Whiny Lament: Liberals Don't Like Obama Either

Sometimes I take a walk on the wild side, so you don't have to. There was some information in this rant that was new to me. I didn't know that Sotomayor and Kagan are viewed by the left as "moderates at best". It will be interesting to see how the disappointed progressives vote in November. If they vote at all, that is.

Instead, we have a de facto minority government, organized and instituted, operated with oily efficiency by the Republicans in the Senate, combined with the Obama administration's capitulation thinly disguised as a bipartisan attempt. Those in charge at the White House and in the Democratic Party ought to be asking: Who voted for that? And: Who will vote for that... again? What is representative democracy if the representatives won't follow the will of the majority who voted for them?

Instead of taking their mandate seriously - instead of being "the ones we were waiting for" - this Democratic Party and this Democratic President have simply failed to lead. The never-ending wars continue unabated. The Supreme Court gets more women, but they are moderates at best, not progressives. Gitmo is still open. Constitutional abuses of civil liberties under Bush/Cheney have become the policy of the Obama administration. These failures plus the meager, insufficient and less than promised legislative results are just not enough for those who didn't vote Democratic for 64 years -but did vote for Obama - to do it anytime soon again. The protests may come from the President's spokesman, even from Obama himself, but the sad fact remains - we have not seen "Change We Can Believe In" and the current crop of Democrats are certainly not the ones we've been waiting for.

More here.

Kind of laughable to blame the Republicans in the Senate. What a joke. Poor little thing can't live unless they have a super majority.

Town Hall Commentary--Camille Paglia (liberal)

art from Steve.

Who would have thought that the sober, deliberative Barack Obama would have nothing to propose but vague and slippery promises -- or that he would so easily cede the leadership clout of the executive branch to a chaotic, rapacious, solipsistic Congress? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down....
You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing....
As with the massive boondoggle of the stimulus package, which Obama foolishly let Congress turn into a pork rut, too much has been attempted all at once; focused, targeted initiatives would, instead, have won wide public support. How is it possible that Democrats, through their own clumsiness and arrogance, have sabotaged healthcare reform yet again? Blaming obstructionist Republicans is nonsensical because Democrats control all three branches of government. It isn't conservative rumors or lies that are stopping healthcare legislation; it's the justifiable alarm of an electorate that has been cut out of the loop and is watching its representatives construct a tangled labyrinth for others but not for themselves. No, the airheads of Congress will keep their own plush healthcare plan -- it's the rest of us guinea pigs who will be thrown to the wolves.
And what do Democrats stand for, if they are so ready to defame concerned citizens as the "mob" -- a word betraying a Marie Antoinette delusion of superiority to ordinary mortals. I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech....
But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

more here.