The President MEANT it.

[Faryn Balyncd]

"Your job is to hold my feet to the fire. . . So, you need to be out there everyday raising these issues, telling us when we’re doing the right or wrong thing. . . My role is to be President of the United States. . . "



http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/12/01/a-foot-in-two-worlds/

How could the President have been any more emphatic that our job is to RAISE HELL, and that robotic "support" is not, in fact, supportive of our shared values.


Could it have been any more clearly stated that blind "support" for compromised policies, by moving the goalposts in the wrong direction, result not in strengthening the President, but in making it more difficult for him to do his job, more difficult to actualize our values politically?


And can it not be more clear that it is only when Americans do raise hell that progress is made?






President Obama needs us to continue to raise hell.

He meant it.

[jakeXT]

1. Not everybody got the memo (Levin: Public opinion can’t guide decision on striking Syria's Assad)

Levin: Public opinion can’t guide decision on striking Syria's Assad
Lawmakers should not be looking to the polls to shape their views on military action in Syria, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Wednesday.

Levin pushed back against lawmakers who have said they can't support military strikes due to overwhelming public opposition, arguing that polls should not be a factor in the decision.

Levin, who supports military action in Syria, cited his vote against the war in Iraq in 2002, when public opinion was on the side of authorizing military force.

“I just don’t think you can be guided, when it comes to this kind of an issue, by public opinion polls,” Levin said at a breakfast with reporters Wednesday.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/321603-levin-public-opinion-cant-guide-foreign-policy-decisions

[Faryn Balyncd]

2. You are correct.

(Maybe Levin needs to learn that we won't let our government continue to be guided by billionaires and weasel politicians.)

[LuvNewcastle]

3. I hope he loses his job.

Everyone knows there was serious opposition from the public about the proposed strike on Syria. It wasn't just about "public opinion polls." We are the people who fight and die and lose loved ones in their wars. What we think is the most important issue for politicians to consider when they make decisions about whether to vote for war. Fuck him and anyone else in Congress who thinks the way he does.

[pampango]

4. Exactly. Neither "robotic support" nor robotic opposition are supportive of our shared values.

We have come to expect robotic opposition from tea party types and republicans in general, but they do not "share our values".

Our support and opposition should be more selective and, for the most part, is. If I were president, I would want a noisy, pushy left always pushing for more progressive policies rather than a quiet left that seemed to be content that "pampango's got this".

[Faryn Balyncd]

5. +1

and that's the kind of president we have.

[reformist2]

6. I think I understand your point, but it does oddly give credit to Obama for when *we* speak up.

[treestar]

11. OH, wait, we can't have that!!!!!!!!!

[Laelth]

7. I want to believe he meant it.

Several posters here, however, have done an admirable job of trying to convince me otherwise. Now, I am not so sure.

-Laelth

[Hydra]

17. The message control is well coordinated

But at this point, if the President didn't mean it when he said it...it doesn't matter. It's our JOB to keep him on the straight and narrow.

We've pretty much failed at doing that, but we need to try anyway.

[Laelth]

18. My ethical core tells me you are right.

Regardless of whether the President wants pressure from those of us on the left, I feel compelled to give it, as do you. Kudos.

-Laelth

[sendero]

8. Communications to the white house..

.. (including congress of course) have been 1000 to 1 against bombing Syria. If that isn't "holding his feet to the fire" I don't know what is.

[SammyWinstonJack]

16. Right?

[Laelth]

19. Spot on. n/t

-Laelth

[99Forever]

10. Pretty sure that ....

... the guy who said that was always "an Obama hater" and "expects a pony."

[treestar]

12. I wouldn't be so happy

He would be speaking to everyone, not just the left, and not just the people who always think he is wrong, no matter what. He's not talking to them, in fact he has pushed back against that.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. It feels good to Raise A Little Hell -

[Triana]

14. In a severely dysfunctional gov't like ours, doesn't really matter. Congress...

...makes the laws and holds the purse strings. And this congress in particular, doesn't give a DAMN how much hell people raise. They only answer to those who own and control them: Koch Bros, Sheldon Adelson, Pete Peterson, Goldman-Sachs, Monsanto, Exxon-Mobil, NRA, Chamber of Commerce, etc.

It doesn't matter what the President wants. This congress has vowed from moment One to obstruct anything he says, wants, or does.

What does that leave us with? Raising Hell, sure. We have to. What else can we do? But realize the President is only 1/3 of the gov't.

[whttevrr]

15. I supported the President going to Congress.

I did not support bombing Syria.

Thankfully there is a pause in this thing. I hope the Chemical Weapons get destroyed.

[forestpath]

20. If he has anything other than disdain for people who hold his feet to the fire I've yet to see it.

[rug]

21. If we don't take action now, he may let loose missiles in the middle east.

Not to mention what North Korea would think of us.