Hey Professional Left !!! - This Post's For YOU !!! - 'The Election War and the Internal War'

[WillyT]

The Election War and the Internal War
Mike Lux
Author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Posted: October 29, 2010 11:49 AM

<snip>

All hands are on deck in the progressive community working to surprise the pundits and stave off too many Republican victories on election day. And all the last minute work really does matter, as I will document in my next post about the closeness of margins in swing Congressional races even in years where one party or the other is making big gains. We all need to keep focused and keep our nose to the grindstone, because this election's fate is not yet decided. The president is out on the campaign trail working his butt off; the Democratic leadership in Congress is raising money and helping out in every way they can; the staffers for the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, and other party committees are out in the field working their hearts out in races all over the country. They are joined by activists from the netroots and every kind of progressive organization knocking on doors, making calls, coming to rallies, and doing everything in their power to turn the tide. It makes me proud that so many people are working so hard even when- in fact, especially when- the going has gotten so tough.

However, I just need to stop for a moment and quickly note, because it will become hugely more important in the weeks and months following the election, that not everyone in the administration is on the same team. All the passion so many people are showing makes it all the more galling to have certain as yet to be found out people in the Treasury department, people who owe their jobs to all of you who worked so hard to get President Obama elected in 2008, stabbing us all in the back in the very last days of this campaign. Check out Zach Carter's superb post this morning on the snakes in the Treasury Department who are working to undermine the president, his new appointee Elizabeth Warren, and all of us in the progressive world who are so excited about the potential of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau right before the election: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/10/29/are-treasury%E2%80%99s-knives-coming-out-against-elizabeth-warren/ Their petty leaks and nasty attacks are the worst kind of Washington BS. They made a rotten attack on Raj Date, who is a brilliant, progressive, and committed man who was a leader in making the financial reform bill stronger. As to the office paint job leak, it is just laughable: I was over at Elizabeth's very plain office in the standard government building where she is spending 95% of her time, and she hasn't even taken the time to put a picture on the wall. She is a frugal, modest Oklahoman who is so driven by the work that she probably wouldn't even notice if someone repainted her office. And the media hound charge is just funny: senior White House officials told me weeks ago that they wanted Elizabeth to be as visible as possible in the final days before the election because she is a strong voice for the middle class. Literally all the media bookings for her have come at the request of the White House communications shop.

I have always told people that working in the Clinton White House, I met some of the best people I have ever known and some of the worst. There are people who are in government for all the right reasons, because they want to make the country a better place and really help improve the lives of regular people. Elizabeth Warren is one of the very best of that group. And there are people who are in government because they are looking to brownnose the industries they are supposed to be regulating so they can get a really high paying lobbyist job after a few years in government. It is very clear that some of the people in Treasury, certainly the people doing these absurd attacks, are in the latter category. They don't care about screwing over the president and the Democratic Party in the days before the election, and they certainly don't care about helping consumers. What they care about is sucking up to the Wall Street bankers who they hope will give them a sweet job sometime soon.

I have a message for the leakers at Treasury, though: you are playing with fire. The two people closest to the president at the White House, Pete Rouse and Valerie Jarrett, are huge fans of Warren, and I know these leaks have caught their attention. I would love to see a serious investigation into these leaks once the election is over, and it just might happen. And whatever happens on the inside, the entire progressive community- bloggers, members of Congress, labor and consumer organizations- have Elizabeth Warren's back. Right now, unlike you leakers, we are focused on winning elections, but after the election, we will be gunning for you.

<snip>

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/the-election-war-and-the_b_775974.html

:kick::kick::kick:

[WillyT]

1. THIS Got Unrecced ???

Wow... I thought you guys had Obama's and the Democrat's backs.

:shrug:

Must be me, and not the piece.

:cry:

:(

:evilgrin:

:hi:

[fascisthunter]

2. I erased the unrec

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Me too, but it was still at 0

The suppression squad is on their toes.

[MannyGoldstein]

3. Professional Left Trumped by Professional Unrec-ers

As usual.

I hope that your post is accurate - however, until Timmy Geithner is launched into space and the rest of the banker uber alles crowd is keel-hauled, we're fairly fucked.

The good news is that the coming full-frontal assault on Social Security will distract us from Treasury shenanigans for a while. Woo-hoo!

[dtmfman]

13. Geithner, Bernanke, Paulsen, Kashkari...theys should all be in jail!

If you want to use them...be my guest!

[sabrina 1]

29. Not any more, Professional Left

trumps professional unrec'ers! Lol!

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. And I added another. Love Elizabeth. We DO have her back.

[dtmfman]

22. this was posted somewhere...

But...it didn't have any side arms...so I added them for effect...go get em sheriff warren!

[Ruby the Liberal]

25. LOL! Nice job.

:toast:

[MineralMan]

23. WTF. Whining about unrecs in the first reply to your post?

Unrecommendations are a feature of this forum.

Unrecommended for having a trigger that is too short.

[WillyT]

26. Oh I Have No Problem With Unreccing For My Unrec "Whining..."

You had the courage to unrec, AND post your objections.

Noted and valid.

What I desire, is for somebody to unrec and courageously STATE WHAT THEY DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THE ARTICLE!

How else will we ever learn?

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

31. That's not required for using that feature, Willy T.

Not at all. The feature is what it is. People should be able to feel free to unrec if they choose to do so. You are not owed an explanation for their action. It is part of DU. I consider whines like this one to be attempts to keep people from using the features built into DU. It's the same as telling someone they can't post in your thread. Both are features of DU.

I usually say why I unrecced, but that's not a requirement. It's unseemly to whine about these things. People do as they choose to do, and it's not up to you to chide them for it. It's a function of the forum. Accept that function. As it turns out, your thread did just fine with recommendations.

Please don't be petty about what people do on DU. The unrec button is there. People will use it. There it is. If you don't like the feature, complain to the admins, please. Please don't chide other DUers for using the tools provided by those admins. Not everyone likes your post. So? My posts get unrecommended, too, by some people. I'd venture to guess that you have unrecommended some of my threads. Who cares? It's just a vote. Do you not want people to vote?

That's my last word on the subject in this thread. Good luck to you.

[WillyT]

33. No It's Not Required... It Is However, Desired...

And it seems a tad chicken-shit to register disapproval without any explanation whatsoever.

And in the case of THIS OP... I'm dying to know what the disagreement is, where it lays, what part of the piece did not cut it.

Of course there is always the possibility that the unrec is NOT about the OP, but is about who posted the OP. In which case, it is infinitely more cowardly. It's sort of an anonymous call out, where you can identify and register your disapproval of a member of this site, without getting in trouble for calling them out.

Again... chicken-shit behavior IMNSHO.

Hell if somebody don't like me... they can post it... many have.

:evilgrin:

And I've never anonymously alerted on a one of 'em.

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

43. Whatever someone's reason for unreccing (or reccing)

a thread, it's a feature on this site. Not everyone feels like posting an explanation for why they unrecommend a thread. However, when you or I or anyone else posts an OP, we are aware that some people may unrec that thread. When it happens, it's an unremarkable event. And, by unremarkable, I mean that it doesn't call for any remarks. There's no point in commenting on that, and it makes the OP look silly to be that concerned with what anyone on DU thinks of his or her thread.

Ask yourself this: Do you ever just unrecommended a thread without commenting in that thread? I have. And I'll bet you have, too. I can't prove that, of course, but I'm just betting you've dropped in on a thread and just clicked unrecommend for one reason or another. If that's true, then you're doing exactly what you're calling people cowards for doing. And that's just not right. You don't need to answer. You know whether or not you have done that, and you can think about it for yourself.

As for alerts, they are not anonymous. The alerter's screen name travels to the mods along with the alert. In fact, it is against the rules here to even mention that you have alerted on a post. There's a good reason for that rule. An alert goes to the moderators and is then discussed to determine whether any DU rules have been broken and what action should be taken if rules were broken. That's not done in public, and the alert isn't public, either. It's a good system, and a fair one.

I have a rule for myself regarding alerts: I never alert on an attack on myself, except in very unusual circumstances. I'm not objective, so I don't alert. I'll make an exception for something really egregious or for a post revealing private information, but that's it. I save my alerts for attacks on others and on posts that are simply over the top.

I have a general rule on unrecs, too: If I unrec, I almost always post the reason for it. Almost always. Sometimes, I don't bother because the IP I'm unreccing is just patently wrong or disruptive or horribly lame.

You don't like the unrec feature. That's fine. I don't care about it. When I post an OP, which I do from time to time, I pay no attention to the recommendation count. I don't post to get on the Greatest Page. I post to say something I think is important or funny. If people like my post, they comment on it, and it stays high on the list of the forum in which I posted it. If they don't, it drops quickly out of sight. Nothing else matters. I ignore unrecommendations, especially. Who cares what some anonymous DUer thinks about my OP? It's irrelevant. It's certainly not something to complain about in the first reply to the OP. That's just strange, it seems to me, if you're posting to share information of some kind.

If you have something worth saying, you have something worth saying. Recs and unrecs don't matter at all. I suppose some people post just to get their screen name on the Greatest Page. I can't imagine why, though. That's a pretty insignificant honor, it seems to me. I'm sure you're posting to educate and inform, so what does it matter?

[sabrina 1]

27. And letting people know that there are objections to the OP

is also a feature of this forum, especially when the unrec'ers do not make their objections public or their reasons known. Which is THEIR choice, and it is ours to point them out. I often mention them and will continue to do so as I am not aware of any rule against it.

[MineralMan]

32. Fine. That is your opinion. Mine is different.

Every user on DU uses the features of the site as they choose. Until there is a requirement that an unrecommendation come with an explanation, why complain about people using that feature. For pete's sake!

[sabrina 1]

34. And until a ruling comes that letting people know an OP is being

unrec'd, why complain when people do so? As you say, every user uses the features of the site as they see fit so long as it is not against the rules.

[MineralMan]

44. It all seems pretty silly to me.

Almost any OP gets some unrecs and recs, if it has any thing in it that people may not agree with. That's just plain unremarkable. I can't imagine anyone who frequently posts OPs on DU would be at all surprised or alarmed that another DUer has unrecced a thread. I post OPs sometimes. I can't remember a single one that didn't get some unrecs, even posts that have over 100 recommendations. Who cares?

It is not the rec count that matters in the first place. It is the content and discussion of that content within the thread. Complaining that someone has unrecced an OP diminishes the original argument and brings into question why the OP was posted. I assume that a person posting an OP has something to say and is interested in what others think about that. That's the only reason I can think of to start a thread in a discussion forum, as far as I'm concerned.

Complaining from the very beginning of a thread that some DUers are unrecommending that thread just seems like a petty action to me...even pettier than unreccing anonymously. It's to be expected with almost every OP here. It's just a commonplace, and not worthy of any notice at all. To make a complaint about an unrec as the first reply to one's own OP just seems odd to me. Such things always make me think: WTF? If an OP waits a while, he or she will soon know what DUers think of his or her post. DUers are not shy about such things. In the case of this particular thread, it accumulated quite a few recommendations. So, what was the point in complaining before anyone had even commented? It just seems silly to me.

[MineralMan]

24. Apparently, it did get unrecced, even before anyone had

posted. Here's the deal, as I see it. Recommendations and unrecommendations are a feature of DU. This kind of whining complaint seems to me to be an attempt to either try to make people stop using that feature or a callout of some person or person unknown. Either way, it's inappropriate. You post an OP. People will reply or not reply to your post. They will recommend or unreccomend your post. That's what happens when you create an OP on DU. It is the nature of the very place where you are posting.

So, the appropriate thing is to make the post and see what happens. As it turns out, your post got many recommendations and got to the Greatest Page with plenty of margin. So, why whine about someone unrecommending your post before anyone had even replied? I don't get it. I post OPs here, too. Often, they get unrecommended right away, then build recommendations over time. Who cares? Really. Either the post stands on its merits and is read and replied to and appreciated or it sinks.

It's petty, I believe, to begin whining about some unrecommendation before anyone has even had a chance to reply to your OP. It just seems to be a small sort of thing to do.

Note: It was not me who unrecommended your post. I probably would not have done that, except that you immediately whined about someone using a feature of this forum. I didn't read the post until two hours after you wrote it. Ugh!

[Tippy]

6. K&R

[xchrom]

7. Recommend

[Ruby the Liberal]

8. Anyone who has seen this woman speak for more than 3 minutes knows she isn't a superficial

prima donna. Her choice of words, mannerisms and style are about as 180 from superficial/egotistical as one could possibly get.

She is the real deal, and the frat boys at Treasury will soon find they are messing with fire if they keep going down this path.

[WillyT]

9. Word...

:yourock:

:hi:

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dtmfman]

11. Remember...Tuesday is trash day...

Don't forget to take out the trash on capitol hill...

[WillyT]

12. Welcome To DU, dtmfman !!!

:toast::bounce::toast:

Glad ta have ya aboard!

:hi:

[dtmfman]

14. thanks...I just found this place...

been over on hp for a while...figured I'd pass along my "posters" I've got a ton...is there a better place on the forum to post them?

[WillyT]

15. Usually People Just Post Them As They Become Relevant To The Subject Matter Of A Post

Do a search of SwampRat... for instance.

:shrug:

:hi:

[sabrina 1]

35. This is why they are out to get Elizabeth Warren"

Treasury officials would be making a serious error if they think they can scapegoat Warren in an effort to deflect criticism from the Department’s own very real failings. As Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Warren has been highlighting major problems with the Treasury’s foreclosure relief plan for literally years. But Geithner and Treasury have steadfastly refused to change the program, as millions of avoidable foreclosures have rained down on the economy.

Elizabeth Warren's grilling of Geithner this summer over why they were not using the Presidents program to help people stay in their homes, was a lesson in how to corner those who believe they have a right to hide from the American people, what they are up to.

At the time, it was hard to understand WHY Treasury was holding on to that money, WHY banks would not want to keep people paying their mortgages. But it was clear that Geithner was hiding something something and I believe Elizabeth Warren knew that also.

Now, with the information we are getting about the whole Foreclosure Ponzi Scheme, I think we know the answer as to why 'millions of avoidable foreclosures' were allowed to happen by Geithner and Treasury.

One, Foreclosures were hugely profitable, and two, they knew about the corruption, the phony documentation etc.

They do to Elizabeth Warren what they did to Brooksley Born, if they can get away with it. But there was no Internet back then, just the MSM so most of us knew nothing about what they were doing.

This and the battle for Social Security should and will take every ounce of energy people have and I hope soon, some of these criminals will be brought to justice. Meantime, I hope EW has protection.

[SidDithers]

16. Unrec for whining about unrec with the first reply...

Edit: and how would you know your post was unrecc'd before anyone else had replied? I didn't think you could rec your own post.

Sid

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MannyGoldstein]

19. recs not equal replies nt

[WillyT]

20. You Can Rec, Or UnRec, Without Replying...

Are you new to DU ???

:shrug:

[SidDithers]

41. Self delete...nt

Sid

[WillyT]

42. I Hacked In...

Actually... I posted what I thought was both a pro-GOTV/got Obama's back piece by Mike Lux, and then went on to other posts and articles. While I was perusing DU, I noticed that this OP had a rec or two with no responses. When I checked back a while later, it still had no responses, and the recs had disappeared. Just wondering what the unreccers found objectionable.

Maybe it was my headline.

:shrug:

[sabrina 1]

28. Rec'd to counter whining about whining about unrecs.

And because it is an excellent OP. Elizabeth Warren is the best.

[WillyT]

30. Damn... I'm Gettin Dizzy Here

:crazy:

And yeah... EW is the BEST!!!

:bounce::hi::bounce:

[Bluenorthwest]

18. Elizabeth Warren is the best.

And if Jarrett is in her corner, that is a reason to give Jarrett another chance. That is how much I like Warren. She speaks like no one in politics today.

[Volaris]

39. I want that woman made Treasury Sec.

[WillyT]

40. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said...

:bounce:

:hi:

:kick:

[laughingliberal]

21. K & R nt

[WillyT]

36. Kick !!!

:kick:

[EFerrari]

37. K&R

[nashville_brook]

38. k and r!