MORE: Vastleft wants everyone to stop fixating on the fact that we elected the first African-American to be president immediately (like Stephen Colbert, vastleft doesn’t see color) and focus on the reality that Obama is going to be “inheriting a series of ginormous crises.” Because nobody’s doing that. I haven’t seen or heard that mentioned in the mainstream media at all. They’re completely ignoring it. All I’ve heard for days now is blackedy blackedy African-American blackedy. That’s all they can talk or write about. I had to turn off my TV yesterday because all Wolf Blitzer did for the first 45-minutes of The Situation Room was yell “first African-American president!” at the camera over and over again while they flipped through old pictures of slaves on the huge monitors behind him and Jack Cafferty sat on a stool in the back strumming a banjo and crooning negro spirituals. It totally sucked. Enough! And would someone please tell her to stop it with the crying and the smiling and the joy and stuff and get to work figuring out how to stop the auto industry bailout or fix our health care system? Jesus christ, don’t make me get all PB 2.0 up in her shit. She won’t know what hit her, but I guarantee it will be historical.
Just read a great interview with photo-journalist (and my neighbor) Scout Tufankjian in The Brooklyn Paper. Tufankjian wisely predicted very early on in the game (December 2006) that Barack Obama was going to run for president and begged her editor to let her cover his not-yet-existent campaign. Here she recounts a stop by Obama at a coffee shop-bookstore two months before his announcement:
“One person asked him to sign her copy of ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover,’ and they got into a long talk about the book. Then the next person asked him about philosophy and suddenly they were talking about Kant and Heidegger. I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is smart.”
She also tells the story of overhearing a phone conversation three boys in an inner-city neighborhood were having with a friend who couldn’t make it to an Obama rally:
...to quell all of the hyperventilating that was going on in the leftosphere yesterday about Lieberman. I’ve loathed Jowly Joe longer than just about any blogger out there (going way back to his days as AG in Connecticut) and if I can suck it up so can everyone else. Obama was pretty clear about how he was going to govern and yet too many normally wise folks seem to think we elected Amy Goodman or David Sirota to be president.
News flash: we didn’t.
And if you want to know how I feel about yesterday (aside from, admittedly, wanting to briefly headbutt Lieberman to a bloody pulp after watching this), I fall somewhere between Steve M. and, believe it or not, Melissa McEwan. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry than that petulant bottom-feeding bristleworm. He ain’t worth the outrage and, as Betty noted here earlier, “martyrdom is something Holy Joe thrives on.” I fully trust that Obama gets that and that he’ll game Lieberman just like he did so many other alleged political geniuses on his way to the White House. Call me naive if you want (go ahead, I dare you ... the name’s Kevin), but that’s where I currently stand.
MORE: I was just emailing with poputonian, who hopefully will weigh in on this matter later today, and brought up the point that there wasn’t one viable Democratic candidate this year who wouldn’t have done the same thing. Go ahead, look. The only two who would have gone for Lieberman’s throat are Kucinich and Gravel. And, well…
RELATED: The last sentence of this killed. I needed that. You probably do, too.
Cheney, Gonzales indicted for alleged prisoner abuse
(CNN)—Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges related to alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, Willacy County, Texas, District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra told CNN Tuesday.
The indictment stems from Cheney’s investment in the Vanguard Group—an investment management company that reportedly has interests in the prison companies in charge of the detention centers, according to The Associated Press. It also charges Gonzales halted an investigation into abuse at the detention centers while he was attorney general.
… the best part of a Texas indictment is that it can’t be blocked through a Presidential pardon. But we’ll see if “tough-on-crime” Gov. Rick Perry decides to go soft for his powerful friends ...
In a videotaped message to the Bi-Partisan Governors Global Climate Summit this morning, President-elect Obama had this to say:
While I won’t be President at the time of your meeting and while the United States has only one President at a time (wink, wink), I’ve asked members of Congress who are attending the conference as observers to report back to me on what they learn there. And once I take office, you can be sure that the United States will once again engage vigorously in these negotiations, and help lead the world toward a new era of global cooperation on climate change.
In addition to U.S. governors, the conference is host to international delegates from 12 countries.
Obama also pledged to “invest $15 billion each year to catalyze private sector efforts to build a clean energy future,” and cit(ed) specific annual targets on emission reductions.”
President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.As he prepared to fly out from Japan, he told his fellow leaders: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
Now this is change I can totally believe in.
Update: More change to believe in! Steve Benen is reporting that Eric Holder will mostly likely be Obama’s choice for AG. I was not familiar with him but definitely like everything I am reading. If you have time be sure to read the speech that is linked to in the article. You gotta love everything he says about abuse of executive powers and his positions on torture (hint: He’s not for it.) It’s feeling like a real breath of fresh air is coming in. Makes me happy enough to dance!
Very cool (and somewhat gruesome), low budget stop-animation video from NYC’s Appalachian stomp masters O’Death. This is “Lowtide” from their new album Broken Hymns, Limbs and Skin:
One sunny day in January, 2009, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.’
The Marine looked at the man and said, ‘Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.’
The old man said, ‘Okay’ and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.’
The Marine again told the man, ‘Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.’
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.’
The Marine, understandably annoyed at this point, looked at the man and said, ‘Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here! Don’t you understand?’
The old man looked at the Marine with a big smile and said, ‘Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.’
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, ‘See you tomorrow, Sir.’
