Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Roland Burris (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Al Franken (D-MN), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and Ben Cardin (D-MD). FDL

Safe to assume Crazy Carl would slumlord over his own mother...the man has no principles and no shame.

Have you heard how he treats janitors in his employ?  Even your mother-in-law can't speak ill of Carl if you work for the bastard.

While Justice officials contemplate the next step, the California court injunction leaves closeted gay servicemembers in a quandary.

Without an appeal or a stay from a higher court, the "don't ask, don't tell" law is no longer enforceable, and Pentagon officials cannot dismiss troops for declaring their sexual orientation.

But if a higher court later overturns the ruling, gay troops won't have any immunity from prosecution simply because an injunction was in place when they came out, according to Greg Rinckey, a Virginia attorney whose practice focuses on military issues.

"They could end up in even more trouble," he said. "If the Justice Department does file an appeal and ask for a stay of the injunction, everything could go back to the way it was."
Alexander Nicholson, director of the gay advocacy veterans group Servicemembers United, said they are urging gay troops "not to change anything" until the legal issues are finalized.

"It's just another step in the process," he said. "But it's encouraging to see this judge take a courageous step forward, when Congress has been much slower to take that same action."

President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that he'll lift bans on new drilling for oil and natural gas off much of the U.S. coastline drew criticism from environmentalists and halfhearted welcomes from Republicans, even as Obama called it only one part of a broad strategy to reduce foreign oil dependence and enact climate change policy. His administration will allow further study and new drilling to proceed from Delaware to Florida, starting with leases off the Virginia coast, as well as off the oil-rich eastern Gulf of Mexico. link

When he's fighting a real bad guy/girl instead of the demon of unrealistic expectations, he'll be fine

Ugh.

As for "what Obama has done," I guess they've decided to go with the metric of "the other guy is worse," because that's the only way "what Obama has done" doesn't look so bad to Dems who wanted - and were led to expect - so much more.  Now, it seems to be about the message that it could be worse.

Sorry, I don't know how this is ever supposed to move Obama - or any of the Dems who tacked to the right with him - in the more leftward direction we want them to; the farther right the other side goes, the easier it is for these New Dems to lay claim to territory that is unquestionably right of center, and keep inching ever rightward to fend off the never-ending claims by the other side that Obama and Company are hard-core leftists.

That "demon of unrealistic expectations" was created, fostered and exploited by Obama when he ran for this job, so if he is now suffering under the weight of those expectations, that's on him - not us.  At every turn, at every point along the way, there have been clear choices that would have taken us, if not to the truly progressive finish line of some of those expectations, then at least closer to realizing them.  Please don't bring up health whatever reform: it isn't at all progressive, it isn't what most people wanted, and watching the whole thing unfold, he chose the conservative, corporate-friendly option every single time.

That - and so much else - is on him.

Yes, I know that we aren't going to get progressive policies from Republican candidates - but we aren't getting them from the Democrats now, and re-electing these New Dems and possibly Obama in 2012 isn't going to change that.  So the problem Obama and the New Dems have is that if we're going to get Republican policies from Democrats, what's the point of voting for Dems?

He's got two years to be the kind of Democrat that Democratic voters want him to be; if he can't do that, if we keep getting more conservative policies, and he decides to go for four more years, I will take the same approach I did in 2008: I won't cast a vote for any presidential candidate.

The problem isn't with the voters - it's with the choices the voters are being given.  And as long as all we are told is important is that the other guy is worse, the lower the quality of the choices we will have.

And despite the predictions that Democrats may relinquish a large degree of legislating power, including perhaps control of the House and even Senate, President Obama isn't thinking of the next two years as a period that will be marked with the same obstructive nature from the GOP.

"It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, [Republicans] feel more responsible, either because they didn't do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn't work for them," Obama says in the article. "Or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way."

More about PPUS 2.0 from Obama Dems:

Dick Durbin says Obama's post-election agenda "will have to be limited and focused on the things that are achievable and high priorities for the American people." Tom Daschle says Obama has to reach out more: "The key word is inclusion. He's got to find ways to be inclusive." link

public option?
repeal DADT?
end the war?