My letter to “Organizing America” the former Obama campaign site

(Written while unsubscribing, as a protest.)

I am not a Democrat.

I was a Democrat for a little over 30 years–until Diane Feinstein started acting and voting like a Republican. I told her I would never vote for her again and I won’t.  My point? Barack the president seems to have forgotten the promises he made as Barack the candidate. I have never seen such timid leadership in my life. No, wait:  the Democrats have behaved in such a manner all the way through the Bush administration. They kowtowed to the Republicans (who played serious hardball) while there was a big, wistful to-do in the MSM over “bipartisanship” that never happened because the Republicans were nasty and excluded the Democrats from almost every opportunity to make a difference. Perhaps the Democrats and Barack the president believe they should take the alleged high road and refuse to behave as the Republicans did.

With all solemnity, I adjure you… Now is not the time to abandon progressive ideals because a minority of crazy, hard right, radical Republicans–who don’t have much of a party left, mind you–are playing up the rhetoric and the lies and inflaming the wingnut populace against the president’s erstwhile agenda, inciting the crazies to riot and possibly to assassination.

Elegance and grace will not give us single payer and/or a public option or even decent health care. Besides, it would appear Barack the president and the rest of the Democrats have given up on both. If events unfold as I see they might, the insurance companies will realize even more profits if health insurance is mandated. How middle class and lower class Americans will pay, I don’t know. Tax deductions will not help. They are actually rather worthless. Americans need real help, upfront.

I cannot tell you how sickened I am with the current state of affairs. Single payer (with an option to retain private health insurance as is possible in the UK) is the right thing to do. Allowing Blue Dogs to mark this territory and bark orders to the rest of us is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and slightly insane into the bargain. While Teddy Kennedy was alive, you had a majority and you could have passed a good bill that contained both. Now all you have is mush.

What we Americans needed was an FDR on the economy and an LBJ on civil rights and health care. This administration hasn’t come close to giving us either one. What I see is a money-grubbing party that’s still beholden to big business, a party without backbone.  It’s appalling, truly.

And it’s not just health care. Barack the candidate was worrisome when he voted on FISA. But Barack the president has abandoned all principle on warrantless wiretapping as well as in legal cases concerning Guantanamo detainees, doing precisely what the Bush administration did before him, or worse. Barack the president did not seek to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He has left it to Congress, whose members will do nothing, ever. Barack the president has set up another Guantanamo in Bagram, and created an environment where anything will go by alleging that because Bagram is not on American soil (WTF?! It’s a US air base! Does that mean McCain isn’t really a US citizen? Hmph.), people detained there will have no right to habeas corpus let alone any Constitutional right to due process within the US legal system.  Barack the president still allows extraordinary rendition.  Barack the president has allowed the same people who destroyed the economy (think Wall Street investment bankers, Goldman Sachs, the New York Reserve, and the Fed) to retain control over the economy. Nothing has changed in that respect. Barack the president doesn’t want to do anything about the Bush administration higher-ups who approved torture and created an ethos where it could thrive and become even more twisted than Gen. Miller and John Yoo originally planned. Barack the candidate wanted to remove us from theaters of war while Barack the president is digging in in Afghanistan.

Barbara Boxer might give me hope, but it’s not yet clear she won’t do what she’s told by the White House, by the so-called Democratic leadership, or by the insurance and drug companies. But Barack the president and the rest of his administration? No, I have no hope at all.

I’m writing in the hortatory subjunctive now:  Look to your principles once more, recall the promises you made and work to fulfill them. Think of the people who voted for you, Barack & Company. Think about why they voted for you. It wasn’t simply your “soaring rhetoric,” you made promises that voters wanted kept. I urge you to reconsider your path, which thus far is filled with so many broken promises (after only nine months!). Remember that we who voted you and other Democrats into office can just as easily vote you out of office. Or, as in my case, simply not vote at all. There is no one worth voting for anymore.

Ignore me at your political peril. You will fail otherwise. A pity, but it’s true.

Sincerely yours–

Message in a Bottle

Woman standing up to Ahmadinejad by Mike Cantone

From: http://twitpic.com/8dnha

Dear Barack

Part I

Yes, you.  I’m talking to you.

I don’t know who’s been advising you lately, but whoever they are, they’ve got their crania stuck up their behinds all the way to their solar plexi because that the only way they’ll see the light of day.  The speech about Iran aside, you’ve been pulling some lame stunts such that I cannot begin to convey to you how pissed off at you I actually am.

Oh, where shall I start?  Maybe I should work backwords?  I’ve got a few months to cover, after all.

Gay Rights

Man oh man, how stupid can you get?  I’m not gay but my brother is, and my neighbors are, and I’ve had gay friends for slightly over thirty years,  since I was nineteen.  (One of my children is bi so this goes triple for her. )  Most of us in the United States don’t need those However Many Degrees from Kevin Bacon to know how pathetic–what an obvious sop–it was to give the same benefits to gay government workers that straights receive.  And then your DOJ issues a brief, that might as well have been flung directly from your mouth, saying gays are comparable to child molesters and perpetrators of incest.  And then your DOJ Tool lied about whether you were “allowed”  to change a bad law. I have a word for you: RISIBLE with a long hiss on the ‘s.’ Except it sure as hell isn’t funny.

You promised to overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,  you promised to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and this is what you give us? A passel of states across the nation have legalized same sex marriage. Does that not tell you something?  What, is the hard right holding you hostage? Are you afraid someone besides readers of tabloids are going to think you’re on the down-low?

Be a man, Barack.  Do what you were elected to do: lead. Get those unconstitutional laws (you remember Equal Protection, don’t you?) overturned.

Sincerely yours, etc. etc.–

P.S.  Contrary to your silly opinion that only Congress can attack the issue of gay rights, Senator Reid says there’s nothing doing and despite her constituency, Pelosi’s been mum. Great job, guys.