Sam Seder: "our interview with Digby on Occupy Wall Street and more!" (audio)

Majority Report, audio (33:23).

"Democrats erupt over latest plan on debt ceiling"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was asked to the White House on Thursday evening along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as President Obama tried to soothe Democrats. Many worried that he was retreating on has demand for new revenue to accompany slashes in federal spending. (Tom Williams, Roll Call / July 22, 2011)

Lisa Mascaro and Christi Parsons (LA Times):

As President Obama pushed hard for a grand deal to reduce the federal deficit, he ignited a furor among congressional Democrats on Thursday by appearing to retreat from his insistence that spending cuts and revenue increases be included in the same package. MORE...

Howie P.S.: Digby is also unhappy.

Digby on the New WikiLeaks Polls

Digby:

Most of those polled - 68 percent - say the WikiLeaks' exposure of government documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many - 59 percent - say the U.S. government should arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables.

Why wouldn't they think this since virtually everyone on TV, including journalists, is acting as if telling the truth about the US Government, even when it's done in league with reputable newspapers, is going to kill us all in our beds? It's not as if they are being told the truth --- even about that.

And frankly, it's clear that under the stress of rapid social change and economic insecurity, America is morphing itself quite comfortably into a police state, yearning to believe that it is under the most serious threats mankind has ever known (well, except for the real ones like climate change, which they increasingly believe is a hoax)in order to justify putting themselves into the hands of people who say they are protecting them. Like those lab rats who repeatedly shock themselves for rewards, they are so overstimulated that they are excitedly eating up the fearmongering and demagoguery, just so they can watch the authorities use their power to make it stop. MORE...

Greenwald: "If you haven't, watch this BBC segment on WikiLeaks" (video)

Digby, with video (05:38):

Greenwald's commentary on the pushback against Wikileaks among our elite overlords is excellent and you should read the whole thing. Like him, the thing that leaves me the most gobsmacked is the media, which seems to be the most upset over the idea that the Government is having a hard time keeping its secrets. I think we can all see how odd that is --- journalism being a field which is ostensibly about speaking truth to power and all that drivel.

This may be the best illustration of the point, also courtesy of Greenwald, in which the "diplomat" is the one who argues for transparency while the "journalist" (the editor of the New York Times as it happens) defends clearing their reporting with the government before reporting it:


If you find this subject intriguing, I would highly recommend that you read this mindblowing essay on Julian Assange's philosophy. Yes, he has one. And it's radical and it's interesting although nobody seems to be interested in it. All I hear is the argument about whether or not it's good for national security or whether it can be called real journalism. What I don't hear about is what it is Wikileaks is trying to accomplish. I suppose most of the interested parties who lead our conversation aren't comfortable with that. And you can understand why, when you read it. MORE...

Ann Wright, Greenwald (and Digby) on Wikileaks (with video)

Glenn Greenwald:

In sum, I seriously question the judgment of anyone who -- in the face of the orgies of secrecy the U.S. Government enjoys and, more so, the abuses they have accomplished by operating behind it -- decides that the real threat is WikiLeaks for subverting that ability. That's why I said yesterday: one's reaction to Wikileaks is largely shaped by whether or not one, on balance, supports what the U.S. has been covertly doing in the world by virtue of operating in the dark. I concur wholeheartedly with Digby's superb commentary on this point yesterday:

My personal feeling is that any allegedly democratic government that is so hubristic that it will lie blatantly to the entire world in order to invade a country it has long wanted to invade probably needs a self-correcting mechanism. There are times when it's necessary that the powerful be shown that there are checks on its behavior, particularly when the systems normally designed to do that are breaking down. Now is one of those times. . . MORE...

Howie P.S.: GRITtv has this interview with Ann Wright, video (15:50):

"We were told as diplomats, 'Don't ever put anything in a cable you wouldn't want on the front page of a newspaper.' It shows that they're a lot of arrogant people, that the system itself wasn't checking itself," says Ann Wright, Retired United States Army Colonel and former State Department official, of the latest documents released from WikiLeaks.

What Digby said...about the Rally for Sanity

Digby:

They did an unfortunately clumsy bit at the end which indicated both sides were equally bad and Jon gave a very uninspiring speech about how both sides need to calm down. (Of course the only ones who will hear it are liberals, but whatever ...) MORE...

H/t to Bob Sesca.

Biden and Digby on the "Message to Progressives" (with video)

MSNBC-Maddow, video via AMERICAblog (03:34).

Howie P.S.: Joe Biden's tells progressives: "Get in gear man!"

Digby:

Regardless of whether you agree with Obama's characterization there, I think most people would agree that it's an odd way to fire up the troops. There seems to be some misapprehension on the part of the DC Dems that trying to browbeat people into appreciating you is smart politics. I'm thinking maybe a little ass kissing at this point might be a little bit more effective.
(SNIP)
It's not that rank and file Democrats are congenitally unable to celebrate all the wonderful accomplishments of the Obama administration. It's that, like Americans everywhere, they are hurting financially and don't have good feelings about the future. The Republicans are fired up and believe that they can take action to change it by voting for teabaggers. But Dems are stuck in a holding pattern waiting for things to hopefully turn around. They have nowhere to focus their angst so they tune out. In those comments, the president is, at best, ignoring their real issue and saying they don't know how good they have it. It's not helpful. MORE...

Digby Reax to Politico on Obama

Digby (Hullabaloo):

Which brings us to the real problem for Obama among all Americans, not just his base, which is his neo-liberal economic policy and the often dry New Democrat political rhetoric that enables it. It does not surprise me much because he signaled early on in the campaign that he was going to govern like a cautious centrist and immediately upon taking office started chattering about "Grand Bargains" on social security and medicare. I took a lot of criticism for pointing that out at the time, from people who felt I wasn't giving him a chance (and who oddly believed the right had been completely vanquished...) But I don't think there was ever much of a mystery about whether or not he was a technocratic "pragmatist" who believed that this recession was simply a market correction that would turn itself around with a few tweaks here and there to make it more "efficient." Everything the administration did signaled they believed they were forced to intervene by political rather than economic necessity. Their eyes were on an "Obama Goes to China" legacy on so-called entitlement reform. The tepid stimulus and continued insistence on coddling Republicans all flowed from that.
(SNIP)
--- creating a Goldilocks meme among the media that says because Obama is criticized by both the immature bloggers and the radical tea party, he must be juuust riiiight. That won't do the Democrats any good in the short run, but it sounds like a 2012 strategy in the making.MORE...

Howie P.S.: H/t to Glenn Greenwald.

"DIGBY REVEALED @ TAKE BACK AMERICA" (video)

Digby comes out at the "Take Back America" conference, (video 13:00). She riffs on the netroots.