Presidential Address - Nice Visual

...Republicans refusing to stand for increased healthcare for children. Keep on digging, idiots.

Change - Month 1

President Obama addresses Congress tonight, a month after taking the oath of office. Instead of clearing brush at a fake ranch, he's actually been working for his employers - us. The Sierra Club is pleased:

There's never been a month -- not at least since the heady days of the early 1970s -- when environmental policy has moved so dramatically towards a sustainable future. The challenge now is to keep up the pace.

And even though the republicans have remembered their misplaced-for-eight-years dedication to fiscal discipline (i.e. trying to block government spending on infrastructure and state aid), it's the President who looks to be tackling the sacredest of D.C. sacred cows, weapons spending:

Unlike most of his predecessors selected to be under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Carter has no professional ties to America's arms makers or manufacturing industry, nor has he spent his career in government procurement. Instead, from his perch at Harvard's Kennedy School, Carter has been criticizing the Pentagon for buying too many armaments it doesn't need, decrying what he calls a lack of discipline and "failure to take account of cost growth in weapons systems and defense services."

Wow, you mean that there's something in the federal budget that can be cut other than social security benefits?

Add that to SCHIP, fair pay protections for women, following through on promises to cut middle class taxes while simultaneously funding health care reform and renewable energy (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) and the executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and it's been an incredible month.

There are still things to be concerned about, such as the DOJ tending to support Bush administration positions on "state secrets" and the open question of Bagram prison in Afghanistan. We need to insist on accountability on these issues and others, but let's not forget where we were just last month (and for the last eight years). If President Obama keeps up this pace, the next eight years might be as good for America and the world as the last eight were bad.

Texas Giant Lightnin' Hopkins

Been pretty busy lately. Here's some music.

Open Letter to Glenn Greenwald (Updated with Glenn's Replies)

Glenn,

I respect your work, although I’m less pessimistic than you regarding President Obama. I was confused by one of the statements in your post “Charlie Savage on Obama's embrace of Bush/Cheney "terrorism policies". You refer to “Obama supporters” claiming that anyone who criticizes him as being (among other things) “Marxists”. I followed the links and read the text, but I didn’t see any evidence to support your claim. I saw Nate’s observation that the ’radicals’ borrow ideas from the 19^th century Marxist approach to social change.

The attribution you make seems fuzzy at best. If I follow it, it goes: Glenn criticizes Obama -> RKR observes that the criticism seems to fit with a recent model by Nate Silver of ‘radicals’ (including a reference to Marxist ideas among others) -> therefore Glenn is: referred to by some Obama supporters -- using the Fox News script -- as "Far Leftist, Marxist, reactionary, radical demagogues.” It seems like a stretch and I’m not sure what the point is (other than trying to increase division among liberals).

The other thing that bothers me is that you seem to have allowed your defensiveness over an obscure slight detract from the main point of your post - which, as an Obama supporter and a human rights supporter, I thought was important and not over the top.

I’m also posting this on my blog in a cynical attempt to get hits. Feel free to flame me and drive traffic to my site so I can get my adsense off of $1.63 :)

Update: Glenn replied to my message and was a good sport about allowing me to post his response.

From: "ggreenwald@salon.com"
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:51:46 AM
Subject: Re: confused

Did you read Nate's post?

Apparently, there are two types of progressives -- the type like him, who are rational incrementalists.

And another type who are impatient with what Obama is doing and critical of him-- those are irrational, dangerous, radical, reactionary, Marxist Far Leftists.

And I'm the one dividing progressives by linking to that?

I didn't say Nate singled me out as in the radical Marxist reactionary Far Left camp. From what I could tell, he put David Sirota in that group. Other people have stepped forward to declare themselves rational (progressives) and put more and more Obama critics on the radical/Marxist/Far-Leftist list.

I don't think Nate intended it as such, but I thought what he wrote was really, really ugly.

My response:

I didn't get that the choices were rational vs. irrational from his post. In reference to who's dividing progressives, I'd rather be called a 'radical' than be told that I'm using the Fox News script. Plenty of progressive folks refer to themselves jokingly as DFH's. I wouldn't expect those people to get too upset about getting labeled as 'radical', but maybe I'm off the mark.


Anyway, thanks for the reply. Do you mind if I post it?

and his response:

If one category is "rational progressives," what are the people who are in the other category if not irrational?

More to the point, these are the terms he used to describe the other category: Marxist, Far Left, dangerous, reactionary, demagogue, radical.

Liberal bloggers jokingly call themselves "DFHs" in the same way that gay people jokingly refer to themselves as "faggots" -- as ways to mock the term and drain it of its meaning.

I don't think any liberals expect to be called Marxist, Far Left, dangerous, reactionary, demagogue radicals by other progressives -- especially ones who, while spewing those ugly terms, praise themselves for being "rational."

I like Nate. I think he's done great work. I don't think he was driven by bad motives here, just by animus towards David Sirota. But he wrote a post invoking all the worst Fox News demonizing terms -- it was almost McCarthyite in the words it used and the unspecified group of people it smeared.

I didn't really intend that first email to be public when I wrote it, but feel free to post the emails, though I'd appreciate it if you'd post both in unedited form. Thanks -

Glenn Greenwald

done

U.C. Davis Guantanamo Testamonials Project

I saw this on Rachel Maddow. They have gathered testamonials from (among others) Prisoners, Marines, Chaplains, Translators, FBI Agents and Guards.

From the main page:

We begin our endeavor with The Guantánamo Testimonials Project. The goals of this project are to gather testimonies of prisoner abuse in Guantánamo, to organize them in meaningful ways, to make them widely available online, and to preserve them there in perpetuity.

The strength of these testimonies is considerable. Based on them, a number of distinguished individuals and organizations have called for the closure of Guantánamo.

At CSHRA we take no position as to whether the Guantánamo prisoners are guilty or innocent. Yet we recognize that these individuals are, in either case, entitled to a set of fundamental rights (a) as individuals held during an armed conflict, (b) as prisoners in general, and (c) as ordinary human beings.

Bush Lift of Guns in Parks Ban Defended by DOJ

It was really stupid when Bush enacted it. I can't think of any reason we would want to keep it in place. From where I'm sitting, things like this and this are giving me a pretty poor impression of the Obama DOJ.

Recovery.gov On Line

As promised, the tracking site for the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is up and running.