MoDo on Greg Craig and Obama

Maureen Dowd weighs in on the firing/resignation of White House counsel Greg Craig, and what it says about Barack Obama. She's spot on, as she often is when she puts aside the snark.

There were complaints that Craig was out of the loop, but couldn’t Obama have walked the single West Wing staircase up to his counsel’s office and looped him in?

Craig was, after all, simply defending positions that Obama himself took during the campaign, from closing Gitmo to greater transparency.

The way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier. But then, Obama is surrounded by many old Clinton hands (and a Clinton).

Writing in Politico, Elizabeth Drew called it “the shabbiest episode of his presidency,” saying that it had caused people who had helped Obama rise to question whether he would behave in as classy and non-Clintonian a fashion as they had hoped.

You have to wonder if Obama is even aware of the discontent. Read More......

Jesse gets engaged

Jesse Lee is our blog contact at the White House. He's one of the few normal people working there. Seems he popped the question at the State Dinner last night. Greg Sargent has the story - it's sweet, and a nice diversion :-) Please join us in wishing Jesse all the best.

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Was Google right not to remove racist image of Michelle Obama?

I heard about this yesterday. The Guardian has a story on it. What do you think?

A racist image of Michelle Obama which depicts the first lady with monkey features has sparked controversy. The picture, which is currently the top search result for "Michelle Obama" on Google Images, is blatantly racist and offensive – yet Google refuses to take it down. A statement from the company says:

Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.

More on the story here. Should Google be in the business of removing offensive indexes from its database? Read More......

Advice for Blanche Lincoln re health care reform

From Nate Silver, via Jed Lewison at DKos:

If I were Blanche's Lincoln's Chief of Staff, my advice to her would be as follows:

Vote for cloture.
Vote against the bill itself.
Articulate this position clearly.
And then Shut The Hell Up.

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Howard Dean: Lieberman should relinquish chairmanship if he supports anti health care reform filibuster

Howard Dean:

"I think that [Lieberman] is a very complicated guy," said Dean. "He does [confuse me] because he says he's a principled guy but there's nothing principled about holding up a bill... If he was a principled guy he'd resign his chairmanship."

"If you are with a caucus you don't owe the leader any vote on any substance," Dean added. "I have no problem with him voting against the public option... You owe it to Harry Reid to allow him to run the Senate. And if you're not willing to do that the proper thing to do is to step aside."

Amen. Read More......

CBS' Early Show Blurs Out Adam's Same-Sex Kiss, But Not Britney-Madonna's

More from TowleRoad and JoeMyGod. Read More......

US fails to join landmine ban

Cowards.

The United States won't join its NATO allies and many other countries in formally banning landmines, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said during his midday briefing Tuesday.

"This administration undertook a policy review and we decided our landmine policy remains in effect," Kelly said in response to a question. "We made our policy review and we determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we sign this convention."

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Bruce Reed, head of the DLC, oddly channels those anonymous White House sources attacking Dems

It's always interesting when the Lieberman wing of the Democratic party starts parroting White House talking points in an effort to bash real Democrats. Seriously, Bruce Reed? The DLC? Who on the left listens to them? Or is this yet another feint to the middle - position Obama as in the middle since so many of those awful Dems are mad at them. If anything, Reed's article shows just how bad things are for President Obama among Democrats. And just how much this White House seems determined to alienate actual Democrats from this President.

Whining? We're going to hear that charge again? And repeating the old canard that everything was going fine with the election in August and September (it wasn't), and it was only the straight and steady fortitude of the Obama campaign that saved the day and won the election.

No it wasn't. We had a small economic blip that kind of handed the election to Barack Obama, in case anyone has forgotten. Then there was Sarah Palin, who was mercilessly attacked by the blogs, even though the party told us to lay off. And finally, there was the uproar in the blogs over candidate Obama's unwillingness to fight back, and how it was starting to create a meme that this was a man who didn't know how, or didn't have the backbone, to fight. Following our uproar the funders flipped out, and suddenly the Obama campaign got tougher.

So spare us the rewriting of history, Bruce, about how the Obama campaign's brilliance won the day, in spite of the naysayers.

Now on to the oft-repeated lie that the only problem Democrats have with Obama is that he hasn't saved the entire earth in 11 months. Uh no. Women are pissed because the White House didn't seem very worried about throwing them overboard in the health care reform bill. Gays are pissed for about 40 reasons, including the President's defense of anti-gay laws in court (and his lawyers' unfortunate comparison of gay marriage to incest and pedophilia - oops). Civil Libertarians are ticked that he flip-flopped on his support for domestic spying. Health care advocates are outraged that President Obama seems to have forgotten all the health care promises that Candidate Obama made. Everyone is ticked about the genuflecting to Wall Street that seems to take place on a daily basis. And so on.

There are more than enough reasons for Democrats to be disappointed, and even angry, with our president. And sending Joe Lieberman's puppet out to parrot anonymous White House attacks on core Democratic constituencies will only further the perception that this is a White House that attacks its friends, but not its enemies. Read More......

Perino: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term"

Other than...

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Obama's decision-making process. Deliberative, or overly compromising?

The Washington Post has an interesting story today about President Obama's decision-making process. Ignore the quotes from the Republicans - they're in this game for politics, not offering any kind of honest criticism.

Liberals have zinged him as being too cautious, too much of a compromiser. Some of his supporters would like to see him show more fire in the belly and recapture the energy that propelled him to victory last year.

"I think the Obama we've seen as president is a very different Obama than we saw during the campaign. He doesn't seem to be connected, he doesn't seem to have the passion, he doesn't seem to be conveying the grand and inspiring vision," says the progressive historian Allan Lichtman of American University. "If you want to be a transformational president, you've got to take the risks."

Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, says Obama has suffered from unrealistic expectations among those who put him in office. "They kind of were sold Utopia, and they bought it, and it didn't happen," he says. "People were comparing the candidate to Abraham Lincoln before he served a day of his presidency. Nobody can live up to that."

I agree with the first two grafs. The third is ill-informed. No one has criticized Obama for not being Lincoln. (Though I will say, don't run on being a larger than life figure who promises larger than life change unless you plan to deliver.) A lot of the criticism of this president has been over his willingness to cave on a promise at the drop of a hat, even when he holds some pretty damn good cards. Or, on gay rights issues, among others, to watch the Obama administration actually harm the community by, for example, defending anti-gay laws in court.

This is about far more than simply whether Barack Obama is Abraham Lincoln in his first year. And its rather disingenuous, or at the very least uninformed, to suggest it is. A lot of Democrats are not pleased. And their grievances are real, and merited.

(The British defense secretary doesn't seem particularly impressed either.) Read More......

Krugman says the economy's outlook is "extremely grim"

And he worries that people are now complacent since we're in a "recovery" from the recession. A recovery, Krugman notes, that will still have the unemployment rate above 8% in 2012.

Why is this considered OK, as opposed to desperately requiring action? Bear in mind that the predicted unemployment rate in 2012 — 2012! — is higher than the rate that let Bill Clinton run on “it’s the economy, stupid”.

Unfortunately, the Democrats failed to brand the Republicans as wasteful spenders during Bush's 8-year disastrous reign - something the Republicans did to the Democrats in less than a year since Obama became President. So now we have no money for a very rainy day, and at the same time, Democrats were afraid, and remain afraid, of passing the kind of stimulus that's really needed. Hell, the Dems even let the Republicans brand the stimulus as failed and not creating a single job. So good luck passing a second.

Where do we find these people? Read More......

Pelosi on Iraq: "Can we afford this war?"

Strong words from Speaker Pelosi about Afghanistan:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Tuesday that every dollar President Obama decides to spend on the war in Afghanistan is one less that's available to help bring about an economic recovery, improve the jobs situation and bank away political capital for Democrats leading up to the midterm elections.

"I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on," Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday on a conference call with financial reporters and economists who blog. "There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?"

Pelosi qualified her remarks by noting that cost is not the top concern. "I think the American people believe that if it's something that's in our national security interest," she said, then the investment is worth it.

At some point, the cost of the war to the country, monetarily, and the damage that cost could cause, has to factor into any analysis of our national security interest. The Soviets thought it was in their national security interest to keep up with Reagan's defense spending in the 80s. But the monetary cost eventually caught up with them. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

A very unhappy wonderdog.



I'm back in Chicago for Thanksgiving. Carmela was joyful, as always, to see me. Though, it seems my presence, in addition to making her run around the house with glee, also sparks a strange desire to growl at the fireplace, the front door, and the door to the TV room (supposedly, she only does this when me or my dad are around). It's actually a bit, well, crazy. Otherwise, she's a great dog. During the bath I did notice the smell of skunk. My sister Kathy informed me that Carmela had been skunked a good 4+ months ago. Still stinks. I'm actually quite amazed - had no idea it could last that long.

Anyway, one day to Thanksgiving. We're having it at mom's, as usual. Just the immediate family this year. And they're even talking of some snow here on Thanksgiving day. That would be very cool. Read More......

German Robin Hood receives suspended sentence

No, no, no. She's doing it all wrong. The average person on the street is supposed to bailout and fund exclusive lifestyles for the rich like we do in America. Heck, some will even talk about you as the savior of the economy if you do that.

The 62-year-old branch head of one German bank was hailed as a hero after she confessed to transferring money from rich customers to help her poorer clients. Already, she has been dubbed "Die Robin Hood Bankerin".

She was given a 22-month suspended sentence after moving more than €7.6m (£6.9m) in 117 transfers between 2003 and 2005. The court in Bonn was told that the employee, who has not been named, took no money for herself.

"The accused hasn't put one cent in her own pocket. She did it purely out of sympathy with people who were suffering financially," the woman's lawyer, Thomas Ohm, said. She was a "good samaritan" with a "Mother Courage" nature, referencing the Brecht character who believes she can do good in a bad world. The employee was accused of allowing overdrafts for customers who would not normally qualify for them. She then used the money from richer customers to temporarily disguise the loans during the bank's monthly audit of overdrafts.

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Bush wanted to invade Iraq even before he was elected

Wouldn't it make sense for the US to also schedule a serious inquiry into the Iraq war? It's even more obvious that the Bush administration had early plans to invade Iraq and simply manufactured problems to trigger the invasion. Then PM Tony Blair initially rejected the idea because it was unlawful, though he eventually folded. The Guardian:

Evidence given at the opening day of the inquiry, chaired by the former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot, painted a picture of a Whitehall slowly realising the significance of George Bush's election in November 2000 on US policy towards Iraq.

Even before Bush's administration came to power an article written by his then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, warned that "nothing will change" in Iraq until Saddam was gone, Sir Peter Ricketts, a former chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and now the Foreign Office's top official, told the inquiry.

"We were aware of these drumbeats from Washington and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that part of the spectrum," added Sir William Patey, then head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office.

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