If Project 9/12 numbers are bad, it's the Dems' fault

By GottaLaff

Earlier I posted about the Democrats' apparent concern over the supposed huge, enormous, gigantic turnout for ::drum roll:: Project 9/12 ::ECHO echo echo::

However, ClusterFox says that they're just trying to raise expectations. Those wily libruls, always a step ahead. Yes, folks, it's time to play "Blame the Dems!"

Conservatives have seized on this memo as proof Democrats are playing an expectations game.

It's a plot! It's all a big, scary plot, I tell ya!

They say the House leadership wrote the memo in hopes it would be leaked and inflate expectations for the turnout anticipating that it will fall short.

Ya hear that? If the -Ers fail to show in GINORMOUS numbers, it's all our fault!

"It's an old political tactic to get out in front and make wild projections and when they're not met, claim their opponents don't have the juice," said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the National Taxpayers Union, one of the organizers of the rally.

Sepp said there's only one reason to float a number that high.

"You set the bar at 2 million and anything under it becomes a failure," he said, adding that any event in D.C. that attracts 50,000 is considered a success...."

Ohhh, now, you wait just a minute there, mister. I know what you're doing, yes I do. You're pulling the ol' switcheroo by lowering expectations, right? Right? Boy howdy, you nearly had me going there for a second.

Sly fox...

"...A crowd of 2 million people, he said, "would exceed our wildest dreams."

Is that what Rushpublics dream about? I'm more into white sandy beaches, hammocks, margaritas, and Anthony Weiner.

Even President Obama didn't attract 2 million people to his inauguration, when estimates ranged from 1.2 million to 1.8 million people.

Hey, wouldn't that be rich? Topping Obama's numbers? Wouldn't that be something?

Not gonna happen. Never ever. Project Exploit9/11 will not, shall not, shan't, can't, won't generate Obama-sized crowds. But posting this clever article on Fox News saying it'll never happen and turning the tables on the Dems is so-o-o GOP.

Those scamps.

But Thornell told FOXNews.com that he was not playing an expectations game and that he simply used the numbers cited by organizers.

"I was using their own words and predictions and estimates," he said, explaining his memo was a compilation of statements from different Tea Party Web sites.

Wait, so it was the TeaCynics who raised expectations after all, huh? Now who do we believe, them or the astroturfers who pay them to show up?

Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, told Politico he expects the crowd to be in the 20,000-30,000 range.

Infighting is so much fun. Can't wait 'til tomorrow! Get out your tally sheets.

ObamAgenda

By GottaLaff

Commenter Ady said this in another thread:

"Obama is extremely pragmatic. He'll always be wiling to give a little to accomplish his long term goals."

Commenter Nellcote then linked to a substantial piece about Obama and his environmental policies that ended with this:

“Obama is not defining his agenda with any particular focus on what the environmental community would want him to do,” [Dan Esty, a Yale professor and environmental economist who was a founding member of Obama’s advisory committee] says. “It’s a uniquely Obama vision of how to go forward - it’ll be attractive across a broad public spectrum, but it won’t be universally acclaimed by the environmental community.” Still, those who’ve known Obama longest remain hopeful that he’ll be able to navigate the challenges that lie ahead. “Community organizers are pragmatists,” says Galluzzo, the South Side organizer who once trained Obama. “It’s not about being an idealist, it’s about moving the agenda forward. You learn politics as the art of the possible.” In the choices Obama has made as he’s progressed from the South Side to Springfield to Washington, Galluzzo sees the same tensions confronted by every grassroots activist: idealism marbled with pragmatism, a readiness to compromise to get things done, a willingness to settle for incremental change. “When Barack Obama becomes president we’ll have an environmental president,” he says. “But will he be a purist on every environmental issue? The answer is no.” Ultimately, Galluzzo says, Obama’s environmentalism is predicated upon an unwillingness to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. The question is whether that will be good enough.

This, to me, sums things up perfectly, and not just about Obama's enviromental policies. The expectations of his presidency are so high right now, he couldn't possibly live up to them. But he does seem to know how to take steps in the right direction, accomplish a few things, and vastly improve on what we've had up until now.

No immediate gratifciation from Not-Yet-President Obama

By GottaLaff

Some of you may think much of the excerpt below sounds awfully familiar... reminiscent of a few of our own Comments, f'rinstance? Please read the entire piece, though, since these excerpts don't get Millner's whole point across:

The favored response, at least among a large swath of Americans, has been to demand that President-elect Barack Obama play Santa Claus. I have lost track of how many groups have been squalling like babies over every move Obama makes - the economists, the environmentalists, the food reformers, the gays, the Latinos, the state legislatures, the consumer groups - no one he appoints, no policy he sets forth, and no one he talks to is "change they can believe in." They want an immediate economic recovery, an organic garden on the White House lawn, subsidized green jobs in every sector, bailouts for every state and every family, people of color running every federal department, trade tariffs, all the troops back home on Jan. 21, a dramatically new health care system, and for the Rev. Rick Warren to just lie down and die. They want it all and they want it right now. It doesn't matter that Obama is not yet our president.

The outpouring of demand and emotion is poignant, because it speaks to the starvation Americans have suffered when it comes to public life for at least the last eight years. The demands are loud and urgent because they have been neglected so willfully for so long. Things have gone so badly, and those in power have been so unmoved by the needs of so many average people, that we feel it makes sense to greet someone who appears to listen not with applause but with the howls like those of the peasants storming the gates of the Forbidden City. But here is where we need to pull back, and to realize that Obama didn't create the Forbidden City. We did.

Then she cautions us about our own responsibilities, focusing on issues of morality:

To put it another way: Obama will be busy enough tackling the political rot in this country. We will have to tackle the moral rot ourselves. [...]

Too bad. Many of the problems we face right now have their root causes in poor moral choices we made some time ago, and to view them in any other light is dangerous, delusional and doomed to failure.

Food for thought.

Big h/t: Vicki Cana

The Obama effect: Cookie monster edition

By GottaLaff

(AP Photo/Kevin Sanders)

Obama can't help himself. He just keeps enriching people:

Want an example of the change Barack Obama is bringing to the country?

Check out cookie sales at Baby Boomers Cafe in Des Moines.

Ever since word spread about the president-elect and his family's fondness for Baby Boomers' chocolate chunk cookies, the small downtown restaurant can't bake them fast enough.

“Two months ago I was giving these cookies away,” said co-owner Rodney Maxfield. “Now, it's like 'I need two dozen cookies. I need four-dozen cookies.'” [...]

Obama's main office was next door to Boomers, and his staff made the cafe a second home. [...]

Suddenly, sales of 400 cookies in a good week soared to more than 1,000 a week, with requests coming from as far away as Mexico. Alas, the price is going up, from 50 cents to 75 cents a cookie to make up for the time it takes to make more each day.

“I think everybody just ... thought, 'Oh, great cookie, great president — the world is a happy place. Barack's going to fix all the problems and if I have a bite of this cookie it's going to make me feel good,'” Maxfield said.

Munching our way to blissful change. If that's all it takes, I'm in.

However, I have a nagging feeling that expectations are just a tad high that this one (very impressive) man will make everything all better in the time it takes to put on a few cookie pounds. Feet? Meet ground.