Light blogging over the next few days. I'm tired, and Comcast has been a bitch. Lousy, lousy customer service and support. This piece from Andy Sullivan's blog made a very depressing week hopeful.
FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN'S BLOG, THE DAILY DISH
"Obama's speech to Gen44 tonight knocked my socks off. It's streaming on CSPAN here. If you've forgotten why many of you worked your ass off for this guy, and felt hope for the first time in many years, watch it. He deserves criticism when necessary as this blogazine has not shied from at times. But he remains in my judgment the best option this country still has left - and it's far too easy for the left and far too dangerous for serious conservatives and independents to abandon him now.
What I particularly loved about the speech was his direct attack on the fiscal irresponsibility of the Pledge To America, the $700 billion it means we will have to borrow from China to sustain the unsustainable Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 a year. And what I agreed with was his embrace of government that is lean and efficient, because these are times when the government is necessary to help reverse self-evident decline, mounting fiscal crisis, deeply dangerous enemies, and socially dangerous inequality, exploited at home by ugly demagogues and know-nothing nihilists. Here is his invocation of Lincoln's core argument about the role of government:
"I believe the government should do for the people what they cannot do better for themselves."
Then this passage where he soared like he hasn't since the campaign:
"I believe in a country that rewards hard work and responsibility, a country where we look after one other, a country that says I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, I'm going to give a hand up, join hands with folks and try to lift all of us up so we all have a better future, not just some - but all of us. That's what I believe."
I do too. I do not believe for a second that the GOP of Palin and Boehner and Beck and DeMint represents anything but more debt, more war, more social division and more denial about the deeply serious problems this country faces and the profound dangers that are metastasizing in the world. I have no love for the Democrats but I do fervently believe that this president's record is far better than many now fashionably claim, that his inheritance was beyond awful, and I am not giving up on this president's immense task now, and neither, in my judgment, should any of those who voted for him in 2008.
Know hope; and fight the cynicism and nihilism that is increasingly the alternative."
15 comments:
Well, here is another ray of hope for you:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101001/el_yblog_upshot/in-key-races-majority-of-undecided-voters-are-democrats;_ylt=AtQVmMmMcZmSN.e9mqbaH5us0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTU1M2Y0YzNqBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3Vwc2hvdC8yMDEwMTAwMS9pbi1rZXktcmFjZXMtbWFqb3JpdHktb2YtdW5kZWNpZGVkLXZvdGVycy1hcmUtZGVtb2NyYXRzBGNjb2RlA21vc3Rwb3B1bGFyBGNwb3MDOARwb3MDNQRwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX2hlYWRsaW5lX2xpc3QEc2xrA2lua2V5cmFjZXNtYQ--
Wish I knew how to do a clickable link on a comment post....
TAO, As a computer impaired
person, I find this place
can do all of the confusting stuff for you.
Copy the URL from the top of the site, paste it into the 'anchor tag', type in a word(s) to link it, then copy that and paste it into your comment.
Impaired? Practically hopeless. Try this place
..mutter, mutter
get some rest Shaw!
The speeches this week from our president were magnificent! He was in fighting mode and gave me chills. The righties will laugh their butts off reading my comment but tuff shit. Who do they have on their side to give them chills?? Boehner?? UGH!!LOLOL!
I hope everyone watches the rally tomorrow if you can't attend in person! Comcast took off my C-Span, I have 2 and 3 but no one!! DAMN THEM!!!
Well, it does lift my spirits. ALL the media are talking as if the Democrats are done for. Very discouraging.
Thanks BB and TAO for those links.
Thanks for reminding us, encouraging our better instincts and mislaid enthusiasm. Yes, it's been a relief to hear the roar back in Obama's voice.
We're going to get hit next month, to some degree inevitably.
But I never thought I'd see the day when I'd align myself more with Andrew Sullivan than The Nation. The unintentionally sobering cover story of the current issue features the fifty most influential American progressives. It's depressing to look through a chronological list that begins with Eugene Debs ("“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”) and ends with Michael Moore who, whatever his clownish merits, is no Eugene Debs.
Thanks for the link TAO. And Hi BBIdaho. I know the Dems will lose seats this November, it is normal and inevitable. What is discouraging is the number of Dems who don't believe Mr. Obama has done enough for THEM in the past 20 months, and who have been as virulent toward him as have the Tea Partiers.
The Tea Partiers were slobbering about wanting their country back 3 months into Mr. Obama's presidency! I was at a rally in Fla. in April of 2009 and heard their inane cries about the "direction" Mr. Obama was taking their country. Direction? In three months he barely had time to turn on the ignition.
Yes, Sue and tnlib. I plan to rest this weekend. As most of my blogging buds know, I've had radiation treaatments over the past month and a half, and I'm tired and suffering from the resultant burns that accompany the treatments. But I will recover and plan to work for the Democrats in the upcoming election.
Hi naomi. Glad to see you here. I love your blog, since my sister and I are extreme left-wing socialist knitters and crocheters who alwasy use red yard! LOL! My daughter used to live in Santa Monica, just off Pico, so I know that part of LA quite well. She's in SoCal now. I'm putting your very interesting blog on my blogroll.
K, I agree with you. Sullivan has more faith and patience and mature understanding of what is happening in the far from perfect Obama administration than do those who demand perfection and instant change.
He gets it.
Thanks everyone for the comments.
PS. Comcast is a horrible company! I will do a brief blog on this later.
As much as I love a great speech, and Obama's victory speech at the Iowa caucus was the best I ever heard, it sucks that a speech motivates us more than the first steps he got the country to take towards health insurance reform.
We now have an exit plan in place and Troops are leaving Iraq. The economy is turnng around despite the lies of the right.
But the public demands entertainment above all else. Even above progress. The tea baggers don't care what happens as long as their speakers act angry and hate Obama or Pelosi.
I got my hands full this November. The fever is getting higher though and my hands will be fuller starting tomorrow.
Republicans will suffer.
Anyone with half a brain knows that the GOP has been on a campaign to disrupt this Democratic president since the day he was elected.
The Rethugs believe only they have the right to govern this country.
We saw what they did to Clinton. And now they will try to do the same to Obama.
We've already learned that the tea party is nothing but a group of old white men and women who don't understand that their health coverage is socialist medicine.
Ayatollah: Agreed. He has accomplished more in first two years in office than any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and he has had nowhere near the favorable political climate or economy that LBJ had. We had eight years of a guy strutting and preening and talking big, all while driving the country into a ditch. Obama has put his head down and done his job. I admire the way he has gone about it.
Uncle: To your assessment, I'd add that this gang has been aided and abetted by a left that has maneuvered itself into a position where it can do great damage but no good.
TAO - type:
{a href="the link you pasted"}
on one end of whatever you want the link on (only replace the brackets with "greater than" and "lesser than" - on most keyboards, SHIFT-period and Shift-comma - pointing in the same directions), and
{/a}
on the other end. (This page shows it better.)
________
Obama's polling numbers spike whenever he gives a speech. He needs to keep stumping for progressive candidates.
But I do have to take exception with that last line you quoted.
"fight the cynicism... that is increasingly the alternative."
Man needs to keep his nose out of my business.
Don't take it personally Nameless.
Even if he knew who you were it's likely he didn't mean you.
It's boilerplate.
According to BB's first link in the WI Senate race "40 percent of undecideds are Democrats"!
Now that's just insane. How the hell could Democrats be undecided as to whether or not they should support Russ Feingold?
Just how dumb is our country? We've got dummies voting Republican, dummies who say they Democrats but can't even decide whether or not they should vote for a superlative Democrat like Russ Feingold, and dummies who won't even bother to show up at their designated polling place on November 4th. It's pathetic.
The health insurance reform is DEAD if the Republicans retake the House, as they have stated their intention to defund it.
Re HCR if the R's take control of the House, my guess is that the House votes to defund while the Senate gets tied up in knots no matter who is the majority. There will be no agreement on a budget and the govt will shut down.
I do not think that a budget bill defunding HCR can pass Congress, so President Obama won't have to veto anything. As craven as some congressional D's have been, the base would desert them in droves if they ran out on HCR, and they know it.
If the govt does shut down, popular opinion will turn against the R's: They just won't be able to make a case for taking insurance away from 32,000,000 people, restoring rescission and coverage limits, and allowing denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions. They also won't be able to explain why their preoccupation with repeal of HCR is worth a govt shutdown in the face of a tough economy. Ironically, this will highlight the strengths of the bill and shift public opinion in favor of it (which is happening anyway).
But, they've painted themselves into a corner on this with their base, which is going to insist that they go to the mattresses.
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