friendly advice for centrist Obama supporters

 You are doing a piss poor job of convincing progressives to reelect Obama.

I believed you guys were actually Republican trolls until I heard the same words coming out of the mouths of top Obama aides and in only slightly milder form out of the mouths of the president and VP himself.

Does that persuade you and make you want to keep reading?

I didn't think so.

So why do you repeatedly insult the progressive majority of Democrats to try to keep them in the Obama tent?

I am not 100% pleased with Obama, but I will be voting for him again. Your efforts mostly make me feel like an idiot for doing so.

If you sincerely want to help Obama win reelection, here's some tips that might help you warm up the base.

Enough with the insults. You know what I'm talking about--calling anyone who criticizes Obama from the left ''far left'' (going as far as to say we are as bad as the far right), ''the professional left,'' ''hopeless idealists,'' and perhaps most aggravatingly ''Obama haters.'' That last one is just fucking lazy. You borrowed it from the Bush PR team.

Stop being crybabies. When you come to a discussion board, expect that people are going to criticize your guy as well as praise him. If you want undiluted praise, go to Obama's campaign website. If you come to a site like this expect to have to defend some of his actions and do so as if talking to your peers not your children.

Retire some of these talking points:

• You don't understand the process--it requires compromise. Actually, we understand that perfectly well. What we don't understand is why the president we elected to pursue Democratic policies gives away half the pie before negotiations even start and then gives up even more to make a deal. That would make some kind of sense once Republicans took over the House, but Obama did this even when Democrats had majorities in both chambers. Either honestly explain why he did this or just leave it alone.
  
  Most of us also notice that this isn't the way the GOP negotiates, regardless of whether they hold the White House or either chamber of Congress. They start with proposals that are clearly conservative, excoriate the Democrats, and then grudgingly compromise at the end of negotiations (and sometimes not even then).
• Obama has to be president of ALL Americans. Again, this one is an insult to our intelligence. We understand that he has to be president of ALL Americans, but we hold elections to decide what policies we want our president pursue. A solid majority of Americans thought they elected a Democratic president, not one who rarely mentions the name of his own party and blames it as much as the opposition that blocks everything and tries to destroy popular, effective programs, and not one who thinks every proposal has to include at least 50% Republican content. The Republicans certainly don't play that way when they take office, and even if they did, that would mean our vote would be meaningless since either party would do the same thing. With just the Democrats doing it, we essentially have a choice being 100% GOP policies or just 50% plus, which is barely a choice at all. So stow this shit.
  
  
• Any Republican will be WORSE. progressives seem to know this better than you or Obama does. If they are so bad, stop agreeing with them and letting them set the agenda, as your points about process and bipartisanship prove.
• Obama will be more progressive in his second term. Maybe FDR did that, but no president in my lifetime has. Bill Clinton was doing well to hold onto office and like Obama agreed with the GOP policies far too often. For good or ill, you have to run on what Obama has actually done (and not just the nice things he has said or will say during the campaign.

That brings me to the one thing you guys do well, the list of Obama's accomplishments. Even your presentation there has room for improvement though.

• Edit the list for a progressive audience. The catfood commission, the Afghanistan surge, and certainly the recent debt ceiling deal are not things you want to brag about with a progressive audience.
• Emphasize the radical and confrontational rather than incremental and bipartisan. So for example with health care reform, instead of talking about the market based exchanges and ''cost controls,'' the latter meaning controlling costs for insurance companies, talk about what the reform did to help the average American and bring insurance companies and big pharma to heel.
• Give it to people in chunks instead of the big dump. Focus especially on progressive moves that aren't getting a lot of MSM coverage, like working to get Medicare Part D to negotiate drug prices.

There are a couple of points that you also avoid mentioning, like why Obama started with an economic team that included so many of the architects of our financial collapse, and why he lets firms like Goldman Sachs pick their regulators instead of picking their cellmates in the Federal pen.

Another area where you need to address progressive concerns is K-12 education. I'm glad Obama gave schools money to keep them from laying off teachers, but a lot of us who care about kids have trouble trusting him on this issue when he hired an education secretary who right wingers praise for his union-busting, mass firing of teachers, emphasis on repetitive standardized testing and privatized charter schools, all ''reforms'' backed by billionaire dilettantes rather than trained educators.

The problem with Obama's approach to Wall St, education, trade, and other aspects of foreign policy is that it is top down rather than bottom up--he appears to talk to almost exclusively the wealthy and largely does what they ask, rather than looking at the wishes of average Americans, who would like to see Wall Street subject to the rule of law and suffer the same kind of consequences a middle class or poor person would if they intentionally caused as much damage, and would like to have safe public schools that borrow the best practices of private schools, rather than privatizing public schools so our tax dollars can be siphoned off in profits and teachers treated like interchangeable burger flippers.

You must address these concerns if you want to get progressives in the tent, and address them in the way that Bruno Bettelheim laid out in his essay ''The Victim.'' He told about how as a concentration camp inmate he needed to get an SS guard's approval to get medical treatment for frostbite. He had to make his case to someone who had no sympathy, all the power, and a gun. So far, you guys have been arguing more like the guard than the inmate.

Should Democratic base VOTE bipartisan like Dem leaders?

Seriously, since Obama continued the Wall Street Bailout, based half the stimulus on GOP ideas, asked Republicans for advice on health care reform and passed a version strikingly similar to Republican Mitt Romney's in Massachusetts, and now are making noises about the need to cut the budget, especially social security with his catfood commission headed by right wing crank Alan Simpson, wouldn't he be pleased if we donated to, campaigned, and voted for SOME Democrats and SOME Republicans?

I can't think of a single Republican I'd want to vote for, but they must have an important contribution to make since the White House bends over backwards to get their advice and uses their ideas even when it doesn't result in Republican votes and even when he didn't NEED Republican votes.

Wouldn't it make him happy if we followed in his footsteps?

Would Obama, Rahm and gang be happy if Democratic base practiced bipartisan voting and campaigning?
	YES, we should follow the example of our leader
	YES, Obama, Rahm and gang would be more comfortable working with Republicans anyway.
	NO, only our leaders know when it's best to do the heavy lifting for their political opponents.
	other
pollcode.com free polls

Obama: don't bow & scrape to business--divide & conquer

An article in Politico says the Obama administration is worried the are gaining an unfair reputation of being anti-business and includes the pitch Rahm Emanuel is making publicly to get back in corporate America's good graces, but only one part of it is on target, the point about reregulation (see highlight in excerpt below).

The fact is, when Wall Street is run like a boiler room scam factory, it's bad for legitimate businesses that produce actual goods and services, who could become the target of the next pump and dump bubble. Worse, without fairly applied regulation, smaller businesses must always be afraid that larger, more politically connected corporations will cheat them in deals or use monopolistic tactics to put them out of business with impunity.

There is also the old Henry Ford case to be made prosperous workers buy more products, and the various scams and exorbitant health insurance costs have meant less money for workers to spend buying electronics, cars, and refrigerators.

Probably the best cases to be made though is a Machiavellian divide and conquer one: not all businesses are the same just as not all people are. There were and are some bad actors who harmed not just the American people but all other American businesses.

Unless a business really believed they could get out of paying for health insurance altogether, health care reform will help them (and it would have helped them more if it had been even more progressive and gave people a public option).

Likewise, the damage BP has done to fisheries, tourism, and probably even some agriculture in the Gulf of Mexico is incalculable. When you add the other hidden costs of catering to the oil industry like the taxes we pay that go to subsidies, tax breaks, and troops to seize and protect oil reserves and pipeline routes, taking care of the health effects of burning fossil fuels, and the suppression of alternative energy to replace it.

Rahm's approach assumes that a business is a business is a business, but that is like saying your corner diner is the same as Microsoft is the same as a tobacco company, ''massage'' parlor, or Tony Robbins get-rich-quick scam.

Clamping down on and holding the bad actors accountable makes it possible for ethical businesses to thrive since the lack of regulation puts ethical businesses at a disadvantage against the unethical who will cut corners in product or worker safety or by giving their customers less than promised.

And just as many conservatives think certain individuals are so dangerous to society that they cannot be allowed to live, so it is with certain businesses and even whole industries that need to be put to death or at least put out on ice floe in the arctic, so that their survival depends on their anti-climate change propaganda being true.

If BP hasn't earned that fate, we should apologize for executing Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer*, and Tim McVeigh.

To do this though, taking care of the public good would have to be a top priority, and if you read up on the DLC, corporate wing of the Democratic Party that Obama has filled his administration with, it is obvious that they would rather replace the Republicans not just in elected offices, but in the hearts of sociopathic CEO's and trust fund babies as their most trusted servants, and if that means grinding us up and using us to chum for sharks off the back of the wealthy's yacht, so be it.

W.H. works to flip anti-business rep
By: Ben White
July 8, 2010 12:51 PM EDT

Obama has been happy to be seen by voters as cracking down on Wall Street but those efforts have had an unintended result: feeding a sense that the president and his party are indifferent or even actively hostile toward big business, whether those businesses are Silicon Valley tech companies, Midwestern manufacturers or Main Street small businesses.

And it is more than just politics: Obama’s aides believe confidence in the general direction of White House policy has an effect on the willingness of corporations to hire, invest and push the economy toward a more solid recovery.

The stakes are high. Nearly every economic report suggests that corporate America, flush with cash and generating strong profits, is waiting to unleash a wave of hiring if only they have confidence there will be no double-dip recession and that consumers will have money to spend.

***

In a Thursday interview, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel argued that rather than recoiling against Obama, business leaders should be grateful for his support on at least a half-dozen counts: his advocacy of greater international trade and education reform open markets despite union skepticism; his rejection of calls from some quarters to nationalize banks during the financial meltdown; the rescue of the automobile industry; the fact that the overhaul of health care preserved the private delivery system; the fact that billions in the stimulus package benefited business with lucrative new contracts, and that financial regulation reform will take away the uncertainty that existed with a broken, pre-crash regulatory apparatus.

FULL TEXT

*NOTE: I know Dahmer was only executed by poetic justice not by the judicial system.

Are Democrats pulling a Jedi mind trick on Health Care Reform?

Are Democrats about to dramatically improve and pass what so far has looked like a deeply flawed and corrupt bill by adding a strong public option or Medicare buy in?

Think about it: only an idiot would really think the Republicans would support real health care reform that took money out of the pockets of insurance companies, and if the debate started with single payer, a public option, or opening medicare to all, enough Blue Dogs and DLCers would have joined the GOP to sustain a filibuster and kill the bill. Likewise, the media would not have been kind to such a bill and would have parroted the GOP talking points about the evils of socialism.

So what do you do? Get over the initial hurdles with a bill that is nearly identical to one signed into law by a Republican governor. Republicans will protest it anyway, but swing voters might notice their hypocrisy, which would limit the effectiveness of GOP protests.

Once the bill got past the procedural hurdles to the point that it could be done with reconciliation, it still does no good to telegraph the punch, but it does help to get the public to visibly ''twist their arms'' with ever growing demands for a public option.

Then if they substitute a strong public option, Medicare buy in, or hell, even single payer at the last second, the protests of the right and their parrots in the media won't matter. The public will get it, and thank the Democrats for it at the polls in November.

It would have a side benefit as far as all the money insurance companies threw at Democrats to sway their vote. The Democrats would get to keep that money, and what could the insurance companies say? That they expected a quid pro quo? A second benefit would be that Democrats could honestly say their vote on this could not be bought in spite of all the money that was showered on them and it could reset the relationship between pols and lobbyists.

This scenario would require a lot of coordination and discipline, which the Democrats as a party rarely demonstrated apart from voting for the worst excrement of the Bush administration, and maybe the current talk of a public option is just shining us on until they pass a corporate give away--but maybe, just maybe, these aren't the droids you're looking for.

Move along.

Move along.


UPDATE: I was wrong. March 29, 2010

Democrats use Osama-Saddam bait & switch on health care

I have often complained that the Democrats have failed to learn the right lessons from the GOP's superior mastery of propaganda and PR. In the health care reform debate, they have misapplied the GOP methods again, using bait and switch, with hope and platitudes about health care replacing the GOP fear of terrorist bogeymen.

The GOP used an Osama-Saddam bait and switch. They got everybody mad at Osama, associate him with Saddam, then dropped Osama out of the equation.

With health care reform, Democrats got everybody excited about a public option, associate it with mandated private insurance, then drop the public option, which will be kept in a freezer in a cave with Osama until needed again.

The big difference is people bought the Osaddama lie for long enough to get the war started. By contrast, no one seems to be fooled by substituting slavery to private insurance companies for the kind of public insurance system every other industrialized country has that is less costly and more effective than ours (except at lining the pockets of the already wealthy).

But the Democrats don't seem to care that they haven't fooled anyone and are going ahead with legislation written by and for the criminals who have killed and bankrupted so many Americans with their epic greed.

Good luck in that fall election, Democrats.

You'll need it.

Obama: LBJ without the accomplishments

Pardon me for being impolite, but if Obama signs health care reform that looks anything like the deeply compromised and watered down bills in the House and Senate, that will hardly be an accomplishment on par with starting Medicare, most of college financial aid, and finally ensuring the full civil rights of African Americans.

LBJ did all that, and people still hated him for the war, and he was unable to run for a second term of his own.

Obama won't have even the figleaf of a major domestic policy victory to cover continuing and escalating the war in Afghanistan. He will barely have an aphid on a figleaf if he keeps following the path of micro-incremental, semi-reforms of the DLC, and worse, leaving the criminals who caused our economic problems in charge of economic policy instead of throwing them off the roof of the White House.

Wall Street gets EXACTLY what they want, and we get crumbs so long as it doesn't offend Wall Street or more likely, even enriches them further. Cases in point: the no-strings attached bailouts, health care reform BIBI (By Insurance companies For Insurance companies), and now the ongoing war in Afghanistan as order by the oil & gas companies. And even during the campaign, Obama was careful to send signals to Wall Street that he wasn't going to reverse the trade agreements that have decimated our manufacturing jobs.

Obama could theoretically have taken care of average Americans AND most of big business by simply singling out a couple of bad actors in the business world, explaining how their sociopathic behavior hurts not only middle class working people but even other businesses, and then showing them NO MERCY. I would nominate the health insurance industry, big oil for their role in our wars, and of course the economic terrorists on Wall Street.

Instead, he has given all three a big sloppy kiss (do you really think Afghanistan is about terrorists not pipelines and drug money for Wall St?)

Likewise, poll after poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans want health care reform that includes a full public option that allows anyone to escape the abuses of private insurance and get into a program like Medicare. Instead, we will be required to buy insurance from those abusive companies with no discernible restraints on pricing, and only a handful will have access to a public program that will be more expensive than private insurance. Do Democrats in Congress and President Obama really think that's a formula to get re-elected? In that case, they might also think being tough on rapists would be forcing their victims to marry them.

I think Obama is a good guy, but our democracy has a serious problem when he can't take the action necessary to correct our problems for fear of offending the people who created the problem, even as their actions are likely to drag us into more debt, war, and poverty.

Is Rahm Emanuel Karl Rove's retarded cousin?

I would submit that he is equally amoral as Karl Rove but less competent.

Rove at least seemed to have a coherent plan to keep his guy in office: smear and fear. Smear your critics, make the public and legislators fear terrorists and crossing Bush. While the corruption and incompetence of the Bushies at actually governing or conducting a war led to their eventual train wreck, Rove's smoke and mirrors were enough to get Bush into his second term.

By contrast, whatever political advice Rahm Emanuel is giving Obama seems solely designed to appeal to corporate patrons with little thought to how it will play with average Americans, particularly, no thought to how the public will react if the final form of health insurance reform is perceived as a gift to insurance companies instead of helping the rest of us.

It is really dishonest to say they are ''moderate'' or ''pragmatic'' when in reality, they are serving their corporate donors and future corporate employers rather than the wishes of their constituents.

This has been made most obvious in polls of voters in blue dogs' states and districts about the public option in health care reform:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/21/montantans-not...

http://www.laprogressive.com/2009/09/22/new-study-publi... /

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/analysis-public-...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/abc-new...

Even voters who reside in more conservative districts are not retarded or prefer being raped by insurance companies to having access to something like Medicare as an alternative.

In fact, one CBS poll found that even Republican voters favor a public option.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/poll-even-re...

Even in places where people have drunken the conservative KoolAid and think they don't want a public option, once they had it given to them, they would probably cling to as tenaciously as the teabaggers cling to Medicare, even as they decry ''socialized medicine.''

Giving people a real public option would yield long term dividends for the Democrats.

Even severe compromises on health care would have been easier to swallow if Obama had taken swift action to punish, rein in, and neuter Wall Street--especially after giving them the second half of the Bush no strings attached bailout.

Obama has certainly done good things on less visible issues like student aid and repairing our image abroad although even the foreign affection for Obama will wear off if he continues Bush like policies in Afghanistan and starts a new Operation Condor in Latin America.

And if corporate compliant Rahm is calling the shots, that is likely to be the trajectory.

Even on the pragmatic level of giving Obama's base a reason to pound the pavement and open our wallets for him in 2012, baldly corporate first action seems stupid.

So my question is, is Rahm brilliantly playing some long game of chess on behalf of the American people, or is he so syphilictically corrupt that he can't help but do a Bush-like corporate smash-and-grab robbery of the treasury on behalf of big business?

NOTE: no offense meant to the retarded, those with syphilis, or Karl Rove

Is Rahm Emanuel more short-sighted than Karl Rove?
	NO--Rahm has some brilliant strategery that hasn't played out yet
	YES-- Rahm thinks he is Karl Rove, but he's really the Dem's Palin--everything he touches turns to shit
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What kind of health care insurance reform (if any) should America have?

I know it's a little late in the process to ask, but this is just a quick reality check.

What kind of health insurance should America have?
	Our current system of largely unregulated private insurance with public programs for some of the poor and elderly
	Tightly regulated private insurance to prevent abuses that cost lives and cause bankruptcies
	Private insurance competing with a public option that people can ONLY buy into when they have no other insurance
	private insurance competing with a public option modeled on Medicare (or a part of it) that anyone could CHOOSE to buy into
	ONLY government run health insurance as Canada and many other advanced Western Countries have
	Government employs the doctors directly, doing away with the need for insurance as the system in Great Britain does
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Democrats.com call for donor BOYCOTT of Dem Party until public option OPEN TO ALL signed into law

They want those who sign their petition to only give DIRECTLY to candidates who support Medicare for All or at least a strong public option until Congress passes such a bill and the president signs it. Their petition will be sent to the DNC, DSCC, & DCCC, along with signers messages like mine:

Democrats cannot afford to take their voter base for granted. If you desert us, we will desert you. The corporate Democrats might bring in the big bucks, but you need our small bucks AND OUR VOTES.

TELL THOSE CORRUPT BLUE DOG BASTARDS TO DO THE RIGHT THING FOR ONCE IN THEIR SQUALID CAREERS. Then they can go back to trolling for their after office gigs as lobbyists, CEO's, and corporate board members.

The Republicans went from the top of the world to fly-covered road kill in the blink of an eye. It could happen to the Democrats too if you don't neuter your filthy blue dogs.

Even if you have never given to these blanket funds, telling then YOU WON'T GIVE in the future will put the fear of God in them.

Here's the text of the petition:

To: Gov. Tim Kaine, Chair, Democratic National Committee (DNC)
Sen. Bob Menendez, Chair, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Chair, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)

I write to inform you that I am joining the Democratic Donor Strike against the DNC, DSCC and DCCC, which will last until the Democratic Congress passes - and President Obama signs - healthcare reform with a robust public option:

* based on Medicare rates, not negotiated rates
* nation-wide, with no state opt-outs
* administered by Medicare, not a for-profit insurance company
* available immediately

Until then, I will only support individual Democrats who support single-payer Medicare for All (the 88 sponsors of HR 676), or (at a minimum) pledge to vote against a bill without a strong public option. I will also support challengers who support Healthcare Not Warfare.

We elected solid Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic President to fulfill Democratic promises of progressive change. We did not elect Republican Senator Olympia Snowe to break those promises.

And if a small number of corporate-funded Democrats in the Senate and House stand in the way, it is the job of our leaders - Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama - to persuade those Democrats to stand with the party that elected them. Even "fiscally conservative" Democrats have absolutely no excuse for voting against a robust public option, because CBO says it will save $110 billion.

So if I receive a fundraising email from the DNC, DSCC or DCCC, I will reply with a link to this petition. If I receive a fundraising call, I will tell the caller about this petition. If I receive a fundraising letter, I will return the envelope with a link to this petition:

http://www.democrats.com/donor-strike-for-public-option

We desperately need real health reform, starting with a robust public option. Until you deliver on your promises of change, I will reserve my contributions for individual Democrats who will truly fight for what we all believe.

Sincerely,

LINK to SIGN THE PETITION

Letter to Obama: open public option to ALL & don't reward insurance companies

Someone pointed out to me a section of one of Obama's speeches that the public option would only be open to those without insurance, so I wrote this brief letter:

President Obama,

Please make any public option available to all Americans, not just those without health insurance. Otherwise, the rest of us could be stuck with the crappy insurance our employers chose, and that choice likely wasn't based on what was best but what was cheapest or even gave them kickbacks.

Likewise, there should be no mandate to buy or subsidies to pay for private insurance unless their overhead spending (advertising, executive salaries, profits, and those claim denial operators) is limited to 10% as Sen. Feinstein proposed.

We should not reward health insurance companies for their sociopathic behavior that has harmed and even killed so many Americans just to increase their profits by forcing people to become their customers.

Feel free to plagiarize this in communication with the White House or your Congresspeople.