{"id":6066,"date":"2011-04-27T13:26:22","date_gmt":"2011-04-27T20:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6066"},"modified":"2011-04-27T14:33:25","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T21:33:25","slug":"the-more-you-back-down-the-easier-it-gets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6066","title":{"rendered":"The More You Back Down, the Easier it Gets"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I took my last US Air Force physical this morning.\u00a0 No, I’m no longer on active duty, but for the last 13 years I’ve gotten my medical care from USAF doctors at the Davis-Monthan AFB clinic here in Tucson.\u00a0 When I turn 65 later this year, I’ll go on Medicare like everyone else and will have to find a civilian primary care provider.<\/p>\n

Two good things: one, I’m fine; two, my USAF doctor this morning was very thorough, making sure my records were in shape and scheduling me for a couple of small tests that should have been in my records but were missing.\u00a0 The bad thing, of course, is that I won’t see this particular doctor again, and she was great.\u00a0 On the outside, I suspect, the level of care she gave me this morning will be rare, maybe not there at all.\u00a0 I’ll be just another damn Medicare patient.<\/p>\n

Oh, well, at least I’m healthy.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

A freight company is bringing our replacement spa cover this afternoon, so I’m housebound until they show up.\u00a0 I wonder how much of a hassle getting rid of the old spa cover will be. If you live inside Tucson’s city limits you can put big garbage out on the street twice a year on designated days.\u00a0 We live in the county, though, and have to deal with our own oversized garbage, which means a drive to the landfill and a $10 fee.\u00a0 Of course most locals just haul their stuff to the nearest wash late at night and dump it there.\u00a0 Believe me, as a Hash House Harrier<\/a>, I’ve stumbled on every unauthorized dump site in Pima County.<\/p>\n

Well, now I’m just bitching.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Since I’m bitching … I think Obama made a mistake by giving in to the racists and releasing a second birth certificate<\/a>.\u00a0 The first one was more than sufficient, and releasing it, back in 2008, was more than any other presidential candidate had ever done or been asked to do.<\/p>\n

So far today I’ve only been on Facebook, and that only briefly, but I’m seeing what I expected to see.\u00a0 The birthers, racists all, are unsatisfied, and friends of Obama are for the umpteenth time on the defensive, trying to portray Obama’s giving in as a mature political decision made to help get the nation’s political debates back on track.<\/p>\n

I was a friend of Obama too, and I still admire his way with words, but he gives in to political and media pressure far too often.\u00a0 Every time he does, his stature shrinks.\u00a0 Who will be the winner, now that Obama’s released a second birth certificate?\u00a0 The mature and wise leader, or the rabid racists and their media enablers?\u00a0 What’s that old saying about wrestling with a pig?\u00a0 Oh yeah, I remember: you both get covered in shit, and the pig likes it.<\/p>\n

Obama caved on Janet Napolitano’s DHS domestic terrorism report.\u00a0 He caved on Van Jones, ACORN, and Shirley Sherrod.\u00a0 He caved on the public option.\u00a0 He caved on calling out the racist Boston police.\u00a0 He caved on closing Guantanamo, and he caved on trying Guantanamo detainees in US civil courts.\u00a0 He caved on the budget, giving up high speed rail and badly needed stimulus\/infrastructure work projects.\u00a0 He’s in the process of caving on Social Security and Medicare, and I predict he’ll cave to military and defense contractor pressure to keep troops in Iraq forever.\u00a0 He said he’d fight for labor, but when the shit hit the fan in Wisconsin he was nowhere to be seen.\u00a0 What hasn’t he caved on?\u00a0 Don’t ask\/don’t tell, and good on him for pulling that one off, but damn it, the man has not shown himself to be a fighter.<\/p>\n

He chases after centrality, and the Republicans see that as a weakness.\u00a0 Every time Obama backs down, the Republicans double the dare, shifting the “center” farther to the right.\u00a0 Obama campaigned as a progressive Democrat.\u00a0 Once in office he started moving toward the center, and as Republicans gained power and began shifting political debate rightward, he became more of a Blue Dog Democrat, and today he’s almost indistinguishable from a late 1990s mainstream Republican.\u00a0 Of course mainstream Republicans today are almost indistinguishable from mid-1960s John Birchers and early-1950s Dixiecrats.\u00a0 If Obama keeps chasing the center, he’s going to wind up in Michele Bachmann territory.<\/p>\n

And of course, the center Obama keeps chasing isn’t the center at all.\u00a0 The center is right where it always was.\u00a0 Most Americans want a public option, and they sure as hell want Social Security and Medicare.\u00a0 The false center Obama’s chasing after is a political construct, a matter of go-along-to-get-along expediency, always moving one way or another depending on who’s pushing the media narrative at any given moment.<\/p>\n

Obama looks all the weaker for playing their game.\u00a0 This is not what I voted for, an America where an elected president backs down and an overindulged media clown like Donald Trump gloats.\u00a0 What the hell is wrong with Obama, and what the hell is wrong with us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took my last US Air Force physical this morning.\u00a0 No, I’m no longer on active duty, but for the last 13 years I’ve gotten my medical care from USAF doctors at the Davis-Monthan AFB clinic here in Tucson.\u00a0 When I turn 65 later this year, I’ll go on Medicare like everyone else and will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,10,4,16,14,2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-current-events","category-hash-house-harriers","category-media","category-military","category-personal","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6066"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6077,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6066\/revisions\/6077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}