My reply to the Obama 2012 campaign

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday July 01, 2011 · 10:16 AM PDT

2011/07/01 · 10:16

On receiving yet another demand for money from Obama 2012:

Dear Jim,

I am not planning on donating to the Obama campaign anytime in the next 16 months. Instead, I will donate money and, more importantly, my time, heart, and soul, to the numerous candidates and policy initiatives that actually deserve my support.

Your Faustian choice between a corporatist candidate who is functionally indistinguishable from Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush (except for two mildly better Supreme Court nominees), or John McCain (ditto), and a bakers’ dozen of Republicans who are apocalyptically insane, is not a winning strategy for engaging any of the hundreds of people I personally know who sacrificed half a year of their lives to elect Obama in 2008, only to discover that they had been used. I never imagined that I would live to see a candidate who I once cared about actually campaign for re-election on a throwaway line from a Firesign Theater skit (“Not Insane!”).

The only time we ever hear from you is when you want something. You are tone-deaf, and way out of touch. The Obama 2012 campaign is worse than a fraud. It is an infinite black hole for valuable time and resources.

Your email is a waste of perfectly good electrons. Please remove me from your list. Do not contact me again, ever. If, by some miracle, Obama actually chooses to get rid of his handlers and become the inspirational leader that he once could have been, I’ll check in.

Poll

137 votes Show Results

Do you intend to work as hard to elect Obama in 2012 as you worked for him in 2008?

137 votes Vote Now!

Do you intend to work as hard to elect Obama in 2012 as you worked for him in 2008?

Hell yes!

51 votes

Nope. My priorities have shifted.

77 votes

Are you kidding? The man is a dreamboat! I'm going to work even harder than last time!

9 votes

Climate wars: Why we need to give up on Obama

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 12, 2010 · 8:09 PM PDT

2010/10/12 · 20:09

Gentle readers may recall my rant from last week discussing why the Federal government is useless in the medium term for any positive action on climate, and why we should aggressively looking elsewhere to make forward progress on this elemental issue. Just in case there are any doubters in the room who still believe that anything good will come from the Federal government on climate in this Congressional cycle, I'd like to lay those doubts to rest once and for all.

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday October 05, 2010 · 4:55 PM PDT

2010/10/05 · 16:55

There's been a lot of tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth lately about the utter helplessness of the Obama Administration to even pretend to do something about the accelerating climate catastrophe.

And it's true. But, ummmm.... nobody is talking about what we do now.

I have a few suggestions.

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday May 15, 2009 · 9:42 AM PDT

2009/05/15 · 09:42

Cross-posted at convergerblog.

Well, the Waxman-Markey climate train has left the station. I'll be talking at length about the massive failure that this legislation represents in a future post. But right now, I'm thinking about whether we can salvage anything from the wreckage. Given that we are going to lose this one, the shift should be towards demanding some small-bore concessions that might ease the pain of losing the big fight to implement an effective carbon reduction regime. Just off the top of my head:

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday April 23, 2009 · 8:50 AM PDT

2009/04/23 · 08:50

Jon Wellinghoff is the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the agency responsible for regulating all interstate transactions of electricity and natural gas. It is an obscure agency with a pivotal role in setting our nations energy and climate policy. FERC was responsible for the plague of deregulation that resulted in the Enron fiasco in the late 1990's. Their policies will set the pace for the energy grid of tomorrow.

And yesterday, Jon Wellinghoff said that he doesn't think we need any new nukes or coal plants, thank you:

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday April 20, 2009 · 9:12 AM PDT

2009/04/20 · 09:12

So, the planet is warming up, fast. But no worries, right? Even the climate-change deniers and the carbon-spewing corporations who love them are on board now with the idea that we have to do something, right?

Except, well, they would rather that fixing the problem didn't cost anything. Better yet, they'd like a carbon cap-and-trade system that makes carbon emission credits really valuable, except that they get theirs for free, and other people give them money. Yeah. They'd be OK with that.

Incredible as it seems, this is actually the current level of the discussion about how we fix climate change in the United States at the moment. We appear to be in the delusional phase of dealing with the problem. There is a serious possibility that Obama's latest attempt to actually get something done is going to just kick the can down the road for another decade or so, blowing our last, best chance to prevent a catastrophic outcome (just to be clear here, we have already blown our last, best chance to prevent a serious outcome - we are now in damage control mode).

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 02, 2009 · 11:10 AM PST

2009/01/02 · 11:10

I was just contemplating the irony of Republicans attempting to embarrass Eric Holder in the upcoming Attorney General confirmation hearings by bringing up Clinton's utterly lame pardon of Marc Rich. If I were the Democrats, I'd be dragging Scooter Libby into the hearing to testify, under oath, about his role as Rich's lead attorney at the time. Maybe they could ask him to opine about his feelings about Rich's pardon in the context of his own pardon for the crimes he committed after he left Rich to work for Cheney.

Amazing how scum just keeps floating back up to the surface, isn't it?

Losing the Great Game

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday July 30, 2008 · 11:35 AM PDT

2008/07/30 · 11:35

I'll bet this is what Rome felt like when Nero and Caligula were partying down.

One of the many catastrophic side effects of a delusional US government with an obsessive-compulsive streak is that things that really, really matter fall through the cracks. Bhradrakumar's analysis today is an excellent case in point:

From the details coming out of Ashgabat in Turkmenistan and Moscow over the weekend, it is apparent that the great game over Caspian energy has taken a dramatic turn. In the geopolitics of energy security, nothing like this has happened before. The United States has suffered a huge defeat in the race for Caspian gas. The question now is how much longer Washington could afford to keep Iran out of the energy market.

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday July 02, 2008 · 9:33 AM PDT

2008/07/02 · 09:33

Won't somebody tell me
Answer if you can
Won't somebody tell me
Tell me what is the soul of a man?

-Blind Willie Johnson

The New York Times confirms today what we already knew - the torture archipelago that stretches from Diego Garcia to Guantanamo was inspired by Chinese torture techniques used on Americans in the Korean War and...Vietnam:

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday June 06, 2008 · 9:23 PM PDT

2008/06/06 · 21:23

Josh Marshall made an excellent catch today on McCain's website. McCain has, once again, nailed his demographic. Check out the fourth tab (of four) on the official campaign homepage:

What's one of the four most important things John McCain wants to talk about this week? Golf gear.

But oh, it gets better. Check it out:

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday April 19, 2008 · 12:50 AM PDT

2008/04/19 · 00:50

The descent into hell continues...

Trying to stem the infiltration of militia fighters, American forces have begun to build a massive concrete wall that will partition Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite neighborhood in the Iraqi capital.

The construction, which began Tuesday night, is intended to turn the southern quarter of Sadr City near the international Green Zone into a protected enclave, secured by Iraqi and American forces, where the Iraqi government can undertake reconstruction efforts.

Joe Lieberman, Republican tool

converger

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 15, 2008 · 9:28 AM PDT

2008/04/15 · 09:28

As if we needed another reminder...

Newer
Older

RSS

My reply to the Obama 2012 campaign

Climate wars: Why we need to give up on Obama

On winning the climate war

Fixing Waxman-Markey climate legislation

FERC Chair says no nukes, no coal

Carbon offsets, forests, and runaway climate

Eric Holder and Scooter Libby, together at last

Losing the Great Game

McCain, torture, and the soul of a man

John McCain and the Golf War

Kraków ghetto comes to Baghdad

Joe Lieberman, Republican tool