Finding Spine
06 September 2009 8:30 am by Taylor Marsh
In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics, Van Jones resigned as the White House’s environmental jobs “czar” on Saturday. – White House Adviser on ‘Green Jobs’ Resigns
Well, once the right wing makes you a trending topic on Twitter, which happened yesterday, you’re toast. Perfect opening paragraph, though it could just as easily read: Obama hands victory to Glenn Beck. No one should be surprised, as the White House has been telegraphing for days they weren’t going to stand by Van Jones. Did Jones’s remarks and actions warrant a resignation? Depends on how you look at it and if you believe in fighting the right as they target and pick off your people. Remember Chas Freeman?
Reader dafederatlist over In the News quotes Ryan Grimm who puts this one perfectly: Glenn Beck Gets First Scalp: Van Jones Resigns. It must be very satisfying for Beck, who has been losing advertisers in pairs ever since he called the President a “racist.” Question is why the Obama administration decided handing Van Jones over to Fox on a platter was a good move. An example of no spine at all.
Meanwhile, birthers in Congress get a pass.
On to other news, which includes that I’m taking my birthday off. I must tell you that sleeping in and waking to the news of Beck getting Jones’s scalp seems like ominous foreshadowing for the fall fight on health care. I wonder if the White House will stand and fight for anything at this point. But much fun planned today, so the stink of this one will be left behind.
Now to other news…
Send a message to Pres. Obama on the public option.
Meet Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party and the man who accused Obama of wanting to “indoctrinate” school kids.
There once was a political operative who loved to tell crowds he had a simple way of explaining to children the difference between Republicans and Democrats.
“Republicans get up and go to work,” he would tell his son. “Democrats get up and go down to the mailbox to get their checks.”
One Seminole County mother, Barbara Wells, remembers the day Greer spoke to her son’s sixth-grade class. “My son said he made some sort of Hillary Clinton joke,” she recalled. …
Bob McDonnell, running for Virginia governor, is getting slammed over his thesis, with this website is absolutely devastating. Having read the thesis, it’s interesting that in the 21st century this man is still ahead of Deeds in the age of Obama. It’s not over by a long shot, but Republicans are looking at the Virginia governor’s race as their comeback story and foreshadowing of 2010. Fitting on Labor Day weekend that McDonnell, the GOP’s hope, believes women and feminists are “detrimental” to the family.
Offensive in Pakistan targets headquarters of Lashkar-e-Islam.
Laura Rozen on “Afghan First” memo. First piece at Politico.
British Justice Secretary Jack Straw drops all pretense on Lockerbie bomber’s release. It was about oil.
Resistance to Afghan troop increase from Senate Dems.
Sick and Wrong, by Matt Taibi.
If you didn’t read the New York Times piece on Ted Kennedy’s memoirs, it’s worth it:
Later in this volume, Mr. Kennedy addresses his own failings and regrets. He writes about how his actions in 1969 at Chappaquiddick were “inexcusable,” how Mary Jo Kopechne’s death “haunts me every day of my life” and how “atonement is a process that never ends.” When his father died four months later, he says, he “wondered whether I had shortened” his life “from the shock I had visited on him with my news of the tragic accident on Chappaquiddick Island. The pain of that burden was almost unbearable.”
The woman who could fill Ted’s seat (interview), if not his shoes, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. She’s tough, smart, happens to be married to a cop, and someone to definitely watch, no matter who else jumps in. Coakley talked straight on abortion funding on health care as well, addressing the Hyde Amendment too, as she said “yes,” we have to make sure access is provided and “change other laws to make them consistent.” I like the way this woman talks. She’s definitely got spine.
