.
"What I'm asking you is;
to keep making your voices heard.
To keep holding me accountable"
-- President Obama, July 2010
Well Mr. President; that's exactly what I'm doing.
that's exactly what WE collective Progressives are doing.
And that's exactly those your Press Secretary Gibbs now refers to as the "Professional Left" are doing.
"Change we can believe in."
I believed!
I worked hard to help Obama get elected!
I made sure we got hundreds of signs, buttons, bumper stickers out into the community. I still have an Obama bumper sticker on my truck. I got a really great campaign headquarters for our local community. We used it to do phone banking; hold events, and especially the big celebration on election night. We rented a big screen tv and installed cable just for the big moment when we finally laid to rest eight years of Bush Conservatism and ushered in a new dawn, new hope; finally, a new era of Progressive change!
I remember the speeches. Great speeches. Speeches so great I recorded many of them. Will I. Am made a song out of one of them.
What I heard in those speeches was how we were going to end the wars, reform Wall St., repeal DADT, bring foreclosure relief, extend unemployment benefits, create jobs, retool America for green energy, protect our oceans from BP, lots of good progressive stuff like that.
We were going to have real health care reform not the milk toast watered down version the GOP deteriorated it into. I was naive enough to think that we were going to get universal health care, single payer. We didn't even get the public option.
So YOUR Press Secretary Gibbs is flippant about us not ever being satisfied even if Dennis Kucinich was president or if we had the Canadian Health Care System.
Excuse me?
At this point, I'm rather certain that Dennis would have found a way to end the wars and get us all universal health care. I really doubt he would have brought in Wall St. insiders like Larry Summers or Tim Geithner. And I'm rather certain that Van Jones and Shirley Sherrod wouldn't have been fired at the will of Fox Noise. By the way Mr. President, I'm getting less fond of Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs by the day.
And by now Mr. President, I would have expected DADT to have been repealed. Congress did that and now its under review? For how long? Unacceptable Mr. President.
If we had Canadian style universal health care, I'd have some of my health issues looked at and I'd be satisfied knowing that Americans would start living 3 to 5 years longer like Canadians now do.
You broke all of your promises about dealing with the foreclosure crisis. As a result, millions of families lost their homes. What I don't remember in any of your speeches Mr. President was your devotion to Big banks, big corporations, big oil. I must have missed all of those 'Too Big to Fail' speeches where you must have promised that corporations must be given priority over their victims of predatory lending and illegal loan servicing practices.
Yes Mr. President, your base is restless. We're impatient. Soldiers are dying. People are still unemployed, homeless, losing all hope. BP just killed an ocean and they got to call all of the shots. No one is in prison for that just like nobody is in prison for the Wall St. crimes.
We acknowledge all of the great things you have done but frankly, its not nearly good enough and 'Yes we can do more'. By now you should have done more. We want you to stop pandering to the right. We really want you to stop pandering to big business. We want you, to get strong, defiant, and force through the "Change" you talked about in all of those great speeches that earned you the most votes of any president in history.
So do us 'Lefty Professionals' (whatever that means and whoever that includes) a big favor; Tell Gibss to STFU about us and turn his frustration where it belongs; the GOP and the 'RWNJ Professionals'. They are the enemy; not us.
We in your base are NOT satisfied. We 'Professional Left' (if I can be so bold as to include myself), WE Mr. President are damn well going to, as you put it: "Keep making our voices heard" and WE Mr. President are going to "Hold you accountable".
And unless you have changed your mind on that one Mr. President, then you need to tell Mr. Gibbs about your directive. Fire Mr. Gibbs for turning on us in a defiant act of betrayal. Because this progressive army of Professional and Amateurs on the left do not intend to be patient much longer. Grow a pair, and give us the change we elected you for or your base won't be there for you next time you need us. Its that simple Mr. President.
There is a big temptation here to go into many other areas or elaborate on those I've already cited but when I have a couple of videos from a couple of big shots that always do a better job at speaking for me than I ever do; I think I should just shut up and them do what they do best.
First, here is what Press Secretary Gibbs said along with the response from Florida Congressman Alan Grayson:
Here is what else Rep Grayson had to say on the subject:
"Times are tough. Maybe you noticed.
In certain parts of the world, 100 years ago, when times were tough -- a drought, a famine -- they ate each other. Literally.
That's who they were.
We're different. When times are tough, we don't think about ourselves alone. We think about those who need help. The sick. Senior citizens. The disabled. Children. When times are tough, they're the ones who need help the most.
That's why I was so proud yesterday to vote for money for schools and for health care for the poor.
That's why I was so proud yesterday to vote for money for schools and for health care for the poor.
Why? Because if we voted it down, schools would close. And hospitals would close.
But we won't let that happen. When times are tough, we rise to the occasion. We shelter the homeless, we feed the hungry, and we heal the sick. We teach the children. We help those in need.
We're Americans. It's who we are. And I'm proud of it."
Follow Rep. Alan Grayson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/alangrayson Here is Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on it:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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1 comment:
When asked the next day whether he thinks that the left will sit on its hands in November, Gibbs said something like (casually), That won't happen because they know what's at stake.
Excuse me? Watch me sit on my hands, Mr. Smart Ass. I won't be taken for granted & if you think you've got a tough Congress now, just wait until next January.
@PatTibbs
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