Alito: ‘I have to think about people in my own family’ in decision-making

Sexy brainiac blogger Glenn Greenwald has had some insightful things to say about Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation process.

The best that most bloggers can do, in my estimation, is to make you think of something in a new light, to present an angle that the mainstream media are not presenting; most bloggers can’t act as news gatherers because most of them, myself included, don’t have the resources.

However, research via the Internet is easy enough, and I’m surprised that in all of the discussions of Sotomayor that I have seen on the Internet thus far, no one has bothered to include the latest photographic group portrait of the U.S. Supreme Court, which shows that seven of the nine justices (including the recently retired Justice David Souter, whom Sotomayor will replace) are white men. That one picture, which is whiter than a Repugnican National Convention, speaks thousands of words, methinks.

Here’s what you’re also not seeing in the mainstream media’s coverage of Sotomayor: 

In one recent post, Greenwald reminds us that Sotomayor’s appeals-court ruling affirming affirmative action — out of which the Repugnicans have been trying to make a lot of political hay for the Joe the Plumber set — was not really a minority opinion (bad pun fully intended). Writes Greenwald:

In light of today’s [U.S. Supreme Court] ruling, it’s a bit difficult — actually, impossible — for a rational person to argue that Sotomayor’s Ricci decision places her outside the judicial mainstream when: (a) she was affirming the decision of the federal district court judge; (b) she was joined in her decision by the two other Second Circuit judges who, along with her, comprised a unanimous panel; (c) a majority of Second Circuit judges refused to reverse that panel’s ruling; and now: (d) four out of the nine Supreme Court Justices — including the [one] she is to replace — agree with her.

Put another way, 11 out of the 21 federal judges to rule on Ricci ruled as Sotomayor did.  It’s perfectly reasonable to argue that she ruled erroneously, but it’s definitively unreasonable to claim that her Ricci ruling places her on some sort of judicial fringe.

What I like even more is this nugget of information from Greenwald (links and emphases are his):

At his Senate confirmation hearing, [George W. Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Samuel] Alito used his opening statement to emphasize how his experience as an Italian-American influences his judicial decision-making (video [and full transcript] here):

“But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, ‘You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country….

“When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”

Greenwald comments:

Did Alito’s Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American [firefighter] plaintiffs [in the Ricci case]?  Has anyone raised that question? 

Given that he himself said that he “do[es] take that into account” — and given that Sonia Sotomayor spent six straight hours today being accused by GOP senators and Fox News commentators of allowing her Puerto Rican heritage to lead her to discriminate against white litigants — why isn’t that question being asked about Alito’s vote in Ricci?

As I asked yesterday:

When is the last time that a white male nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court was admonished against allowing his whiteness or his maleness or his “personal background” influence his rulings?

So I’m exceedingly glad that Greenwald provided a specific instance in which a white male nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly stated that his personal background influences his rulings and yet he wasn’t called to the carpet for this as Sotomayor has been called to the carpet for having the gall to be a — gasp! — Latina.

Racism, thy name is Repugnican.

Misogyny, you too.

Hypocrisy: Ditto.

Stupid white men set to beat up on Sonia Sotomayor for being a Latina

Updated below (Monday, July 13, 2009)

Associated Press photo

Repugnican Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, shown above in an image from today, plans to beat up on U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings because Sotomayor doesn’t think, speak and act like a fellow stupid white man does.

Is it possible for the Repugnicans be bigger fucking idiots than they already are?

Federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate for her promotion to the U.S. Supreme Court begin tomorrow, and Repugnican Sen. Jeff Sessions plans to call a white firefighter who was involved in the affirmative action case that Sotomayor ruled in — that the right-wing, stupid-white-male-dominated U.S. Supreme Court reversed — to testify regarding Sotomayor.

The Repugnican Party is sinking because it still, in the year 2009, is the party of the stupid white man in a rapidly demographically changing nation. Shifting national demographics don’t favor the Repugnicans, yet here they are, making Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings a battle between the stupid white man and the “racist” Latina.

The Repugnicans already have dug their own grave; they now are throwing the dirt upon themselves.  

The “victimized” white man bullshit might fly with Rush Limbaugh’s audience and in Sessions’ podunk red state of Alabama, but nationally, it goes over like a lead balloon. That the historically oppressive stupid white man now is the “victim” because groups that historically have been oppessed by the stupid white man — women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-Christians, et. al. — are gaining more power is a big fucking joke to those of us who historically have been oppressed by the stupid white man.  

I encourage the stupid white men who comprise the Repugnican Party to beat up on Sonia Sotomayor as much as they possibly can. I encourage them to continue to criticize her because she does not think, act and speak just like a stupid white man does. I encourage them to continue their charade of being “victimized” because the nation is about to get its first Latina U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Since white people comprise no more than 74 percent of the U.S. population, white men comprise no more than a little more than a third of the U.S. population, yet seven of the nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices (more than 75 percent of them) are white men. Here’s photographic evidence:

And it would be unconscionable to the stupid white men if we had one more woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. That would be two of the nine justices being women, or fewer than 25 percent of them, even though women actually comprise slightly more than 50 percent of the U.S. population.

Yes, I encourage the stupid white men who comprise the Repugnican Party to bash Sonia Sotomayor as much as they possibly can this coming week so that the Repugnican Party’s grave is more quickly completely covered in dirt.

Update (Monday, July 13, 2009): Lest you think that my headline “Stupid White Men Set to Beat Up on Sonia Sotomayor for Being a Latina” is inaccurate and/or over the top, Sen. Jeff Sessions, the highest-ranking Repugnican member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, said this today, on the first day of Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings:

“I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their [sic] own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their [sic] decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court.”

What Sessions is saying, essentially, is that Sotomayor isn’t allowed to be a Latina — unless she thinks, acts, speaks and rules just like a white man does. (A conservative white man, in this case, of course.)

When is the last time that a white male nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court was admonished against allowing his whiteness or his maleness or his “personal background” influence his rulings?

How can one’s race and gender, which shape one’s life, for fuck’s safe, not influence how he or she thinks and what she or he values and believes?

No, Sessions’ and the other stupid white men’s real problem with Sotomayor is that she isn’t a fellow stupid white man. She would be acceptable to the stupid white men only if she acted just like a stupid white man, like Sarah Palin-Quayle and Condoleezza Rice do.

It’s as simple as that: Repugnican opposition to Sotomayor is more about racism and misogyny than anything else. If she has to be a Latina, then she should be a “good” Latina as the Repugnicans define the term “good,” just as Condoleezza Rice is a “good” black woman and Sarah Palin-Quayle is a “good” white woman.

Times are changing and the stupid white men can’t handle it. The nation’s first black president has nominated the first Latina to the U.S. Supreme Court. This can mean only one thing: End times!

“President” George W. Bush, when he had the opportunity to replace two justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, chose two white men. He could have chosen a non-white; he did not. He could have chosen a woman; he did not. (He initially nominated Harriet Miers in 2005, in my estimation, only to give the appearance that he was willing to nominate a woman. He knew all along, I believe, that his eventual nominee would not be Miers, who ended up withdrawing herself for consideration for Supreme Court justice*, but that the nominee would be yet another white man.)

For all of their talk of “reverse discrimination,” the fact of the matter is that the Repugnicans want to see only conservative white males on the U.S. Supreme Court.

I rest my case.

*Wikipedia notes of Miers: “Miers’ nomination was criticized from people all over the political spectrum based on her never having served as a judge, her perceived lack of intellectual rigor, her close personal ties to Bush, and her lack of a clear record on issues likely to be encountered as a Supreme Court justice.”

Does this sound like a nominee that Bush really expected to get on the U.S. Supreme Court?

‘Brüno’ is (mostly) good for gays

Gay fashionista Brüno (a.k.a. Sacha Baron Cohen), of Vienna, poses with adopted son O.J., whom he obtained in exchange for a limited-edition iPod.

So the Internet buzz is that the movie “Brüno” is bad for gays.

Oh, puhfucklinglease.

The only camps of people who truly could believe that are self-homo-hating gays and the members of the heterosexual politically correct crowd who want to be offended on behalf of us queers in order to burnish their PC credentials.

Any actual damage that comic genius Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Brüno” might cause the gay community (if there is such a thing [and there isn't]) most likely is offset considerably by the pervasive homo-hatred that Cohen brings to light in “Brüno.”

Only fucktards could believe in all of the gay stereotypes that Cohen uses liberally in “Brüno,” but even dullards should come away from “Brüno” with a better sense of what hatred — and consequent danger – there is for gays throughout the United States of America, land of the free (well, free for stupid, white, presumably straight, “Christian” males, anyway). 

In at least one scene it appears that Cohen-as-Brüno nearly was hit by a large object thrown at him by a homo-hater that could have caused him serious injury had it made contact with him (I won’t give it away by giving the details), and in another scene, what appears to be an angry mob of Orthodox Jews seriously chasing him in what appears to be Israel gives us a hint as to how “civilized” our partner in war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel, is (which is about as “civilized” as the United States is). 

Not only was Cohen’s physical safety apparently jeopardized by homo-hatred and anti-homo violence in his quest to get footage for “Brüno,” but even when his physical safety was not jeopardized, with his antics as the gay Austrian fashionista Brüno he still reveals homo-hatred aplenty. (Salon.com’s often-lame reviewer and even the New York Times’ lame reviewer both seem to think that this isn’t such a big deal — homo-hatred is pretty much expected of the red states, which pretty much makes it OK, right? – which strikes me as rather homo-hateful itself.)    

Perhaps most revealing is the segment in which Cohen-as-Brüno appears before an all- or mostly black television talk-show audience in Dallas; the segment showcases how homo-hating many, if not most, black Americans are. Don’t you dare to discriminate against them based upon race, but they feel perfectly fine discriminating against non-heterosexuals. Gay indeed is the new black, with even the historically oppressed blacks shitting and pissing upon gays.

One stupid white man (at a gun show, I believe it is) tells Cohen-as-Brüno apparently quite seriously that if Brüno refers to him as gay one more time, he will inflict upon Brüno serious bodily injury. (I mean, think of that: This man believes that being gay is so awful, is such a stigma, that he is justified in even doing serious bodily injury to someone who calls him gay.) And I was surprised to see that Cohen-as-Brüno apparently did not get a gunned pulled on him when he went out with a group of redneck hunters and proceeded to get rather Brokeback on them after nightfall.

“Brüno” also exposes Ron Paul (whom Bruno claims [hilariously, I thought] he had thought was RuPaul) as quite a homo-hater; Cohen-as-Brüno has Ron Paul using, on camera, the epithet “queer” quite seriously and quite liberally — even though the effete Paul strikes me as quite possibly non-heterosexual himself.

(A long time ago I passed a Ron Paul table near the California State Capitol. Knowing that Paul is a right-winger masquerading as a moderate and/or as an “independent,” I kept walking past the Paul propaganda table when one of the Paul zombies stopped me. I told him that I cannot support a homophobe.

The young male zombie informed me that he is gay yet he was following Paul. Whether he was telling the truth or was lying in order to try to gain a convert to his little cult I’m not sure, but when I saw Paul using the word “queer” in “Brüno” today, I felt pretty fucking vindicated. [Yes, Cohen-as-Brüno certainly eggs Paul on, but Paul's reaction is quite homo-hateful and there is no excuse for that hatred. It's OK to fault a person for his or her wrong actions, but not for whom he or she is.])

“Brüno” is crude, of course, and as with “Borat,” sometimes this works as comedy and sometimes it doesn’t. Cohen-as-Brüno employs about every gay sexual stereotype imaginable. There are dildos aplenty and Brüno’s pygmy boyfriend (yes, pygmy boyfriend) proves to be quite, um, capacious as well as portable. Cohen employed a lot of homo-related gags in “Borat,” and the character of Borat is heterosexual, so you can imagine what “Brüno” is like. 

If you hated “Borat,” you probably will hate “Brüno,” too, and if you loved “Borat,” as I did, you probably will find “Brüno” funny but a little less funny than “Borat,” as I did.

On its own, “Brüno” holds up to “Borat,” but we saw “Borat” before we saw “Brüno,” so Cohen’s shtick of filming the spontaneous reactions of bigoted dupes to his antics in character isn’t brand-new to us anymore.

And “Brüno” mimicks “Borat” in some plot aspects, such as in that both Borat and Brüno find themselves leaving their native nations and making pilgrimages in the United States. And Borat has his sidekick in the blubbery Azamat, while Brüno’s sidekick is Lutz, his fawning “assistant’s assistant” (although Lutz plays a smaller role in “Bruno” than Azamat does in “Borat”). And in both “Borat” and “Brüno,” the title character has a spat with his sidekick that forces a separation, only to have the sidekick return later at a critical junction in the title character’s unfolding story.

Hopefully, Sacha Baron Cohen will use a different formula for his next film, but “Brüno” had me laughing hysterically throughout, so much so that in the theater my boyfriend asked me several times to keep it down, so Cohen succeeded in his main goal for “Brüno,” which was to be funny.

As a gay man, the only scene of “Brüno” that made me uncomfortable is the scene in which Cohen-as-Brüno shows apparently faked photographs of him and his adopted toddler O.J. partying in a hot tub with his naked gay friends. The myth of gay men as pedophiles doesn’t need to be reinforced.

But probably Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants have more reason to be offended by “Brüno” than do gay men. How Cohen-as-Brüno actually got Paula Abdul to sit atop a Mexican(-American) guy serving as a piece of furniture in order to do a serious interview about the importance of humanitarianism I don’t know. But even with that, Cohen’s intent, it seems, was to show us how Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants are treated in the United States; of course Cohen doesn’t believe that such treatment is acceptable.

“Brüno” also contains plenty of Nazi jokes, such as how Brüno quite seriously reflects that he is the second great man from Austria.

But Cohen can get away with his jokes about Nazis and Jews because we know where he stands; he’s Jewish, so he’s hardly an anti-Semite.

And it was in an interview with NPR after the release of “Borat” that Cohen stated that of the characters he has played, duping people, he has most been concerned for his physical safety while playing the gay character of Brüno — a testament, he stated, as to the severity of the problem of homo-hatred and anti-homo violence.

Sacha Baron Cohen is on our gay men’s side. Those gay men who claim otherwise because they find “Brüno” to be offensive should examine their own deepest beliefs about homosexuality and being gay, and those straight self-appointed members of the PC Police who want to be offended on my behalf should find another group on whose behalf to be offended.

My grade: A-

P.S. I’m really not getting the “argument” that I’m seeing everywhere that it was just too easy for Cohen to evoke homo-hateful words and deeds from homo-haters.

“Ridiculing American rubes is like shooting dead, motionless fish in a barrel filled with Jell-O,” notes one pretentious writer who tells us, rather explicitly, that he’s above and beyond it all (as do the rest of his ilk).

OK, so then you see news stories like this one from The Associated Press from today:

Salt Lake City – A gay couple say they were detained by security guards on a plaza owned by the Mormon church and later cited by police, claiming it stemmed from a kiss on the cheek.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said that the men became argumentative and refused to leave after being asked to stop their “inappropriate behavior.” The men say they were targeted because they are gay.

Matt Aune said he and his partner, Derek Jones, were walking home from a concert nearby on Thursday night, cutting through the plaza near the Salt Lake City Mormon temple.

Aune, 28, said he gave Jones, 25, a hug and kiss and that the two were then approached by a security guard, who asked them to leave, telling them they were being inappropriate and that public displays of affection aren’t allowed on the property. He said other guards arrived and the men were handcuffed.

“We asked what we were doing wrong,” Aune told The Associated Press.

Church spokeswoman Kim Farah said in a statement Friday that the men were “politely asked to stop engaging in inappropriate behavior — just as any other couple would have been.”

“They became argumentative and used profanity and refused to leave the property,” she said. The church did not immediately respond to a request for more comment.

Police later arrived and both men were cited with misdemeanor trespassing, Salt Lake City Police Sgt. Robin Snyder said.

“It doesn’t matter what they were asked to leave for,” Snyder said. “If they are asked to leave and don’t they are … trespassing.”

The church has been the target of protests over its support of a ban on gay marriage in California.

I find it hard to believe that a heterosexual couple would have been handcuffed for a kiss on the cheek, and I find the “trespassing” “issue” to be a smokescreen for the Mormon cult’s homo-hatred.

To those who claim, explicitly or implicitly, that homo-hatred isn’t a problem or that it’s such old hat that Cohen shouldn’t have even bothered to make a film about it, I say to you heartily and wholeheartedly: FUCK YOU!

No one would claim in an article posted on a supposedly reputable website that racist hate speech and racist acts of violence are acceptable or even tolerable.

Why the fuck, then, is it still wide open season on gays? Even by pretentious, supposedly enlightened, above-and-beyond-it-all writers?

P.P.S. Just thought I’d note that my favorite film critic, Roger Ebert, loved “Brüno” too.

“The needle on my internal laugh meter went haywire, bouncing among hilarity, appreciation, shock, admiration, disgust, disbelief and appalled incredulity,” Ebert wrote in his review of “Brüno,” adding, “Here is a film that is 82 minutes long and doesn’t contain 30 boring seconds.”

I should have noted that “Brüno” was directed by Larry Charles, who also directed “Borat” and “Religulous” with Bill Maher. I love Charles’ direction — I’ve reviewed both “Borat” (here) and “Religulous” (here) – and I look forward to his next film.

Walk a mile in Michael’s moccasins before casting your stones at him

Associated Press photo

Michael Jackson, who died unexpectedly last month at the age of 50, is memorialized today in Los Angeles. First, millions of people lived through him as though they had his talent, too,  and then millions felt better about their own sins by castigating him for the sins he was accused of, but now, hopefully, he is at peace. 

OK, so I will admit, it has been hard for me not to view Michael Jackson as having been pretty creepy. He apparently had enough money to create and to live in his own little alternate universe — and he did so.

Unfortunately, I probably will remember Michael Jackson more for his unfortunate morphing of his appearance over the years (from a young black man to a white woman, apparently) than for anything else.

But I’m not on board with calling him a “child molester” or a “pervert” or the like.

Fact is, I never saw Michael Jackson molest anyone of any age, and you didn’t, either.

Fact is, he never was found by a court of law as being guilty of having committed a sexual crime, and in this nation you are supposed to be presumed innocent until deemed otherwise by a court of law.

Even if Jackson had been found guilty by a court of law, this is supposed to be a “Christian” nation, and Jesus Christ said interesting things like ”The one among you who has never sinned may cast the first stone [at the accused sinner].”

So when the likes of Repugnican Rep. Peter King of New York calls Jackson things like a “low-life,” a “child molester,” a “pedophile” and a “pervert,” and adds, “and to be giving this much attention to him … what does this say about our country?” – and when even leftist columnist and editorial cartoonist Ted Rall jumps on the dog pile on Jackson with this rather vile cartoon*:

– it makes me ponder:

Indeed, what does it say about our country that an individual who never was found guilty by a court of law nonetheless is deemed guilty by so many (most of whom have tiny lives and can only feel better about themselves by beating up on others)? What does it say that in a “Christian” nation Michael Jackson is judged so harshly? What would Jesus say about Michael Jackson?

I never walked a mile in Michael Jackson’s moccasins. I wasn’t raised by his reportedly abusive, apparently egocentric father who apparently used his own children for his own selfish gain. I don’t know exactly what Michael Jackson went through, although I have read hints, such as how when he was an awkward, painfully self-conscious teenager, people told him that they missed the cute, little Michael Jackson.

I don’t know exactly how lonely Michael Jackson apparently was, even when he was on top of the world, before he was called such things as a “pedophile” and a “pervert.”

Speaking of which, I don’t know what did and what did not happen in the privacy of Jackson’s Neverland ranch.

Because there is so much that I don’t know, I’m not ready to condemn Michael Jackson, and I hope that he rests in peace, that in death he finds the peace that he apparently never found in life.

P.S. To those I’ve heard questioning the cost of Michael Jackson’s memorial service to the taxpayers, I have to ask you: how much money in sales taxes and income taxes did he contribute to the local and federal governments over the many years? More than his memorial service is costing, I’m pretty sure. (And indeed, his memorial service is good business for Los Angeles, is it not?)

And why do people worry themselves over the cost of Michael Jackson’s memorial service but just allow their government to spend billions and billions and billions of their tax dollars on bogus wars? Um, yeah.

They strain out gnats but swallow camels, to quote Jesus once again. (Funny how “Christians” not only don’t follow Jesus’ teachings, but they don’t even know them.)

*Ted mostly redeems himself with this one:

Good riddance, I hope, you betcha!

Associated Press photo

In a rambling, bullshit speech in which her voice quavers because she’s a fake and a pathological liar, Repugnican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin-Quayle announces today that she is resigning her post later this month, even though she still has about a year and a half to go in her term. Despite her bizarre, irresponsible move today, the wingnutty dingbat still widely is expected to run for the 2012 Repugnican presidential nomination with a political  “resume” of having served only a little more than half of a gubernatorial term in the nation’s fourth-least-populous state (Alaska’s estimated population is less than 700,000) .

How do you know when Sarah Palin-Quayle is lying?

When her lips are moving.

Palin-Quayle claims that she’s resigning as governor of Alaska later this month for the good of Alaskans.

Bullshit.

Either there’s some major scandal that’s about to break and she’s pre-emptively resigning or, as a ladder-climbing power-tripper, she finds being a lame-duck governor to be not satisfying enough for her ego and/or too boring.

I mean, what’s the difference between having Palin-Quayle as a lame-duck governor or having Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell being a lame-duck governor? Either way, Alaska will have a lame-duck governor. It makes no sense.

In any case, when you are elected to public office, you are taking on the responsibility for filling out your term unless you absolutely cannot — you don’t bail out when the job becomes lackluster and/or because you have higher aspirations.

Palin-Quayle seems to have lost her marbles.

Not that she ever had them in the first place.

Does Palin-Quayle’s resignation mean that we no longer have to listen to her continuously whine and cry about how the “media” supposedly repeatedly viciously attack her white-trash family and how it’s not about her power-grubbing beauty-pageant-contestant ego but is about “country first”? (More like it’s about the cunt first…)

It’s probably too good to be true that Palin actually returns to the obscurity from which she emerged and in which she belongs, but we can hope.

Obama more Clintonesque than Bushy

I

Leftist columnist and editorial cartoonist Ted Rall is on a kick as of late that President Barack Obama is even worse than was “President” George W. Bush. My guess is that Obama is still learning the ways of the White House more than that he endorses the acts of the unelected Bush regime that preceded him.

I love hyperbole almost as much as I love profanity, but I have to disagree with lefty columnist Ted Rall’s (presumably serious) recent assertion that George W. Bush “was the worst president the U.S. had ever had. Until this one.”

“I liked Bush better [than I like Barack Obama],” Rall writes, adding that Bush “didn’t insult us by pretending to care. Come on, Barack, smirk! Truth in advertising!”

It is true that Obama doesn’t seem to be working fast enough to try to reverse the damage of the past eight hellish years of rule by the unelected Bush regime, but we need to remember here in the United States of Amnesia that Obama inherited a mess that is going to take some time to reverse.

(Giving non-heterosexuals equal human and civil rights, however, takes little time and little to no money, so I don’t give Obama a pass on that one.)

I get Rall’s point that at least with Bush we knew what we were getting; we knew what we were getting right after BushCheneyCorp brazenly stole the presidential election of 2000.

Obama, on the other hand, campaigned as a progressive but thus far has governed as a Clintonesque centrist. Even with the Democrats in charge of the White House and both houses of Congress, I don’t expect Obama’s bait-and-switch centrism to change any day soon.

Even with a razor-thin margin of power, the Repugnicans under BushCheneyCorp never hesitated to “spend” their “political capital” (e.g., Bush “won” “re”-election in 2004 with only 50.7 percent of the popular vote to Democrat John Kerry’s 48.3 percent, but the members of BushCheneyCorp called this a “mandate”), yet here is Obama, sitting atop a mountain of political capital, yet he’s being miserly with it.

There is no good reason to get overconfident and to push things too far, as the Repugnicans did and thus subsequently sent themselves into the political wilderness, but there’s no reason to be too timid when you’re firmly in charge of things, either.

I can’t buy the Obama-is-even-worse-than-Bush argument for several reasons, starting with the reason that at least Obama legitimately was elected by a majority of the people. (Even Bill Clinton, who before Obama was the standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, won the White House in 1992 with a plurality, not a majority, of the votes.) At least nothing like a 9/11 or a Hurricane Katrina has happened thus far on Obama’s watch (and, my guess is, never will). Obama is slow to pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East (indeed, he’s putting more of them in Afghanistan), but he didn’t put them there in the first place; he inherited the mess in the Middle East from the Bush regime. And I can’t see Obama embroiling us in a wholly new bogus war, a la BushCheneyCorp with its Vietraq War.

Obama reminds me more of faux progressive Bill Clinton than he reminds me of George W. Bush. As Clinton faced early in his presidency, Obama is facing the two issues of health care reform and equal human and civil rights for non-heterosexuals.

Hopefully,  Obama, with a disempowered Repugnican Party and an empowered Democratic Party, will make far more progress than Clinton did on these and other issues.

All of this is not to say that we don’t keep Obama’s feet to the fire. We do.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is widely quoted as having said to the progressives within his party, “I agree with you [and] I want to do it; now make me do it.”

Let’s make Obama do it. Whether he wants to do it or not.