The 'Professional Left' Just Doing Our Job Mr. President!

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"What I'm asking you is; 

  to keep making your voices heard. 

To keep holding me accountable" 

-- President Obama, July 2010

Well Mr. President; that's exactly what I'm doing.  

that's exactly what WE collective Progressives are doing. 

And that's exactly those your Press Secretary Gibbs now refers to as the "Professional Left"  are doing. 

"Change we can believe in."

 

I believed!  

I worked hard to help Obama get elected! 

I made sure we got hundreds of signs, buttons, bumper stickers out into the community. I still have an Obama bumper sticker on my truck.  I got a really great campaign headquarters for our local community.  We used it to do phone banking; hold events, and especially the big celebration on election night.  We rented a big screen tv and installed cable just for the big moment when we finally laid to rest eight years of Bush Conservatism and ushered in a new dawn, new hope; finally, a new era of Progressive change!

I remember the speeches. Great speeches. Speeches so great I recorded many of them.  Will I. Am made a song out of one of them.

What I heard in those speeches was how we were going to end the wars, reform Wall St., repeal DADT, bring foreclosure relief, extend unemployment benefits, create jobs, retool America for green energy, protect our oceans from BP, lots of good progressive stuff like that.

We were going to have real health care reform not the milk toast watered down version the GOP deteriorated it into.  I was naive enough to think that we were going to get universal health care, single payer.  We didn't even get the public option.  

So YOUR Press Secretary Gibbs is flippant about us not ever being satisfied even if Dennis Kucinich was president or if we had the Canadian Health Care System.

Excuse me?

At this point, I'm rather certain that Dennis would have found a way to end the wars and get us all universal health care.  I really doubt he would have brought in Wall St. insiders like Larry Summers or Tim Geithner.  And I'm rather certain that Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod wouldn't have been fired at the will of Fox Noise.  By the way Mr. President,  I'm getting less fond of Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs by the day.

And by now Mr. President, I would have expected DADT to have been repealed.  Congress did that and now its under review?  For how long? Unacceptable Mr. President.

If we had Canadian style universal health care, I'd have some of my health issues looked at and I'd be satisfied knowing that Americans would start living 3 to 5 years longer like Canadians now do.

You broke all of your promises about dealing with the foreclosure crisis.  As a result, millions of families lost their homes.  What I don't remember in any of your speeches Mr. President was your devotion to Big banks, big corporations, big oil.  I must have missed all of those 'Too Big to Fail' speeches where you must have promised that corporations must be given priority over their victims of predatory lending and illegal loan servicing practices.

Yes Mr. President, your base is restless. We're impatient.  Soldiers are dying. People are still unemployed, homeless, losing all hope.  BP just killed an ocean and they got to call all of the shots.  No one is in prison for that just like nobody is in prison for the Wall St. crimes.

We acknowledge all of the great things you have done but frankly, its not nearly good enough and 'Yes we can do more'.  By now you should have done more.  We want you to stop pandering to the right.  We really want you to stop pandering to big business.  We want you, to get strong, defiant, and force through the "Change" you talked about in all of those great speeches that earned you the most votes of any president in history.

So do us 'Lefty Professionals' (whatever that means and whoever that includes) a big favor;  Tell Gibss to STFU about us and turn his frustration where it belongs; the GOP and the 'RWNJ Professionals'.  They are the enemy; not us.

We in your base are NOT satisfied.  We 'Professional Left' (if I can be so bold as to include myself), WE Mr. President are damn well going to, as you put it: "Keep making our voices heard" and WE Mr. President are going to "Hold you accountable".  

And unless you have changed your mind on that one Mr. President, then you need to tell Mr. Gibbs about your directive.  Fire Mr. Gibbs for turning on us in a defiant act of betrayal.  Because this progressive army of Professional and Amateurs on the left do not intend to be patient much longer.  Grow a pair, and give us the change we elected you for or your base won't be there for you next time you need us.  Its that simple Mr. President.

There is a big temptation here to go into many other areas or elaborate on those I've already cited but when I have a couple of videos from a couple of big shots that always do a better job at speaking for me than I ever do; I think I should just shut up and them do what they do best.

First, here is what Press Secretary Gibbs said along with the response from Florida Congressman Alan Grayson:

Here is what else Rep Grayson had to say on the subject:  

"Times are tough. Maybe you noticed.

In certain parts of the world, 100 years ago, when times were tough -- a drought, a famine -- they ate each other. Literally.

That's who they were.

We're different. When times are tough, we don't think about ourselves alone. We think about those who need help. The sick. Senior citizens. The disabled. Children. When times are tough, they're the ones who need help the most.

That's why I was so proud yesterday to vote for money for schools and for health care for the poor.

That's why I was so proud yesterday to vote for money for schools and for health care for the poor.

Why? Because if we voted it down, schools would close. And hospitals would close.

But we won't let that happen. When times are tough, we rise to the occasion. We shelter the homeless, we feed the hungry, and we heal the sick. We teach the children. We help those in need.

We're Americans. It's who we are. And I'm proud of it."

Follow Rep. Alan Grayson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alangrayson

Here is Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy




Related Links on this Subject

Cowards vs. Hypocrites: 

Why Democratic Politicians Despise the “Professional Left”

By Randy Shaw

From: The California Progress Report

 

 

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Keith Olbermann Commentary of December 6, 2007

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Keith Olbermann

I love Keith Olbermann! What an American Patriot! As a Political Scientist, writer, and speaker myself, I only wish that I could lay it all out and wax as eloquently as Keith. But then he has a staff and I don't.

But still, he focuses his show in a way that fills an incredible void that is otherwise lacking in mainstream media. I really should go back and gather up all of his older commentaries to post here. Some of his editorials are so potent and biting that it brings chills to your spine just listening to him lay it out. Keith is so on target, so sharp in his criticisms, so articulate in his presentation, and so very courageous in his willingness to speak truth to power, that it is amazing that he is still on MSNBC.

To say it another way, I know of no other journalist in main stream media that even comes close to presenting a perspective which is so balanced and fair, and yet it is the truth that you can't find elsewhere in the world of watered down reporting that passes for news today.

Keith is no only a first class journalist, he is the very definition of a true American Patriot. I want to thank Keith for all he does for this country which is no doubt, way more than he would ever be willing to take credit for but he has earned that appreciation many time over.

Thank You Keith!

Keith Olbermann
Commentary of December 6, 2007

Keith Olbermann
Transcript of Commentary
of December 6, 2007

Finally, as promised, a Special Comment about the President’s cataclysmic deception about Iran. There are few choices more terrifying than the one Mr. Bush has left us with tonight.

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole — or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked — at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so — whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

A pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief. It is the nightmare scenario of political science fiction: A critical juncture in our history and, contained in either answer, a president manifestly unfit to serve, and behind him in the vice presidency: an unapologetic war-monger who has long been seeing a world visible only to himself. After Ms Perino’s announcement from the White House late last night, the timeline is inescapable and clear now.

In August, the President was told by his hand-picked Major Domo of intelligence, Mike McConnell, a flinty, high-strung-looking, worrying-warrior who will always see more clouds than silver linings, that what “everybody thought” about Iran might be, in essence, crap.

Yet on October 17th the President said of Iran and its president, Ahmadinejad:

“I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

And as he said that, Mr. Bush knew that at bare minimum there was a strong chance that his rhetoric was nothing more than words with which to scare the Iranians.

Or was it, sir, to scare the Americans?

Does Iran not really fit into the equation here? Have you just scribbled it into the fill-in-the-blank on the same template you used to scare us about Iraq?

In August, any commander-in-chief still able-minded or uncorrupted or both, sir, would have invoked the quality the job most requires: mental flexibility.

A bright man, or an honest man, would have realized no later than the McConnell briefing that the only true danger about Iran was the damage that could be done by an unhinged, irrational Chicken Little of a president, shooting his mouth off, backed up by only his own hysteria and his own delusions of omniscience.

Not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr Bush.

The Chicken Little of presidents is the one, sir, that you see in the mirror.

And the mind reels at the thought of a Vice President fully briefed on the revised intel as long as two weeks ago — briefed on the fact that Iran abandoned its pursuit of this imminent threat four years ago — who never bothered to mention it to his boss.

It is nearly forgotten today, but throughout much of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, it was widely believed that he was little more than a front-man for some never-viewed, behind-the-scenes string-puller.

Today, as evidenced by this latest remarkable, historic malfeasance, it is inescapable, that Dick Cheney is either this president’s evil ventriloquist, or he thinks he is.

What servant of any of the 42 previous presidents could possibly withhold information of this urgency and this gravity, and wind up back at his desk the next morning, instead of winding up before a Congressional investigation — or a criminal one?

Mr Bush — if you can still hear us — if you did not previously agree to this scenario in which Dick Cheney is the actual detective and you’re the Remington Steele — you must disenthrall yourself: Mr Cheney has usurped your constitutional powers, cut you out of the information loop, and led you down the path to an unprecedented presidency in which the facts have become optional, the intel is valued less than the hunch, and the assistant runs the store.

The problem is, sir, your assistant is robbing you — and your country — blind. Not merely in monetary terms, Mr. Bush, but more importantly, robbing you of the traditions and righteousness for which we have stood, at great risk, for centuries: Honesty, Law, Moral Force.

Mr. Cheney has helped, sir, to make your administration into the kind our ancestors saw in the 1860’s and 1870’s and 1880’s — the ones that abandoned Reconstruction, and sent this country marching backwards into the pit of American Apartheid.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland…

Presidents who will be remembered only in a blur of failure, Mr. Bush.

Presidents who will be remembered as functions only of those who opposed them — the opponents whom history proved right.

Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland… Bush.

Would that we could let this President off the hook by seeing him only as marionette or moron.

But a study of the mutation of his language about Iran proves that though he may not be very good at it, he is, himself, still a manipulative, Machiavellian, snake-oil salesman.

The Bushian etymology was tracked by Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post’s website.

It is staggering.

March 31st: “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon…”

June 5th: Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons…”

June 19th: “consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon…”

July 12th: “the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons…”

August 6th: “this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…” Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror — but there may not even be a tree there…

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: “They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program…”

August 28th: “Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons…”

October 4th: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”

October 17th: “until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

Before August 9th, it’s: “Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.”

After August 9th, it’s: “Desire, pursuit, want… knowledge, technology, know-how to enrich uranium.”

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003…And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th…

And that term suspending is just a coincidence?

And we are to believe, Mr. Bush, that nobody told you any of this until last week?

Your insistence that you were not briefed on the NIE until last week might be legally true — something like “what the definition of ‘is’ is” — but with the subject matter being not interns but the threat of nuclear war.

Legally, it might save you from some war crimes trial… but ethically, it is a lie.

It is indefensible.

You have been yelling threats into a phone for nearly four months, after the guy on the other end had already hung up.

You, Mr. Bush, are a bald-faced liar.

And more over, you must have realized that John Bolton, and Norman Podhoretz, and the Wall Street Journal Editorial board, are also bald-faced liars.

We are to believe that the Intel Community, or maybe the State Department, cooked the raw intelligence about Iran, falsely diminished the Iranian nuclear threat, to make you look bad?

And you proceeded to let them make you look bad?

You not only knew all of this about Iran, in early August, but you also knew it was all accurate.

And instead of sharing this good news with the people you have obviously forgotten you represent, you merely fine-tuned your terrorizing of those people, to legally cover your own backside, while you filled the factual gap with sadistic visions of — as you phrased it on August 28th: a quote “nuclear holocaust” — and, as you phrased it on October 17th, quote: “World War III.”

My comments, Mr. Bush, are often dismissed as simple repetitions of the phrase “George Bush has no business being president.”

Well, guess what?

Tonight: hanged by your own words and convicted by your own deliberate lies…

You, sir, have no business being president.

Good night, and good luck!

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