far more likely to dissolve were the US to be a little more even handed.



I managed to read that article and i have to agree with a part of its rationale for Obama picking Hillary as one designed to keep both her and Bill under some kind of control. I actually think that this is one of the most intriguing aspects of Obama's upcoming presidency: his ability to neutralise a threat from the Clintons. I certainly foresee Hillary distancing herself from the Obama's administration should things begin to go poorly for the new president but have to admit she's provides far less of a threat while she's a part of his team.

For the record, I should say that were I an American, I would've wholeheartedly voted for Obama, and still would, even given my reservations about those he's appointed to his cabinet. He strikes me as an utterly capable man and I can see the logic behind his caution. I only hope that his fear of rocking the boat doesn't end up undermining his ability to address the crucial decisions he's going to be faced with in the very near future. If there's one thing that this economic turn and escalation of events within the Muslim world is sure to prove, it's that the necessary progress will not be something that suits every interest.

yep. americans are like the waiters as described by orwell in "down and out in paris and london". he said that waiters were terrible prospects for the communist party because they didn't hate the rich, instead they looked at the fatcats they were feeding and thought "that could be me". so this is the reason why the rich aren't hated in america, they are even considered virtuous, and that's also why an unlicensed plumber can be a symbol of the self-appointed "middle class".

anyway... 1 month 16 days and 7+ hours until bush is gone!!!!

Three years ago I saw a bumper sticker that read Condoleeza Rice for President in 2008.

Oh, my God, we are so lucky.

It's an interesting issue that seems increasingly evident across a number of countries, not just the US. Britain went through it's own revolution in learning to love the wealthy in the 'that could be me' fashion you describe with Thatcher. And of course the dissolving of the Soviet Bloc at the end of the 80s hardly did the credibility of Socialism much good, at least in terms of mainstream popularity. And yet I do think there's a kind of grass-roots suspicion of wealth, and in particular the wealthy, that still remains within a broad - if declining - sweep of European society that appears far greater than what I've experienced within the US. I've yet to really work out why this is though.