1,000 Words: CFPB Tea Leaves

Victory lunch or job interview?
.
Both, I hope.

Maybe this will shut up the naysayers on the left (yes, I said the left) who seem to think the Obama people make no effort to hear the voices of progressives and competent administrators.
.
Frankly, I’m sick of all the Third Way b-s by the firedoglake hysterics, who see boogeymen behind every Obama decision. Despite ingrate allies like these, Obama is still plugging away passing legislative victories.

Jarrett: “The most important thing is that you must never say anything that will upset Glenn Beck.”

Warren: “Well, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to…”

Jarrett: “I admit it is hard to predict what will anger him, but when making public statements avoid terms with ‘social’ in them. Socialism, obviously. Social Security. Social fabric. Social safety net. Social services. Etc.”

Warren: “I guess I could do that.”

Jarrett: “And one other thing. I was just talking to Tim Geithner and he was mentioning how now is not a good time to be taking away revenue streams from banks. So, if you could just look the other way on overdraft fees, ATM fees, miscellaneous transaction fees, etc.”

Warren: “But that’s what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

Jarrett: “We’re only talking about 3 to 4 years. Tops.”

I am sure this will quiet all the critics.
.
On one hand, they didn’t end TBTF. They didn’t end the derivatives casino. They didn’t end the conflicts of interest in the ratings system. They didn’t stop handing out free money to banks for proprietary trading. And the WH is using Chris Dodd to torpedo the momentum for Warren’s appointment.
.
OTOH, Jarrett is having lunch with Warren.
.
What is there to be critical of?

Loyalists like you are part of the problem.

“Despite ingrate allies like these…”.
.
You mean the ‘ingrates’ who voted for Obama? The ‘ingrates’ who expected him to advocate the policies he ran on? Or are you one of the non-ingrates who think Obama’s ‘start from the middle and compromise to the right’ strategy is a good one?
.
And what sort of ‘victories’? Gitmo’s still open for business. Two wars still in progress. A compromised mess of health care reform. The only positive I can find is that he’s not McCain. When the best thing you can say about a Dem is that they’re not a Republican, you’ve got a pretty weak Dem.
.
Oh, and I blame Dems in congress as much as the Dem in the White House. More and better Dems is what we need. Not vilifying the Firedoglake for keeping pressure on the Dems to do what their supporters voted for them to do.
.
I swear, the motto of the Democratic Party should be “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”

Yeah, stuart, and whiners like you who complain about getting 3/4 of a loaf instead of a whole give no ammunition to the right. Right.
.
BTW, I’m not a loyalist, to Obama, to the left or to you and your crackpot meanderings (which you write as though you’re the first to think of them — what a laugh!) I’m a pragmatist who has more reasonable expectations of what can be accomplished in the current political climate. I don’t throw a fit every time Obama does something I don’t like, as you seem fond of doing.

“You mean the ‘ingrates’ who voted for Obama? The ‘ingrates’ who expected him to advocate the policies he ran on? Or are you one of the non-ingrates who think Obama’s ‘start from the middle and compromise to the right’ strategy is a good one?”
.
No, I mean ingrates who can’t appreciate a health care bill that had a lot of good in it, and tried to torpedo the whole thing because they didn’t get a public option or drug re-importing.
.
You bring up Gitmo. Please enlighten us as to how to get the votes. Please find where the prisoners can be housed without protest. Please show me that Obama didn’t make a good-faith effort and will continue to do so to close the facility as promised. Am I disappointed that Gitmo is not close yet? Of course, but I see why it isn’t and I wouldn’t place the bulk of the blame on Obama.
.
“I swear, the motto of the Democratic Party should be “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”"
.
I agree with your sentiment entirely. But it includes the activists in the Democratic Party, particularly the firedoglake whiners, who seem determined to undermine their own party and put Repubs in office.

“Loyalists like you are part of the problem.”
BTW, I’m not a loyalist to anyone or anything as much as you lap up every word out of Glenn Greenwald’s mouth.

“I’m not a loyalist to anyone or anything as much as you lap up every word out of Glenn Bleck’s mouth”
.
That fix to the right hurt. Ouch.

Things Republicans Hate: Jeopardy!

http://thethingsrepublicanshate.com/?p=512

“I mean ingrates who can’t appreciate a health care bill that had a lot of good in it”
.
Like?
.
I can check off being dumped by my insurance company for a pre-existing condition. And a slight expansion of coverage for people near or at the poverty line. And that’s about it. I’d like to see “a lot of good in it”, but that got stripped out by the Blue Dogs and negotiating with Republicans who never intended to vote for it.
.
“Please enlighten us as to how to get the votes.”
.
Make. The. Republicans. Filibuster. The only reason Dems don’t have the votes in congress is cowardice and the desire to appease bipartisan pragmatists like yourself. And there’s a difference between piecemeal legislation that moves towards a more progressive government, and mealy no-one-wins compromises like the kind you seem to be enjoying.
.
“particularly the firedoglake whiners, who seem determined to undermine their own party and put Repubs in office”
.
Right. Because we need the Democratic party to act more like the Republican party so that we get more Republicans to vote Democrat. We need for fewer Graysons and more Leibermans, right? That’s been working great so far, hasn’t it? Well, you got you moderate pragmatic President, you have a pragmatic pro-life Dem leading the Senate. How well has that worked so far? Oh, and you’d be surprised what a campaign based on “vote for a crappy Dem or else the Republican will win” does for voter turnout. Or does voter turnout not matter as long as you can incrementally ruin the country, instead of letting the Republicans do it all at once?
.
I may be a ‘whiner’, but at least I’m a whiner with principals, and not an petulant milquetoast unwilling to fight for what he believes in.

Just kidding, PD – I agree that, so to speak, just because you didn’t get that Xbox doesn’t mean that Xmas was ruined.

Slightly OT: We’re not seeing classic filibusters are we? I only see threats, not any reading from the phone book like BITD [Back in the Day].

My guess is that porkdumpling is being honest when he/she says that he/she is not an Obama loyalist. My guess is that porkdumpling personally benefits from the current system and doesn’t need any damn firebaggers ruining a good thing.

To the extent that Obama serves porkdumpling’s ends, great. But if Obama starts getting between porkdumpling and his/her $$$, then Obama will get chucked under the bus tout de suite (with none of this 3/4 loaf nonsense).

momento: Are you seriously arguing that there is no good besides two provisions in the health care bill? I’m not going to re-litigate the bill here, but if you really think that’s all that’s good in it, then I don’t even know what to tell you or what you expected.
.
Second, to even imply that I want even one Lieberman in office, much less more, is slander. Nor am I advocating a “crappy Dem” though your definition of ‘crappy’ may differ with mine. Still, if you want to see what nominating a bunch of fringe ideologues gets you, take a good look at the small tent of the Republicans and their embrace of the Tea Party. If you want snatch defeat from the mouth of victory, nominate the left version of Sharron Angle and see where that gets you.
.
Let me clue you in: maybe in your world, Obama is center- right, but to us regular folk, he is clearly to the left of center. It’s a reason the Repubs are so damned determined to block his every initiative, the “anti-Reagan” as Krauthammer recently called him.

Hooray! The circular firing squad of the Democratic base is back!

I benefit from the “current system”? Don’t make me laugh.
.
How quickly you question my motives while knowing nothing about me. Pretty skeevy. All I did was disagree with your views.

Interesting. Entertaining. Me like.

Yup, kevin, though let it be know that in this Shirley Sherrod incident, who was quick to attack the WH and who put the blame squarely where it belonged on Andrew Breitbart.

And we all know that if stuartzechman is Greenwald’s lapdog, then square1 is zechman’s buttboy. Hey, square, maybe stuart will put you on his podcast again!

Adam -

A question. While we are all hoping Warren gets the nod has anybody in the press bothered to ask her if she even wants the job? For all we know she may not, having had her fill of DC BS as head of TARP oversight.

“Hooray! The circular firing squad of the Democratic base is back!”
.
Heh, yeah, I hate it when the kids fight, too.
.
Porky, we’re probably closer to agreement than we think. Your dislike of Leiberman is encouraging evidense of that.
.
I don’t think nominating a left version of Angle is a good plan. I’ve been critical of Kucinich in the past for being ideologically pure, but legislatively ineffective, too. But nominating more Leibermans and Nelsons is an over-compensation. As is gutting your legislative plans to appease people who never intend to vote for it. That’s my key issue with your statements – it sounds like your throwing in the towel before the bell has rang.
.
There are good compromises and bad ones. In my opinion, HCR is a case-study example of a bad one. The fact that I can’t think of a good example from the last two years is demonstrative of how bad things are right now. Even so, I’ll take a party-line vote in favor of good legislation over a bi-partisan piece of junk any day. Same goes for who gets my vote.

Porkdumpling: You are such an angry person. Many of the liberals on this site have differing opinions (gosh I have even disagreed with Stuart) but we try to avoid being unpleasant to each other. Your posts are something I expect from NewRusty or textee. Please try to cease calling names and have a civilized discussion.

Elizabeth: I understand Beck’s wee wee is only this big.
Why do I have to worry about him, again?

First, you really might want to leave the insults out of your arguments, it doesn’t help the discussion, nor your credibility.
.
Second, your “pragmatism” isn’t really any less of a faith-based, ideological argument than any other. You’ve bought into reasonable expectations of bad policy, apparently without thinking through what accomplishment of that kind does “in the current political climate.” This is because, in reality, you’re just as ideologically committed to your assumptions as any Trotskyite or Ayn Rand devotee. Fatuous proclamations about your own realistic superiority doesn’t change the fact that poor politics and policy are the practical results of your support for them.
.
Third, we’re not getting “3/4 of a loaf,” we’re getting one hundred percent establishment center policy. Your argument is the classic center side of the center-left alliance. It’s the complaint that says “We agree on abortion, we agree on feminism, we agree on affirmative action, we agree on all the hot-button social issues, we agree that the popular right are nuts…what more can you purists want from us? You’re getting almost everything!” Unfortunately for the left side of that center-left arrangement, it’s that “25%” of the center’s agenda that isn’t culture war policy that’s really f*cking the country at this crucial moment in history.
.
As Ed Kilgore was honest enough to write (from the center side) in The New Republic (http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/taking-ideological-differences-seriously):

Taking Ideological Differences Seriously
.
The latest intra-progressive dustup over health care reform displays a couple of pretty important potential fault lines within the American center-left. One has to do with political strategy, and the role of the Democratic Party and the presidency in promoting progressive policy goals and social movements…
.
But the other potential fault line is ideological, and is sometimes hard to discern because it extends across a variety of issues. To put it simply, and perhaps over-simply, on a variety of fronts (most notably financial restructuring and health care reform, but arguably on climate change as well), the Obama administration has chosen the strategy of deploying regulated and subsidized private sector entities to achieve progressive policy results. This approach was a hallmark of the so-called Clintonian, “New Democrat” movement, and the broader international movement sometimes referred to as “the Third Way,” which often defended the use of private means for public ends…
.
To be clear, this is not the same as the conservative “privatization” strategy, which simply devolves public responsibilities to private entities without much in the way of regulation…
.
Now clear as this distinction seems to “New Democrats,” there are a considerable number of progressives who think it’s largely a distinction without a difference, in education policy and elsewhere. And we are seeing that fundamental divergence on opinion on other, more prominent issues right now. On the financial front, the Obama administration reflexively pursued a strategy of regulation and subsidies for the financial sector, without modifying the fundamental nature of financial institutions, even as critics on the left argued for nationalization (at least temporarily) of key financial functions. At the more popular level, critics of TARP from the left joined critics of TARP from the right in deploring “bailouts” of failed financial institutions, even though the two groups of critics held vastly different views of the right alternative course of action.
.
Similarly in the health care reform debate, the Obama administration pursued legislation that utilized regulated and subsidized private for-profit health insurers to achieve universal health coverage. This approach was inherently flawed to “single-payer” advocates on the left, who strongly believe that private for-profit health insurers are the main problem in the U.S. health care system.
.
To put it more bluntly, on a widening range of issues, Obama’s critics to the right say he’s engineering a government takeover of the private sector, while his critics to the left accuse him of promoting a corporate takeover of the public sector. They can’t both be right, of course, and these critics would take the country in completely different directions if given a chance. But the tactical convergence is there if they choose to pursue it.
.
For those of us whose primary interest is progressive unity and political success for the Democratic Party, it’s very tempting to downplay or even ignore this potential fault-line and the left-right convergence it makes possible. It’s also easy to dismiss critics-from-the-left of Obama as people primarily interested in long-range movement-building rather than short-term political success; that’s true for some of them. But sorting out these differences in ideology and perspective is, in my opinion, essential to the progressive political project. And with a rejuvenated and increasingly radical Right’s hounds baying and sniffing at the doors of the Capitol, we don’t have the time or energy to spare in dialogues of the deaf wherein we call each other names while getting ready for the elections of 2010 and 2012.

Nobody is “throwing a fit,” we’re noting that the outcome of you “pragmatic” ideologues is predictably bad, both in terms of policy and politics, while the inevitable response is pompous name-calling and doubling down on what doesn’t actually work in the practical world.
.
For all of your self-proclaimed “realism,” you are losing the war against the right, turning political opportunities into failures, and imposing mostly ideological solutions that don’t work on country that grows ever more distrustful.
.
You are a loyalist. You are loyal to the idea of what can and can’t be done, and to the public people who confirm those boundaries for you. You are loyal to a vision of America in which such incrementalism is successful, just like the conservatives are wedded to the vision of “freedom on the march” sold to them by their leadership. Unfortunately, this vision of yours isn’t reality.
.
Just as elections in occupied Iraq didn’t prevent ethnic cleansing from occurring under our watch, Christina Romer’s and Larry Summers’ –and, ultimately, Barack Obama’s– predictions about unemployment just didn’t come true. We’re not at 7-8 percent unemployment, we’re at 9-10 percent, the numbers they predicted if the inadequate stimulus package they designed wasn’t passed. These are facts, as inconvenient as they are for loyalists to acknowledge.
.
This reflexive, knee-jerk “pragmatism” of yours is a failure.
.
It’s way past time to get out of the way, and let the left part of the center-left coalition try to drive this car out of the ditch, before it’s too late, before the movement rightists take over again because of your arrogance and unthinking devotion to this discredited political philosophy.
.
Be truly pragmatic, for once. Actually see things the way that they are. Look at what’s happening in the country. Look at what’s happening in the capital.
.
There’s a very good probability that the Republicans will gain political ground this fall, and in the next presidential cycle, where GOP candidates will be beholden to movement rightists. The center keeps warning us ingrates about the possibility of “President Palin,” and that is a possibility, especially now that the country has seen New Democrats in action.
.
So, now the question becomes
.
“What kind of Democrats do we want in office, if the likelihood of rightist political gains remains high? Do we want politicians who would fire Shirley Sherrod at the first sign of controversy, or people who would stand and fight the right-wing machine? Do we want the compromising center, or the fighting left, once movement conservatives take over?”
.
Loyalists to the “pragmatism” regime, loyalists like you, haven’t made that question unnecessary, and so now we’ve got to answer it.
.
Worry less about “plugging away passing legislative victories” for policy that was devised by Third Way think tanks in the 1990′s, and worry more about how that policy doesn’t seem to work in practice. Worry less about the minuscule political damage us “hysterics” can cause to the Democratic leadership, and more about the significant problems they’re causing for the country.
.
At this point, you should probably drop that posture, and join the left side of the center-left coalition over here in acknowledging the reality that a new direction is needed –before it really is too late.

“Yup, kevin, though let it be know that in this Shirley Sherrod incident, who was quick to attack the WH and who put the blame squarely where it belonged on Andrew Breitbart.”
.
Briebart is walking pile of pond scum masquerading as a pseudojournalist. He’s responsible for smearing the good name a fine public servant, maybe even be criminally so.
.
That said, there are always going to Breibarts out there. If the White House crumbles every time one of the Breibarts squeaks, they might as well go home now. I’m not saying go to the mat for everyone, but showing some spine every so often would be nice.

Apr: You’re right. I’m really angry today. I hit my limit of blame-Obama-first mentality of many who claim to be on the left. I saw it on TV all today, while Breitbart gets a free pass (I swear he is giggling it up in his sewer-lair instead of dropping dead from a heart attack as he deserves).
.
I haven’t called any names of the profane variety, just called it like I see it, apropos if not flattering. If you take a really good look, when it comes to ad hominem, I never went after someone first. I find it laughable that someone like square1 who’s attacked Obama as much as newfreedom and freeinpa is questioning my motives. What a joke.
.
I’m taking a break from this blog.

Pork: Please return and participate in our discussions. I do understand your anger.

Way to refudiate the “meanderings” charge, SZ.

I apologize to everyone for provoking another endless stuartzechman crazy-rant. Yes, yes, Third Way, whatever. So wise, ok, yeah yeah.
.
Getting away from this now…

Hell, yes, I question your motives.
.
That’s because most actual Democrats either (a) have no problem pressuring Obama and the Dems to be more aggressive in advancing a liberal agenda or (b) live within a 75-mile radius of D.C. or Manhattan.
.
That leads me to conclude that either you are not a Democrat or you benefit directly or indirectly from the corrupt, revolving-door governmet-media-contractor-lobbyist system.
.
Of course it is possible that you are just some random fool in flyover country who has decided that the country’s most pressing problems are Democrats who continue to press the current administration on liberty and economic issues (e.g. Greenwald, Firedoglake, and Zechman)

Breitbart didn’t fire Shirley Sherrod.
.
We live in a country of 300 million people. Some of them are racist idiots. It is the choice of this administration to live in fear of the Breitbart’s of the world.

billiecat:
.
LOL.
.
What can I do? I need an editor.

BREAKING: WHITE HOUSE PUBLICLY APOLOGIZES TO SHIRLEY SHERROD FOR MISTAKES OF STUART ZECHMAN, FIREDOGLAKE.COM, AND GLENN GREENWALD

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/white_house_apologizes_to_shir.html

Fine, fine.
.
If you don’t want to wade through my crap, at least take the time to read through what Ed Kilgore wrote at The New Republic, and consider it.
.
He’s not on the same side of the debate as I am, but he accurately describes the problem.
.
You should at least avail yourself of that information, if you’re going to make these arguments.
.
Other people can read my meandering crazy-rant, if that entertains them. No problem.

I’d just like to reiterate apr2563′s request, and to say that I have no desire whatsoever to drive you or anyone else from the discussion, porkdumpling.

“buttboy”
.
Porky, we can disagree, but let’s try to back off on the homophobic ad hominem attacks, k?

You are loyal to a vision of America in which such incrementalism is successful…Unfortunately, this vision of yours isn’t reality.

It isn’t? Since when? Please tell me that you can think of at least one ‘lefty agenda item’ of the past hundred years that didn’t happen overnight or in one big piece of legislation.

Worry less about the minuscule political damage us “hysterics” can cause to the Democratic leadership, and more about the significant problems they’re causing for the country.

There is a difference between loudly trying to push the Dems in the right direction and harping on their every move.

My o’ my, look at them libruls fightin’ wit’ each other, Ralphy.”

I suppose it looks that way from the far right, where internal disagreements figuratively end in knife fights.

porkdumpling, If you have read “Audacity of Hope” by a chap named B.H. Obama, like me, you would also wonder if the author was/is a Third Way Democrat. So sz has good company

Apr,
.
That joke was immature, crude and borderline pornographic.
.
I liked a lot!
.

Honey, you haven’t even touched your glass of urine. Isn’t it fresh?

“I suppose it looks that way from the far right, where internal disagreements figuratively end in knife fights.”
.
Don’t be ridiculous!
.
The far right march in lockstep, expel the ideologically impure and then they sing happy songs like this:
.

Jarret: Elizabeth, I know exactly what you mean. The last time I had sex with Glenn, I didn’t ask him if he was through. I asked him if it was in.

Jarret informs Warren that she has won the Andy Warhol look-a-like contest.

Valerie: Elizabeth dear, if you flick that booger at me I’m going to re-arrange your face.

Valerie: Elizabeth, I’m just as upset as you are. How they could have picked Lindsey Lohan to play Linda Lovelace over us just boggles the mind.

Can’t I even go work and then come home and play the Wii for a couple of hours with the mrs. without you kids fighting and all hell breaking loose?

Valerie: I’ve got a couple of hours before my next meeting. What do you say that we bump uglies and kill a fifth of tequila?

Valerie: Oh, I see that you’re having the Karen Carpenter special for lunch too.

Well…

The First Hundred Days
.
Roosevelt entered office with enormous political capital. Americans of all political persuasions were demanding immediate action, and Roosevelt responded with a remarkable series of new programs in the “first hundred days” of the administration, in which he met with Congress for 100 days. During those 100 days of lawmaking, Congress granted every request Roosevelt asked, and passed a few programs (such as the FDIC to insure bank accounts) that he opposed. Ever since, presidents have been judged against FDR for what they accomplished in their first 100 days.

Wow.
.
Those are some Democrats, there. 100 days?
.
OK…What kind of programs? A commission to study “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?”

Bank and monetary reforms
.
With strident language Roosevelt took credit for dethroning the bankers he alleged had caused the debacle. On March 4, 1933, in his first inaugural address, he proclaimed:

Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. … The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization.[15]

He closed all the banks in the country and kept them all closed until he could pass new legislation.[16]
.
On March 9, Roosevelt sent to Congress the Emergency Banking Act, drafted in large part by Hoover’s top advisors. The act was passed and signed into law the same day. It provided for a system of reopening sound banks under Treasury supervision, with federal loans available if needed. Three-quarters of the banks in the Federal Reserve System reopened within the next three days. Billions of dollars in hoarded currency and gold flowed back into them within a month, thus stabilizing the banking system. By the end of 1933, 4,004 small local banks were permanently closed and merged into larger banks. (Their depositors eventually received on average 86 cents on the dollar of their deposits; it is a common false myth that they received nothing back.) In June 1933, over Roosevelt’s objections, Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insured deposits for up to $2,500 beginning January 1, 1934; this amount was increased to $5,000 on July 1, 1934.
.
To deal with deflation, the nation went off the gold standard. In March and April in a series of laws and executive orders, the government suspended the gold standard for United States currency.[17] Anyone holding significant amounts of gold coinage was mandated to exchange it for the existing fixed price of US dollars, after which the US would no longer pay gold on demand for the dollar, and gold would no longer be considered valid legal tender for debts in private and public contracts. The dollar was allowed to float freely on foreign exchange markets with no guaranteed price in gold, only to be fixed again at a significantly lower level a year later with the passage of the Gold Reserve Act in 1934. Markets immediately responded well to the suspension, in the hope that the decline in prices would finally end.[18]

Unbelievable, isn’t it?
.
But what about those “hot-button social issues”?

Repeal of Prohibition
.
In a measure that garnered substantial popular support for his New Deal, Roosevelt, on March 13, 1933, moved to put to rest one of the most divisive cultural issues of the 1920s. Just nine days later he signed the bill to legalize the manufacture and sale of alcohol, an interim measure pending the repeal of Prohibition, for which a constitutional amendment (the 21st) was already in process. The repeal amendment was ratified later in 1933. States and cities gained additional new revenue, and Roosevelt secured his popularity in the cities, which were overwhelmingly wet, for supporting or permitting the legal production and sale of alcoholic beverages.

That was pretty huge.
.
I mean, shall I go on?
.
The thing is, you don’t use incrementalism to deal with crises. You can’t put out a fire by trying to sneak coffee cups of water past a sleeping neighborhood. It just doesn’t work. Some problems are too big to handle this way. We have those problems today, as the New Deal Democrats did in theirs.
.
I don’t harp on Democrats’ every move, I criticize a series of policies based on an ideology that has proven time and again not to work.
.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a real point to what you’ve brought up, just that the reflexive, knee-jerk incrementalism of the establishment center can’t be relied upon to cope with an increasingly dangerous set of issues this country faces. We should have this discussion, you and I, and everyone who cares about what’s happening, and not merely take certain interested parties’ word for it that this, meaning incrementalism, is how everything has always gotten done. That’s just not true, especially when Americans have faced great crises.

Is there any more valuable commenter than sacredh?
.
Answer is…nope.
.
Thanks for the palate cleanser, or as they say in “nicer”restaurants-$12.00 Watermelon Sorbet.

“I don’t harp on Democrats’ every move, I criticize a series of policies based on an ideology that has proven time and again not to work.”
.
Didn’t you question whether Michelle Obama was faking a speech impediment when she spoke in Denver?
.
It’s a perfectly reasonable position to dislike BHO but at least be honest about where you are coming from with your criticism.

LOL
.
Dude, that’s not some deep-seated hatred, I really did think she adopted this weird public speaking style for that speech, so I mentioned it, thinking it was odd and harmless, in a “Let’s Play Oddball” kind of way.
.
Some of the folks who watched her were genuinely moved, so I got some sh*t for that, which I understood, once I realized people had a different, emotional reaction to her. I felt kind of bad about it.
.
You’re picking one silly, minute, meaningless episode. You may have forgotten the praise I heaped on the guy after the Philadelphia race speech, PNNTO. My whole thing during the primaries was that I don’t care about personality or “character”. I voted for Obama –twice– because I thought that he wasn’t a DLC Democrat. I didn’t find out I was wrong until way, way later.
.
It’s not about personal stuff, I honestly think they’re working off of a badly flawed, old and now discredited playbook.
.
Seriously, if you think that I’m filled with some sort of animosity for the Obamas, that’s just wrong. I’m really not making up criticisms to satisfy a personal beef.
.
If you don’t think that I’m being honest, either with you or with myself, then I don’t know what to tell you. I really don’t.

Stuartzechman: Wow, great post. Like any Dem, love FDR. But….do you really not see a difference in the political reality between 1933 and now? To keep it short, I think the political landscape probably looks a bit different when you have 25% unemployment. Maybe that accounts for the “goodwill” that FDR enjoyed when he entered office? And, he didn’t have 24/7 news cycles. I imagine it’s a bit easier to deal with Congress when you don’t have pundits “analyzing” your every move. While FDR did have to deal with Father Coughlin, Townsend, and Huey Long, that doesn’t really compare with the viral right-wing nightmare that we have to deal with today. The banking crisis, while deep, really doesn’t compare to the multi-national complexity that Obama faced upon taking office. And, the depression did not really end until the war. We have two wars going on and it doesn’t seem to have the same effect.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you way more than I disagree. The Third Way does not work for me, either. And I read the Audacity of Hope and thought OMG, here we go again. But I have to ask: beyond voting for a third party candidate, what can we do? So I take my half a loaf and wonder why the hell we never even seriously discussed single-payer. But strangely that doesn’t prevent me from calling my representatives and asking them to pass legislation. I whine to my friends and in blogs and even whitehouse.com but support what BHO is trying to get done. Make any sense?

doddeb:
.
You raise arguments that I’d like to debate…if it weren’t the evening before my @lovely_bride ‘s birthday, and she hadn’t just walked in.
.
Thank you for reading and responding, though, I appreciate it.

I mean, shall I go on?
.
The original statement was:
.
“Please tell me that you can think of at least one ‘lefty agenda item’ of the past hundred years that didn’t happen overnight or in one big piece of legislation.”
.
Didn’t, not ‘did’. Desegregation didn’t happen in one fell swoop; it took most of the previous century to build up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

…and the FDA was built over the course of a century.
.
I mean, shall I go on?
.
The thing is, you don’t use incrementalism to deal with crises.
.
Perhaps. You can’t legitimately say that ‘incrementalism’ is unsuccessful, however…only that, given the circumstances, it can be less effective. Some problems don’t call for half-solutions, right?
.
Seriously, if you think that I’m filled with some sort of animosity for the Obamas, that’s just wrong. I’m really not making up criticisms to satisfy a personal beef.
.
I don’t…but it would be fair to say that a few on the left are overly and/or unjustifiably critical, no?

Thanks Pnnto. That was very kind and generous. It seems to me that as the acrimony gets worse and the country descends even further into bizarro land that we either have to laugh or cry at their shennigans. I’m just along for the ride. I have no idea where we’re going or when we’ll get there. I’m just trying to enjoy the scenery until the car runs out of gas.

Jarret: I saved up box tops, coupons and a ton of contest entry forms and finally won the Grand Prize…a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. How f**ked up is that?

Warren: We’re having a sleep over at my house tonight. We’re going to watch all the Twilight movies and then cruise the truck stops. Please say you’ll come.

Elizabeth Warren pepares to grab the knife and stab the prostetic hand on the table she has stuck in her sleeve.

Are you sure you’re not freeinpa or textee? You seem awfully eager to highlight the blame on Obama and away from the right nutjobs.

“Breitbart didn’t fire Shirley Sherrod.”
.
Your spirited defense and advocacy for Breitbart is noted.