Only You Can Prevent John Boehner

I hadn't particularly noticed Glenn Greenwald attacking "moderate" Democrats, only right-wing ones. It's Robert Gibbs who attacked moderate Democrats, but that doesn't seem to bother Alter, a booster of Bush's war on terror and an advocate of torture even before it was clear that the Bush regime was using it. (He's since tried to cover up his support of torture, but he lies.) No wonder he likes Obama.

So, given Alter's liberal willingness to throw principle to the winds and embrace Republican bloodthirst, what is his objection to John Boehner? What does Alter mean by "prevent"? How exactly could Greenwald or the rest of us on the professional left "prevent" a member of Congress?

Speaking of the Whiner in the White House and his Press Secretary, David Michael Green does a nice job on both of them at Counterpunch today. Now, Green really is in "frothing at the mouth attack mode," bless him, but he's also rational and well-informed.

And so I confess that I’m not all that psyched when I see the press secretary of a failed president lecturing the people who put him into office, following two years of betraying them while cutting deals with the scariest predatory monsters in the country.

And I especially don’t want to hear it from folks who don’t have the good sense to have good sense about themselves and their record. Obama recently gave himself a grade of “incomplete” for his presidency, but said he has a “pretty good track record”. Last year it was a B+, with an A- after health care passed. He’s certainly entitled to his opinion, which his fawning press secretary and other White House staff no doubt share in spades. It’s just that no one else does.

Maybe if Obama was up twenty points instead of down that many, maybe if he was adored by a grateful public, maybe if he was poised to increase his party’s majorities in Congress rather than turn over control of both houses to people like Sharon Angle and Rand Paul, maybe if he was genuinely changing the country for the better – maybe then he’d have a soapbox to stand on and lecture the left.

Until then, it’s not working.

Green's term "professional failures" should become the standard label for Obama and his Team of Rivals.