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Bend over so they can screw it in tighter

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Thoreau notes that some of our most pessimistic and gloomy bloggers have come back to sit under the awning and complain about the rain.

I guess that means I’ll be in fine company as I fire up the scripts and widgets to get this old jalopy of a blog back in working order.  I probably need to do more than look under the hood, and may take it into the garage for a full tune up, but I think it’s still street legal.

I mean, it’s not like anything’s changed in the year or so I took off from serious blogging.

We’re still screwed.  Just as screwed as we were when PrezO harshed our buzz the night he was elected, saying such nonsense that he was elected to be President of ALL of us.  How’s that working out?

“Obama’s support among Americans who identify themselves as both liberal and Democratic was 83 percent last week, little changed from previous weeks and slightly higher relative to Obama’s overall approval rating than it has been historically,” Gallup said.

“Although President Obama’s job approval rating hit the low point of his administration during the past week and is down among most subgroups, there are no signs yet that he has taken a disproportionate hit among his traditional base of liberals and Democrats. On a relative basis, both of these groups remain as loyal to Obama compared with Americans overall as they have been on average since he took office in January 2009,” Gallup added.

The president’s overall approval rating is at 42 percent, down from 50 percent at the beginning of June.

The left still likes him (“love” is too strong a word at this point), but are freaked that not supporting him could lead to President Bachmann. The right can’t fucking stand him. (“Hate” is a mild descriptor, as in “I hate spinach.” They’re way beyond hate and always have been.)

For those who insist that either his policies, his style, or his negotiating (for lack of a better word) “strategy” are all politically motivated, are designed in some nefarious way to increase his chances for reelection are deluded and stupidly buy the spin from his spokestools. The frightening thing is the realization that Barack Obama thinks he’s doing the right thing.

FAIL: REPORT: Debt Ceiling Deal Will Cost 1.8 Million Jobs In 2012

As with most centrists/moderates/sheep he lacks an underlying ideology that can guide him when you can’t see the shit right in front of your eyes because the shit-storm raging all around you has reduced visibility to zero.  It’s not a backbone he lacks, but much like Poppy Bush the Elder, he doesn’t have that “vision thing.” Bureaucratic plutocrats like that are more than satisfied with getting something done instead of getting something they want.

When historic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities have presented themselves, like single-payor, a Stimzilla that REALLY invested in our future, or killing the Bush (II) tax cuts, we we told that the half-a-loaf was delicious.  Sorry, but it left a sour taste after seeing how much a minority faction of loons can get out of our system if you DON”T play by the rules and act like a grown up.

Whatever you want to call it, it ain’t democracy.  Not when less than 10% of the country gets 98% of what they want.

So I’m back. Back to writing. Back because I’m angry again. Angry like I was when we went to war over a pack of lies and I started this blogging adventure.  Back because it’s time. Back because 140 characters can no longer contain what’s bubbling up inside of me. Back because the reason I stopped — that I didn’t want to bash the President but could no longer act the cheerleader when he extended the disastrous Bush tax cuts — has come back to bite us all in the ass, because it revealed Barack Obama’s fundamental weakness in negotiating with the GOP instead of breaking their back when they were down.

“We Do Big Things.” (UPDATED w/VIDEO)

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I liked the speech. I accept that it didn’t get into the specifics. But that’s not what this sort of speech is for.

I also accept that it seemed to be full of contradictions: How can you freeze spending while investing in jobs? Simple:  it’s about what you think is important, it’s about your priorities.  You freeze spending in certain areas while you ramp up investments for the future.  You invest in bridges, not bombs. Bridges help us (and our children) move into the future; bombs leave nothing behind but destruction and death.

Granted, creating a sustainable future is easier said than done. But you do have to say it. Otherwise it never gets done.

That’s what leadership is. It is someone standing up and saying, “follow me.” Follow me into a future where we’ve set our priorities so that we can grow the economy, provide jobs, balance our budgets and provide for our families in the way our families provided for us.

It won’t be easy. But I liked how President Obama reached back to “the Sputnik moment” to describe our current position. Granted, the speech was written by a 30-something and delivered by a 40-something, neither of whom were born when the original Sputnik moment happened. But it was an apt metaphor.

“…[H]alf-a-century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik we had no idea how we would beat them to the Moon. The science wasn’t even there yet. NASA didn’t exist.

“But after investing in better research and education, we didn’t just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.”

So how do you implement this vision? Well, you’re going to have to win elections because you need a majority that agrees with you. Right now, the Democrats do not have that. They squandered the opportunities in the last election cycle. And/But instead of re-hashing what is already past, allow me to imagine the campaign for the next election in 2012.

Hear me out. If I were running for (re)election in 2012 (of course as a Democrat), my platform would have three big things in it:

  1. Green jobs
  2. Clean air and water
  3. Strong national security

Green Jobs: Move our workforce into a sustainable future. For example, take workers off the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and put them to work making wind generators and solar panels. You heard me: the pay is the same; it’s less dangerous; and it’s sustainable:

We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if — I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.

…and this leads to Big Thing #2…

Clean Air and Water: No more oil rigs in the Gulf means no more volcanos of oil soiling the water, the beaches and marshes of the Gulf coast. Come on, stop being in denial — you know it’s going to happen again and again and again. So stop tempting fate. There’s too much at stake.

And another thing: hunters and fishermen — not typically a Democratic constituency — will be with you on this. You will get their votes in great numbers because they respect what a clean environment means to them and their children.

In Lousiana, for example, it means giving your children what your parents gave you: an opportunity for a job, an opportunity for recreation, an opportunity for freedom. A filthy environment takes all of that away from you. It forecloses the future.

[Sotto voce: You're also doing the right thing to mitigate climate change.]

All Americans have that common goal: to eventually give the environment to our children so that they can carry on the legacy we received from our parents.

Strong National Security: Energy independence means you can eventually stop being held hostage by hostile oil-producing states that use the money we pay at the pump to fund terrorism around the globe. Dry up that money and you take away a lot of their power.

Again, this is something that everyone — Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives — can agree on: when you buy foreign oil, you are funding terrorists. So move our economy into a greener future. It will provide sustainable jobs and will give our children a cleaner safer world — and make us safer against the outside forces of terror.

So my imaginary stump speech would conclude with this: No one — no nation — has ever cut its way to prosperity. To prosper, you have to do big things.

UPDATE: Here’s how clueless (or just mendacious?) my Congressman Rep. Bill Cassidy (LA-06) is:

“We in Louisiana understand that wind and solar can never replace natural gas and oil, and that’s what he spoke about doing tonight,” Cassidy said after the president’s speech.

That reminds me of what Henry Ford once said: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

…Or what I’ve seen on more than one motivational poster: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

…Or what Marshall McLuhan said: “The future of the future is the present. And this is what people are terrified of.”

The Motives of Power

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As confused and disgusted as liberals may be right now at President Obama and the Conservadems, things may actually be worse than they are giving them credit for. For the most part, liberal criticism (short of liberal Barack Derangement Syndrome, popular particularly among the PUMAs) falls along two lines:

The first is Obama’s political spinelessness. Here’s Mark Thoma on the cowardess behind his inexplicable fold on forcing the Republicans into a corner on taxes:

Obama made it seem as though this is an issue where he won’t compromise, but instead of holding the line and hammering Republicans day in and day out to make it clear who is standing in the way of extending middle class tax cuts, he caves.

Then there’s Obama’s supposed political incompetence. Here’s Digby:

Once you do that then we can get down to the real argument which is over whether the government should tax the wealthy and do more to create jobs. They are obscuring that argument with the deficit obsession for a very good reason — they don’t think they can win it.

But there’s another, more obvious answer: Obama and the Conservadems may think they can win that argument but don’t want the tax cuts for the wealthy to expire or a more progressive tax structure in the future because the plutocrats don’t want it. All the talk of adding to the deficit is more Kabuki, i.e., political lies, for The Village Scribes and still confused liberals. The alternative is to go all-out populist and turn the Party against the ruling oligarchy.

So perhaps the view of Obama as pusillanimous is correct. But what he’s afraid of is nothing less than a corporatocracy that controls everything. That includes the Democratic Party.

Update: Jebus, here’s kos: “He just thinks, time and time again, that showing good faith will win him GOP support. All the while, they laugh in his face.” I’ll say for you smart liberals one more time: bi-partisanship is Kabuki. It’s performed to allow Democrats to do the bidding of the oligarchs without you noticing what they’re really doing. And it’s working.