And We Shall March

O Good I Can Stop Having This 101-Level Conversation, Now. I Can Just Send Them This Link!

What the progressives forget is that black intellectuals have been called “paranoid,” “bitter,” “rowdy,” “angry,” “bullies,” and accused of tirades and diatribes for more than 100 years. Very few of them would have been given a grade above D from most of my teachers.

When these progressives refer to themselves as Mr. Obama’s base, all they see is themselves. They ignore polls showing steadfast support for the president among blacks and Latinos. And now they are whispering about a primary challenge against the president. Brilliant! The kind of suicidal gesture that destroyed Jimmy Carter — and a way to lose the black vote forever.

Unlike white progressives, blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all.

WikiLeaks and the Diplomats / DADT / holding

The business of diplomacy is often messy and when private communications become public, it can also be highly embarrassing.

But what struck us, and reassured us, about the latest trove of classified documents released by WikiLeaks was the absence of any real skullduggery. After years of revelations about the Bush administration’s abuses — including the use of torture and kidnappings — much of the Obama administration’s diplomatic wheeling and dealing is appropriate and, at times, downright skillful.

*****

“While a repeal would require some changes to regulations, the key to success, as with most things military, is training, education, and, above all, strong and principled leadership up and down the chain of command.”

How Obama Saved Capitalism and Lost the Midterms / holding

If I were one of the big corporate donors who bankrolled the Republican tide that carried into office more than 50 new Republicans in the House, I would be wary of what you just bought.

For no matter your view of President Obama, he effectively saved capitalism. And for that, he paid a terrible political price.

What He Said Was "This Is Going To Be Hard." / holding

But such selective indictments — legitimate and troubling in many of their particulars — grossly distort the sweep of the 44th presidency. It's one thing to call the president on his shit. It's quite another to paint his entire presidency as shit — even if Joe Biden and Robert Gibbs are losing their shit, accusing you of being a "whining" member of the "professional left."

From the outset, it was inevitable that Obama's transcendent campaign would give way to an earthbound presidency — one constrained by two wars, an economy in free fall and an opposition party bent on obstruction at any price. "Expectations were so sky-high for him that they were impossible to fulfill," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. "Obama's partly to blame for this: People were expecting a progressive revolution. What the president has delivered instead is gritty, nuts-and-bolts, political legislative work — and it's been rough."

But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what will last in history," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, "Obama has more notches on the presidential belt."

In fact, when the history of this administration is written, Obama's opening act is likely to be judged as more impressive than any president's — Democrat or Republican — since the mid-1960s. "If you're looking at the first-two-year legislative record," says Ornstein, "you really don't have any rivals since Lyndon Johnson — and that includes Ronald Reagan."

Things That Are Good

Barack Obama Looking At Awesome Things. Click through the whole hilarious set. My fave (of course):

 

Yup. Still Not 'Bored, Now' With Downfall Remixes, Especially Ones Making Deft Commentary About Obama's (And Pelosi's) HCR Victory

Obama Year 1 / holding

No recent president has had such a substantive start since Ronald Reagan. But what Reagan did was to shift the underlying debate in America from what government should do to what it should not. His was a domestic policy of negation and inactivism, and a foreign policy of rearmament and sharp edges. Obama has, in a mirror image of 1981, reoriented America back to a political culture that asks what government will now do: to prevent a banking collapse, to avoid a depression, to insure the working poor, to ameliorate climate change, to tackle long-term debt. The point about health insurance reform, after all, is that it represents a big expansion of government intervention in the lives of the citizenry — and that’s a game-changer from three decades of conservative governance.

xx

Things Found During Electronic Housekeeping

Nikki Giovanni, 2008:

 

Itty bitty bodice build, 2007:

    
 
House of Mystery estate agents, 2008:

 

Sound & Fury Edinburgh Fringe Fest costume build, 2008:

 
 

Cuddle Kitty, 2007:

 

Cuddke Kitty and Obama's book, 2008:

  

Tourists watching Snoop Dogg at Kress, 2009:

 
 

Echo Park, 2007:

 

No idea where this came from:

 
 

Lancaster, 2008:

 


 

Obama Culver City office opening party, 2008:

 

Assault on Santa, 2008:

 

 Earth shot from who knows where, 2008:

 
 
 Victorian dress to make, 2008:

     
 
 BGF American Library Assn. self-poster test:

  

 Socks the cat:

 
 

Eddie Izzard WGA strike from ? 2008:

 
 

Mark Twain's cat from ? and when ?:

  

Second City group shot, 2008:

 
 

Rocket Science poster from ?:

  

Mace Windu poster from ?:

 
 

Obama office opening, Wolff, 2008:

 
 
 
 

Obama's Blackberry & Michelle's Outfitting

It's even funnier if you read the captions. 

Of those, perhaps the only entry off-base is #5, given what's been widely reported about Michelle Obama's shopping habits. (Short version: for the most part she shops normal, at normal places, at normal-and-below-prices. This is a woman who routinely rocks outfits from H&M and the Gap. This isn't someone prone to designer shopping sprees. If she were, word would have gotten out a long time ago, I think.)

Perhaps, under the pressure of deadline, the cartoonist confused Michelle for Sara? Or perhaps, for the same deadline reasons, he was in Lazy Gender Stereotype mode, assuming all women of means shop alike?

All that said, the big-picture questions Adams is raising about her choice of designers - when she does go out on designers - are good, important, difficult questions that should be part of the conversation.

Biden / holding

1.15.09