Thomas Paine's blog

Lead. Or Resign.

I'm too enraged to write anything thought provoking or witty. The leadership of the Democratic party is a bunch of spineless, cowardly, weak, feckless, cowardly asshats, who all need to be primaried until they die. When they retire from the Senate, we need to primary their retirements. When they die and go to Purgatory (they are too milquetoast, feckless, traitorous and weak to justify their special place in hell, and they sure as shit aren't getting into heaven), I want to primary them there too. Make their lives miserable for all eternity. Seriously, this is beyond pathetic.

How many people failed? The little field where I select who is in the way on my blog form ran out of room before I could add everyone. That's how spectacularly our leadership has failed.

The only thing left to do on this issue is sign the petition over at FDL and pray that the house actually stands up and leads. Of course, that will happen when I start shooting my writing quills out of my nipples, but whatever.

Matt Browner Hamlin has all the gory details on todays spectacular failure of leadership. May God have mercy on their souls.

I should add that Feingold and Dodd were the only ones to rise up and take a stand on this issue in any significant way. (Obama voted the right direction, but never brought it the attention it deserved, which in his position as a candidate he had the ability to really do.) So kudos to them for behaving like Senators instead of little scared children.

It's kind of disappointing and disturbing how large our Get Out of the Way tag cloud is in comparison to our Leading tag cloud.

Sigh.

This post isn't really about leadership, but this crap is so hilarious, I just feel the need to bring it to your attention.

A deputy campaign manager from Hilary's campaign, tech wizard Bob Nash, apparently learned about technology from a Nigerian Prince who needs your help transferring some money and will gladly give you some of it if you help him. Check out the style of his muck raking email:

From: Bob Nash
To:
Sent: Sun Dec 09
Subject: BARACK

HOW ARE YOU ?? I AM FIGHTING HARD >

SECOND ARE YOU PEERSONALLYAWARE OF TH EWORK BARACK DID ON THE SOUTH
SIDE WITH COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION S , ETC ./. BOB

WHAT DI DHE DO AFORE HOW LONG AND WITH WHO ??

PLS TELL BOB HELLO BOB

Bob J Nash
Deputy Campaign Manager
Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee
4420 N. Fairfax Drive
Arlington, VA 22203

If you supply him with information he will transfer a lump sum into your account TODAY! PLZ SEND CONFIRMATION!

It boggles the mind that in this day and age, this guy is actually in charge of making actual decisions at the Hilary Camp. Clinton would be wise to put him on a small bus back to DC.

Chris Dodd and his small but well liked campaign had been building momentum, day after day, online, in spite of his lack of national recognition. They had been building up a pretty strong netroots strategy and getting the attention of all the major liberal grassroots activists. It's taken time and patience to get this far. And now, in one foul fell swoop, the fine Senator from CT has managed to destroy all the progress and momentum he had, with one careless, idiotic, and utterly ignorant move.

He was the first guest of Old Stupid Bigot Don Imus's new hateful crappy radio show. The premiere's guest.

Sigh. Better luck in 2016.

I'm aware that the rough and tumble of campaigns can make the varying candidates hostile towards one another, that they occasionally must go negative, in order to help themselves and hurt others. It's a cut throat business. I ain't gonna judge a campaign for going on the attack. That being said, it seems Hillary's team has plagiarized a story from the Onion for their latest attack.

Twice in One Day: Senator Obama Tries Rewriting History, Again Claims He Hasn't Been Planning White House Run

At an event in Boston this evening, Senator Obama claimed for the second time today that he is "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President, contradicting statements his friends, family, staff and teachers have all made about him.

"Senator Obama's relatives and friends say he has been talking about running for President for at least the last fifteen years. So who's not telling the truth, them or him?" Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said.

In Boston this evening, Senator Obama said: "I'm not running to fulfill some long held plans or because I think it's open to me." In Iowa earlier today, he said: Senator Obama said: "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for."

But that's not what Senator Obama's teachers, family, classmates or staff say:...

...In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Someone has lost their mind at the Hilary campaign. This is just straight up crazy. Please, just stop, before you really hurt yourself.

UPDATE: It was all a joke! Mark Penn said, "At the end of a long thing as a joke, the campaign put out that he always wanted to run from Kindergarten. It was a joke!...at the end of a very serious and long release." Right, except right before the end of a long and serious release, you also call him out for wanting to be president in Third Grade. I left out the two other attacks in it, but 50% of this long and serious release is apparently a "joke." Stay out of comedy buddy, it ain't your strong suit.

I truly hope that this stops soon. When stanceless bores like Mitt Romney and Hilary Clinton can join together and critique you with a completely solid and valid argument, you know you are in trouble.

Feel the hopeiness.

One of the challenges of writing a blog in general is having enough things to say on a daily basis to keep people interested. One of the challenges of writing a blog about progressive Leadership is that there is such an absolute vacuum in Washington of it, that one struggles to find anything inspirational at all. So sometimes you have to leave Washington and look elsewhere, for what Atrios calls "More and Better Democrats."

I have found one of those Democrats, and his name is Jared Polis. He's apparently insane enough to run for congress as a progressive in the conservative state of Colorado (though in the apparent hippy mecca of Boulder.) While most candidates espouse vague rhetoric of change and hope and blah blah blah, he's actually putting his money where his mouth is. He's going to fucking Iraq to see how it looks on the ground. My guess is he'll be the only candidate in the country to do so.

Hopefully, he'll get access to more than just the green zone and see what's really going on over there. He's a far braver man than I, regardless. Good luck, sir.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that it was too soon to put Harry Reid in the Lead or the Get Out of The Way category? How he had some strong rhetoric that lead me to believe that he might do something brave?

Well, now he's just IN THE WAY. Harry Reid, grow a pair.

Nancy, the ball is in your court. I wait in mediocre anticipation of your utter and complete capitulation. Please, for the love of God, prove me wrong.

You'll notice at the top of the site, we have tag clouds for "leading" and for being "in the way." The name of the leader gets bigger with each action they take on way or anther. To earn a spot in the Lead category you have to really mean it. How do I decide who really means it? Basically, it's based on past behavior combined with the current rhetoric and how shocking and leaderly it looks to be. That's right, leaderly. I learned that from Monsieur Colbert. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is that the Democratic leadership, which has managed to choke every single time they have been called to lead sounds like they are ready to step up finally, and be, well, "leaderly."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won't approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home.

By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill would require Bush to initiate troop withdrawals immediately with the goal of ending combat by December 2008.

If Bush vetoes the bill, "then the president won't get his $50 billion," Reid, D-Nev., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made a similar statement last week in a closed-door caucus meeting.

I haven't added Reid and Pelosi to the leader board, just yet. Since they have a history of choking under pressure, I'm gonna wait till I see their actual actions and see if said actions speak louder than their words. Here's hoping.