Motley Moose – Archive

The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

It seems no matter which political party in America holds the majority, a Washington/Wall Street corporate centric axis dominates policy making. Indeed, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently observed that banks, “Frankly Own the Place.” Among liberal-progressive activists like myself, this condition has facilitated a confrontational mindset.

Our experience suggests that the power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a few will not be voluntarily relinquished. Hence, everything from healthcare reform to bankruptcy protection for aggrieved homeowners is perceived by many of us as a high stakes pitched battle between struggling families and feculent corporate behemoths. Although activism has certainly facilitated important victories on behalf of working people, fighting for economic justice often seems analogous to climbing an endless wall.

(Also at OC Progressive & Nevada Progressive)

Late last week, we found out that Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wants to delay her committee’s vote on the Senate climate & energy bill and move it to September. And furthermore, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) supports this move as he’ll have more time to round up votes. However, we don’t really know if this is good news or bad news.

The delay bodes ill for passing a climate bill this year.  It shows leaders are not confident they would have enough votes to pass the bill and want as much time as possible to rally support. Boxer also noted that many key senators with a role in crafting climate policy are also leading the debate over health care, another major congressional priority for this year.

[…] Several environmental groups have written in to say that they think today’s announcement is good news for climate legislation.

“We don’t think that this is a problem at all,” said Josh Dorner, spokesman for Sierra Club. “In fact, we think it’s a good thing. It’s a huge organizing opportunity, both here in D.C. and in the field. It also shows they are taking the time to make some meaningful, positive changes to the bill.”

Environmental Defense Fund was equally optimistic. “From our perspective, this is the right decision,” said Tony Kreindler, media director for climate at EDF. “It gives senators more time to review and understand the historic bill just passed by the House. It signals a serious intent to seek agreements on key issues going forward.  And it gives Boxer and her colleagues on both sides of the aisle more time to reach those agreements. After all, the chairman has the ability to move forward today if the goal were simply to push any bill through.”

Honestly, I don’t mind the delay that much… So long as this delay results in a stronger bill with more votes in time for the international climate change summit in Copenhagen this December. Let me explain my thoughts some more after the flip.

This is all too easy for me to write.  

I’ve spent the last eight months trying very hard to agree with then-President-Elect Obama- that we should look forward, not behind us, on the issue(s) of what the Bush Administration did to make us safe. I sympathize with President Obama on this one. There is so much work for us to do on policy! Health care, climate change, credit card reform- and God knows what else is on that list!

Moreover, I agree with the basic premise that the Bush administration, by and large, did what they did in the honest belief that they were doing what (they thought) was necessary to save American lives (and perhaps atone for their monumental fuckup). Well, I give up. I can’t get behind this, even though I cannot condemn President Obama for his impulses on this one.

Attorney General Eric Holder must act, regardless of the costs. If Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA, as has been recently reported, to NOT brief Congress on matters that the CIA is required by law to so brief Congress, well, that’s it. Holder MUST act in order for us to keep this republic our founders gave us.

When I heard that Republicans (led by our old friend, Senator John Cornyn) were planning to use New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci as another posterchild (in the vein of Joe the Plumber) to use against Sonia Sotomayor in her Congressional confirmation hearings, I thought to myself “Self… I bet they won’t bother to look into his history, which the ‘mainstream MSM’ media will undoubtedly uncover.”

Lo and behold…

Slate has an excellent article up on this issue; it turns out our friend Frank is well-versed on the workings of the American legal system- by way of having filed about several other lawsuits on a variety of discrimination charges against several different municipalities’ fire departments.

I’m not sure about you guys, but personally, I am shocked- SHOCKED!- and outraged that the media would look into the history of employment discrimination lawsuits filed by a person who has been asked to appear before Congress at the confirmation hearings of a Supreme Court justice due to an employment discrimination lawsuit.

So it begins, eh? Another everyman dares to oppose Obama and his minions, only to be attacked on every level possible, as viciously as can be imagined!

Perhaps on one the best Michael jackson tributes I have seen to date.

What’s on your mind?

Today Roland Burrs (D-Ill) announced that he was not going to run for re-election to the Senate seat which was “given” to him by Rod “Pay to Play” Blagojevich.  CNN showed the press conference live until their Neilsen ratings plummeted into negative number-space and quickly switched to a canned video of a sloth sleeping in a tree out of simple corporate self-preservation.

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that the CIA had lied to her in briefings regarding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?

Was the CIA also masking the truth about the “Executive Assassination Ring” directed by former Vice President Darth Cheney, the same one Seymour Hersh talked about back in March of this year?  

“It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” Hersh said. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

“Congress has no oversight of it,” he added. “It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

One theory floating around Capitol Hill seems to suggest that this is indeed the case.

I’m beginning to see that being in power is not something we liberals on the blogsphere are used to.

At the first sign of Obama’s approval rating dropping below 60%…panic ensues.

I can only name one President in history who has gone through an entire term with positive approval ratings; Eisenhower, and even he dipped lower than Obama at some point…Obama will be unpopular at some point during this presidency…can we deal with that? Or are we going to panic and delcare the end imminent.

On the tenth anniversary of the 1999 student uprising against the theocratic regime in Iran, protesters take to the streets again.

From Twitter:

Today the ppl fought back and the basij blinked and ran. We have reached a turning point.

i could see on the eyes of some police men, they wanted to join us, but someothers couldn’t even speak farsi