Teddy!

PS — Comments about the current primary are out of place in this thread. Yeah, I know it’s late nite, but let’s have some non-pie, non-poo fun. Cast our minds forward and measure the next Presidency for its first Accountability Moment. There will be plenty of time for primary talk elsewhere.

in case anyone missed this at the end of teddy’s post…

And a Congress that does its job as well.

*waving* hey teddy – gee, 2012 – i had not really thought much beyond the first part of 2009.

Looks like my campaign platform (minus the federal level stuff).

dugg ya teddy

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, war profiteering.”

Truer today, Teddy, than when FDR uttered them in 1936…! 8-(

There probably won’t be much recognizable as the USA by 2012.

The economy is going to be in depression, there will a continuing energy crisis and we will probably have has some sort of military coup staged when the congress decides that the gig is up for the MIC. The USA will be broke by then and the dollar worthless.

Things might be very interesting in ways you can’t even or don’t want to imagine.

Oh goodie. The right did it.

Teddy- great post, and I agree with your list. 100% 150% 200% 2012%

Let me say it again. A great, great post.

Hey!

Pach’s post about accountability got me to thinking about 2012 — what will I hold the President accountable for then?

Evening Teddy,

Corporate law has to be rewritten, a corporation is not an individual.

The media has to be broken up, the FCC has a herculean task in front of it.

Wonderful thread, thank you.

Kinda scary, isn’t it? Krugman’s got me really scared; I’m reading his book, where I found this FDR quote.

Hiya VG! Thank you, ma’m.

But the Democrats will get the blame if we’re not careful!

You go, Teddy.

how much do we hold the incumbant in 2012 accountable for that which was created prior to 2009? it took FDR more than 4 years to get us back on track from the last depression.

I don’t see how “they” can prevent the coming economic unravelling. The old fed tricks don’t cut it. They don’t have the tools to solve this one.

Teddy, you nailed just about everything I want. Too add to your list, I’d put Restore Habeas Corpus and Ban Torture on the list, too.

For Project Runway fans, Christian Siriano will chatz at the WaPo0 tomorrow at 11am eastern

Man up, dude.

How will the dems get blamed?

The collapse of the USA will be the result of the economy completely tanking.

But the dems will be ineffectual in doing anything about it.

Our economy was destroyed when we offshored our manufacturing base and turned into a service and financially based economy.

Dropping interest rates or flooding money into the economy is like giving wine to a alchie.

evening Teddy.

not sure i am entirely ready to start thinking about 2012 just yet

How about “If credit card companies can still charge usurious interest rates?” Now they can apparently, on a whim, jack your interest rate to 30%. (Disclaimer — I use one card and pay it off every month, so I’ve only heard about this. But the people I’ve heard about it from are in some SERIOUS hurt.)

I know, I was just catching up on Krugman, a little earlier…

And the problem now becomes obvious. This is now the third time Ben & co. have tried slapping the market in the face — and panic keeps coming back. So maybe the markets aren’t hysterical — maybe they’re just facing reality. And in that case the markets don’t need a slap in the face, they need more fundamental treatment — and maybe triage.

That kid is a hoot.

What a list! That looks the product of a lot of good thinking.

But the Democrats will get the blame if we’re not careful!

That’s been the plan all along. That’s why so many cans are being kicked down so many roads…

could we have free and fair elections too- or is that just way over the top?

I want a president who will wear tie-dye lapel pins. /s

Off Topic Post.

So I’m watching KARE-11 News, the NBC affiliate here in Minneapolis, and they run a story about the Chinese government claiming to have conducted a raid and foiled a terrorist plot against the Summer Olympics. Fine, whatever.

But after showing stock footage of Chinese pedestrians, the arena, and uniformed Chinese officials at a press conference, they showed footage of Islamic people praying in a mosque.

NO mention was made of any possible connection to Islamic organizations. They simply ran a story about a possible terrorist attack in Beijing, and decided to accompany it with footage of men in turbans praying in a mosque.

I called 763-793-1111 and left an angry message. They haven’t yet put the story on their website (and they may not) but if they do I’ll post a link to it.

Appalling.

The occupations must end in Iraq & Afghanistan and we must finally become honest brokers wrt Israel/Palestine. We must pay reparations to those we have harmed and rebuild infrastructure that we have destroyed.

We must acknowlege all of our gross errors and lack of adherence to the Geneva Conventions and International Law and become full members of the ICC.

We must work honestly to denuclearize the world, starting right here at home.

The democrats deserve blame. They are complicit and have the same policies as the republican corporatists.

Excellent, though I think the “financial services” landscape will be fundamentally different by 2012. I’m not even sure there will be credit cards by then.

I don’t want any D president to fund charter schools, indirectly or otherwise.

Frabkly, at this point I would prefer to see the collapse of both parties and a new constitutional convention and get rid of the political system we have.

We need a parliamentary system perhaps and not just two parties which are more alike than different.

We need a revolution. Ask Tom Paine.

more here

including this:

Although China has not been a major target of international terrorist groups, a small separatist group that collaborates with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement has staged bombings in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The Chinese and U.S. governments as well as the United Nations have labeled the East Turkestan group a terrorist organization. East Turkestan is another name for Xinjiang.

Uighurs, who are Muslim, make up the largest ethnic group in oil-rich Xinjiang, home to about 20 million people. Human rights activists say the Chinese have repressed the Uighurs, central Asians whose culture and ethnicity are different from China’s Han majority.

More muslims living atop other peoples’ oil. Whodathunkit?

We need to get our assses out of the rest of the world and stop flooding it with weapons for a start.

I have no problem with this list. I hope that whomever is elected in our name THIS time has no problem with it either.

Thanks for posting this. It is excellent.

that is a bit too far out (2012) to ponder. there is much to de undone. i’m a wee bit more concerned with the present and the immediate future so on that note, i’ll just sit back and read

I don’t see how “they” can prevent the coming economic unravelling. The old fed tricks don’t cut it. They don’t have the tools to solve this one.

The next President is going to land in deep shit with no way out. A broken economy, no money, and enough Repulican’s and Blue Dogs in Congress to obstruct economic change..it isn’t going to be pretty.

the wapoo article is going in the news box next teddy

That’s a pretty good list. But I’d add a couple things and they won’t be popular. But I’ve never been a popular guy.

If you have one kid, you get one tax deduction. If you have two, you get two. If you have three, you get one. If you have four, you get zero. If you have five, you lose your personal deduction. If you you have five, both parents, together or not, lose their personal tax deduction.

If you have more than one child and you’re on welfare, you lose it. We have to begin to stop the sense of entitlement that exists on the part of parents. Not to mention it’s absolutely ludicrous to call yourself “green” if you have more than two kids.

The greenest thing anyone can do is not have kids.

The sense of entitlement has to stop.

non-pie, non-poo fun.

OK I am confused.

Re: #3. If the Unitary Executive still exists…
This is really not something the president can restore, in my opinion.
Congress needs to restore it.
The president could cut down on all the presidential directives and secretive stuff- but when the next prez came around, s/he could revert it back.
This is the huge problem. Congress needed to follow through and challenge the unitary exec or it stands whether it is exercised by the next prez or not.

Oil addiction grew out of the industrial age and the belief that it was a limitless resource and we could take it from wherever it was by passing out some bakshesh.

These are all good steps I’d like to see the next President take. Will you hold the next occupant of the Oval Office accountable for all of these? Will you support a challenger if all these are not accomplished, or even started, by 2012?

I’m trying to see where my own wishlist ends and accountability begins.

i’d add human trafficking as well

From Krugman’s Mar. 7th post…

Geithner(NY Fed President) then goes on to describe the policy measures being taken. And here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s just me, the actions sound trivial compared with the problem. He more or less admits that credit markets are worsening faster than the Fed can cut rates, so that money is effectively getting more expensive, not cheaper; the other measures he describes sound minor. Rearranging deck chairs — that may be too strong, but it’s pretty unreassuring.

So what should be done? I’m not sure (and I’m thinking about it, hard.) For now, I’d just say that this is really, really scary.

Pretty ominous…! 8-(

Linky, for those who haven’t seen it…

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

I look forward to the State of the Union address in 2009. (Will the new president give one?) We need to pay careful attention to that, and see if the new president is honest. The state of the union then will be more abysmal than now. We need to hear what the president says s/he will do to right the ship. If anything is missing, we need to shout it out. If not, we need to hold the new president to task.

I’m not thinking it is possible to fix this mess in four years, but we need to be on course.

You are welcome, and thanks.

I suspect there will be a “military” coup in the States. Bush already laid the groundwork for it to happen.

it will be the captains of industry and the media along with the MIC who will run the show.

Bye bye constitution.

I agree with everything, but who can we get? We would have to start picking now I’m for Feingold. How do we convince our President to leave without helping the GOP?
Also its hard to think about us netroots people failing to influence the process after we have worked so hard.

Seconded!

Good point. I used a credit card check once, and got a statement showing 35% interest. Fortunately, I was able to pay it off the same month, so I didn’t have to pay the rate, but I could not believe it. I wrote Feinstein about it, but no reply…

The economy is in free fall for all intents and purposes. The USA will cease to exist as we knew it a less than 3 years.

I too am concerned with the present, but I don’t want our party’s incumbent to be startled by a primary challenge in 2012. I want to say, right now, what will prompt that challenge. It’s only fair.

It’s kind of my honey-do list to be left on the HMS Resolute desk on 1.20.09.

TO: Teh President
FROM: Progressive Democrats

.
.
.
.

She’s probably pleased about the interest rate.

If a Democrat wins the White House this year, I would be extremely unlikely to support defeating him or her in the primary for 2012. I would really have to be convinced that that path is better than trying to force progressive change on him or her through the Congress.

Just being honest here! Don’t yell at me. :)

The democrats deserve blame. They are complicit and have the same policies as the republican corporatists

Exactly right..which cracks me up about the polarization in the Dem Party. If you look at the consultants, advisors, and hangers-on, with the candidates, it’s the same old players..every four years they just re-shuffle the deck, using the same cards.

How many months can we go with jobs bleeding in the hundreds of thousands?

We must be well on our way to a balanced budget, including allowing bush-era tax cuts to wither away.
We must have a more balanced trading arena and begin the restoration of american manufacturing. The USAF tanker is a good place to start.

Will you support a challenger if all these are not accomplished, or even started, by 2012?

yes.

If these things are not even started by 2012, we won’t have our country any more.

(it’s hard enough to recognize it now!!!)

Imagine when the dem congress tries to get at the “wealth” that the top 1% have stashed away. You think they are going to ante up to “save america”? Hell no… they will have long gone.

But that goes against the scripture.

Excellent.

What’s on your list, then? What will you hold our next President accountable for? Is there nothing our next President can do to disappoint you?

Because if that’s the case….

{not yelling}

Good point
Nore and better preogressive congresscritters in 2008 – 2010 and 2012.

Things I absolutely expect to see from the next President are:
Qualified, competent Bench and Departmental appointments.
A Secretary of State who understands more than one other country.

The US economy is one vast credit bubble. 99% of the people owe money… house, cars, consumer debt.

That was the capitalist’s dream… extend credit to stimulate production. hahahahaha

That’s true. But I’m worried that since impeachment is off the table, this may be impossible. Can they write laws that simply reinforce what the Constitution says?

Social Security. I just want someone to tell me what the plan is. Just mention it.

Restrictions on capital flight need to be put in place immediately, imo.

Oh, I’m not criticizing at all. It is a thoughtful post, only that there are so many things looming in front of us (on the local, national and international front) that I can’t project that far. I worry about the finanical crisis that is real (right now and in the immediate future) I worry about human trafficking and slavery (sex and focred labor) that is occuring right in fromt of us with barely an outcry being heard for all these women, men and children. I could go on and on, but this is the roadblock that prevents me from looking too far forward and instead kind of go from day to day.

The wars will end because there will be no more money for them. The federal government will be so broke and printing more money only makes for insane inflation and it will have less and less value.

Slam the barn doors after the horses are gone eh?

All the wealth of the nation is offshore already.

The USAF tanker is a good place to start.

Who can tell what that is about. The original Boeing deal was a scam with the Airforce leasing the tankers for 10 years..(the leasing cost was more then the cost of the planes) and then Boeing got the plans back with the airforce having the option to buy back at full price.

The new deal will use Airbus airframes and the planes will be built in the US. How much US total content, who knows…how much US content in a Boeing aircraft..who knows. Both deals are probably dirty and screw the taxpayer.

Well, that one’s easy. If we tax (!) people’s income above $250,000 a year for payroll taxes, the system lasts until infinity. Create a doughnut hole between the current cap and 250, then start taxing again.

One thing is that whoever is president (democrat) will have to be honest to the american people about just how fucked up everything is and that we ALL are going to have to make sacrifices and that it will take time to repair the damaged inflicted by the last administration. If the president keeps talking to us about where we are, what is required, etc., we will get through it

Heh, in Dubai…!

ThatGuy @ 42, I assume that abortion is available in this world you describe? And emergency contraception?

did my comment go to moderation??

Why do we even need these damn tankers? To refuel fight jets we don’t need?

Hard refresh, TexBetsy. It is there.

Good Evening everyone…… they say it will be in the 80’s week…. the wildflowers are popping out all over…

Ah. This is what Pach meant to post yesterday that everybody found so confusing. At least this one is clear about what’s wanted.

I’m with RobZuber. The Presidency is the least accountable elected office in our current system. Resources spent trying to defeat the president in a primary could be more effectively used to win a dozen congressional primaries, and would have more effect on advancing the movement.

I’m already kinda p-oed at how much attention the presidentials are getting when we could be looking at 60 senate seats.

Look, with the president, you get what you get. There are no pressure points. You can’t use money, because the president has effectively unlimited resources for a campaign, and you shoot yourself in the foot if you run a primary opponent or, worse, a third party candidate.

So, no, there’s nothing the president can do that will lead me to take action to hold him accountable, other than through legislative action and pressure.

thank you lurking mod!

teddy – i’ll support any primary challenger who appears (to me) to be better than the incumbent. i’m not making a list because i’m not giving up my right to choose a better candidate – no matter how good the incumbent it. i think that’s just nuts.

My number one is court appointments, especially SCOTUS. If the next dem pres. appoints wishy washy middle of the road equivocators just be cause he or she thinks they need to in order to get the votes then screw em, find someone who will appoint a librul justice!

Fair question.

I have difficulty answering this because I dislike the modern view of the President as a “Supreme Legislator”. I view the Congress as the primary motivator for many of the issues you list out here.

I would probably need to see major abuse of the power of the Executive (something like vetoing a restoration of habeas corpus). But then I might actually favor impeachment over a primary challenge, depending on the timing.

I have great difficulty seeing myself supporting a primary challenge based on policy differences, even big ones. The President would have to be near Nixonian levels of corruption for me to go there.

Sure, do away with the Air Force entirely…! The current KC-135’s, the mainstay of the tanker fleet are 40+ years old, they’re old and very tired…

Teddy, if we promise not to throw it at each other or the walls or the mod tower, can we have this kind of pie?

“…Cassandra’s story is very old: she was cursed that she would always tell the truth and never be believed. But it is also a very modern story and, perhaps, the quintessential Cassandras of our age are the group of scientists who prepared and published in 1972 the book titled “The Limits to Growth”. With its scenarios of civilization collapse, the book shocked the world perhaps more than Cassandra had shocked her fellow Trojan citizens when she had predicted the fall of their city to the Achaeans. Just as Cassandra was not believed, so it was for the “Limits to Growth” which, today, is still widely seen as a thoroughly flawed study, wrong all along. This opinion is based only on lies and distortions but, apparently, Cassandra’s curse is still alive and well in our times….”

Great Post. We need to focus on the big picture and long term. The very reactionary segment of US corporate and personal wealth that backs the gang of criminals and nutcases that have taken over the GOP, they always focuses on the big picture and very long terms. Therefore we must focus likewise. Below are my comments:

9. If FDR’s words have not been returned to a rightful place in our national discourse.

This #9 should be at the top. It is number one in my book -building a new big-tent grass-roots people powered New New/Fair Deal coalition. Paraphrasing John Maynard Keynes -ideas are far more powerful than vested interests (prime example: the defeat of the attempted Bush social security swindle). In my opinion, the political, social and economic ideas and philosophies supporting the Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenshower/Kennedy/Johnson post-WWII consensus have were allowed to atrophy. Therefore, even though this political and economic consensus delivered the highest per capita economic growth rates in US history, and an unparalleled rise to world power, the citizens who benefited from this consensus lost interest, and faith in it.

Many of the ideas behind the New/Fair Deal consensus were challenged by new conservative ideas, many of them from new theoretical developments in economic and political philosophy -and, to be honest, a couple of major economic and geo-political boo-boos by Johnson. A few (very few, as it is now becoming clear) of the conservative critiques were justified, in my opinion, but they were co-opted by truly retrograde reactionaries, and turned into a gigantic fraud and swindle perpatrated on the US population. The reactionaries managed to display their total dishonesty, incompetence and rank stupidity and emptiness into the total 100% failure of Biblical proportions on all fronts we see today. But their fraudulent and dishonest intellectual arguments and emotional fear and resentment mongering still dominate the national discussion.

Many of the leaders of the Democratic remain intellectually bankrupt (like Reid, Emmanuel, Hoyer, Feinstein and their ilk) and whether wittingly or through their ineptitude, cowardice and lack of ideas, or corruption, are positively aiding the reactionary cause. Unfortunately I think HRC and Obama both still have many ties to this tired old broken down machine.

I think the ability to start laying the foundation of a new rationale for social and economic democracy that will register with the voters is the number one priority. And turning it into a reality in terms of a new movement of grass-roots political organizing. If the next Democratic president cannot lay the foundations for that new movement, then they have failed.

Some comments on the others:
1. If US troops are still dying in the Middle East.
2. If the current health care mess still prevails
3. If the Unitary Executive still exists
4. If our current energy and environmental situation is unchanged
5. If Bush Era lawbreakers, philosophers, and profiteers roam free.
7. If the Federal Government still protects corporations from citizens, instead of the other way round.
8. If campaigns for federal office are still privately funded.

The president has the bully pulpit on these, but pressure and action from a new more progressive and much more aggressive Congress needed for effective action on 1-4, 5, 7 and 8.

That is why I am more excited about Donna Edwards and Foster wins than whether HRC or Obama get the nomination.

Go more progressive and much more aggressive congress in 09!

The wars will end because there will be no more money for them. The federal government will be so broke and printing more money only makes for insane inflation and it will have less and less value

We are already there..the question now is, how long will foreign govts be willing to keep getting screwed with the falling dollar. I think it was last week that the Gulf States that have been propping up CitiGroup said that they don’t have the resources to save the company. If the largest bank in the US goes broke..the shit will really hit the fan.

hahahahaha i’ll take some of that pie.. yummy

I’m already kinda p-oed at how much attention the presidentials are getting when we could be looking at 60 senate seats

and i’m already kinda p-oed at how much attention the presidentials are getting when we could be learning how to do congressional oversight. because while we’ve improved by several fold over the past couple of years, we still suck badly at doing accountability. mostly, i think, because the process is so opaque.

You mean if we elected a Democrat and then troops were still dying in Iraq in 2012, you’d sign up for the Committee to Re-Elect? Really?

I think that gives away a tremendous amount of our power as a progressive movement.

I wuld re think the entire national security state concept.

Why DO we have such a huge military with nuke subs and carrier groups and billion dollar a piece fighter jets and $2-4 billion bombers? Isn’t that total madness?

How about our nuclear tipped missiles numbering 6000?

hi katy!

Actually, I guess I need to add an item, which should go below the new #1 (or, Teddy SF’s old #9).

#2: Continue, expand and intensify the 50 state strategy. A strong robust, grass-roots Democratic organization working to elect home-grown progressives at local and state levels every election cycle.

If the next Democratic president uses influence to weaken or kill the 50 state strategy, then, they are not working for long term good of the country, and they need to be opposed.

mmmm key lime mmmmmm

Maybe I’m more of a pessimist about what the state of the US economy is going to be in 2009. I think that it will be a Herculean task just to maintain Social Security and the health benefits people have now in the coming Depression. I think that a President could restore the Constitution, close Gitmo, withdraw troops from Iraq, begin investigations and criminal prosecutions of criminal acts perpetrated by Bush and his cronies. But a major overhaul of the healthcare accomplished by the first term AND a “Manhattan Project” from Green Energy? Other than tax incentives for the latter…where’s the money going to come from in a depression? I think that there will soon be millions of working people living on the streets…with vast tracts of suburbs lying empty. That will result in a “squatters movement” and initially, at least, battles between “private security” sent to flush people out of bank-owned homes. Houses will be set on fire. People will die. Food and fuel prices will continue to escalate…more and more will need gov’t supplied food and crowd onto public transport. Businessmen will ride to work on bikes.

The Depression itself will serve, however, as a means of restructuring the economy so that future corrupt acts might be more difficult. Consolidation of media outlets could be curbed, and the larger ones compelled to break up. And if the President could help craft legislation that would restrict the impact of lobybists, and make changes in campaign financing (without the Supremes declaring it unconstitutional) then that would be a real victory. It will be fought in Congress, as well.

I wouldn’t push or support a third-party or primary challenger if there was substantial movement toward most of these goals, or if through some miracle a system of universal healthcare was passed.

I think Citibank is basically on life support. But once a few banks fold up, the rest collapse and it’s madness.

You’ve covered it well Teddy. MY little input here, I’d like to see some kind of solution to the hate wing media, and some authenticity and ethics mandated in MSM. We have GOT to clean up the media in this country. It’s getting so bad that I more often go to overseas sources on the net.

Thanks for this post. And I’m IN whenever I can be, in ANY No Poo Zones here and elsewhere.
Pax

Hey! Save some of it for me!

it was either that or serving you SOS, and i figured you wouldn’t want poo for dinner.

i saved the cherry pie for you!

Perhaps one of our goals might be to create a rational military policy and instrument, one that reflects a ralistic strategic vision of where our likely adversaries will be. The next threat is not going to be Soviet tank brigades through the Fulda Gap. It will be more likely small other-then-national and non-conventional.
Overwhelming air supremacy is still a good thing, though. The current role of ground troops has changed from being those who take ground after clearing the enemy. Now they are the ones who located the enemy and stand back to call in air assets to remove obstacles. Still a very dagerous mission, but since artillery has been replaced as the king of battles by airpower, the Army is less the center it once was.

Read the Long Emergency by Kunstler. He has it pegged.

Out of the loop for a week and I find pooh flinging warnings both here and on my progressive radio station….

Question…. should I be glad that I missed it?

its every woman for herself when it comes to pie, christine (laughing)

how’s ohio tonight? still digging out of all that snow?

Why DO we have such a huge military…?

Good question! Nuke disarmament and beating swords into plowshares is an awesome goal! We certainly don’t need the behemoth we have now…!

spew!!! snarky tonight tex :)

welcome back katymine

Also, not sure trials on convictions are best medicine for abuses and corruption of Cheney/Bush crimes in every case.

Most important it to hold public hearings and investigations so truth is known to public. I think the old rule that sunlight is the best disinfectant is a good rule here.

After the record is set straight, and national mood regarding the seriousness of crimes is known, then criminal proceedings, or impeachments of former office holders warranted for the worst offenses.

First priority is to make sure public knows the truth, so reactionaries are poltically discredited for a long time.

James Howard Kuntsler said this:

Whoever wins on November 5 will wake up to preside over a different America than the schematic one he was debating about during the primaries and the election. The long campaign will beat a path straight into the long emergency. The new president will inherit a wrecked banking system, an economy in freefall, a wobbling world oil market, and an American public extremely ticked off by its startling, sudden impoverishment. (This is apart from whatever melodramas spool out on the geopolitical scene.)
The president-elect will quickly realize that the number one problem is not that Americans can’t afford health care — it’s that they can’t afford anything, because their income is evaporating in terms of both lost jobs and a dollar that is racing toward worthlessness. They’ll be hard put to pay for food and gasoline, nevermind Grandma’s emphysema treatments. They will be walking away from home ownership — or yanked kicking and screaming by default-and-repo — and any government scheme devised to abridge their mortgage contracts will only undermine basic contract law that has made mortgage lending a credible thing in the first place. And that too, of course, would redound straight to a real estate sector already in price free-fall, with no one willing or able to think about buying a house.
As Obama and McCain go at it through the next eight months, they will likely focus on our situation in Iraq. (Calling it a “war” now is imprecise.) As merely one commentator among thousands, I’m not satisfied that either one of the contenders has defined his position on this coherently. Obama is disposed to get the US military out of there as quickly as possible. He’s right that the sheer awful cost of the adventure is one big factor in wrecking US finances while it erodes our standing in the world. But with our Iraq garrison shut down, he’d better be prepared for a further breakdown in Middle East stability and the oil markets that depend on it — meaning, the basis of American life for four generations, dependable oil imports, will sharply end. That would accelerate the disorderly abandonment of our massive misinvestment in suburban living, and also ramp up the anger and resentment of the public grieving over its lost entitlements.
McCain’s contrasting hundred-year plan does not take into account the severe impoverishment and exhaustion of the military itself, not to mention the overall purpose of the adventure — to keep suburban life and all its accessories running in the homeland — which is an exercise in futility under any terms. McCain would have to confront the terrible paradoxes of the war, namely that thousands of legs have been blown off for the sake of WalMart, which company will be hemorrhaging customers anyway, as incomes wilt, at the same time that WalMart’s own operating system — the “warehouse on wheels” — surrenders to the reality of five or six dollar-a-gallon diesel fuel. In any case, the implosion of the US economy during the next eight months will overshadow whatever we decide to do in Iraq, and that cratering will be laid directly at the feet of the Republican party. If the party survives that, which I doubt, it would a long time before anybody trusted it again.
Whoever wakes up as the next president on November 5 will have to preside over the comprehensive reorganization of American life. The big question is whether he can persuade the public to let go of its sunk costs, and all the sheer stuff that represents, and move ahead in a unified way that doesn’t end up tearing the nation apart. The danger is that the public will want to mount a kind of last stand effort to defend a way of life that has no future under any circumstances, and they will ask the president to lead that last stand.
To avoid that deadly outcome, the new president will have to be equipped with a realistic vision of what this society can actually do to survive the discontinuities that circumstances present. This will require him to confront the prevailing delusion that the US can become “energy independent” in the sense that we can run WalMart on something other than oil from foreign lands. The new president would have to carefully restate American expectations and goals — for instance, not to keep all the cars running at all costs, but to get us living in places where driving is not mandatory. I’m concerned that the American people will hate the new president if he tells them the truth: that an old way of life is over and a new one has to begin now. We’re about to find out how much “change” the public can really stand.

~~~ModNote: In the future, please insert the first paragraph or 2 and link to the rest of a comment that runs this long. Thanks.~~~

i am on vacation all week and child-free till wednesday

Agreed but we also have to make sure that none of those crooks can ever serve in public office again. I hope we’ve learned that lesson the past several years

It’s become even more so under bushco and his congressional enablers cloaked under the omnipresent and deceptive guise of “national security”– but hey, Roger Clemons might get into trouble for lying to Congress…

so many critters never even read the legislation… and then crud is “slipped” into the legislation in the dark of night so we, the people, are NOT represented.

Oh and Teddy– the next President must stop this illegal spying and all other grievous violations of our privacy.

Betsy, awesome cherry pie! Suzanne, you would not believe yesterday — the blizzard just went on and on. I still haven’t cleared the driveway, Mr. CE is stuck in Newark, no path to the garage. It took me 30 minutes to clear the back steps so I could open the door…there is a photo in the Sunday PD of seven of my neighbors pushing a public bus down the street — ON THEIR KNEES!

Yeah, I know. I never did follow scripts very well.

of course not.

but that doesn’t mean that replacing the president is going to be my number one priority either.

JFC! – we can’t even do the most basic accountability of our current incumbents, the past year has taught us that – and you want to plan for 4 years from now?

i think we have a major disconnect here… do we even understand how much we suck at oversight? how are we going to hold our elected officials (any of them!) accountable if they are able to get away with murder (figuratively and sometime literally) and we have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT IS GOING ON?

teddy – this isn’t directed at you, because i think you are heads and shoulders above most of us on having a fucking clue. what i’m trying to address is the blogosphere in general. we have a lot of self education to do, and it scares the shit out of me that we don’t seem to recognize that.

somewhere in my list is fixing the media….. I really miss the news… anyone remember real news? Not fluffy stories about some silly thing but in depth reporting about an issue, investigations, media that is fair is liberal because you look at the issues from all sides when you think like a liberal.

Pretty good list Teddy -

But what if:

1. We’re out of Iraq, but US troops are dying somewhere else in the middle east (the potential for a new conflagration is high). And I’m not talking about Iran.

2. The new President risks personal political capital in the fight for health care changes but is obstructed in enacting them (through the influence of the insurance lobby) by congress.

3. This one I grant you outright – no exceptions!

4. Off the ground meaning what? carbon cap and trade? carbon tax? alternative energy programs? carbon sequestration? What if legislation is passed but there is little or no visible progress towards goals?

5. The problems at the justice department are resolved (i.e. de-politicised), but the primary actors in our current farce are not successfully prosecuted. What if the focus is on correcting the problems for the future rather than punishing the evil-doers from the past? (imagine a US version of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission).

6.Gitmo closed is also an absolute! What if Bin Laden isn’t caught, and new attacks require some response. Would a shift in focus to a law-enforcement-based approach from a pre-emptive, imperial mititary one suffice?

7. What if progress is made on all the fronts you identify, but takes longer than expected to re-popuate goverment regulatory agencies with competent and comitted workers (many, many of whom have fled from the hacks that were appointed as their bosses under Bush)

8. What if the worst excesses of campaign finance are eliminated (i.e. the overwhelming power of corporate money and lobbyists) but other forms of private financing are allowed? Deal-breaker in and of itself?

9. What if the new president is effective at reducing income and wealth disparity but doesn’t engage the rhetoric of class war as FDR did?

In sum, what if the new president made up ground in every area you have identified, but didn’t meet the standards you have set in individual cases as deal-breakers. What if he shows goood faith, acts consistently with his own values, but because of systemic inertia and active resistance from threatend special-interests, he doesn’t gain all the ground in a single term?

Do you throw him under the bus and look for another candidate? I agree in principle with everything you have identified, and for the most part even with the standards you have set. But it seems to me you’ve outlined an agenda that would be an astounding accomplishment for a three-term president – and completely impossible in 4 years. At what point do realism (of what’s actual possible) and principle meet?

a perfect night to be stuck inside reflecting on teddy’s questions

Slightly OT: Democrats must force a vote to override Bush’s veto of the ban on waterboarding, even though the override will fail. It is important to have on recrod the names of those senators who by their votes enabled this self-admitted war criminal to continue practicing his war crimes. There will come a day of reckoning, and that reckoning may should descend upon an entire political party.

You’d refuse? You’d start a third party candidacy? You’d terminate the movement over an issue, to make some kind of point?

There’s a very good chance there will still be troops in Iraq, that 50,000 soldier force, in 2012 under either Clinton or Obama.

So what would you do if there were?

Felony convictions and long stays “in the big house” (h/t KO) are the best insurance. Look where we’d be today if we’d convicted some Team B folks, or some Iran/Contrans.

Better off, that’s for sure.

Yes, and just so you know, I really do take them so seriously. I just read and read, and think and think. I admire those who can so spontaneously write so much, so quickly.

I think Citibank is basically on life support. But once a few banks fold up, the rest collapse and it’s madness.

History repeating…Another “Bank Holiday”.

I like your accountability 2012 platform teddy.

Makes the current election seem more palatable somehow.

p.s. looks like the digg comments might spark up a bit.

i became much more politically aware when i was without a car for almost a year. had lots of time to ponder questions.

Heh, Feith and Perle would’ve gone down with Cap Weinberger…!

“people are not” – missed the ‘not’ word.

And more from JHK:

The maneuvers that the big banks are making nowadays, along with their enablers at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere in Washington, really amount to little more than the old Polish blanket joke — in which (excuse my concision) the proverbial Polack wants to make his blanket longer, so he scissors twelve inches off the top and sews it onto the bottom. Only in this case, the banks are shearing x-billions of losses off the top of their blankets and re-attaching x-billions of new debt onto the bottom. This new debt, of course, goes to cover the old losses and only represents further losses-to-be-reported-later, since the banks are basically insolvent. Borrowing more money when you’re broke doesn’t make you less insolvent.
The banks can probably keep this gag running a little longer, but not without consequences. My guess is that it spins out of control in March sometime when some more hedge funds blow up and at least one big bank, perhaps Citi, rolls belly up like a harpooned whale. The game is really over, and all the playerz know it. The consequence of continuing to pretend the meta-fiasco of Ponzi endgame is fixable will be an even more shattering depression than the one we’re already in for.
We are a much poorer nation than we thought we were and the reality is just too hard to face. Nobody from the most august banker (Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) to the lowliest wanker (the WalMart inventory clerk who “bought” a house outside Phoenix with a no-money-down, payment-option, adjustable rate mortgage) can believe that this is happening. The candidates for president are pretty much assuming that vast financial resources will exist to be deployed against a range of problems. Everybody is going to be hugely disappointed.
When you introduce perversities into an economic system, they invariably end up expressing themselves as distortions. The economy that evolved the past two decades, driven by the perverse securitization of wishes and frauds, will now express itself in a stark cratering of American living standards. Incomes and jobs will vanish, massive quantities of stuff will collect dust on the WalMart shelves, the fragile infrastructures of daily life will go to shit, and there will be political hell to pay. Every attempt to avoid a straight-up workout of our massive losses, will represent another layer of perversity and more consequent destructive distortions.
I feel sorry for the next president. Even as he takes his oath of office, the nation will be flying apart like a seized-up engine. Since the fiasco in finance is happening in lock-step with Peak Oil (and very likely because of it at a fundamental level) we can expect one of the distortions to take the form of oil shortages. These shortages will come not just from demand bottlenecks in a stressed-out world oil allocation system, but because exporting nations will start demanding payment in Euros or something besides the depreciating currency that reflects our disintegration, and we’ll have a problem coming up with payments that amount to at least fifty percent more than we’re used to shelling out.
Once the US gets into serious difficulties with our oil supplies. every other sector of the economy wobbles, including especially the food-growing sector, which cannot function without copious amounts of diesel fuel and hydrocarbon-based soil “inputs.” Americans will go hungry, and not just the “underclasses.”
Along in this process somewhere, there is huge potential for armed conflict with other nations. If the unraveling gets traction while George W. Bush remains in charge, the US may answer bellicosity from oil-exporting nations, or energy-hungry rivals, with truculence of our own. Things can get out of control very fast in such a situation. Nations that were happily selling us salad shooters six months earlier may be targeting our naval vessels with a different sort of shooter, say a Sunburn missile. In any case, we will be acting with a bankrupt, exhausted, and over-extended military, and the best case outcome would leave us merely isolated and marooned geopolitically on our own continent, with dwindling energy and mineral resources and an angry, demoralized population.
This time around we have more to fear than fear itself. The banking executives, government officials, and candidates for president are not doing the nation a service by concealing and ignoring our losses. Finance, as the driver of an economy, is finished, but the deployment of capital is still an indispensable arm of a real economy. Sooner or later we’ll get back to money that stands for something and banks that function as credible repositories of wealth. But we haven’t even started down the path to that place, and the longer we pretend that we don’t have to go there, the worse the journey will be.

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I quoted Keynes above. Many of his innovations are standard operating procedure in macro-economic and macro-financial management today. Even the nincompoops like Bush think like Keynes now, almost as an automatic reaction. Those moves have probably already saved us from a huge financial panic and onset of depression.

I tend to be more optimistic than many about the economy. The US economy is very robust. It took two or three years of horrendously bad macro-economic and financial mismanagement to turn the financial panic of 1929 into the Grest Depression. If ware are lucky, we will only have to survive one year of horrendous mismanagement until January 2009.

If can elect a Democrat president and get a much stronger congress, then I think damage can be limited.

If get McSame McCain, we can only hope he is lying all the time about his new found love for Cheney/Bush economic policies. Since McSame McCain has already shown himself willing to lie through his teeth on national TV, that is our hope should McCain be elected -that he is damn liar when he talks about continuing Cheney/Bush economic policy. With the old 2000 McCain we could muddle through, though with much unnecessary pain.

If McSame McCain is not lying, if he will really continue Cheney/Bush policies, and he is next President, then we are in big big trouble.

Unless new Congress is progressive enough and aggressive enough to kick Presidential butt from Maine to Hawaii and back on a regular basis, and just tell the old fool what to do through passed legislation and veto overides.

Agreed but we also have to make sure that none of those crooks can ever serve in public office again. I hope we’ve learned that lesson the past several years

If they can be criminal indicted and convicted, then let it be so! But even if they can’t many of them should be impeached by Congress and prevented from ever entering the streets of Washington D.C. in the future. Post-hoc impeachment is authorized by the Constitution, and it has been acknowledged as an act that is legal by Congress when it impeached and nearly convicted the former Secretary of War of U.S. Grant for embezzlement and selling public offices. Secretary Bellknap resigned on the eve of the impeachment letters being issued by the House. But the House almost unanimously ruled that resignation could not evade impeachment. The Senate also voted to establish that the trial was legal and justified. Bellknap was acquitted, but many said they voted to acquit, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they felt it was a criminal matter.

Well, I don’t think you can hold electeds accountable without setting clear expectations. I think we as a progressive movement need to set clear expectations that sound like

“You will have a primary challenge in 2012 if….”

And, I respect your opinion, but if American troops are still dying in Iraq in 2012, then replacing the President as my party’s nominee will be my highest priority. Otherwise we will face armed insurrection, and a GOP/JCS coup d’etat.

You’re right. I thought I included impeachements of appropriate officials, whether currently in office or not. If I forget that one, sorry. That would be next most important before putting them on trial for jail time.

teddy-

I think that gives away a tremendous amount of our power as a progressive movement.

Pach was saying stuff like this too, but using confusing metaphors that I didn’t get.

I don’t know what power you think you’re giving away. Our moment to exercise our movement’s power was after the 06 election. If we had any power that we had tremendous fraction to give away, Bush and Cheney would have been in the dock and out of office by now.

We don’t even have the power to get the Congress to enforce its own subpoenas demanding people come in and lie to them for a few hours. I don’t know what this tremendous power is you’re talking about.

10. If Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is NOT impeached

JCS?

Suz, have you read “Drinking the Rain” by Kate Alix Schultz (?). It is a moving memoir about living in a cabin in Maine for a season, living on the sea, leaving New York, leaving a marriage, and remembering the feminist movement of the 70’s. I’ve been reading it for the second time this weekend.

Absolutely! Utterly, totally and completely.

I am probably the most pro-choice person in America. I believe life begins at birth and not one second before.

That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

HOWEVER, I would carry it FAR beyond abortion and emergency contraception. Mandatory sex education, mandatory “Baby Think It Over” programs, widespread publicity on the misery of unwanted children and their “parents.”

If you take away the incentive to have a gazillion kids, you have a start.

Obviously, this stuff will never EVER happen, the fundie idiots would scream bloody murder and even the “environmentalists” would scream bloody murder (even though not having kids is the greenest thing you can do). But if you want to start solving the world’s problems, think about how we can start to reduce the population of the world without resorting to mass murder, plague, famine or totalitarianism. If humans don’t stop breeding like rabbits, they’re doomed. I won’t live to see it at my age, but it’s going to happen, the way we’re going.

CT- yes, about the huge military.

I can’t claim to be an expert on this, but it strikes me that once a US military presence is established, even for good cause at the time (Germany e.g.) it never goes away. Why to we still have military bases in Germany? I really don’t know.

And, this is not quite the same, but I have a So Korean student in my Freshman seminar. She granted that there may have been good cause in the past to have US military presence in Korea, but that now So Koreans would rather have the US out of there, so that they can deal with it themselves.

First priority is to make sure public knows the truth

that’s what i’m trying to get at.

how many people in the progressive blogosphere know that extraordinary rendition (kidnapping people and taking to them to egypt to be tortured and/or killed) was taking place in the clinton administration?

how many of us know:

how many times was iraq bombed during the clinton administration?
how many iraqis died because of the clinton administration policies?
how many lies were we told by the clinton administration to justify bombing various places in the former yugoslavia?
that the bombing of serbia was a war crime?
how did the clinton’s neoliberal economic policies (via the imf, wto, gatt) undermine democracy, not just here at home but in the world at large (esp. in latin america and the former soviet union)?

JFC, i could go on and on… and i’m quite sure that the majority of us don’t know the answers to these questions. because we haven’t yet learned how to do oversight.

asking about the primary in 4 years is putting the cart before the horse.

i’ve not but i’m gonna add it to my wish list – sounds just up my alley (so to speak)

I can’t think of a way to more quickly marginalize the movement than to list out a list of the demands a president must face, or else we will mount a primary campaign. Did you not notice how our favorite candidates did in the nomination process? Who do think would write off his political career to be our candidate? Or are you thinking of running Winona LaDuke?

JCS=Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It won’t take 4 years to get most of this stuff done – all the new President has to do is
1) Renounce the previous way of doing business – and then stop doing business that way.
2) Surround themselves with like-minded cabinet officials and other advisors who believe in the same principles of open, transparent and accountable government.

The trials and prosecutions will take the whole time – but everything else can be accomplished the first day in office and then reinforced every day thereafter by a person who models the right kind of commitment.

The one I would add to the list is: If the appointed heads of the agencies of government are actually people who were selected because they have expertise and knowledge of the subject, are not former members of the industry they are supposed to be regulating, and were selected because they were “the BEST person for the job” regardless of politics and not as payback for campaign contributions.

Good night.

This is the sine qua non for me:

5. If Bush Era lawbreakers, philosophers, and profiteers roam free. Yup, I want some amazing televised show trials of attorneys who politicized the justice department, authorized torture, and invented the Fourth Branch. […] I want those who twisted intelligence and manipulated our media exposed and impeached. I want this question to ring loud throughout the land: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Federalist Society?” Without these cathartic events, any attempt at a “bygones” Presidency will draw a challenger, and I will support that challenger.

I want my country back! And, I want the monther fuckers who stole it brought to justice!

I am, of course, willing to compromise in a few areas — but am unprepared to show my hand just yet.

Good thoughts, all, though. With regard to systemic inertia, I do expect the next President to use the bully pulpit and the loud megaphone bestowed by the American people to make early and consistent headway on many, many fronts at once.

g’nite sandero

I’m with selise. You can’t end the hegemony project if people don’t know it’s going on. And that’s a legislative function.

We just don’t have that much power. We couldn’t even get a progressive candidate as the nominee. IMHO, we have to concentrate on Congress first, working from the bottom up. We can override vetoes.

sleep well sander O

I think the war crimes trial judge will want those names — House and Senate both.

I wonder, too, about our large presence in Japan, South Korea, and Germany. But, since these folks all need their jobs, perhaps they could be doing something constructive here at home. NOLA, anyone?

I have no idea what anyoen else has mentioned above, but i’d hope axing NCLB is one the table as well for things to be done.

That thing is ruining schools more than anything else, and schools are where the new talent is growing up. They cant’ do it in that environment. We need that new talent badly, too. The fact that at 30, i’m a bit of an exception to the usual grade of graduate is a bad thing. Most of my classmates aren’t curious and never were. It was trained out of them in pursuit of the social goals and much of the classroom environment. I hate to see exactly what the latest batch of HS graduates is like nowadays.

Teddy, You so often say exactly what is on my mind. I’ve loved having you as a front-pager!

Don’t lose me, I’m trying to keep up with the comments but not doing a very good job…

if American troops are still dying in Iraq in 2012, then replacing the President as my party’s nominee will be my highest priority. Otherwise we will face armed insurrection, and a GOP/JCS coup d’etat.

you know, i thought that about our dem congress too. and look at what a great job (not) we’ve done of holding them accountable.

i’m not saying i don’t want to – what i am saying is what you are describing sounds to me like planning to win the lottery. nice goal – put no way to make it anything but the longest of long shots.

how about we figure out how to do oversight and how we could actually have a chance to do what you are describing?

Joint Chiefs of Staff…!

Same here! Place is a blur tonight!

dying

And no third party.

there is a trail of progressive policies on this thread that you can easily follow and not get lost (wink)

A cartoon for late nite FDL’ers

And I haven’t even put a list out!

Prosecuting them is a slight by logical extension of the Yamashita standard of the doctrine of command responsibility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…..onsibility

i agree with the grassroots/netroots idea. It positive, constructive and is people based. People powered government in it best form. Active, open engagement of policy.

Joint Chiefs of Staff

i’m with jayackroyd on this.

After all the snow shoveling? Yes, you are right!

Our presence in Germany has shrank dramatically since I was there in ‘86-’88, we’ve brought many of the large units; 3rd ID, 1st Armored, 8th ID, 3rd Corps, amongst others, back state-side. Similarly in South Korea, but, only minor tinkering there…!

OK, agree with that.

For me the problem is setting specific metrics, projected through a filter of our current problems and issues. Imagine engaging this exercise in 2000 – what would we have established as our accountability list for Gore? And what correlation would that have had to the actual challenges that he would have faced in his 1st term?

My bottom line on accountability is this: a president who acts consistency in good faith, in concert with his stated principles, transparently, and with a modicum of political courage. Pretty simple list.

OK, Betsy, any Key Lime Pie left?

Personally, I don’t see either of our current candidates achieving #5, “bringing Bush Era lawbreakers, philosophers, and profiteers to juustice.” Clinton’s husband still has too much to answer for under this standard, and Obama is too dedicated to change accompanied by bipartisan harmony.

But, in 2012 I’ll face the same dilemma I face today: Do I really want to chance a Republican making the next SCOTUS appointment? My less than bold answer will likely again be “no way in hell.”

http://static.crooksandliars.c…..ernets.png

The people who wrote the Constitution knew about “people powered” governments..that why they put brakes on democracy. Why would “people power” turn out to be progressive and not Christian fundamentalist people power. Be careful what you wish for.

I’m ready to start helping push the impeachment meme into the next presidency.

We couldn’t get a progressive nominee in 2008.

In 2012, if American troops are still dying in the middle East, you don’t think we can get a challenger? After four more years of BlueAmerica, organizing online, Democracy for America, MoveOn.org? Two more full congressional cycles?

Do you really think the American people will sit still after another four years of American troops dying in Iraq? I don’t.

1. If US troops are still dying in the Middle East. This is absolute. If the new President hasn’t ended the occupation of Iraq, then I will support an intraparty challenger.

Seriously, I don’t think I can even wait until 2012 on this- that would be 5 more years in Iraq.
The 7+ years of GWB have been so depressing.
Like Sally Fields says, “I’ve only got this one lifetime to live.”

Yes, this is a great reminder about accountability. Thanks, TSF, I’ve loved your posts for quite a while. And yes Pach tried to get it rolling, but too many commenters misinterpreted. I love Obama, but if his “new politics” morphs into the same old, same old after he’s elected, I’m no longer a fan. I think we do have to realize that no campaigner can keep every single promise, but I also think it will be apparent how hard he or she (our next prez) is trying. Compromises WILL be made, but we need to keep a close eye on exactly how and why. Your list is excellent, and I think I’ll print it out to check off (or, regrettably, not) as they get taken care of.

Hey, I’m not one of the usual gang. Normally a lurker. Welcome me, would you? I’m listening to Talking Heads’ “True Stories,” Hey Now, Now. I am the king of the world. The boss of the boys and girls.

I love you all!

And I love your comments! *g*

I screwed up that should be:

i agree with the grassroots/netroots idea. It positive, constructive and is people based. People powered government in it best form. Active, open engagement of policy

One key like tart for everyone.

Teddy, your list covers it for me.

welcome indeed! i have found it to be my experience (and that of most of my fellow commenters) that having once de-lurked, you can not stay silent anymore.

welcome and i look forward to hearing more of what you have to say, hooliaG

Wow, is this thread out?

186 should read key LIME tart

Wigwam:

Slightly OT: Democrats must force a vote to override Bush’s veto of the ban on waterboarding, even though the override will fail. It is important to have on recrod the names of those senators who by their votes enabled this self-admitted war criminal to continue practicing his war crimes. There will come a day of reckoning, and that reckoning may should descend upon an entire political party.

Yes. I am working on the Robert Hamilton for Congress campaign and look forward to seeing how Issa will vote on this. Hopefully, there will be something on CSPAN, and I would very much appreciate you pups who are able to to note dates and times of anything Issa says. We are looking to make a Worst of Issa YouTube for the campaign to show the voters here what he is really all about.

Also, if you have memories of any past outrageous statements Issa has made, and can find the CSPAN recording of it, please note the date and time that he said it for said YouTube. We’d sure appreciate any help you guys can offer. This idea came from another pup who can identify him/herself if he/she wishes.

terryolson at roadrunner dot com. Thanks.

You’ve said what I was trying to find words for.

Hey Chris, hi everyone. ;)

Hello! and Welcome!

i thought you were being snarky about my liking key lime pie so much :)

I’ll vote for Nader in 2012, then!

Hmmm….must be stuck in moderatorville.

-G

hiya HooliaG!

Be careful what you wish for.

grassroots/netroots organizing takes too much work for wishes.

I have quite a bit of sympathy with selise and Jayacroyd too. That is why I put articulating a vision and plan of action that can defeat the forces of reaction, and supporting efforts to build a long term political movement that can get electoral results on top of my list.

And, also, need to emphasize that many things that need to be done, must be done by Congress. Certainly, re-establishing Congress as a co-equal branch of federal government cannot be done by the President.

All three candidates, Dem and GOP, are on record as saying that they will not push for continuance of unitary executive philosophy. We are have a bit of luck there, that the three remaining possibilities have publicly renounced that unlawful, unconsititutional, and impeachment-worthy atrocity.

But, how much you wann bet that any of those three will forget their words, once they want something done next term and Congress or the Courts get in their way? I bet any of them will grab whatever power the current horrible precedents suggest that they can grab.

Some things even the bestest most woderfulest president ever cannot do, by the very nature of the office. And one of those things is restoration of Congressional power. Only a more progressive and aggressive congress can do that.

That is why some items on that list should be requirement of next president AND congress to do jointly.

Welcome, Hoolia. This seems to be an especially fine thread for delurking. Kinda reminds me of old times, lol.

Welcome to the lake HooliaG, good to have you with us!

There are no comments in moderation, GregB.

nothing in the filters, greg – did you lose a comment? we had that happening last night during the hiccups.

OK Betsy, that is my eye view of the best key lime pie.

I want my Constitution back.

By no later than 2012.

Don’t forget to include his diatribes about Sandy Burger at the USA hearings.

hey – i’m not saying i don’t want to work on this stuff too… but trying to draw a line in the sand now for the entire progressive movement is assuming that either 1) the movement isn’t going to grow or 2) the people who join will think just like us and 3) that nothing we learn and nothing that happens in the next 4 years will affect our goals or priorities.

i hope all three are wrong.

The quality of the thoughts are usually a tribute to the quality (and clarity) of the post.

For which I thank you.

Must be a digital fart or something.

-G

Thanks for the welcome, Suzanne, and Suzanne is my middle name. (I’m a lucky one who loves her middle name!) I’m getting my printer ready to print out this list. It IS really important, and we must bear all in mind over the next several years.

I’d like some of both. Please.

Margot! Never did get that driveway clear. I am lucky to have a neighbor who has a clear driveway. Mr. CE NOT back, maybe 2:00 a.m.

An excellent list. My only thought is that I would have put this at number 1:

3. If the Unitary Executive still exists. I expect the next Democratic President to immediately restore the rule of law throughout the Executive Branch. I also expect clear actions that show respect for checks and balances. Absent a return to tripartite government, I will back a challenger.

I agree with chrisc @ 44 that this is a huge problem and that it is fundamentally up to Congress to address it, to assert its constitutional prerogatives against Bush’s usurpations (for which reason they were given the power to impeach and remove a president in the first place).

However, eviscerating the Constitution’s safeguards against creation of an omnipotent Presidency is at the core of the Republicans’ agenda. Absolutely everything they do, including the war, is designed with that goal in mind. They have a significant number of Democrats on board with them, enough to give them a ruling majority in Congress most of the time, and they absolutely will not stop. That being the case, a President with a zero-tolerance policy for this subversion would be immeasurably helpful.

No matter how important issues like health care, labor rights, and the environment are, without the Constitution, we have nothing. We’d be reduced to the level of China, whose government tells its people, “What? You want to govern yourselves? Well we’re in charge. Forget about Tiananmen Square, here, have a shopping mall.”

It’s not just insulting, it’s the difference between being citizens with at least some personal control over the destiny of our civilization, and being subjects, ruled by a government we must always fear.
And I do not want to live in the Last Generation of the American Republic.

welcome margot. how’s things?

some items on that list should be requirement of next president AND congress to do jointly.

that would help.

and i don’t have any problem with discussing what changes we want to see and what our priorities are – that’s all good stuff. it’s the drawing the line now i object to – when the line may not make sense in 4 years AND when we have no way (and no idea how) to hold a president accountable.

Umm, cherry pie or key lime?

not i.

I’m still trying to figure out how to get the ladies at WalMart to register to vote. I can’t get into lists~!

Yes.

Good Evening Teddy and Firedogs,

thank you for this thoughtful post Teddy. I have been dying to say that.
alas, I dwell in the reality based community and hold out no hope. in fact I’m concerned they’ll want to look ‘magnanimous’ and throw the wingers some judicial appointments – but fully expect Constitutional Restoration, Iraq, Healthcare from the jump

I just went back up to read Teddy’s list, sure enough most of our fellow americans would agree – there’s work to be done undoing the mother of all branding on the GWOT, but this is what most of America would want

I am not sure if this covered but I got a new Robert Wexler email this morning and thought you all would be glad to know he is still fighting this administration to bring truth to their lies.

Two weeks ago, the House took a bold step demanding accountability for the Bush/Cheney Administration by holding former White House Council Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in Contempt of Congress for blatantly ignoring congressional subpoenas for over 8 months.

Though it was not a surprise, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, wrote a letter to the House of Representatives stating that he refuses to call a Grand Jury to enforce those contempt citations.

The Attorney General’s letter, effectively claiming that members of the executive branch are immune from congressional subpoenas, calls for quick action.

Click HERE to watch my latest video discussing Mukasey’s outrageous response.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Chairman Conyers have smartly decided to pursue a civil lawsuit to force Bolton and Miers to appear before Congress. We should pursue a lawsuit – but I think we can do even more.

While a court may order – months from now –that Miers and Bolten must appear before Congress, by then George Bush and Dick Cheney will have largely accomplished their goal of running out the clock on the investigation into this Administration’s politicization of the Justice Department. Even a successful outcome in federal court might only mandate that they appear, at which time the witnesses are likely simply to continue their obfuscation by claiming executive privilege of the 5th Amendment in person.

The House of Representatives must re-establish its legitimate rights as a co-equal branch of government. Congress cannot allow its power to be summarily ignored and justice delayed.

The House was correct to hold these renegade White House officials in contempt, and much credit should be given to Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Conyers for pushing for that outcome. Now, we must go further: The House must immediately consider taking the following actions:
- Initiating impeachment hearings that would likely break through the reckless claims of executive privilege made by the Bush Administration.

- Approve a resolution that calls for an inherent contempt citation which would give the House Sergeant at Arms the power to bring Miers and Bolton before Congress.
As you may know, 17 of my colleagues, including four of my fellow members of the Judiciary Committee have joined my call for impeachment hearings.

This is not an issue between Democrats and Republicans. As members of Congress, we have an absolute duty to enforce the checks and balances prescribed by our Constitution.

We have ceded too much for too long, enabling George W. Bush to assume a unitary imperial Presidency. It is long past time to secure accountability for those who have, by all appearances, committed significant breaches of our laws and trust.

Mukasey’s claims are simply the latest in a long line of outlandish legal arguments ranging from the idea that we can selectively cherry-pick from torture laws to the concept that the Vice President is no longer part of the Executive Branch (except, of course, when he needs to claim Executive Privilege).

Over the past months, I have received tens of thousands of emails and letters from you expressing your great support for my efforts. Your encouragement and activism on these causes are much appreciated. I continue to work hard on your behalf and hope you feel these updates are valuable.

With kind regards,

Congressman Robert Wexler

My list would be quite similar to Teddy’s, but to his no. 7 I would specify that I want a FEMA that is once again its own cabinet level dept. And I would add somewhere that I want Halliburton, KBR, and Custer Battles investigated and if they are found to have done any wrongs, I want them prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Charges to include anything from defrauding the government to war profiteering and everything in between. They get bonus points if they are able to pin anything on Cheney.

Hoolia, I love your name. Welcome!

pie?

Which reminds me of something I keep bringing up to reporters and commentators in Washington Post chats: “In 2000, there was little campaign debate talk about terrorism, and it has consumed the Presidency that followed. What issue do you think will consume the next Presidency that we aren’t talking about in 2008?”

I don’t get very good answers, ever, but your comment reminds me of just how much things can change in four years.

But I think we need to establish some metrics for accountability, and I think my nine are quite basic. Clearly commenters have added many more excellent ideas. Do you think we should not have any list at all? (Clearly, some people do, and I respect that.)

But I am unclear on how Congress not performing oversight prevents progressives from establishing realistic expectations of our next Democratic President.

If U.S. troops are still dying in Iraq in 2012, I’ll take under consideration revoking my citizenship. That’s unacceptable – period.

News & blog posts have just updated: Reality Based News Feed

HooliaG — thanks for delurking

Thanks Margot. In the time I took to compose it, 94 other comments were posted… hard to keep up with the quantity and quality of responses.

Kudos to Teddy for initiating the flood!

- Approve a resolution that calls for an inherent contempt citation which would give the House Sergeant at Arms the power to bring Miers and Bolton before Congress.

It’s refreshing to see a congress critter does know about it! ;-)

Hi Tex, doing well here, and you?

Obviously, everybody gets to move their line over the next four years. But, drawing one now is a very useful exercise. Four years from now, we’ll have to ask ourselves how far we moved it and exactly why.

Also doing well! On vacation for a week.

I see your point but I also think that formulating some sorta of platform is a healthy aspect of movement building.

It not like teddy is walking down from on high and proclaiming our progressive ideals ;)

What nice things will you do for yourself this week, Betsy?

Now, on judicial appointments, that where need to hold next Democratic president to the very highest standard. No more reactionary feudalistic, unconsitutional ahistorical lunatic revolutionists (AKA Federalist Society) nutjobs on the US judiciary. Anywhere, Ever.

Next President needs to explain to population why reactionaries (even the reactionary wolves who wear sheep’s clothing until confirmed) are poison.

And frankly, I doubt that either HRC or Obama can live up to that bar.

So, we need to get a Congress that will stand strong, come whatever ‘appeasement’ nominees may come from unsound reflexes of next Dem president and his or her assbite ****headed consultants and advisors.

This may well be where we’re headed. The English Revolution (1643-1654), the French Revolution (1790s), the Russian Revolution (1905-1906), in China, a rebellion that brought down the Ming Dynasty (1644), and rebellions throughout the world occurred during a particular planetary configuration which is again operative (2007-2020) and which will peak in 2012-2015.

We also need to think about a Booby Trap Swat Team…. I firmly believe that BushCo is planting these traps all over…. in all the agencies, laws, Judges, DOJ…. etc…..

If a strategy is not put into place to be in front of this issue it will be wack-a-mole game over and over again.

Yes I am!

{channelling the theropod}

already did some online shopping. plan to run some errands, get to the pool at least 2 more times, maybe 3. hope to have lunch with friends. gnome? greenwarrior? y’all around? all that in the beginning of the week, and driving texteen and friends here there and everywhere at the end of the week.

Hi TJ,
don’t want you to get lost in the furious scroll here.

’scuse my French.

A greater danger than what HRC or Obama will want to do, will be the influence of the bankrupt, un-moored, cowardly, idealess and clueless Democratic establishment. The Reids the Hoyers, the Rahms, etc. Maybe Pelosi will turn out to be one of those also.

What I really hope for is a new Congress that will kick some of those dudes out of their leadership positions. If we can get that, that is almost worth as much as the most wonderfulest presdient ever.

But I am unclear on how Congress not performing oversight prevents progressives from establishing realistic expectations of our next Democratic President.

by “oversight” i did NOT mean congress’ oversight of the executive branch.

i meant our ability to provide oversight of congress. we suck.

We also need to think about a Booby Trap Swat Team…. I firmly believe that BushCo is planting these traps all over…. in all the agencies, laws, Judges, DOJ…. etc…..

If a strategy is not put into place to be in front of this issue it will be wack-a-mole game over and over again.

The fundie true believers have been infiltrated through out the govt agencies. That is going to be a huge problem.

And the next President must be unafraid to say, “Look what we found today that those criminals and jackanapes left for us!”

Every single day, if necessary.

Wexler deserves all our admiration and thanks for his courageous letter. I do hope he is including Mukasey, Cheney and Bush in these impeachment hearings. Sure hope it works.

This AFJ vid speaks directly to your points.
Quiet Revolution: Part One — Strategy

lol :)

…which will peak in 2012-2015.

How about Dec. 21, 2012? ;-)

Thank you, Christine. The water’s been a little rough for me to come and play here lately. It’s good to be among friends who exchange thoughts in a nice way.

Never can get to bed on time!

oh sure, get all ancient calendar on us (laughing)

God how I hate this shit from Andrew Sullivan:

It’s alive! We thought it might be over but some of us never dared fully believe it. Last week was like one of those moments in a horror movie when the worst terror recedes, the screen goes blank and then reopens on green fields or a lover’s tender embrace. Drained but still naive audiences breathe a collective sigh of relief. The plot twists have all been resolved; the threat is gone; the quiet spreads. And then . . .

Put your own movie analogy in here. Glenn Close in the bathtub in Fatal Attraction – whoosh! she’s back at your throat! – has often occurred to me when covering the Clintons these many years. The Oscars host Jon Stewart compares them to a Terminator: the kind that is splattered into a million tiny droplets of vaporised metal . . . only to pool together spontaneously and charge back at you unfazed.

The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win.

Bill Clinton’s presidency was the best we’ve had since 1980 by an order of magnitude. Why on earth should a return of the Clintons be seen as the resurrection of a monster? There are lots of things wrong with Hillary, as there are with Obama. But neither is a monster in league with Bush and/or McCain. Andwrew, Please get a grip on the difference between big and little.

*gentle reminder* no current primary politics on this thread please

This is a wonderful place, especially Late Nite when one wants to just say “whatever.” But not so much this week. Please stay with us and be passionate. And there is Late, Late Nite, too. We, some, gals tend to be very “momish” so please be kind.

thanks for that Quiet Revolution Video. That is from truthout.org?

Do you think we should not have any list at all?

no. see my 216.

i like lists, i like discussions, i even like platforms.

but i don’t like the idea of drawing a line in sand – at this point. way, way too premature.

in addition to points made above – we don’t even have a process to arrive at a platform or list that is democratic or inclusive.

… and please god, i am the last person who wants to spend any more time in meetings on process.

but if we want to have progressive, populists goals and institutions we need to at least acknowledge that we should be organizing in ways that are consistent with that vision – inclusive, transparent, etc.

late late nite is still a free for all open thread

While the historical references and astrological correlation is indeed curious, a cautionary reminder that correlation does not equal causation.

Besides, it seems to me that there is at least one significant historical revolution not included in your list (and therefore unimplicated in celestial configurations)… can’t quite put my finger on which one. hmmm.

Thanks to everyone for their wonderful contributions tonight, and to the mods who skillfully enforced the ruling I established up top. Thanks to all for sticking with the rule, as well.

And thanks to Pach for getting me thinking about this yesterday!

More threads like this, eh? And less pie and poo?

Oh, hell, a little pie {h/t RBG}

OT: Italian Court Protects a Woman’s Right to Lie
from Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines

Italy’s court of last resort has ruled that married women have an inalienable right to lie about having an affair. Specifically, the court decided that a 48-year-old woman who lied to the police was justified in defending her honor.

AFJ which I picked up from CHS’s first monday series.

Wouldn’t it be great to hear that news every day on the new FDL network.
A guy can dream can’t he? Thanks TSF and love to all pups. Hi Hoolia!

that’s not what i’m saying (obviously very badly). please see my 258.

Got your list printed out. Thanks so much for helping us keep track. We seem to lose track over time. . . .

For what it’s worth, I have a little stray munchkin kitty I’ve lured in since last summer. I already have two siblings who are 12 years old. But the new Lili is starting to punch the “old guys” around. Very funny, even though I try to keep her in line. They’re bigger than her and obviously more well established here, but she does not cower in a corner. I will protect and defend my 12-year-olds, but I will also say, “You go, Lili!”

Heh! See you there?

TSF is da bomb!

ok, i did just kinda jump in late :)

You asked what the next Administration will end up being consumed with that we aren’t talking much about today. Every once in a while folks talk about climate change, but I think that subject will grow, as will a world wide depression. I’m hoping that moving toward less oil fossil fuels and greening industies will help out, but I’m worried about the speed with which this needs to be implemented in order to avoid falling into a deep world wide depression. We need strong and convincing leadership, leadership, leadership!

check. Thanks very much!

Don’t get me started.

Local news….
Local water contaminated with Prescription drugs….. Tucson water was contaminated with antibiotics and anti-psychotics…. waiting for the EPA to respond…. exactly how many years will they wait?

Wouldn’t it be great to hear that news every day on the new FDL network.
A guy can dream can’t he?

I share your dream.

It appears that KO is paying attention to FDL and Dkos, etc. That’s already a start. Also, Rachael Maddow is now a “political advisor” at MSNBC, which is another beginning. But, obviously the progressive side of the world needs its own TV news outlet. Soon I hope.

they say our water is fine, but it’s a mess in many places

hey – not saying i’m not full of shit.

just if i am, i don’t think that’s it.

Out of Iraq. Incentives, R&D–clean energy–enough to make a difference and build home grown industries. Comprehensive health care reform. Clean up the Justice Dept. An out and out liberal jurist on the Supreme Court. Serious nuclear disarmament–us especially, but world wide discussions–all players at the table. Infrastructure investment and job opportunities. Serious change in national drug policy, esp. inre marijuana–movement toward legalization and taxation. Dismantle lobbying corruption among both parties. Those for starters.

Here’s my 2 cents (for what it’s worth):

Get rid of ALL Faith-based initiatives.

Do it or find another candidate.

I want sleeves rolled up on Day 1, and postponement of any Inaugural Ball til maybe 1/10. Too much to be done and we’re broke.

I don’t think your full of shit. Your strong passionate voice is one of my favorites. I jumped in way late and was stumbling down over the comments with coffee in hand.

coffee! that’s what i need. gotta wait a few hours though….

just felt bad about the shortness of my response. was trying to explain my concerns, and not doing a very a good job of it.

oh, well. maybe next time.

thanks tw3k.

You did a great job of explaining yourself, selise, you always do.

The thread went zip! and I wasn’t ready for it, sorry not to give your replies the attention they deserved.

i wasn’t ready for it either!

late night, tired, trying to think on the fly. bad combination. but you are very generous not to notice.

i’m sure this won’t be the last time the topic comes up… will try to give it some thought when i’m not so tired and have plenty of coffee on board.

nite pups!

Christian Siriano must design a new Presidential ensemble for every press conference.

w00t!

“While the historical references and astrological correlation is indeed curious, a cautionary reminder that correlation does not equal causation.”

Exactly…astrology entails correlations which terrestrial events and is acausal, which is why I said “this MAY well be where we’re headed,” and not “this is where we’re headed. The archetypal does not always manifest exactly in the same way…

Also, because the American Revolution did not occur under this configuration does not invalidate my point, except perhaps in your mind, and I’m okay with that.

Teddy, your list pretty much covers it for me, along with the restoration of Habeas. But, I think the things covered in the list will take more than two terms to accomplish, and maybe even longer, depending on the make-up of Congress, for one thing, and the sturm and drang of economic turmoil and destabilization.

Let’s hope we can stay ahead of Italy on the civilization front. I mean, if you can’t hide your lovers from routine snooping around, what privacy is left? Add that to the list, if the the reactionaries are coming after that too.

But then how could they come after that one, they all have affairs, right?

Lousy thread. ;-)

You answered it all for me, hoss. *G*

First phreaking progressive rant and rage I’ve seen in here in ages.

You done good, hoss. *G*

Can we get some MORE of this shit? *G*

Geebuz, QB, that’s three HUGE redo’s put in simple terms.

Are you REALLY Francois, and Quebecois?

Cuz yer really showin USA Patrriot!!!

N I value that . . . n’cest pas?

(all my french was learnt and forgotten in IndoChina as a young kid 50’s to 60’s) ;-)

Hey Larue what is yor take on impeaching Bush/Cheney.
Is it left?
Is it doable?
Wexler thinks so, he points out that using the Bush DOJ to get the supeonas of Miers and Bolton enforced is weak tea. Any thoughtd?

Just a friendly reminder – from Teddy’s post, last paragraph:

PS — Comments about the current primary are out of place in this thread. Yeah, I know it’s late nite, but let’s have some non-pie, non-poo fun. Cast our minds forward and measure the next Presidency for its first Accountability Moment. There will be plenty of time for primary talk elsewhere.

A 2012 Vision Statement. What will be accomplished by my administration by 2012. Domestic…foriegn policy and the environment.
Those are good questions to put to the candidate followed by how it gets done. Smart thinking Teddy approaches to problems.

Is this on topic 292 LurkingMod?

lurk lurk

g’nite all

Sorry remove both my 290 comments I did not read the whole post and totally agree my bad

Super post, really great approach. I am standing up cheering hoping for a sequel. You just hit out of the park. What shape will the Dems and the country be in 4 years. Naybe we need a 29 year plan.

No problem with your visible comments.
Just avoiding poo.
Thanks bigbrother.

Sorry i had to step away for so long.

There’s the heart of the problem right there. No. You won’t be able to get a candidate if there are still troops in Iraq in 2012 will to run in a primary other than a very marginal candidate.

#10: Media reform
#11: Fair trade policy

Amen Teddy.

It think the ones at the top are essential 1-7 are my main priorities.

I have serious doubts that healthcare will happen. Forgiving not getting healthcare will depend on if I believe they tried.

If it looks anything like the FISA capitulation, bye bye support.

I am getting more discouraged by the day with this Congress.

Thanks for the post!

Your #1 alone would be sufficient for me.