Mon, 11/10/2008 - 5:47pm — vastleft
So Obama has told the Democrats that he wants them to leave Joe Lieberman alone.He will regret it. Joe Lieberman is a sanctimonious egomaniac who has no sense of loyalty or gratitude and he will stab Obama in the back as often as possible. He may even use his subpoena power on the Homeland Security Committee (which they are going to have to let him keep) to harrass him on behalf of conservative interests. It's a huge mistake to keep him in the caucus where he will have knowledge of their strategy and legislative tactics. He will be the first one called upon to "speak for" Democrats who are unhappy with Obama's inevitable "overreaching." He is a mole for the Republican party.
WKJM blames this, first and foremost, on the 42nd president.
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I'm Shocked! Shocked!
Whoever could have guessed this was going to happen?
Eff Josh Marshall.
What a freaking windbag.
Holy crap.
WTF
happened to SEPARATE BUT EQUAL?!!!!!
@&%$!@#!
Ah, yes--Josh blaiming Clinton, just like BushCo! Day-ummmmn.
Remember when everything that went wrong under BushBoy was actually, according to BushCo and their MCM minions, Clinton's fault? Somehow....
I note that Josh refers to a single unsourced quote. Great.
What happened to Josh? He's building his MCM cred.
(And I posted something similar to this twice yesterday. Huh.)
A child's tear...
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Oh the video this could be!
"So Obama has told the Democrats that he wants them to leave Joe Lieberman alone. "
After all he's been through! All you care about is readers and getting stupid bills passed! HE'S HUMAN! Leave him alone! You're lucky he even caucused with you bastards! < sob >
---------------
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
---------------
We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Really?
If they keep him, would this be true?
BTW, I must admit my ignorance about Joe. I know that he's a conservative hawk on foreign policy, but what about the rest of his positions? Is he really the worst. Democrat. evah currently in the Senate, or are their more conservative Dems?
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
progressive punch ranks lieberman
45th most progressive, of 100 senators overall [here are his scores on individual issues]
Thanks, Hip
Quite a dichotomy, huh? He's great on education/art and housing (#1 progressive), but right at the edge of the party on war and peace and civil liberties. I guess this is exactly what I'd heard, earlier.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
i hate when people won't fit themselves into neat little boxes
i'd never really liked lieberman but i'd never really paid a lot of attention to him either before the 2006 debacle. i wish these people i love to hate weren't so good on some of the issues i care about.
Interesting
Most of his low score on civil rights seems to be related to FISA, including a bunch of bad scores for each amendment voted up or down. He's solid on abortion (except for confirming fed judges, but a lot of Dems came up short on those) and sucks on consumer laws.
I'm not sure if it's that he represents quite a dichotomy or its the way Progressive Punch organizes its issues.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
"Rape Gurney Joe" is all I'm sayin'...
Oh, and Damon - turn off the italics! :)
italics fixed. Remember: /i, not i/
.
I have no idea what I did...
...and why it'd effect everyone else's following posts. Sorry, I'm pretty blog illiterate, here.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
You put the slash after the "i" in
your closing italic tag on "evah," instead of before the "i," so everything below it stayed italics.
I hope the new CW
site doesn't let one rotten tag spoil the rest of the bunch.
And no big deal Damon. At least it wasn't a blink tag.
there's that "change" again--not.
of course he wants Joe to stay--he's going to need him to continue all the horrendous DHS and "security theater" stuff-- which includes massive databases/spying on all of us, by the way, no?
more accurate-- "Changeiness"
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?dia... -- "... 2008 will birth the word changeiness - "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to exemplify real change, rather than concepts or facts known to embody real change."
In the weeks ahead, I'll try to keep a running tab on changeiness - the moves that we'd like to believe suggest the possibility of real change, but, in fact, are not real change. ..."
Am I stupid to believe that we need Joe's vote? He's
burned us before but maybe it's better to have him on our side of the fence instead of soundly on the other.
I love this job!
I love this job!
Even if the Senate had reached the magic 60
I think they still would have needed Joe because of all the Blue Dogs who are qualmless about voting with the Republicans.
I would like to think they 'kept' Joe for his positive positions on some of the social issues, but sadly it's probably for the security/spying side of the ledger.
You don’t know me, son. So let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.
-Malcolm Reynolds, “Serenity”
He'll vote the way Obama wants him to?
Uh huh.
Here's another bit from the article:
A Democrat close to Lieberman, meanwhile, said he thought that keeping Lieberman in the fold "would be a good move for Obama as a way to make real his promise of new politics, a less partisan Washington and more unity. He would do so at some risk. Obviously there is a liberal wing of the party that wants Joe punished... "
See? It's those evil liberals causing trouble again.
You know where Obama can put his unity pony?
Obama's another father figure just like Reagan. "You dems
and repubs settle down and get along. Stop that bickering. {{patting on the head}} And you women/GBLT/old people, you know that we're doing the right thing so relax and I'll take care of everything."
I don't want a father figure. I enjoy a good fight especially when there are things worth fighting for like universal healthcare and preserving social security. Why do we have to get along? And what in hell makes Obama think that the repubs are going to play nice? Maybe he'll control them through sticks and carrots. That's worked out great in the past.
I love this job!
I love this job!
Sunstein calls him a "visionary minimalist"
--such bs....
http://coloradoindependent.com/14788/oba... -- Obama the visionary minimalist --
"... Some public officials are minimalists. They do not like to reject the fundamental commitments of their fellow citizens. On environmental questions, sex equality, national security and economic policy, they try to bracket our deepest disagreements. They seek to obtain a consensus on what to do — not on why to do it.
Minimalists favor their approach because they think, as a pragmatic matter, it is most likely to work. They also insist that their approach, putting fundamental differences to one side, shows respect to their fellow citizens.
...
Above all, these visionaries seek to alter the nation’s self-conception. In changing policy on the economy, or on national defense, they are entirely comfortable with asserting that their vision is the superior one and that alternative visions should be rejected. When they succeed, they transform how the nation understands itself.
Our greatest presidents — including Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — have been visionaries. In recent American history, President Ronald Reagan stands as the leading visionary.
Obama is something new in American politics — and not just for the obvious reasons. He is a visionary minimalist. This is a key both to his extraordinary campaign and to his unique promise. It even helps explain his conception of public service.
...
Obama shows unfailing respect for those with competing views. In designing policies — on climate change, tax reform, energy conservation, foreign policy — he attempts to produce solutions that will accommodate, rather than repudiate, the defining commitments of his fellow citizens. Even on the most divisive issues of separation of church and state, Obama favors approaches that will attract support from all sides. ..."
Amberglow, you rock! What Sunstein meant by Visionary Minimalist
T/U so much for posting this piece. Great find, great addition to our understanding of how one of his closest advisers sees Obama.
I'd seen a brief reference to Sunstein calling Obama a "visionary minimalist," but no more than that. This fleshes out Sunstein's basis for saying that--and is another nail in the coffin Obama may be building for universal healthcare.
I think Obama will have to choose whether to go down in history as simply the First Black President--or a great progressive president who was also the first black president, a "play it safe" placeholder or an actor in history who made a real difference in the lives of Americans and the world.
This so-called "minimalism" is a form of accepting the status quo and of not making waves.
Sunstein's words are Way Scary:
Reagan as "leading visionary"? Talk about dropping off a cliff! And Sunstein sees Obama as changing things "minimally"?
Gasp. Shudder. Next comes coma?
We can only hope that Sunstein gets Obama wrong--way, way, way wrong.
Imagine an FDR who did not make waves!!!
It will be interesting to have a full time campaigner for McCain
in the Dem Senate caucus.
I have no idea how much he was allowed to hear, how much he was trusted on anything. I've often wondered if he taped the sessions or just used his memory to give info to the Repubs--on issues he disagreed with the caucus. Did the Dems have secret meetings that Joe wasn't invited to? Keep strategy among only a few who could be trusted?
Very interesting. Could be the basis of a play, maybe a TV series....
I wonder what kind of VP he would have been. Or maybe 9/11 just put him over the edge. He was quite willing to criticize Clinton on the floor of the Senate--would he have spoken out against Gore as VP? Who knows.
Is there any reason Reid couldn't make some committee chair changes, or is that not done among Dems? Lieberman held no hearings about so many important things. But, hey, who's Obama to complain about that? However, we still can!
Who was the model for the VP on West Wing, the one who kept trying to subvert President Barlet?
Am I remembering John Hoynes as working against Bartlet?
very related--"Obama seen as continuing covert war on al Qaeda"
http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandida... -- "Covert U.S. strikes against al Qaeda, authorized and employed aggressively by President George W. Bush, look set to continue when Barack Obama takes office despite expected protests from allies and adversaries.
"This is perhaps the thorniest issue of Obama's foreign-policy initiation," said Brian Glyn Williams, a University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth professor who has testified on al Qaeda at the Guantanamo war crimes trials.
Covert military operations around the globe, including in countries with which Washington is not at war, have been a part of U.S. policy for decades and have been mounted against the stateless al Qaeda since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
During his election campaign, premised on the need for change after eight years of Bush policies, Obama condemned Bush's counterterrorism operations as ineffective and advocated more international diplomacy to isolate militant groups.
But he also vowed to strike al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan if the United States had good intelligence and Islamabad failed to act -- setting the stage for a continuation of Bush's policy there.
...
Bush has given the military new authority to fight al Qaeda on its own and in coordination with the CIA. The New York Times reported on Monday that a classified order issued in 2004 by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with Bush's approval, authorized military strikes on al Qaeda around the world,
It said that the order identified some 15 to 20 countries where militants were operating and that more than a dozen previously undisclosed attacks have taken place under it.
The White House, CIA and Pentagon declined to comment.
..."
I guess FDL
didn't get the memo. Just got an email from Jane Hamsher:
We'll find out this week if the Democratic Party will boot Joe Lieberman from its ranks, and we have a chance to help them make the right decision.
Since losing the Connecticut Democratic primary, Senator Lieberman has threatened to leave our ranks and even joined the Republican Convention to attack Barack Obama in a keynote speech. The long and the short of it is that he is no Democrat. As such, it's high time the Democratic Caucus took appropriate action and stripped him of his committee chairmanship.
Members of the Senate Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee will be deciding if Lieberman keeps his chairmanship this week, so we need to take to the phones and let them know that we want him out of the caucus.
Fine by me.
Heh
Once they get the memo, the Party Line will instantly change and will be acknowledged as having always been the correct opinion to have.
Yes, he's a Republican mole.
So, this question comes to mind: Did Obama and his team make this decision because they're bereft of clues, or are they Republican moles as well?
"You'd better get this straight. Wise up before it's too late." -- Sister Sledge
JFK has been shot, we miss him a lot
He always knew what to do
-- Philly Cream