Make Some Enemies, Please

I’ve been planning to write a piece about Barack Obama’s unhealthy dependence on the Washington media, but Riverdaughter saves me the trouble:

The QC test for the Obama administration is the Villagers, that little bastion of political pundits and DC courtiers with the narrow minded collective conscious that is stuck in the fifties. They are the status quo. They are the power. Piss off a Villager and your job is misery for four long years. The Clintons know that the Villagers never forget. Their memories are lonnnnnnng. Their grudges never ending. They pass judgement on everything: Your marriage, your clothes, your children, your interns, your policies that might cost them a teensy bit more in taxes or anything that might make THEIR lives uncomfortable. You can’t do anything in DC without the approval of the Villagers. They control the horizontal and the vertical. Step out of line and your ass is glass.


Both Hillary and Obama knew that. But where Hillary was willing to take them on and was actually succeeding, pressing forward inch by inch against the hurricane force gusts of Villager hot air, Obama decided to gain their confidence. He bravely marched over to the Villager side and adopted all of their conventional wisdom. Hillary was a monster, women should be seen, not heard, the new FISA law is good, telephone companies were viciously maligned, the Iraq War isn’t nearly as bad as we thought, Michelle will make a great "Mom-in-Chief".


Obama bowed and dipped and flattered and danced a merry little Pavane. All was cheery and delightful. He was the perfect solution to their civil rights dilemma. Why, he is just like them, except a little darker. . . .


Now, Obama can make all kinds of promises and policies and have Jon Favreau insert "hope!" and "Change!" into every speech but Obama knows that if he proposes anything to displease the Villagers even one little bit, he’s going to be slung with a big, stinky albatross called Milorod Blagojevich for the duration of his four long years. And we have seen that Obama is very reluctant to court controversy. He’s not a fighter. He’s a "get out of town on the day of a tricky vote" kinda guy. He will not stand up to the Village because he is afraid of them. Before he can sign one bill into law, Obama is already a non-functioning unit.


So much for hope and change.

Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have been afraid to govern without the approval of the corporate media, so she had to be taken out during the primaries. They’re pretty sure Obama is someone they can do business with. For the sake of the country, they'd better be wrong.

The Five Amigos

Shelby, Ensign, DeMint, Vitter, Coburn.


From the brilliant "free market" solons who brought you The Bush Economy comes their latest blockbuster: Screw Detroit! And Let The Chips Fall Where They May!


Meet the New Old Republicans. George W. Bush is now dead to them. He’s a socialist. They want to take the country back to the halcyon days of the 80's – the 1880s.


We’ve had two elections in a row in which the voters practically begged the Democratic Party to show some backbone. If Obama, Pelosi and Reid think the GOP base is in the mood to endorse any "post-partisan" solutions, they need to listen to some wingnut radio.


It’s getting nasty out there.

STFU

I don’t know much about Rep. Donald A. Manzullo (R-IL), but I assume he gladly supported every irresponsible tax cut and disastrous piece of deregulation the Bush Regime inflicted on the American economy. I’m watching him now on C-SPAN grilling some poor bastard from Hank Paulson’s admittedly incompetent Treasury Department. The distinguished gentleman is grandstanding about an AIG executive who got a big bonus, insisting that the witness give him the kind of simple-minded, no-facts-required, constituent-stroking answer that his own lizard brain demands. It’s a disgusting spectacle indeed.



Calling H.L. Mencken!

Premature Wagon-Circling

Josh Marshall and Will Bunch manage to get themselves all worked up over an extremely benign New York Times story that dares speak of Barack Obama’s career in Chicago politics. Bunch writes:

Most people run for office in THE CITY WHERE THEY LIVE--that caused Obama to cross paths with an interesting cast of characters, but in the case of Rod Blagojevich, it seems like once he took the measure of the man he didn't want much to do with him. He had little to do with Blago after 2006, didn't even ask him to speak at the Dem convention in 2008, and his people didn't give the governor the time of day regarding his recent Senate machinations. Obama mostly kept their "murky" world at arm's length, which is a reason why he is president-elect and why the notion that a machine hack like Blagojevich could even think about running for president in 2016 is almost proof of his insanity. [Emphasis added.]

The title of Bunch’s blog post–"Obama’s support of ethics reform is good news for the GOP"–is a ludicrously snarky distortion of an article that simply notes the unsavory political milieu that nurtured Young Obama. (One of the "interesting characters" in Barack's career is slumlord Tony Rezko--the Zelig of Chicago scandals--who was his early sugar daddy and who helped him buy a house. Marshall and Bunch can cover their ears all they want, but these are simply facts, and they don't sound too good.)



When Obama decided to run for president, he began to distance himself from his sketchier Chicago associates. That was a wise and necessary decision, but it doesn't seem to be enough for his internet groupies, for whom there’s no body of water–be it Lake Michigan or the Potomac River–that Barack can’t walk across.



What’s the difference between the Marshalls of 2008 and Bush worshipers circa 2002? Not much that I can see.

Live-Blogging Hardball

Chris Matthews is about to trash George W. Bush for his lack of accomplishments. How times have changed! He couldn't get enough of Dubya's manlinesss before Iraq turned to shit. Now he wants to be Mr. Democrat.

Do we really need this douchebag in the Senate? I think not.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

Eric Alterman writes:

Barack Obama's election to the presidency is the greatest electoral moment of my lifetime and unless you were around in 1932--or perhaps 1860--yours too.

Thank you, Nostradamus. I certainly hope Obama is another FDR. We need him to be. But it might be wise to reserve judgment until he does something worth a damn.


Alterman continues:

Listen, people, Obama will disappoint us. That's part of the job description. But somehow, our nutty political system has produced a president who is to politics what Duke Ellington was to an orchestra and a recording studio, what Muhammad Ali was to a boxing ring (and an empty microphone) and what Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band still are to 80,000 people in a football stadium. How wonderful to have our faith in the very idea of hope fully restored in this way, following eight years of full-throated fearmongering in the service of nothing but cronyism, corruption, ignorance and arrogance. How empowering to learn that the Bush/neocon vision of America has been signed, sealed and delivered to the ash heap of history.

No, no, no, no, no! This is embarrassing and an insult to Messrs. Ellington, Ali, Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.


Look, I’m as happy as the next bloke to be rid of Bush, but after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I think I might have beaten McCain. And I don’t like Obama’s speeches. They don’t inspire me and I think they’re fake. So sue me. (Here’s the guy who writes them. Nice, huh? Boys will be boys, especially in Hope Town. Would Hillary Clinton’s top speechwriter still have his job were he to be seen on Facebook copping a feel with a Michelle Obama cutout? The question answers itself.)


In the rest of his column, Alterman takes to task tired Washington hacks like Richard Cohen and Mark Halperin for being mean to Barack. Big deal. I’m more concerned that as president, Obama will decide it’s in his own interest to suck up to them.


Why shouldn’t he? He promised the media he'd be post-partisan. And he had the left at "Hello."

Obamabots Are Easy, Negotiating Is Hard

Tom Daschle gives a vague speech linking health care reform to a strong economy, and Greg Sargent falls into a swoon. Really now, Greg–what did you expect him to say? Talk is cheap.


Let's climb into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, shall we? When George W. Bush first proposed his disastrous $1.3 trillion tax cut in 2001, the then-Senate Majority Leader did everything but fetch him his pipe and slippers. Daschle's opening offer was $900 billion!


Universal health care really is important. Unfortunately, a lot of people will want to drown it in the bathtub.


Maybe Shatner can give Bashful Tom some pointers on playing hardball.