Start where you are: Obama is the reality.

[cali]

When he's wrong or when you disagree with him, make it known, organize, communicate, but for me, giving up on him, at least for the next couple of years, is not an option. Now some here seem to feel that anything sort of complete repudiation and denunciation of Obama, makes one a bootlicker or complicit or whatever, but what does that accomplish? Giving up on Obama is counter-productive. It disallows the possiblility that we do have some influence and the ability to press for things like the repeal of DADT and EFCA.

[WhiteTara]

1. I wish "we" did

but only those whispering in his ear have influence.

When Monsanto Vilsack was first floated as Ag secretary, the transition office was flooded with calls opposing him. The staffer flatly said to me "You and tens of thousands of others." Today, we have Monsanto Vilsack.


Millions decried Warren; we got Warren. Millions begged for the wolves and Polar bears; they are not being protected. Insurance "just like his" was a campaign promise; single payer isn't even allowed in the room.

But of course, I'll keep fighting the good fight. It is all I know.

[Adelante]

3. That's an exaggeration

He overruled Gates on the nuclear warhead program, for example. Do you think the Pentagon wasn't whispering in his ear?

[WhiteTara]

5. thanks for the warhead reduction...

I had forgotten that. I know he is not a bad man, but I am tired and a little disappointed.

[grantcart]

8. I am curious about your assertion that he and Gates were not in agreement on nuclear warheads

Gates broke with the Bush Administration (and McCain) by agreeing with Obama before the election that the Testban Treaty should be signed (the first senior Republican to do so).

He also indicates that he wants the current stockpile modernized specifically so that the number of weapons could be reduced;

"To be blunt," Gates said, "there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program."

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/29/nation/na-gates29

Also, to his credit, he cashiered the top Air Force General and Civilian because of security problems re: nuclear warheads.


While I would like to see a unilateral elimination of nuclear weapons, it seems that Gates is as progressive as many Democrats, and more so than all other Republicans. The more I find out about him the more I like him.

[Adelante]

15. Here is the source

I agree about Gates - an overall good SoD.

Obama Breaks With Gates, Cancels Nuke Program

Obama's new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that expand the American nuclear stockpile. For the past two budget years the Democratic Congress has refused to fund the Bush-era program. But Obama's budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration program once and for all.

-snip

One particularly interesting angle here: Obama has overruled his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who has been pushing for months to maintain the warhead program. Last October, Gates warned that

"to be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program."

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/05/12/obama-breaks-with-gates-cancels-nuke-program.aspx

[Cha]

6. And, we have an Organic Garden at the

White House with Vilsack promoting Obama's lead and a second in command, Kathleen Merrigan, the Deputy Sec of Ag, who is "One of the Sustainable Dozen"..

<snip>

"What a difference a few months make. Advocates of sustainable agriculture are now ecstatic about President Obama’s decision to appoint Kathleen Merrigan as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, second in command. Unlike Vilsack, Merrigan was one of the “Sustainable Dozen.” She comes from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, in Boston, where she is the director of the Center on Agriculture, Food and Environment. She has also worked in government, as head of the Agricultural Marketing Service at the USDA, as a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization at the United Nations, and as staff to the Senate Committee on Agriculture. She even worked for Texas populist Jim Hightower at the Texas Department of Agriculture in the late 1980s. She knows how things work, and she knows where power lies in the food industry. But that’s not what makes Kathleen Merrigan a provocative choice to lead the USDA."

http://www.gourmet.com/foodpolitics/2009/03/politics-of-the-plate-kathleen-merrigan

There was so much more to this than "Vilsack-Monsanto"..I'm taking it you didn't know.

[grantcart]

9. when we have labelled somebody as a sell out further facts are not helpful.

[Cha]

10. I was hoping the poster

would take a look at that and see there might be more beneath the surface than just Vilsack being app Sec of Ag.. that happened months ago.

I wrote the White House and expressed my own displeasure with Vilsack and lo and behold the next thing ya know..we got Merrigan and an Organic Garden at the White House.

[avaistheone1]

22. So does that mean everyone gets a pony?

[WhiteTara]

13. thanks for that good news. n/t

[Cha]

19. You're

welcome!

[Cha]

17. We have Vilsack but we also have

Kathleen Merrigan. Who is she, you ask?



<snip>

"Pres. Obama has tapped Kathleen Merrigan, an academic and former congressional aide who helped write federal organic food-labeling rules, to be deputy agriculture secretary. The White House announced the pick yesterday, drawing cheers from food-safety advocates, who have pushed for more stringent labeling regs.

"Merrigan will bring an excellent perspective to a number of troublesome labeling issues now before the agency," Jean Halloran, Consumers Union's director of food policy initiatives, said in a statement. Among the matters that need to be addressed, she said: loopholes in the current "grass fed" standard, lack of uniformity in meat marketing claims, defining "raised without antibiotics" label claims, and weaknesses in the current definition of "naturally raised."

Merrigan, 49, director of the agriculture, food and environment program at Tufts University, helped develop the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 as a staffer on the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. The law created national standards for organic foods and a federal program to accredit them. From 1999 to 2001, Merrigan served as administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), which oversees the agency's organic program."

<more>
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=kathleen-merrigan-organic-foods-exp-2009-02-24

The White House has an Organic Garden now and Tom Vilsack was there for the opening.
http://digg.com/environment/Michelle_Obama_Plants_Organic_Garden_at_the_White_House

And, Warren? He did his thing but Civil Rights for all are going to happen anyway.

I'm one of those who look at the positive and ways to make it even better.

[Cha]

18. Wow, I didn't realize the OP was from

May 16th and I had already replied once! Looks like I responded the same way twice!

Yay, Kathleen Merrigan!

[Fovea]

2. It is not about the man for me.

It is about the issues. When he's on the right side of them, hooray! When he's not, I make my opinions known.

Try not to take it too personally, cali. I know how petty the clever can be at times, and down deep many of us wish we were monologists like the Repugs.
But that is what makes them repugnant.

Use all the power you can spare- and you are empowered by the ideals of democracy, have no doubt.
Now let's keep dragging what we've got back to democracy.

I may sometimes disagree with you, but I believe in you.
Do not give up.

[berni_mccoy]

4. Well said cali.

[cooolandrew]

7. Exactly, giving up on Clinton 94 gave us a lost congress in the 90s and that brought all the >

hell we see today. We can strongly disagree but giving up on him is giving up on ourselves. I mean in example did African Americans ever give up in civil rights well histroy says no. We follow the path of least resistance undoubtedly is President Obama anything else is a self inflicted wound, hopefully we learn from the 90s. I feel folks envisage governmnet more idelistic than it is it's a very broken systme and that's not solely Obama's fault, but the main people responsible to fix it are external to DC end of.

[Phx_Dem]

11. Very nice, Cali!

[dionysus]

12. once again spot on cali

:thumbsup:

[Bluerthanblue]

14. very well said Cali-

:hi:

[HOLOS]

16. cali--agreeing

[PurityOfEssence]

20. Absolutely.

The guy's the guy in the pilot house, and we want the ship to run smoothly.

"Proving" him vile or angelic does no good, and merely sullies the topic at hand when doing so; everybody's a mixed bag, and those who need pure villains and heroes just look silly in the long run.

What's important is using our influence to nudge things in the right direction when we think he's going off-course.

As a fault and a virtue, he has a bent to be accommodating. In a bad mood, one can call this appeasement, but in a good one, he's being a conduit for the forces at play at large. This can be used, and I think he'd even probably chuckle at this assessment.

With time, the parallels between him and Bill Clinton are more and more striking, and they've been starkly so from the beginning. The good facets of this is that they're both sharp, hard workers, and feel an honor-bound duty in the concept of being a public servant. The downside is that, for all their seeming optimism, I think there's a streak of cynicism in both that the system simply can't be changed very much. This streak of corporatism isn't based in greed, but some kind of underlying defeatism (and ironically for a couple of smart guys, a lack of imagination) and I think it's misguided. The true danger of this is that dancing with economic monarchists and theocrats has a big price.

Nevertheless, though, the system is the system to a great degree, and we need him to be supported as much as possible, while still not letting him skate on important economic, environmental, imperial, religious transgressions just because "we have to have faith" that he's really with us on all these things.

Much as I loathed and still loathe Ronald Reagan, he came up with two good concepts: "constructive engagement" (re: South Africa, just cuz we disagree, we need contact to have influence) and "trust, but verify" (a fine bit of reality-based caution).

[ecstatic]

21. The one thing I've changed my mind on are the wars

I don't think either war is winnable or even worth our time and energy anymore. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. So I think we should organize to urge Obama to end both wars and forget this unwinnable war on terror. If we just mind our own fucking business and leave the ME alone completely, our problems are solved. I know it sounds harsh, but we should cut off Israel, Iraq, basically everyone over there and only get involved when the UN requires it.