WTF?!?!

It's been a crazy couple of days. Lots to catch up on so lets get started.

The Democrats lost the senate seat held by Ted Kennedy to a Republican. Of course, this is being touted as a referendum on health care reform. But the Democrats are running around whining that now all is lost! No, sorry Democrats. All was lost about 6 months ago when you squandered all the political capital on the bank bailouts and the tea parties for healthcare and everything else. Democrats suck. I'm not saying that they go all GOP and start passing things in reconciliation, but to continue to give in to Republican demands in the hope that Republicans will join in voting is proving to be useless. Yet Democrats keep trying.

The Supreme Court just ruled that its ok for companies to directly spend money in politics. This stikes me as a disaster for our democracy. Treating a company as an individual who has free speech rights yet not treating a company as an individual when criminality or wrongdoing has a occured doesn't make any sense. Plus, what good does someone like me have in supporting a candidate who doesn't have the backing of large corporations for donations? Our democracy is no longer 'of the people, for the people, by the people'. It's more like 'of the people, for the companies, by the companies'. This fall, TV is going to be unwatchable because the ads will be unreal. This decision makes our democracy a joke. Even the Supreme Court thinks so, if Twitter can be believed. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe thinks the ruling is bad.

Obama is proposing a raft of bank reforms ala Paul Volker. Geez, what took so long? What started all this populist anger out of Obama lately? Its nice, but a little too late. Did they see the writing on the wall in Massachusetts and realize that they should move the focus to financial reform to save face, now that health care reform is in doubt?

Obama's presidency turned on yesterday. Ezra Klein has a great summary of what his first year means to us progressives. Not very pretty.

But that's meant letting the government work. And that turns out to be an ugly thing, full of deals with pharmaceutical companies and concessions to Nebraska and delays and press releases and controversy and anger and process stories and confusion. Americans don't like Washington, and they like it less when they see it more. Obama's strategy has meant they see it constantly, and there's no one really guiding them through its thickets. The country is trapped in a sausage factory, and they want out.

This is what Obama has given us, but it is not what he was voted into office to do. We wanted someone to change how things got done. Obama has been a real pushover. I mean this isn't even the high road he is taking. He's got a ton of appointments being held up in Congress, he had a supermajority in the Senate and a 40 seat majority in the house, and yet all he has to show for that is a too small stimulus. Take the gloves off, man. Explain how stupid Congress is being. Why isn't he doing this? He keeps giving chances to Republicans. Why? Why why why? Things better change, or Obama will be a one term president with nothing to show for it.