Let's try for a measure of pragmatism. DKOS has a diary from LaFeminista that dwells on her many disappointments.
You would think that Obama is another no-clue, no-strategery Bush-a-like. Well, I've seen this pitch before.
It's a mirror/replay of Ron Paul's "Tea Party leftie" fakery that netted the GOPers millions of votes in 2010.
"Leftie" complaining converted to GOPer votes.
In contrast, militarism is Obama's big ticket item. Obama and his Joint Chiefs are doing the heavy lifting to end tossing $300-billion-a-year on crazed militarism.
You'd never know that from DKOS trolls-R-us diaries.
Then there's abortion. Dems roll on with 40 years of electioneering incompetence -- unchallenged. We can do better.
We need to attack the GOPers. This Debt Ceiling crisis from the GOPers has cost investors an average of $12,000 each. The GOPers have to be vulnerable.
Echo GOPer memes at DKOS ? It's a free country. BTF for alternatives :::
False Front:
-- Pretended behavior, a dishonest political movement
-- dissimilation, fake, feigning, front, performance, phony, pose, posture, pretense, put-on, sham, show, shuck and jive, simulation, soft soap, stall, stance, stunt, sweet talk
The list from LaFeminista is exactly what Ron Paul has been using to rope blue collar isolationist/peacenik whites into voting for Tea Party authoritarian candidates.
For example:
I still think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were and are unnecessary
I still think those who authorized and carried out torture should be punished.
I still think The Patriot Act etcetera were an anathema to our core values as a nation. ("attack on the Fourth Amendment")
I still think the whole "war on terror" is just a reaction to self induced fear.
I still think the MIC is a ridiculously expensive waste of our nations resources.
I still think unemployment is a scandal.
I still think those in DC live in a bubble and are at the beck and call of the wealthiest.
If you didn't listen through the Ron Paul CPAC speech, above, take some time and do it now. This is political fakery at the very highest level:
The problem with this is that Paul's "leftie" schtick serves corporatism. It's fraud. The candidates he shovels votes to are Far Right billionaire-financed extremists.
Not a drop of what he espouses is going to happen by way of the Republican Party.
He's throwing out right-brain dreams, deluding his blue collar followers into voting for Far Right corporatist candidates. His son Rand Paul in Kentucky is a perfect example. Rand the Man ran on populist, anti-power themes and then voted 100% for the corporatist agenda.
The problems with our democratic government under Obama ?
With the debt ceiling or health care or with abortion or health care ?
The real-world problems are not Paulist fakery/fuckery.
Of course we have problems with American democracy. The American presidency is not a dictatorship -- there is very little that can be done by fiat.
Thinking matters.
Obama is the reverse of that no-brainer-dumb-gut-Bush.
For example, reversing the 2002-2011 militarization of America is the most critical issue facing the country. This change has been underway with Obama, despite having to do more in Afghanistan for a couple of years, since 20-JAN-2009.
Iraq was already winding down.
Afghanistan was converted to a Drug War in the first 90 days -- producing a "Heroin Drought" across Europe and the Americas. What had been happening before was a plague of heroin, shared needles, and massive HIV in Russia and Eastern Europe. This Drug War eventually cut back the income and power of the main Afghan drug kingpins.
Two of the four largest kingpins were assassinated recently. Credit Joe Biden and his son for the details.
Tactics on the groound are accompanied by a broadly revised national military strategy:
National Strategic Narrative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars web site.
Let's not ignore our professional, top level career military officers. Solid left-brain analysis is what gets you to good plans.
In one sentence, the strategic narrative of the United States in the 21st century is that we want to become the strongest competitor and most influential player in a deeply inter-connected global system, which requires that we invest less in defense and more in sustainable prosperity and the tools of effective global engagement.
CAP and The Economist indicate that we are spending some $300-billion a year too much on the military -- moneys that need to go to sustainable prosperity. This "Mr. Y" paper addresses five topics for a modernized, non-militarist/anti-militarist narrative:
1) From control in a closed system to credible influence in an open system. The authors argue that Kennan’s strategy of containment was designed for a closed system, in which we assumed that we could control events through deterrence, defense, and dominance of the international system.
Go back 30 years and we were containing both Soviet and Chinese Communism. Now, our military investment is built around the same containment task -- painfully so, if you consider equipment such as aircraft carriers. In an open system there is no such thing as containment. Aircraft carriers are useless against the likes of FaceBook. The burden on the economy is what matters, not imaginary threats from other nation states.
2) From containment to sustainment. The move from control to credible influence as a fundamental strategic goal requires a shift from containment to sustainment (sustainability). ...we need to focus on sustaining ourselves....
3) From deterrence and defense to civilian engagement and competition. Here in many ways is the hard nub of this narrative. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen has already said publicly that the U.S. deficit is our biggest national security threat. He and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have also given speeches and written articles calling for “demilitarizing American foreign policy” and investing more in the tools of civilian engagements – diplomacy and defense.
4) From zero sum to positive sum global politics/economics. ...The threats that come from interdependence (economic instability, global pandemics, global terrorist and criminal networks) also create common interests in countering those threats domestically and internationally.
5) From national security to national prosperity and security. The piece closes with a call for a National Prosperity and Security Act to replace the National Security Act of 1947. The term “national security” only entered the foreign policy lexicon after 1947 to reflect the merger of defense and foreign affairs. Today our security lies as much or more in our prosperity as in our military capabilities.
Deterrence and containment are damned expensive. Also silly, considering the modern world. Another Hitler comes along... it's a lot cheaper to kill the SOB than to fight World War III.
Sustainability could sure use the extra $300-billion a year that we're wasting on today's deterrence+containment military. CAPT Wayne Porter, USN and Col Mark "Puck" Mykleby, USMC, hit the bulls eye.
Yes, this is Obama. 100%.
This is Obama's Joint Chiefs raising American strategic vision to match the intellectual demands of our president.
Want more of your policies to get enacted ???
Win back the House and do whatever it takes -- anything and everything -- to defeat Red State GOPer Senators. Bitchin' over and over and over about Disappointed With Obama ain't part of any practical victory over the GOPer enemy.
Btw: abortion is the lock-down issue for GOPer voters. Dems are slammed as baby killers. Sympathy for "unborn children" is worked for all they can get.
This little thing's about an inch long. You'd have to be a damned-soul, Cheney-sucking monster not to feel tenderness for these little creatures. Church bulletin boards carry dozens of images that amplify the response.
So far the GOPer tactics have worked to beat the band. 30% to 50% of the GOPer vote turnout self-identify as single-issue anti-abortion voters. And they're had for free. The election cycle investment amounts to a dozen mailers/fliers per home, financed by the 507s and fundie churches. Sermons are also free.
Voters break 49% in favor of legal unrestricted abortion, compared to 45% against. If you tighten that question to legal vs. illegal, then the break goes to 62%-to-31%. Voters who would give up everything to outlaw abortions are likely closer to 10%-15%-20% than this answer-the-poll 31%.
GOPers have worked abortion for all it's worth and more.
Keep an eye on the Legal Abortion Group here at DKOS for analytical work aimed to the 2012 elections. Applying research is manpower intensive. The aim is going to be to move the "single-issue" tag off 10% to 30% of these long-time "single-issue" voters.
Where a pregnant woman feels than an abortion is necessary, it should be legal.
That, folks, is a model wedge.
Notice how this construct avoids using the word "choice." "Choice" is a weak and unfortunate antonym to "necessity."
K.I.S.S.
Then figure out how to hammer it in.
This target pool is too fat not to go after. Despite that DNC and unions and all the big democrats haven't done a thing in 40 years, this is a battle where the GOPers have everything to lose.
BTW: NYSE is a disaster today. Down again a hundred points so far. That's close to a $1,000 lost from the Debt Ceiling fiasco. Cause and effect.
The GOPer mad men got what they wanted, so the Free Market responded.
Whining about Obama ??? Not a purple pimple on that elephant's arse.