Happy Labor Day! Get fired up!

Happy Labor day! (could not let it pass without a post)

I watched with glee the Obama speech to the AFL/CIO today, and well it got me fired up!
(it is on c-span, and on huffpo)
I hope he continues the rhetoric on Wednesday's big Hcare speech.

Wobs-->What do you know about the charge from Jane Hamsher that liberal groups are being corralled in a "veal pen"? How many of these calls have you sat in on?

Soon after the election, the Administration began corralling the big liberal DC interest groups into a variety of organizations and communication networks through which they telegraphed their wishes -- into a virtual veal pen. The 8:45 am morning call co-hosted by the "liberal" Center for American Progress, Unity 09, and Common Purpose are just a few of the overt ways that the White House controls its left flank and maintains discipline.

My own experience with the Veal Pen came indirectly, when some of them had the temerity to launch a campaign against Blue Dogs. They were rebuked and humiliated in front of their peers as a lesson to them all at a Common Purpose meeting, which is run by lobbyist Erik Smith. White House communications director Ellen Moran attends. It isn't an arms-length relationship between these groups and the administration.

A few weeks ago, Rahm Emanuel showed up at a Common Purpose meeting and called these liberal groups "fucking stupid" for going after Blue Dogs on health care and ordered them not to do so any more. Since that time, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have.

These organizations may kid themselves that they're doing no harm, but that's not true. They are the institutional liberal validators who telegraph to liberals that there are problems, that things are happening that are not good for them. They are trusted to decode the byzantine rituals of government and let the public know when their interests are not being served, that it's time to pay attention and start making a racket. When they fail to perform that task, the public is left with a vague feeling of anxiety, intuitively understanding that something is wrong but not knowing who or what to blame.

I think the calls are a great way to coordinate message, and I think it is a long over due response to the previous admin and Rep party's incessant talking points. BUT, left advocacy groups will be toast if they use the "access" to merely "get in line" rather than "line up their interests"
It boggles my mind that Obama is pushing the left to tow the line, when it is the f'in blue frogs that suck, and most need some kind of reform to improve their election prospects...

100 Days and Life to Go -- Thoughts?

We should be mindful, and critical, of even the best-written of the leading liberal fantasy-'profiles' of Obama.

Also: whatever their imbrication w/i a vast, world-statist conspiracy may be...the Politico's done us a service by compiling these 165 vids of the first 100 days.

BHO at 100 Days: C/NC? Step to it.

Crap/Not Crap: BHO's "All-at-Once" Strategy

[See the "poll" on the "right," alright?]

This (admittedly rightward-ho!-ish) explanation of the all-at-once strategy is from the Note's Rick Klein:

This week an ambitious President Obama continues his move from what he must do (the economy, Iraq) to what he wants to do (healthcare, energy policy) and what he’s judging that he must do again, and again (AIG is the latest back at the federal till).

Using that sky-high popularity for what it’s worth (and then some), Obama is pressing ahead in a brash style, telling his opponents he’s ready for battle, calling them on hypocritical statements as quickly as they’re doing the same to him, and choosing more fronts, not fewer.

This is what he was elected to do -- though not necessarily all at once.

Now, piece by piece, Obama is taking ownership of problems he inherited -- not just from his immediate predecessor, but from decades of calcified politics that couldn’t deliver breakthroughs on the biggest issues of the era.

The pile-it-on strategy (just last week, remember, he said he was ending the war, fixing the financial meltdown, and curing cancer) signals an early evolution for a president who’s struggled with his own definitions of bipartisanship and effective governance.

More than ever, he looks like a president who will succeed spectacularly or fail miserably.

How much is too much?

I suppose yr answer to this question hinges, maybe, on whether or not you think the "all-at-once" srtgy. really is BHO's strtgy. I think it is, and I think it's "not crap," but you tell me...

I do not claim to know what the next six months of legislative combat have in store for us, but I think this tack is the White House's best bet for beating down the politically insane but tactically effective lockstep marching of the Congressional Rs.

Crap/Not Crap: US Labor "Getting the Band Back Together"

for reference purposes, please see Labor Calls for Unity After Years of Division - NYTimes.com

The union presidents issued their joint call after the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama signaled that it would prefer dealing with a united movement, rather than a fractured one that often had two competing voices.

David E. Bonior, a member of Mr. Obama’s economic transition team who withdrew from consideration as labor secretary, helped arrange and oversee a meeting of the union presidents on Wednesday in Washington.

The leaders are hoping, by April 15, to approve a plan to reunify, one union official said. But some officials said they might fail to reach agreement.

Mr. Bonior, a former House majority whip, said he would organize meetings with labor leaders over the next few weeks in the hope of hammering out details about what form a reunified labor federation would take.

BHO saying it'd be easier to work with a united labor movement, and potentially using EFCA as a quid-pro-quo to consolidate his base/our movement? Not crap. Bonior as master of reconciliation ceremonies? Not crap. But then comes tougher questions:

1. Is this "rotating two-year presidency" idea even more flaccid and in-efficacious than the UN-... I mean, the AFL-CIO's situation?
   
2. Trumka? He's not crap, but the "pale/stale/male" tradition he embodies is undeniably so.
   
3. Seriously, a new name? Can we call ourselves "The Leopards?"
   

Equal Fucking Pay For Equal Fucking Work, You Cocks!

Good Guys/Girls Win! Obama's first legislative act shouldn't be allowed to go without saying. Of course, we should all be shocked and horrified that it took the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act this long to come down...but we should also not be too cool to note how different life is under a grown-up, non-insane President. 2009, people.

odyssey

"Can opener to top of beer can makes a great ashtray!" - kyle m'ccaterbear.

we will now begin our odyssey, jetting to Jersey and then training to the capitol of our united nation of fifty states and countless territories and bona fide bombing areas.

we will be encountering Wobs. sunday i will hold in my hands the tickets that will take the Wobs family and I to see Barry Obama inaugurated as top guy.

BHO from Pres-Elect to Pres

John Nichols has a darling piece for the Progressive that joins works by Adolph Reed and Doug Henwood in the canon of the left-Obama-critics. Nichols falls out with the latter two - if only as a matter of tone - with his insistence that Obama is at heart - if not in deed - "a progressive.*" Due to the ideological vagaries of American political culture, and the slings and arrows of electoral politics, Nichols believes Obama will gravitate towards centrism (maybe re-frame it as "post-political" or plain "pragmatism") and carry out what some have called "compensatory neoliberalism," or a plodding, market-based liberal reformism. But, but...Nichols contends that Obama, thinking as he does (progressively) and being who he is (a progressive), could be leveraged into behaving "progressively" by the Left - were the Left to mobilize, enunciate, get its shit together, etc.

Does this sound like an obvious point, one that you've made in your own heads 1,000 times? Absolutely. But sometimes it's nice to see your thoughts grafted onto someone else's voice. Well, it is for me at least. Great artcl, but given its 'self-evident' nature there's no blurb I can find that doesn't seem almost redundant, given the OG demographic. Anyway, it's bigger than the sum of its pieces and joints.

*In light of this blurbless link and my blurb about it, a question?

1) Does the term "progressive" denote a discrete set of ideologies/practices/texts in Barack Obama's USA 2009? If so, can we isolate some of those keystones?

2) Bonus question: how does the socialist wing of the Democratic Party feel about the Progressive Democrats of America? Do we get into Trot-style# ideologiko-rumbles? Or are we chums just like Lucy and Ethel? Obviously we know where the Trots for Romney come down on this one.

# Let me apologize. That link is horrid. 'Looks like a Maoist critique of les Trots, but it feels like an anthropological curiosity if you're me, which you aren't, so that link is unfair. Avoid it.

".exactly these cans." horn

[i'm working through an obstacle with exactly these cans on my ears. dual volume controls! i am enjoying very much the new Deerhunter and Lambchop records, and speaking of Lambchop the newest Giant Sand would go well between your Lambchop and your Testface records.]

The Interview: Barack Obama - Person of the Year 2008 - TIME

don't even think about not reading this, because it's lengthy and candid.

Palin leads top 10 list of memorable political economic quotes - Politics- msnbc.com

what a year of politics we've lived through? huh. this is a pointed kind of scrapbook, this list.

Electrical Audio - Best Albums of 2008

outside of our immediate circle, this is where the real top 10 conversation goes on. i am having a great time preparing my top ten...especially since i've already leaked the identity of my #1 on the other blogo.

Golden Girls Jewelry! » Is The “Thank You For Being A Friend” Necklace The Best Christmas Gift Since Christ Was Born?

i come to Best Week Ever exclusively for Paul F. Tompkins. but they've got me by the elbow now. shoegaze and pop-gossip, merry New Year!

blog.aflcio.org, "double-standard-critics-of-big-three-loan-subsidize-foreign-competitors"
again, i keep wondering why it took labor so long to get this winning message out to people!

back to work.

Unionization as Stimulus

Ezra Klein joins in our speculation about the chances of getting the Employee Free Choice Act folded into BHO's early, massive stimulus bill for 2009:

In 10 years, you can imagine the history being written either way. You can imagine EFCA being rammed through atop the stimulus package, and it ascends into the pantheon of crucial changes that would never have survived our system if not for the reformist opportunities of a national emergency. That is, after all, how the National Labor Relations Act passed in the first place. There's precedent here. But you can also imagine the stimulus bill getting bogged down in a fight over worker ballots, with business interests spending hundreds of millions on the campaign, and the Obama administration suffering a humiliating early defeat as they find themselves unable to overwhelm a Republican filibuster. In that world, EFCA will look like Clinton's damaging effort to allow gays in the military. Like with most policies, the question is passage. If EFCA is tried and passed, it will be a great victory, If it's tried and failed, it will be a deep wound.

Will Barry step up to the plate? Is it even doable with the threat of filibuster...My teeth are gonna be chattering for a long time over this. Those congressional hearings are going to give me seizures, I just know it.

Overnight Blather

Who you got for labor?.....waiting...


TPM reports:

Former Rep. David Bonior, who has deep roots in the labor movement, has mounted an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign, with letters and personal lobbying, to press the Obama transition team and top labor leaders to get behind his pick for labor secretary: Union activist Mary Beth Maxwell, who would make history as the first openly gay cabinet member.

Bonior, who has been trying in vain to get his own name taken off the shortlist for the post, is also confirming for the first time that if asked by Obama, he would take the job, though he would prefer Maxwell.

I wonder what the hold up is??? personaly, I got no frackin' clue who it is gonna be.

Yes???

from huffpo:

An aide to Barack Obama reaffirmed the President-elect's support for the labor movement's chief legislative priority in a one-word statement issued to the Huffington Post on late Tuesday.

Asked if Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act remained as strong as his public proclamations suggested on the campaign trail, transition spokesman Dan Pfeiffer responded, succinctly, "Yes."

Now I don't know about you but I find that response to be squirrely....couldn't his "support"..."remain as strong", but the circumstances still dictate that it will not be possible????

Maybe I am just paranoid, and tired of being constantly lied to by the current admin...

On Glenn Greenwald's takedown of Brennan...

I was just perusing Glenn's excellent discussion of the aftermath of Brennan's "removal from consideration" and the crappy NYT (not gonna linky) coverage of said removal ...
his indictment:

All of this underscores a crucial fact: a major reason why the Bush administration was able to break numerous laws in general, and subject detainees to illegal torture specifically, is because the media immediately mimicked the Orwellian methods adopted by the administration to speak about and obfuscate these matters. Objective propositions that were never in dispute and cannot be reasonably disputed were denied by the Bush administration, and -- for that reason alone (one side says it's true) -- the media immediately depicted these objective facts as subject to reasonable dispute.

and his (typically sarcastic) conclusion:

And besides, even if you want to get all technical about it and say that they "broke the law," everyone Serious knows that "criminal prosecutions" weren't created for high government officials. As Goldsmith so movingly points out, it's already bad enough that Good and Important People like John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney and friends have suffered what Goldsmith describes as "severe criticism" and even "enormous reputational losses." Criticism and reputational damage! In the name of God, what more do you want to do to these people?

As Goldsmith pleads, these are people who have been so severely punished already. They are banished to toil in shameful, humiliating labor conditions -- as, say, tenured Professor at Berkeley Law School or Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States, with unimaginably grim futures involving millions of dollars in fees for giving speeches and writing memoirs and living in retirement off Halliburton stock. What kind of monster would want to heap still more punishment on these noble, suffering souls, just because they committed some so-called "war crimes" and other felonies? Haven't they suffered enough? Shame on those who want to keep harassing them, wringing what Goldsmith calls "further retribution" by holding them accountable under the law.

"people" should continue to pressure the Obama admin. to investimagate, and prosemacute the deciders....

Surprised Not to See My Name

Digby has a post up about a flowchart (of questionable origin) describing the possibles at various cabinet levels.

She seems to think that the Powell listing as a possible at Defense and State is a joke, I, again, fall back on the political favors argument. Powell endorsed Obama at a time when the race seemed to be tightening, his name on the list might be payback enough. Or Obama could be signaling to moderate GOP members that if they play ball with him, he'll play it back.

On a related note, I was telling Ging about my post defending Obama's consideration of Summers and other neoliberal, corporatist swine and the trouble, if only imaginary, it caused me. I, of course, had to explain who Summers is. She immediately became outraged that Obama would consider appointing a sexist to anything and said that she wanted to retract her vote. My explanation that no one was particularly upset about Summers "sexism" did not help. My explanation that the reaction the "science and math" speech was less about sexism as it was that Summers relied on a biological determinist argument in a socially constructed world did not help.

I now join you all in fervently hoping that Summers ain't appointed to shit.

Hopefully seeing RFK, Jr.'s name at EPA and Al Gore as Climate Czar might cool her fire. And that's politics!

Change is

There's a fair number of people out there who - despite witnessing spontaneous worldwide street parties - are having a hard time actually grasping that this election really was about change and that more change is possible. That includes the vast majority of the Right and a decidedly small fragment of the Left. The former maintain that nothing's changed because we're still a center-right nation; the latter attributes stasis to Obama's centrism.

The Right is, of course, delusional, as dave has been busy (and I suspect will continue to be busy) documenting. The farther Left has a valid criticism, but misses the larger point.

While not discounting the change at the very top, it is the change in the attitudes and actions of the citizenry that is remarkable. Consider this: a presidential candidate spoke openly of sacrifice to the electorate and won. Before last Tuesday, there were very few people alive who could say they'd ever seen that. Not only that, during the campaign that sense of sacrifice was palpable - the Obama campaign ran on a huge and extraordinarily well-trained group of volunteers. Moreover, Obama carried professionals making over $200K - those who were explicitly told would have their taxes raised. A pluarality of Americans believed Obama was going to raise their taxes. They didn't care.

There's two things I carry from this - 1) A motivated chunk of the electorate understands the gravity of our current situation and is willing to sacrifice in order to meet those challenges and 2) this portion of the electorate now believes that it can rise to meet these challenges - after all, we just helped elect a black man to be President of the United States.

All of this is to say that in the past four years, a formidable, well-trained, and broadly-based left-wing grassroots coalition has matured. It will be mobilized to provide political cover for the initial pieces of the president-elect's agenda. It can be mobilized to pull that agenda a little further to the left.

There are millions of people ready to get to work transforming this country. Engage with them.

Am I Wrong Here?

I am being deluged with calls to hold Obama's "feet to the fire." With some exceptions, I didn't recall the people sending these missives being big Obama supporters in the first place. They are pissing me off already. This is why I have a blog, to spew about people that piss me off.

One, if you didn't support Obama because he wasn't "radical" or "progressive" or "leftist" enough for you, where do you get off attempting to hold his feet to anything? If you didn't support him, you're opposition. He has no more obligation to listen to you than he has to listen to Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich. You decided long ago that Obama was not the man for you. Guess what? He's still not the man for you. You can keep right on criticizing him for being a centrist sell-out, but you have no right to speak as if he owes you something. If you want to hold someone's feet to the fire, how 'bout you turn to your man Nadar and remind him that even though he is the most awesomist American evah!, that still doesn't give him the right to use racial slurs in the direction of our newly-elected black president.

Two, can you allow for the possibility that Obama is appointing people that he doesn't necessarily agree with? That he has no interest in surrounding himself with "yes" people? The he has some political debts he has to pay back and he's doing so by appointing big name friends of friends who may have little influence over him? If there is one thing Obama is, it is confident in what he is doing. How many times during that race did you doubt that he made the right move?

I remember at the end of the second debate where McCain, unprompted, launched into a closing where he touted his lifetime of service to America and his humble desire to keep on serving. Obama, awkwardly, went with being the son of a Kenyan immigrant, raised by his grandmother in Hawaii, etc. I was thinking, "No, no, no! Be All-American, emphasize your love of the flag, and that your dreams are the same as Joe the Plumbers'." I was wrong, he was right, and I was remind (when I shouldn't have to be) that his story is just as American as McCain's or Joe's.

Obama ran this campaign well. He ran as himself. I have no doubt that's exactly how he'll govern. As everyone has said, he'll make decisions and advance policies that we disagree with. He can't please everyone. Lord knows the progressive faction ain't exactly in agreement over EFCA and Big Labor ain't exactly the most progressive aspect of the Dem coalition.

Which is to say that before we go crying "Betrayal!" maybe we should wait for the man to actually "betray" us. I don't recall him promising to put together the most progressive transition team in the history of transition teams. Jesus, he turned nine Bush states blue, does that not earn him three fucking days of credibility?

Makes Me Proud

Avi Zenilman and Ben Smith give credit where credit is due, to the "older, industrial unions" that have, in their opinions, actually answered Obama's call for dialogue about race in the USA. I've over-ranted about this aspect of "Labor 2008" already, but the fact is that it's a welcome galldarned thing.

I Can't Get Enough

From the comments at Real Clear Politics:

Posted by: Marion Valentine Oct 28, 10:45 AM

---

After spending nine years in Navy Intelligence as a Cryptologist, intercepting communications from Marxist/Socialist countries, breaking their codes, and gathering intelligence in "other" ways. I am familiar with their methods of using the media for propangada, using the educational system to indocronate young minds, using the judicial system, and voter fraud to steal elections.
This is what is happening now in america.

From everything I have researched in the last two years, has lead me to conclude that Obama was selected, tutored, groomed, scripted, and financed by Radical Marxist/Socialists to become the puppet leader of the USSA.

There is a vast difference between Social Democrats and Radical Marxist/Socialists. Hillary Clinton is a Social Democrat. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Schumer, Durbin, Franks,Boxer, and a few others now in Congress are Radical Marxist/Socialists.

On my website: [valsword.spaces.live.com] I have a 16 minute video of an interview with Yure Bezmenov a KGB agent who defected in 1970. This interview was recorded 24 years ago,
and the transcript highlights, in Yuri's own words confirm what I mentioned in the first paragraph.

I pray that I am wrong, but from everything I have researched, I believe Obama, with a Reid Pelosi led Congress, with a radical judicial system will pull a Hugo Chavez.

Obama to Godwin land-speed record

Behold, and you really do want to take some time with the comments on this one.

Goosebumps.

Holy shit.

I believe.

Volcker and Obama

story of the day, though I cannot link you to the actual WSJ content without all of us subscribing. Former Fed Chair Volcker (1979-1987), more than Reagan, inaugurated domestic neoliberalism in the USA as an inflation-fighting deficit hawk. Now he's presiding over what many are calling the "end" of neoliberalism.