So now, the right is up in arms over Obama giving an address to schoolkids?!?

Can they get ANY stupider?
This is nothing more than over-the-top, pathetic hysteria. These people DESPERATELY need to reintroduce themselves to reality. They had no trouble with GWB reading to schoolkids, as he was doing on 9/11, Nor with Bush 41 speaking to schoolkids in
1991, but now that a DEMOCRAT is President - hoo boy! INDOCTRINATION! SOCIALISM! Apparently, according to these brain-dead fools, talking to schoolkids is BAD - unless a Republican does it. Give me a flippin' break!

GET. A. GRIP.

If you are one of those comparing Obama to Hitler - You are an IDIOT.
If you think Obama is socialist or marxist - get a dictionary, because you obviously have NO CLUE what the words you're using mean - AND you're an IDIOT.

Why in hell don't they just come out and say what they REALLY think - that they can't stand the idea that a Black man got elected President, and that all this socialist/marxist/radical Muslim/indoctrination BS is nothing more than "Mommy! Mommy! Make the scary Black man go AWAY!"
Effing IDIOTS.
Rant OFF.

Obama has, on many occasions, said "I cannot do this alone"; that he required our help. His seeming to abandon the public option held OUR feet to the fire, and we've responded as needed. We've reminded him AND the American public that there is indeed strong support for the public option - giving the lie to RW claims of "flagging support". We've given him the covering fire he needs to move forward when it seemed we were getting passive.

In addition, he ONCE AGAIN exposed the righties as simple obstructionists - they wouldn't even accept co-ops, fer Gossakes - who want NOTHING done, and want to keep the insurance companies ripping you off.
THIS is the genius of "bi-partisanship"; forcing the GOP further and further into the whackadoodle world of their crazy base, and even further from mainstream thinking. Once he's safely marginalized the righties, he can get down to some SERIOUS business.

The Pentagon announced TODAY the formation of a new 500-man elite fighting unit called the United States Redneck Special Forces (USRSF)





These mostly Southern boys will be
Dropped off into Iraq & Afghanistan and will be given only the following facts about terrorists :
1. The season opened today.
2. There is no limit.
3. They taste just like chicken.
4.. They don't like beer, pickups, country music, or Jesus.
5. They are directly responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt.

The Pentagon expects the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan to be over by Friday ..


Applications are available at your local Wal-Mart sporting goods counter.

And thus doesn't understand how Obama's tax plan affects them, point 'em to my blog
(http://damon-whatthehellishethinking.blogs... ), where I lay out the basics.

A sample:


Feel free to comment, poke around, etc.

I actually am THANKFUL for Bush.
His utter, devastating failure finally awakened the country to what was going on, and has weakened the Republican party to a great extent - so much so that we can begin to implement the policies that this country has desperately needed for SO long.
With an EFFECTIVE Republican minority, much of the needed reforms of banking and health care would be DOA, as would efforts to invest in renewable energy and fight climate change.
So, in a perverse way, THANK GOD for GWB - he paved the way for us to do what needs done.

 
Every word you say proves how delusional and out of touch you are.

-When you cling to a rumor that's been debunked by every credible source in the world;
-When you fall back to fear-mongering from the damn-near-20-years-over Cold War;
-When you hold fast to an economic philosophy that has directly caused 3 major recessions AND the
worst economic upheaval EVER, and fail to learn from repeated lessons of history;
-When you complain about "big government" after you oversaw the biggest expansion of government
since the New Deal;
-When you call Democrats "soft on terror" after YOUR president ignored warnings and allowed 9/11
to happen, and then so botched your "WAR ON TERROR" that our main threat is actually STRONGER
today than when they killed 3000 of us;
-When you complain about "wasteful spending" by the Democrats after YOU turned a budget surplus into
record deficits with your "bridges to nowhere";
-When you spurn science for ideology;
-When you use Hurricane Katrina as an example of "why Government doesn't work": never mind YOU were
running said government at the time - incompetently!
-When you claim President Obama's policies are "Job-Killers" when you've proved over and over and
over again that you haven't the vaguest CLUE how to create jobs.

You just keep right on talking - the more you talk, the crazier you sound, and the more Americans see you for what you are - lunatics with ZERO connection to reality.

This is why bipartisanship is a brilliant political move by Team Obama - the GOP is hosed either way.
If they cooperate, they lose their base, and they're sunk.
If they DON'T, they come across as the Bad Guys, they lose the independents & moderates, and again are sunk.
All Obama has to do is be more inclusive of the Rethugs than Little Lord Pissypants was of the Democrats - that's LAUGHABLY easy, as just saying 2 civil words to them accomplishes that task - and he appears to be the Good Guy Reaching Across The Aisle, which endears him to independents & moderates, who HATE partisan squabbling.
And when the GOP obstructs itself into losing 2-3 more seats in the Senate next year, then Obama can say "I tried and tried - they seem to prefer party politics over the good of the country",and then bring out the steamroller while the GOP fumes from the back bench - at least until they figure out that they put themselves there.

Many people on this board have questioned my dislike of Lyndon Johnson as expressed in my sig line, pointing - correctly - to things like the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as reasons not to do so. People have pointed out to me, again correctly, that Kennedy got us into Vietnam, so that was not Johnson's fault. I disagree strongly.

What they miss was that Kennedy was also ready to get us OUT after the Diem government fell. The day before he left on the trip that would take his life, he is reported to have said: "When I get back, we'd better be ready to answer some hard questions about just what we're trying to accomplish there (Vietnam). It may just be time to cut our losses."

Johnson pushed ESCALATION of the Vietnam war based on a LIE (the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" that never happened). We excoriate Bush for lying us into war, as well we SHOULD, but Johnson gets a pass when his decision killed FAR more young Americans? Not from me, thanks.

And it gets worse.

Johnson's dishonesty in escalating and prosecuting the war brought about the "Credibility Gap", which in turn brought about the counterculture. The counterculture fractured the New Deal Coalition, and began to alienate the blue-collar labor voters that had been Democratic bread & butter - the civil disorder, street protests, anti-American rhetoric, and seeming anarchy drove those voters straight into Nixon's "Silent Majority" - which became the Reagan Democrats.
Exacerbating this was that Johnson, having expended his political capital on Vietnam, had none left to fix the flaws in the Great Society - flaws the GOP seized upon as "excesses of liberalism", which solidified their hold on the hardworking voter.
This damage is ONLY NOW being repaired, as the economy begins to force a reforging of the coalition FDR built.

As I've said elsewhere - if all Johnson did was the Great Society and the Civil Rights Act, I'd honor him, and he'd deserve it. But on balance, I can't, because the tragedy of Vietnam has led to the mess we find ourselves in now. It led to 40 years of Republican ascendancy in American politics, the disastrous consequences of which we are only BEGINNING to experience, much less reverse. That ONE decision, based on a LIE, has led to utter, unmitigated disaster.

I can't call LBJ a good president. He meant so well, but DID so badly...

The Republicans are at it AGAIN - putting partisan political gain over the good of the country. This is a game at which they excel, and it's how they put this country in the mess it's in.
Observe their latest - they single out for criticism TINY parts of the bill, such as the anti-smoking programs.
Why do they do this? Because they know that this bill is right for America. They know this bill will save and/or create 3-4 million jobs. They know this bill will avert hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs. They know this bill will create hundreds of thousands of "green" jobs and double our clean energy production.
They also know that the success of this bill will contrast sharply with their many policy failures, and show just how bankrupt Republican policies are. Like their mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh, they "hope Obama fails" while not caring that Obama's failure now will take the country with it. "Country First", indeed!

In the book of Proverbs, Chapter 25, Verses 21-22: "If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you."

How wonderfully ironic to destroy the RW with Christian principles, no?

Obama is playing a long-term game. He has seen the strong tendency to shortsightedness in the Republican party (witness the 22nd Amendment - which they passed, and then wanted to repeal so Raygun could run again; witness also their talk of "The Nuclear Option" to eliminate the filibuster, and their excoriation of the "Gang of 14" who put a stop to it - aren't they glad NOW that they didn't get their way?), and is using it to his advantage to secure long-term gains for Democrats in Washington. Unlike the Rethugs and their open talk of a "Permanent Republican Majority", Obama is more subtle and crafty.

This is chess, people, and Obama's playing well enough to put Vishwanathan Anand (current World Chess Champ) to shame. Every time he reaches out, the Rethugs MUST retreat into an unreasonable position or risk being seen as weak by their shrinking base.
He has them in a bind of their own making, where every move they make weakens them further with the larger electorate. If this continues, the Democrats will have a deathgrip on the Government for YEARS.
Or to be more musical about it, Obama's playing the GOP like Jimi Hendrix on a Fender Stratocaster.

Bear in mind that Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago - if you think for ONE SECOND he hasn't
got a plan, you are understimating the man at your peril.

The war I see (the CORRECT one against EXTREMIST Islam) is a war in which we have to fight alongside moderate Muslims to discredit the ideology of the extremists. This war CANNOT be won by military force alone.
Here's how you win the RIGHT war, and 1,2, & 3 must be done SIMULTANEOUSLY:
(1) FINISH the job begun in Afghanistan - eradicate the Taliban, and deny Al-Qaeda sanctuary there. Capture Mullah Omar, AND OBL. (BTW, why did Bush say he wanted OBL "dead or Alive" in December 2001, and then claim in late 2002 that OBL "wasn't his priority"? And WHY is the mastermind of the deaths of 3000 + Americans still alive & at large almost SEVEN YEARS after 9/11?) Push Pakistan for action on Al-Qaeda, and make it CRYSTAL clear that if they don't move, WE WILL whether they like it or not. Reminding them just how friendly we are with India might be useful there.
(2) Put "space-race" inensity into alternative energy - BREAK ourseves from foreign oil within a decade. From where do you think Islamic terror gets its money? Petrodollars. Why do we not pressure Saudi Arabia, from which came most of the 9/11 hijackers? We need their oil. As long as that leverage exists, we WILL NOT BEAT terrorism.Getting off oil - it's not just for environmentalists anymore...
(3) Begin AGGRESSIVE diplomacy - a "hearts and minds" campaign against jihadists focused on the Islamic world. Use the carrot AND stick, instead of just the stick. Tell AND demonstrate how Moderation brings peace and prosperity, while extremism breeds death, poverty and destruction.
(4) ONCE THE JOB IN AFGHANISTAN IS DONE, use our intelligence agencies, police and the Special Forces (and regular troops where appropriate) to eradicate existing cells of committed jihadists, because these guys won't respond to anything else. You cut off extremist Islam's air, while kicking its ass; this is basic warfare, page 7.
All Bush did (and McCain wanted to continue) is (4), and that's been utterly ineffective, as the 2006 NIE showed conclusively.

 
...and I don't think the pundits know what to make of him yet.
Barack Obama IS a transformational figure, and he is going to change the way governance is done. The sheer power of his grassroots movement is going to involve the American people in their own government in ways that have NEVER been seen.

I think what we have here, to put it as simply as I can, is a synthesis of Reagan and JFK - (Reagan's enormous power in the grassroots + JFK's call to service) x BOTH men's outstanding abilities to communicate and inspire = A TOTAL transformation of how Governing is done.

So John McCain and Sarah Palin are now trying to use Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright against Barack Obama.
How sad.
If this is all John McCain has, it is even MORE important to elect Barack Obama President of the United States. We are in a financial crisis worse than any since the Great Depression; we are in an unneccessary war that is costing us $10 Billion per month while Al-Qaeda grows stronger; 43 million Americans are without health insurance, and we shed 159,000 jobs in the last month!
And McCain/Palin want to talk about Ayers and Wright, because they hope you will be stupid enough to be distracted by a scratch on your coffee table while your house burns down around you - especially because policies they favor started the fire in the first place.

...and is something I've been saying for months:
Obama is the long-awaited (and desperately needed) Progressive answer to Ronald Reagan.

The parallels between now and 1980 are startling, IMO:

-In 1980, Liberalism was widely perceived as having overreached and run out of ideas;
-In 2008, Conservatism is so perceived.

-In 1980, an unlikely candidate (Reagan) with a powerful, persuasive oratorical style changed the political dialogue by offering a message of optimism about the greatness of America and a promise to change the rules in Washington.
-In 2008, Guess what? Unlikely candidate (Obama), powerful oratorical style, changing the dialogue by offering optimism about the greatness of America and promising to change the rules in DC.

-In 1980, Reagan correctly perceived a tectonic shift in the popular mood, rode it to his party's nomination and to the WH despite fears within the party establishment that he was unelectable.
-In 2008, Obama has correctly perceived the tectonic shift occurring in the popular mood, ridden it to the brink of his party's nomination and will likely ride it to the WH despite fears within the party establishment that he is unelectable.

-In 1980, the Republican candidate had a maddening ability to draw Democratic voters, and seemed immune to Democratic attacks - they just made him stronger.
-In 2008, we have a likely Democratic candidate who scares Rethugs silly as he attracts many of their voters and seems to find ways to turn attacks to his advantage.

Just some points to ponder.