On The Mainstream Media and the Fight Against Communists and Social Security, 1936 Edition
My takeaway of your points is:
(a) Major legislation is hard and takes a long time.
(b) The liberal agenda still has a chance to succeed in the long run.
(c) Obama\'s Presidency may yet echo Roosevelt\'s.
The first two are plausible. And e.g. I wouldn\'t be surprised to see a Republican Congress and President pass a decent healthcare bill: eventually corporate America will decide the current system is too expensive and they\'ll magically discover government healthcare isn\'t actually *that* bad.
But! Obama is no Roosevelt. Roosevelt was willing to try and experiment; the New Deal and his policies in general were a mishmash of conflicting programs and ideas, many of them denounced by his own advisers.
Obama in contrast listens to Serious Experts. And the Serious Experts he\'s chosen include people like the architects of our current economic collapse (e.g. Larry Summers). Guantanemo is still holding prisoners, torturers are being defended in court, the wars continue… The President has huge discretionary power in a whole set of areas, and in all of them Obama has chosen to more or less follow his predecessor.
And of course, the most ironic: Obama chose the members of the budget deficit commission, who a month from now will be recommending cuts to Social Security.
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On You Can Pick Your President: Obama Takes Seattle
Yeah, it's great how there's no loyalty oaths and people don't get tossed out of rallies and the President thinks he can assassinate Americans without a trial and Afghanis keep on magically dying and the looting by the banks continues while underemployment hits 17%. And by "inviting everyone into the process fairly", I assume you mean how the White House cut a deal with the drug companies and insurance companies, gutting any chance of real healthcare reform?
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On Prop 8: Mormon Persecution, Marriage and the Refuge of Patriotism
"those of us caught in between felt we had no choice but to align ourselves with the homophobic coalition or to betray our religious community."
So in the end, you felt supporting your community was more important than following your sense of right and wrong? Was there a practical consequence to this choice, and what actions did it imply?
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On I Finally Got a Kindle and I Love It but I Am Scared of Fascism
It's possible to remove the DRM from Kindle books, allowing you to back them up more reasonably and read them on other devices, etc.:
http://nyquil.org/archives/1128-Converting-Kindle-Books-a-painful-process-that-works-for-reading-Kindle-books-without-a-Kindle.html
This is, of course, STEALING and TAKING THE FOOD OUT OF THE AUTHOR'S BABIES' MOUTHS, even when you just want to back up the copy you paid for. But no doubt some Awl readers just enjoy thieving for the hell of it.