The Snowstorm & Loki The Cat

Happy Holidays!

We're enjoying the holidays and we hope that you are too!

The Heros Of DADT Repeal (Not Obama)

Photo: Naples

Rachel Maddow thinks the repeal of DADT is Obama's victory. He may get credit but I think he did very little to help us out. I give credit to: Nancy Pelosi, Senators Lieberman, Gillibrand and Collins, and to all the brave GLBT service members and our brave activists who fought so hard to end this policy. As for Obama...let's see how quickly he actually ends the discrtimination. Lt. Dan Choi puts Mr. Presidnt O on the spot:

President Obama, you are not off the hook. The compromise bill passed today puts the moral imperative squarely on your desk. Sign an executive order instituting a full non-discrimination policy throughout the military. If you do not, if you drag your feet and politicize this with your theoretical calculations as you have these past two years, you will be guilty of abetting those who loudly proclaim homophobia from their platforms and pulpits. Provide them no shelter or safe haven. Institute justice now.

Gay Rights LEadership Failure

Photo: Naples


Richard g\Grenell (US UN Spokesperson) writes over at Huffington:

It is painfully obvious that the national gay leaders have promoted their own partisan agendas and careers within the Democratic Party instead of working to ensure passage of civil rights.

Grenell calls for the HRC's Solomonese and others to resign. Pam Spaulding also called for Solomonese to resign. Heought to go. He can get work with the DNC.

DADT Failure: Obama On Down

Photo: Naples

This president had two years of a Democrat Party controlled congress, plenty of time to repeal DADT. But he exercised no leadership, and no leadership on the issue came from congressional Dems. Our biggest gay rights group, the HRC, told us to be patient and it would happen, rather than mobilizing the community and pressuring the White House. They all are to blame.

Did We Elect A Republican President?

Photo: Flag hanging from our cabin railing on board the Celebrity Equinox docked in Naples


Robert Reich:

Obama's new tax compromise is not only bad economics; it's also disastrous from the standpoint of educating the public about what has happened and what needs to happen in the future. It reinforces the Republican story and makes mincemeat out of the truthful one Democrats should be telling.

This giveaway to the wealthy should be defeated. If Obama cannot lead better then this he should step aside and let some other Democrat run for president.

Wikileaks Has Done Us A Great Service

Photo: Napoli

Johann Hari in the London Independent:

...we will never unlearn or unknow the great truths Julian Assange has brought us. The hysterical state-power hacks saying he is "a terrorist" should go tell it to all the tortured Iraqis, all the terrorized Honduran democrats, and all the bombed Yemenis whose story he has -- at last -- brought out from the sealed-away world of top secret cables.

Hari acknolwedges that Assange may be a rapist, but also that the rape chrges could be trumped up by the CIA.

This Says It All

The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.

- Clarance B Jones

A Progressive Challenger To Obama in 2012?

Photo: The harbor in Naples, Italy

Robert Kuttner (Huffington Post) writes:

Let's stop pretending. Barack Obama is a disaster as a crisis president. He has taken an economic collapse that was the result of Republican ideology and Republican policies, and made it the Democrats' fault. And the more that he is pummeled, the more he bends over.

Robert Kuttner thinks Obama may become the Democrat's Herbert Hoover, presiding over a fully Republican congress after 2012, provided he wins re-election at all. He raises the possibility of a Democratic Party challenger from the progressive left to Obama in 2012. We shall see.

Frank Rich: Obama is "Weightless...AWOL"

Photo: Orvieto, Italy

Frank Rich's column in the New York Times today is a must read. He describes Obama as:

A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL

Rich warns that three of the last four sitting presidents with high unemployment rates lost their bids for re-election. When will Obama wake up?

Fineman: Obama IS Bush Light

Photo: Civitavecchia, Italy (the port for Rome)

Howard Fineman on Obama:

..."Obama in fact has allowed himself to be trapped, with a few notable exceptions (health care and food safety being two), in a slightly more bland rendition of a third Bush term."

Great. Just what we didn't need: Bush Light.

Krugman: Obama's Moral Collapse

Photo: Taormina, Sicily


Paul Krugman throws in the towel on Obama:

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right... Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction...all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs.

Hopefully, there will be a Democratic Party challenger to Obama in 2012, or a third party progressive candidate with guts. One thing is clear: Obama is a failure. We might as well get rid of him ASAP, and hope for a real leader with progressive values to emerge.

I Have A Helper

I'm building an addition to my toy train layout. A certain juvenile creature often comes to visit me while I'm working. Here he is supervising the goings on.