Update

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance - it's the illusion of knowledge.

John Cleese narrates a Dunning Kruger refresher.

Take A Break And Stay At It

Chuck Wendig, terribleminds.com

My fave is #5.

These are dumb times and dumb times often call for tireless marathons of beer and donuts and naps — and definitely do those things from time to time! — but also, like, eat some fucking vegetables, get some exercise, get some rest. Trust me, I get it, pretty much every day I hit a period where I’m like, “The best thing I can do right now would be to drink whiskey until I stop recognizing the world,”

driftglass

...reminding us (just in case you're still a little unclear on the concept) that if we don't learn our History, then we don't learn from our History.  Particularly, how to keep from making the same fucking mistakes over and over and over again.

Take it away driftglass (@Mr_Electrico)

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan killed something called The Fairness Doctrine:

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987.

For the record, the two federal judges who helped Reagan kill the Fairness Doctrine were future-Supreme Court incubus Antonin Scalia, and disgraced Nixon henchman Robert Bork.  After helping to hold down the Fairness Doctrine while Reagan smothered it, both men went on to enjoy long and fruitful careers as wingnut icons and ruiners of American democracy.

driftglass almost always runs a little long, but that's cuz he drinks good Scotch and he knows things. And there's a shitload to know, so it can take a while for him to recount it all for us.

Learn a little sumpthin'.

Fareed Explains

The Lady Kills Me

Can you say 'high dudgeon'?  I knew you could.

A Day Late

I spent so much time yesterday casting about for something to post, that I plumb forgot it was National Teacher Appreciation Day.

Here's a bit from Tim Wise (fast becoming my favorite social critic) from earlier this year. He's trying to throw some light on the facts of "education" here in USAmerica Inc these days.

My main takeaway is that we have to stop thinking the people in charge are stoopid and that they're making stoopid decisions.  The decisions are made and policies are put in place for specific reasons - and those policies are working almost exactly as intended.

And BTW - here's the Jefferson quote:

This bill proposes to lay off every county into small districts of five or six miles square, called hundreds, and in each of them to establish a school for teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The tutor to be supported by the hundred, and every person in it entitled to send their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for it. These schools to be under a visitor [i.e., superintendent], who is annually to choose the boy of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar schools [high schools, in effect] of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different parts of [Virginia], for teaching Greek, Latin, geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.

Tommy Jeff was cool enough, but I have no doubt he was a man of his times; an elitist with a bit of a conscience, but an elitist nonetheless.

Yikes

So - should we be afraid for ourselves?   Or is it that we should be afraid of ourselves?

Isn't that pretty much what it comes down to though?  Politicians in general (and Repubs mostly in particular) are eager to peddle the panic.  They know how to play on our fears to keep us divided, and to use that division to get what their big money donors are paying them to get.  

But over time, we become conditioned to the fear, which starts to drive a trend towards ideological purity, which always gets us out to the logical extreme in one big fuckin' hurry.  ie: Everybody's a traitor to the cause except you and me, and I'm beginning to have my doubts about you.

We can have some fun pointing and laughing, but this shit gets real if we don't smarten up and stand in its way before it has a chance to reach critical mass.

And BTW - in case it's not obvious enough, lemme state the obvious for you - smart guys working for John Kasich put this together using Trump's nutty-tude to make Kasich look like something other than the radical god-knobbing authoritarian freak that he actually is.  It's not like Kasich doesn't think very much along the same lines as Trump does, it's just that Kasich doesn't say that shit out loud.

And of course, that's kinda the problem - Trump gets a boatload of support for being "Anti-PC".  But here's the word on that one, guys.  It's Politically Incorrect to say certain things because they're shitty things to say. And since words comprise the expression of thought, PC becomes not much more than a general attempt to get you to stop thinking shitty thoughts about people.  

Putting it another way - if you can learn not to talk stoopid, it'll help you learn how not to be stoopid, and then we can stop calling you stoopid, and then you can stop bitchin' about how everybody's always callin' ya stoopid.  Deal?  

And BTW also too - Since the "voting" in Ohio appears to be nearly as honest and forthright as it was in Noriega's Panama, I'll go out on a limb and say this: Assuming Kasich's still in this thing next March - and even if he's polling behind by 20+ points - he'll somehow manage to eke out a landslide upset.   Just sayin' - again.  

I guess my main problem now is deciding how to defend myself from accusations of peddling a little fear my-own-bad-self.

The American ISIS

...meets the Islamic Klan(?)

Whatever I'm doing on any given Saturday morning isn't more important or educational than listening to The Professional Left podcast from driftglass and BlueGal.

Starting at about 37:00, they get to the meat of something that sounds about right.  Even if it does end up seeming a little obvious, when somebody connects a coupla dots for me, and there's the sound of a click in the upper part of my brain, I know I've become aware of something worth learning about.

Anyway, listen to it and then tell me there's nothing to worry about with something like the Bullshit Revisionist History Curriculum in Colorado (eg) right now.

It's important to believe as many true things as possible, and to not believe as many false things as possible. (paraphrasing Matt Dillahunty)

Blue Sunday

Gotta be a way to move forward, but it seems like somebody's always dragging us back.

The Amazing Charlie Pierce

Copied in it's entirety from Esquire - picture and all:

Jesus god, Ed fking Meese?

Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama's health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

I didn't know that there was an Old Timer's Game for Authoritarian Yahoos.

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

At least part of the blame has to be shared by those nominal Democrats who, either through their silence on the crimes of that era, or in their admiration for Reagan's "style" and toothy obliviousness. (The latest of these, alas, is Chris Matthews, who has written a book about how Tip O'Neill and Ronnie made politics "work," and who, between 1980 and 1982, probably sold out truly progressive politics for at least two decades.) A number of truly horrible things were set in motion in our political life in the 1980's. The people responsible never have really been called to account for it. Now, one of the worst of them is back, doing further damage. I am, frankly, stunned.

Dear "Conservatives",

I wanna believe you.  I really do.  I wanna know when the people I'm trusting to run my government are fucking up and/or fucking us over and/or whatever.  We all need you to tell us about the things you find out - especially the shit that goes on in every administration that every administration doesn't want us to know about.  Do that and you're fulfilling your number one obligation to our country.  Your guys aren't in the White House right now, so applying counter weight to the balance of power is what you're supposed be doing.  All well and good - but ya gotta stop just makin' shit up.  Cuz guess what - I'm not inclined to believe one fuckin' thing that falls outa your gob-shite pie-holes any more.

First off, there's plenty of stuff about Obama we should be talking about that we're not talking about, because you won't let us talk about it, because you're too busy jumping up and down screeching about stoopid "issues" that're either trivial or straight-up made-up bullshit.

Let's see if Ol' Doc Maddow can 'splain some of it:



Repubs are fond of saying how fucked up Gubmint is, and they seem to be working really hard to make sure it says that way.

Why Benghazi?

Because it's about attacking the opponent's strength(s).  It's classic Turd Blossom. Obama and Hillary and "the Dems" have gained an awful lot of ground on Foreign Policy.  And of course the Repubs won't admit it to the rubes (the rubes can't even admit it to themselves), but after Jr Bush, how could anybody not look good on Foreign Policy?  The Continentals were so relieved we elected a guy with a living thinking brain they creamed their jeans and gave him the Peace Prize before he'd actually done anything - they were just desperately hoping the Cheney/Bush nightmare was finally ending.  So the perception for the rubes is that the whole world is ass-over-apricots-in-love with Barack and Hillary, and so of course we'll need to pull them down a peg or two; and it doesn't matter that they look all shiny and clean - we'll just make something up.

It worked on The Big Dog back in the 90s.  It worked on Kerry in 2004 and they believe completely there's no reason it can't work on Hillary now.



If you wanna make your argument stick, you lead with your strength.  Because there's a brain thing that happens in humans - I've forgotten what's it's called, but it has something to do with our ability to Generalize - and it says that if I can knock down your first point in the debate, then I can knock down all the rest of your points without even knowing what they are - my brain is just wired to make that assumption.

So you attack the opponent's strength; if you can make even the tiniest dent, you can move the opinion needle back in your guy's direction; and in a political climate where the two sides are so closely divided, that tiny movement can make a big difference.

"Argument"

And try not to think about what goes on when you try to engage your more "conservative" friends in a real discussion on anything that matters.



Every fucking time.

And damn if it wouldn't be great for the cops to come in and arrest the whole bunch.  Or even better if the fuckin' thing just ended with a

hat tip = Crooks & Liars

It's A Sucker Move

Obama says if Assad uses Chemical Weapons, it's a game-changer.
Intel says somebody's used Sarin in Syria.
John McCain immediately hits TV saying we gotta make a move.

There's a lot to it, and I don't claim to know enough to make the definitive call, but remembering that it's never all about what they say it's all about, here's what I hear some of these guys saying:

The Neo-Cons - and the Neo-Liberals too - (for lack of more accurate identifiers) are pushing hard again for another entanglement in the Middle East.  And one of the benefits of pushing Obama into a war would be that it suddenly becomes a lot easier to play the Equivalency card.

So it starts to sound like, "See? Obama is no different than Bush or any Repub or anybody else - so you should all just throw up your hands, walk away from politics altogether, and be sure to stay home on election day because it's all just too weird.  It's ugly and they're all stupid and you're busy with your own shit anyway.  Just stay away."

That's one thing I hear.

Here's Chris Hayes breakin' it down:

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And here's the next segment:

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Today's Smartest Thing

(My 2¢ - politicians take positions; abandon positions; and/or change positions when they recognize either political opportunity or political threat)

From a Balloon Juice post:

But there’s at least one difference between Portman and Obama on this specific issue: Portman did it because changing his position will lead to a clear and direct personal gain–his actual gay son might get an real benefit from the state based on his father’s position. As far as we know, Obama’s change in position gives him no such benefit. For you freshman logic fans, that’s the fallacy of equivocation. Glenn’s trying to say that one of Obama’s stated reasons (his empathy for friends and staff who are gay) is the same thing as Portman’s (a real parental interest in the outcome of the debate).

Today's Smartest Thing

They're talking about the sausage-making in DC, and at around the 4:45 mark, Alexis Goldstein (OWS) makes an observational analogy that just knocked me my off my chair.

Paraphrasing - lobbyists get in to see the Congress Critters so regularly and so often - effectively pushing constituents and consumers and "regular people" off to the side - that it starts to look like a Denial of Service Attack.

Watch, and gape - and then try to explain to me how you think your Reps in congress are there to serve you.

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Today's History Lesson

Heroes remain heroes only as long as we don't look too close.  It's always important to judge slowly.

From a long pice at AlterNet:

The disruption of Johnson’s peace talks then enabled Nixon to hang on for a narrow victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey. However, as the new President was taking steps in 1969 to extend the war another four-plus years, he sensed the threat from the wiretap file and ordered two of his top aides, chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, to locate it. But they couldn’t find the file.

--and--

So, while congressional and federal investigators looked only at how the specific 1985-86 arms sales to Iran got started, there was no timely attention paid to evidence that the Reagan administration had quietly approved Israeli arms sales to Iran in 1981 and that those contacts went back to the days before Election 1980 when the hostage crisis destroyed Carter’s reelection hopes and ensured Reagan’s victory.

The 52 hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.
Over the years, about two dozen sources – including Iranian officials, Israeli insiders, European intelligence operatives, Republican activists and even Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – have provided information about alleged contacts with Iran by the Reagan campaign.

And, there were indications early in the Reagan presidency that something peculiar was afoot. On July 18, 1981, an Israeli-chartered plane crashed or was shot down after straying over the Soviet Union on a return flight from delivering U.S.-manufactured weapons to Iran.

--and--

When journalist Gary Webb revived the Contra-Cocaine scandal in the mid-to-late 1990s, he faced unrelenting hostility from Establishment reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. The attacks were so ugly that Webb’s editors at the San Jose Mercury News forced him out, setting in motion his professional destruction.

It didn’t even matter when an internal investigation by the CIA’s inspector general in 1998 confirmed that the Reagan and Bush-41 administrations had tolerated and protected drug trafficking by the Contras. The major newspapers largely ignored the findings and did nothing to help rehabilitate Webb’s career, eventually contributing to his suicide in 2004. [For details on the CIA report, see Robert Parry's Lost History.]

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Gettin' It Done - 1

Get your ass out there and vote.  And nag everybody you know to get out and vote too.

You can pretend to be cool and fatalistic about it; and you can actually convince yourself that somehow you're standing up to protest by sitting at home, thus punishing the system by depriving it of whatever your fevered little brain thinks you're accomplishing by withholding something from it.  (or something like that - whenever I hear people's explanations for why they don't vote, I honestly can't figure out what the fuck they're talking about)

But anyway; first off, genius, guess what.  An awful lot of the "bad guys" you're constantly pissin' and moanin' about want you to stay home.  Do you honestly think they'd spend all that money time and effort trying to keep people away from the polls because they want full participation of the electorate?

Second, it's really about having the guts to make a fairly simple commitment to the fairly simple idea of self-government.  Do you at least want to try to be involved in making the decisions that affect your everyday life, or do you just want to leave it all up to somebody else?  You can actually afford to take a few moments away from your hobbies and your habits to fulfill your absolute base minimum obligation when it comes to service to your country.  When you don't vote, you're expecting everybody else to do your work for you, while you get an equal share in the benefits.

So it comes down to this:  If you stay home on election day, then you're a know-nothin', do-nothin', free-loadin' pussy; standin' there with a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.

Work for it.

50 Things Obama’s Done – First Term

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden: In 2011, ordered special forces raid of secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed and a trove of al-Qaeda documents was discovered.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

8. Recapitalized Banks: In the midst of financial crisis, approved controversial Treasury Department plan to lure private capital into the country’s largest banks via “stress tests” of their balance sheets and a public-private fund to buy their “toxic” assets. Got banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government.

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Ended 1990s-era restriction and formalized new policy allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011, joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action, including air power and naval blockade, against Gaddafi regime to defend Libyan civilians and support rebel troops. Gaddafi’s forty-two-year rule ended when the dictator was overthrown and killed by rebels on October 20, 2011. No American lives were lost.

11. Told Mubarak to Go: On February 1, 2011, publicly called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to accept reform or step down, thus weakening the dictator’s position and putting America on the right side of the Arab Spring. Mubarak ended thirty-year rule when overthrown on February 11.

12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies: Two days after taking office, nullified Bush-era rulings that had allowed detainees in U.S. custody to undergo certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques considered inhumane under the Geneva Conventions. Also released the secret Bush legal rulings supporting the use of these techniques.

13. Improved America’s Image Abroad: With new policies, diplomacy, and rhetoric, reversed a sharp decline in world opinion toward the U.S. (and the corresponding loss of “soft power”) during the Bush years. From 2008 to 2011, favorable opinion toward the United States rose in ten of fifteen countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with an average increase of 26 percent.

14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending: As part of the 2010 health care reform bill, signed measure ending the wasteful decades-old practice of subsidizing banks to provide college loans. Starting July 2010 all students began getting their federal student loans directly from the federal government. Treasury will save $67 billion over ten years, $36 billion of which will go to expanding Pell Grants to lower-income students.

15. Created Race to the Top: With funds from stimulus, started $4.35 billion program of competitive grants to encourage and reward states for education reform.

16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards: Released new fuel efficiency standards in 2011 that will nearly double the fuel economy for cars and trucks by 2025.

17. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis: To keep world economy out of recession in 2009 and 2010, helped secure from G-20 nations more than $500 billion for the IMF to provide lines of credit and other support to emerging market countries, which kept them liquid and avoided crises with their currencies.

18. Passed Mini Stimuli: To help families hurt by the recession and spur the economy as stimulus spending declined, signed series of measures (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011) to extend unemployment insurance and cut payroll taxes.

19. Began Asia “Pivot”: In 2011, reoriented American military and diplomatic priorities and focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Executed multipronged strategy of positively engaging China while reasserting U.S. leadership in the region by increasing American military presence and crafting new commercial, diplomatic, and military alliances with neighboring countries made uncomfortable by recent Chinese behavior.

20. Increased Support for Veterans: With so many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Iran with serious physical and mental health problems, yet facing long waits for services, increased 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 16 percent and 2011 budget by 10 percent. Also signed new GI bill offering $78 billion in tuition assistance over a decade, and provided multiple tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans.

21. Tightened Sanctions on Iran: In effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program, signed Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (2010) to punish firms and individuals who aid Iran’s petroleum sector. In late 2011 and early 2012, coordinated with other major Western powers to impose sanctions aimed at Iran’s banks and with Japan, South Korea, and China to shift their oil purchases away from Iran.

22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

24. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws: Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, giving women who are paid less than men for the same work the right to sue their employers after they find out about the discrimination, even if that discrimination happened years ago. Under previous law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the statute of limitations on such suits ran out 180 days after the alleged discrimination occurred, even if the victims never knew about it.

25. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court: Nominated and obtained confirmation for Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to serve, in 2009; and Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010. They replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively.

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

27. Achieved New START Treaty: Signed with Russia (2010) and won ratification in Congress (2011) of treaty that limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200) and 700 launchers (down from more than 1,400), and reestablished and strengthened a monitoring and transparency program that had lapsed in 2009, through which each country can monitor the other.

28. Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.

29. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection: Signed Omnibus Public Lands Management Act (2009), which designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, created thousands of miles of recreational and historic trails, and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

30. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco: Signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009). Nine years in the making and long resisted by the tobacco industry, the law mandates that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients, obtain FDA approval for new tobacco products, and expand the size and prominence of cigarette warning labels, and bans the sale of misleadingly labeled “light” cigarette brands and tobacco sponsorship of entertainment events.

31. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020. Goals include 30 percent reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26 percent boost in water efficiency, and sustainability requirements for 95 percent of all federal contracts. Because federal government is the country’s single biggest purchaser of goods and services, likely to have ripple effects throughout the economy for years to come.

32. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.

33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

41. Avoided Scandal: As of November 2011, served longer than any president in decades without a scandal, as measured by the appearance of the word “scandal” (or lack thereof) on the front page of the Washington Post.

42. Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill: Though lacking statutory power to compel British Petroleum to act, used moral authority of his office to convince oil company to agree in 2010 to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; $6.5 billion already paid out without lawsuits. By comparison, it took nearly two decades for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill case to receive $1.3 billion.



43. Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: “The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory,” reports Governing magazine.

44. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

45. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.

46. Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide: In 2009, EPA declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, allowing the agency to regulate its production.

47. Expanded Stem Cell Research: In 2009, eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which shows promise in treating spinal injuries, among many other areas.

48. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.

49. Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.

50. Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.

Gettin' It Done - 2

This one's as big as they get.  And while it's a little silly to play "yeah-but-what-If", I think there're 2 things we can be pretty sure of.  First, without the Stimulus Package we're lyin' in pieces on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.  And second, we'd be miles ahead of where we are now if Obama'd gotten just the tiniest bit of help from the Repubs in congress.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

It's something of a stretch - but not much...

Gettin' It Done - 3

It's big and complex and some of it is being used by Big Financial to make it harder for the smaller players to compete, which of course makes it easier for the big guys to capture more of the market (but that's another rant).

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

So "reform" in this  case is a relative and somewhat dubious term, but still, we got something out of it: Consumer Credit Protection, Reinforcement/Restructuring of Sarbanes-Oxley, Some restriction on banks investing in private equity instruments, etc.  It's not everything I think we should have in place, but it's something.

Now if the Repubs on Capitol Hill could manage not to stand in the way, it might do us some real good.