To use James Carville's term, re: Bill Clinton, I'm "stickin'" with President Obama.

[Aristus]

Terrific book, by the way.

President Obama has three more years to make headway against the eight solid years of damage and destruction the Clown Prince wrought on this country. And I'm willing to give him another four years after that. The President has made some decisions that have disappointed me. But I'm stickin' with him. My family disappoints me some times. But I love them, and I'm stickin' with them. The whole freaking world disappoints me sometimes, but I'm not going to do a "goodbye-cruel-world" anytime soon; I'm stickin'.

We all had some terrible experiences in 2000 and 2004. And a wonderful experience in 2008. Now things are turning sour again, and the faint of heart want to jump the Ship of State, or turn the helm over to the Republicans again. Not me. I'm stickin'.

[Greenpeach]

1. Me too n/t

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[babylonsister]

2. Bravo! I'm stickin', too! Rec'd.

:toast::fistbump:

[goclark]

24. Glue checking in ~

[alteredstate]

3. Me, too

K & R

[LWolf]

4. If you are proclaiming loyalty to

the escalated war on terror, the escalated war on public education, and the determination to allow health insurance companies to control the reform debate, your loyalties are questionable.

[Political Heretic]

5. I'm 'stickin' with responible and just public policy

I criticize politicians when they don't deliver that and applaud them when they do.

What I'm sick to death of is "personality" politics.

I really do not care who Obama is as a person. He's not my friend. I don't want to have a beer with him. I But I know that America needs some deep, structural change and politicians who will chose to prioritize the needs of working families above the whims of the financial elite.

Joining to a corporate sucking centrist and his argument for standing by a "pro business pragmatist" (Clinton's own self-description) corporate capitulating administration really doesn't "move" me too much.

[DrDan]

15. what he said

[Aristus]

6. Thank you. I thought I'd get flamed (and I still might) for the term "faint of heart."

Even Dems who are most angry with President Obama believe that anger is justified. And I respect that. But I can't respect the notion that if we vote in Republicans, that somehow they will be more willing to work with President Obama than the Blue Dog Dems. President Obama's hesitation on some issues might drive us crazy, but let's not let it drive us REALLY crazy, as in 'voting for any Republican' crazy...

[Political Heretic]

7. David Sirota on Movements vs. Parties

The difference between parties and movements is simple: Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it. ~ David Sirota

[Fire1]

8. Is this a direct quote from Carville? n/t

[Aristus]

11. Is what a direct quote?

n/t

[Fire1]

12. The commentary under the pic. n/t

[Aristus]

13. No, that's me.

If I had quoted Carville directly, I would have used quotation marks. I guess my use of the cover pic gave the impression that I was quoting directly. That was a mistake. Sorry.

[Fire1]

14. Thanks and good commentary btw. I agree. n/t

[Enrique]

9. Carville gets big bucks for sticking

and his wife gets big bucks for sticking with Cheney.

What do you get?

[Aristus]

17. Well, for starters, it gets me a President who doesn't say: "nook-you-lar."

All else will manifest in time...

[Bluebear]

10. Is "faint of heart" like being a Plouffe "bedwetter"?

[ddeclue]

16. Hey CAJUN: Loyalty is a TWO WAY STREET. If Obama wants MINE he needs to be loyal to ME

not the God damned corporations!

UNREC.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

21. Didn't get your pony for Christmas?

My rec cancells your unrec.

[ddeclue]

23. Looks like you got your Kool Aid though..

:P

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

41. Do you have a clue what Kool Aid means?

It's a reference to the Jonestown mass suicide. I'm hardly that.

But if not Obama what's your alternative? My gut feeling is with you is be a beautiful loser. You care less whether we clean up the Repukes mess. Hecj you could care less whether they retake the country so long as you're ideolically pure.

If I'm wrong how about debateing me instead of posting your snotty one liners.

[Political Heretic]

48. My "pony" is policy that puts poor people ahead of the financial elite.

So when you mock me for wanting my "pony" you're mocking the needs of poor and working class families and mocking the demand that our policy put compassionate investment in ordinary American families before the profiteering of wall street.

Your right, not only did I not get that "pony" for christmas, but I also didn't get a leader who shares those priorities, nor a party that shares those priorities.

When you mock that, all it does is make you look like a heartless dick. Which is why it almost never bothers me when people such as yourself say something so ignorant and stupid.

[TheWatcher]

51. He's just another meme repeater, with a really silly username.

In the end, it's all they have. When you actually ask them for something to refute the criticisms and concerns you have regarding promises broken, expanding wars, policy decisions, Lack of accountability for the previous criminals, etc, etc, etc, they retreat to the Four Horsemen Of Denial.

Pony, Chess, Patience, Moving Forward.

It shouldn't anger you, but because so many seem to be unquestioningly mesmerized and determined to cling to such memes rather than face reality, it should worry you.

Maybe it isn't Superior Indifference, as I have been alluding to these past few months.

Maybe it's Superior Ignorance.

Coupled with Superior Allegiance.

[Skittles]

18. it's not as if we have a choice

[gleaner]

19. I'm sticking with voting for ..

a brand new Democrat in 2012, and lots of new Democrats in 2010 if they follow Obama's lead. What you do is your business, but I'm not shouldering the Obama liability. He has lied too much and I think now he is morphing into Bush. The lies and deceit coming from his mouth and his administration are unending. He has made a lot of headway. Unfortunately it is mostly for the Republicans.

So keep on sticking, but as time goes by I imagine you will be thinking more and more often of flypaper when sticking flits through your mind.

[Aristus]

27. Mmm, don't think so. By that logic, we should have voted Roosevelt out in 1936 because

the New Deal had not instantly and miraculously ended the Great Depression. And he was devious! And he didn't always reveal his plans right away! It's always 20/20 through the retrospectoscope, but really, would any Republican have been better than a not-always-successful FDR in 1936, 1940 and 1944? I don't think so...

[Political Heretic]

49. It's not about speed its about direction.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

20. Spot on

You can't always get what you want right away. Especially when you have to clean up ater the BFEE.

[reformist]

22. I'm stickin' too - there's nowhere else to go!

[dflprincess]

26. And that's just what they depend on

and why they can ignore us.

[babylonsister]

32. So who are you supporting, princess? nt

[Political Heretic]

57. I'm supporting the people

:shrug:

[greenbird]

25. Me, too.

Giving the President the benefit of the doubt does not equal Kool Aid drinking. Being willing to give him time does not mean one is a mindless cheerleader. Problems take time to solve. Big problems take more time to solve.

[cutlassmama]

28. Agreed. Sticking with him too n/t

[Terra Alta]

29. I will "stick with Obama" when he

starts acting like a Democrat and not like Bush lite.

Gitmo is still open, the health care bill is a sham, we are still fighting two needless wars and absolutely nothing has been done regarding GLBT rights.

Sure, it's going to take a while to clean up the mess Dumbya gave us... but Obama hasn't even STARTED to clean anything up yet. I see little difference in where we are now, than where we were a year ago.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

42. Gitmo is closing.

Sorry it hasn't been quick enough for you. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

You weren't a Nader voter perchance?.

[TheWatcher]

52. Really, when?

What's the latest ever changing timetable on that?

Quick now, Copy/Paste some Mainstream Propaganda to back up your blind faith and put me in my place.

Just don't be surprised when it is still open at the end of his first term, AND his second. (Which is wishful thinking at this point)

Or maybe they'll throw you a bone and close it, and just move the whole operation to somewhere on U.S. Soil, keep the location secret, and the atrocities can continue, while you sit back and feel good, thinking something has been done.

America The Easily Led, Easily Fooled.

We make it too easy for them.

[Political Heretic]

58. And Bagram is still open for business. And Obama still denying prisoners trial

Obama to indefinitely imprison detainees without charges
By Glenn Greenwald

(updated below)

One of the most intense controversies of the Bush years was the administration's indefinite imprisoning of "War on Terror" detainees without charges of any kind. So absolute was the consensus among progressives and Democrats against this policy that a well-worn slogan was invented to object: a "legal black hole." Liberal editorial pages routinely cited the refusal to charge the detainees -- not the interrogation practices there -- in order to brand the camp a "dungeon," a "gulag," a "tropical purgatory," and a "black-hole embarrassment." As late as 2007, Democratic Senators like Pat Leahy, on the floor of the Senate, cited the due-process-free imprisonments to rail against Guantanamo as "a national disgrace, an international embarrassment to us and to our ideals, and a festering threat to our security," as well as "a legal black hole that dishonors our principles." Leahy echoed the Democratic consensus when he said:

The Administration consistently insists that these detainees pose a threat to the safety of Americans. Vice President Cheney said that the other day. If that is true, there must be credible evidence to support it. If there is such evidence, then they should prosecute these people.

Leahy also insisted that the Constitution assigns the power to regulate detentions to Congress, not the President, and thus cited Bush's refusal to seek Congressional authorization for these detentions as a prime example of Bush's abuse of executive power and shredding of the Constitution.

But all year along, Barack Obama -- even as he called for the closing of Guantanamo -- has been strongly implying that he will retain George Bush's due-process-free system by continuing to imprison detainees without charges of any kind. In his May "civil liberties" speech cynically delivered at the National Archives in front of the U.S. Constitution, Obama announced that he would seek from Congress a law authorizing and governing the President's power to imprison detainees indefinitely and without charges. But in September, the administration announced he changed his mind: rather than seek a law authorizing these detentions, he would instead simply claim that Congress already "implicitly" authorized these powers when it enacted the 2001 AUMF against Al Qaeda -- thereby, as The New York Times put it, "adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies."

Today, The New York Times' Charlie Savage reports:

The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.

The Washington Post says that these decisions "represent the first time that the administration has clarified how many detainees it considers too dangerous to release but unprosecutable because officials fear trials could compromise intelligence-gathering and because detainees could challenge evidence obtained through coercion." Once that rationale is accepted, it necessarily applies not only to past detainees but future ones as well: the administration is claiming the power to imprison whomever it wants without charges whenever it believes that -- even in the face of the horrendously broad "material support for terrorism" laws the Congress has enacted -- it cannot prove in any tribunal that the individual has actually done anything wrong. They are simply decreed by presidential fiat to be "too dangerous to release." Perhaps worst of all, it converts what was once a leading prong in the radical Bush/Cheney assault on the Constitution -- the Presidential power to indefinitely imprison people without charges -- into complete bipartisan consensus, permanently removed from the realm of establishment controversy.

There are roughly 200 prisoners left at the camp, which means roughly 25% will be held without any charges at all. Using the administration's perverse multi-tiered justice system, the rest will either be tried in a real court, sent to a military commission or released. What this means, among other things, is that the President's long-touted policy of closing Guantanamo is a total sham: the essence of that "legal black hole" -- indefinite detention without charges -- will remain fully in place, perhaps ludicrously and dangerously shifted to a different locale (onto U.S. soil) but otherwise fully in tact. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Military Commissions Act unconstitutionally denied the right of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees -- a principle the Obama administration has vigorously resisted when it comes to Bagram detainees -- but mere habeas corpus review does not come close to a real trial, which the Bill of Rights guarantees to all "persons" (not only "Americans") before the State can keep them locked in a cage.

Numerous Democrats have spent the year justifying Obama's desire for indefinite detention with dubious excuses that would have been unthinkable to hear from them during the Bush years. I addressed all of those excuses in full back in May, here. As but one example, the claim most commonly cited to justify Obama's actions -- these detainees can't be convicted because the evidence against them is "tainted" by torture -- is: (a) completely unproven; (b) completely immoral (it's one of the longest-standing principles of Western justice that tortured-obtained evidence can't be used to justify imprisonment); and (c) completely contradictory (Democrats spent years claiming, and still do, that torture doesn't work and produces unreliable evidence; if that's true, who could possibly justify indefinitely imprisoning someone based on torture-obtained -- i.e., inherently unreliable -- evidence?). Whatever else is true, both Obama's policy and the rationale -- we must imprison Terrorists without charges because there's no evidence to convict them but they're somehow still deemed too dangerous to release -- is exactly what the Bush/Cheney faction endlessly repeated to justify its "legal black hole."

But no matter. If there's one thing we've seen repeatedly all year long, it's that many Democrats simply do not believe in the axiom best expressed by The New York Times' Bob Herbert when he said that "Americans should recoil as one against the idea of preventive detention." As Herbert wrote: "policies that were wrong under George W. Bush are no less wrong because Barack Obama is in the White House." That precept should be too self-evident to require expression and yet is widely rejected. Hence, exactly that which very recently was condemned as "a dungeon, a gulag, a tropical purgatory, and a black-hole embarrassment" is now magically transformed into a beacon of sober pragmatism from a man -- a Constitutional Scholar -- solemnly devoted to restoring America's Standing and Values.

* * * * *

Yesterday, prior to this decision being announced, I conducted a 20-minute interview with ACLU Exeuctive Director Anthony Romero regarding that group's newly released report on Obama's civil liberites record after the first year in office, pointedly entitled: "America Unrestored." I'll post that discussion later today. Additionally, I will have an analysis of the Supreme Court's obviously momentous decision in Citizens United -- invaliding restrictions on corporate and union election spending -- posted later.



UPDATE: Just to add some thick irony to all of this, today is the one-year anniversary of President Obama's Executive Order to close Guantanamo within one year -- an anniversary the administration decided to celebrate not by fulfilling its terms, but instead by announcing that the central feature of Guanatanamo -- indefinite detention with no charges -- will continue indefinitely.

http://www.salon.com/opin...1/22/detention/index.html

[Political Heretic]

59. Meanwhile, Obama continues to defend Bush policies:

Obama quietly continues to defend Bush's terror policies Updated at 6:55 PM

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans' phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any formal legal process or court oversight.

The FBI revealed this stance in a newly released report, troubling critics who'd hoped the bureau had been chastened enough by its own abuses to drop such a position.

In further support of the legal authority, however, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel backed the FBI in a written opinion issued this month.

The opinion by the OLC — the section that wrote the memos that justified enhanced interrogation techniques during the last administration — appears to be yet another sign that the Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush's in claiming sweeping and controversial anti-terrorism powers.

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/82879.html

[burning rain]

30. Obama's the best president we have.

No doubt about that.

[MorningGlow]

31. Stickin'

For the past year, we've wanted Obama to behave like a dictator--declare something "is so" and then have it "made so". We're the same people who mocked Bush for saying things would be a whole lot better if the US were a dictatorship, as long as he was the dictator. How can we demand our desires to be made reality overnight, when the man is surrounded by obstructionists and just plain doodyheads whose sole goal is to make everyone, even those who voted for Obama, turn away from him? We are playing right into their hands.

Yes, Obama has made mistakes, mostly of the overly trusting variety. He thought that he could get through to Republicans and selfish Dems, thought that they wanted what was best for the country, like he did, instead of wanting what was best for themselves. It's a hard lesson to learn. But I will stick with him as he keeps working for what's right.

[jonnyblitz]

33. Mary Matlin's asshole husband is the LAST person who could

ever convince me to be an unquestioning and loyal little DemBOT. how fucking UNDIGNIFIED and weak. :puke:

[JVS]

45. Yeah, seriously. Fuck that turd!

[Marr]

34. Wow...the professional cheerleader is sticking with the team?

Color me inspired.

[Hamlette]

35. sad that it even needs saying. n/t

[KG]

36. right. this from a guy whot's married to darth cheney's lead flack. barf.

[BlueIdaho]

37. Some real hubris on display in this thread. Me? I'm stickin'

[Aristus]

38. Thank you.

B-)

Those who insist President Obama is no better than any Republican, I have two words for you: President Palin. That may sound like a straw-man argument, since there are potential Repub candidates who are vastly more qualified for higher office than S.P. That's true, but they won't be getting the nomination in 2012.

[BlueIdaho]

40. Yup - and neither will Howard Dean. nt.

[Codeine]

39. Stickin'!

In fact, I'm changing my sig line. :hi:

[Aristus]

61. Wow! I feel like I've made a difference!...

:blush::hi:

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

43. Those who think there is no difference between the D's and R's...

...should consider who appointed the SC justices who recntly struck down campaign finance restricitions.

[liquid diamond]

53. "Obama = Boosh! Oogah-boogah!"

:sarcasm:

[Political Heretic]

60. Here are the differences between D's and R's

The differences between the two parties are like two rivaling captains on the same sinking cruise ship.

One captain wants to change the way the deck chairs are arranged on the sinking ship so that some more people can enjoy the seating on deck. This captain wants the seating not to be restricted to first class passengers only, but to include more people - but not all - on the deck of the sinking ship.

The other captain opposes Captain #1's idea. This guy wants to throw many of the deck chairs overboard the sinking ship. He wants to reserve the remaining deck chairs for first class passengers only, and argues that if other passengers wish to come up to the deck of the sinking ship, they can still do so and sit on the ground.

Arguing about whether Captian #1's ideas for the sinking ship should be implemented or Captain #2's ideas for the sinking ship should be implemented seems kind of pointless (even if one is better than that other in the short run for more passeners) because guess what, the ship is still sinking, and neither Captain is willing to discuss that problem, or attempt to do anything about it.

So if I was on this sinking ship, and someone came up to me and said, "you need to support Captian #1," I would ask why, and question whether it really matters since neither Captain is doing anything about the fact that the ship is sinking.

This someone would probably respond with someone like "But these Captains are our only choices! There's no one better, and nothing else we can do! Besides, if Captain #2 gets his way, he'll be much worse than Captain #1! I hear he wants to lock all non first-class passengers up in their quarters!"

I would respond that my, in most circumstances, that would sound like a serious problem. But in this case this ship is freaking sinking and that seems to sort of "drown out" other concerns.

If someone then said, "well these are our only two choices, what better idea do you have?" I would respond that perhaps if our Captians weren't going to do anything about our sinking ship, perhaps we should try to do something to save ourselves, instead of arguing about what arrangement the deck chairs should be in.

...

There are differences between the parties. But neither party is willing to talk about the structural failures and gross (and increasing) injustices at the very fabric of our system. The system is broken. It doesn't really matter if one party has way better ideas about how to arrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship.

[donheld]

44. Too bad Obama doesn't seem to be "stickin" with us.

[MisterP]

46. I'm sticking with America: its good, not the President's benefit, is the criterion for action nt

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

54. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DailyGrind51]

55. Obama needed a Carville on his team, rather than a Rahm.

[deacon]

56. A major k + r n/t