truesee's Blog

Originally Published:Monday, December 6th 2010, 5:24 PM
Updated: Monday, December 6th 2010, 5:29 PM Sayles/APElizabeth Edwards arrives at the 'Stand up to Cancer' event in Culver City, Calif., in September.

Elizabeth Edwards' loved ones were rushing to her bedside Monday after her cancer took a sharp turn for the worse and doctors said further treatment was useless.

The wronged wife of the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee posted what read like a goodbye on Facebook:

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that," she wrote.

"I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces ­ my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope," Edwards said.

"These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined."

The Edwards family in Chapel Hill, N.C., released a statement saying that doctors told her any further treatment would be "unproductive."

"She is resting at home with family and friends," the statement said.

ABC News reported the former senator was also by his estranged wife's side.

Elizabeth Edwards, 61, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the final days of her husband's failed 2004 general election campaign. She was a popular figure on the campaign trail and a major asset to her husband.

The cancer went into remission, but returned in 2007 during his 2008 primary bid - when the North Carolina senator was also secretly cheating with the blonde videographer who would bear his child.

He continued both his campaign and his marriage until the lies caught up with him in August 2008.

A federal grand jury is investigating potentially serious charges of using campaign donations to pay off the secret girlfriend. His former campaign manager and his press spokeswoman gave testimony last Thursday.

John and Elizabeth, married 33 years, are legally separated and were reportedly planning a final divorce next month.

They had four children: an adult daughter, Cate; a son, Wade, who died as a teenager; and two younger kids, Jack, 10, and Emma Claire, 12.

Edwards fell ill over Thanksgiving and was briefly hospitalized last week, People magazine said. Doctors advised her to return home. The cancer has spread from breast to bone to liver.

"It isn't possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel to everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day," Edwards wrote on Facebook.

"To you I simply say: you know. With love, Elizabeth."

Be careful what you say, even in confidence; the world's listening

12/5/2010 11:34 PM
Gene Owens
Aiken Standard

I empathized with Katie Couric when I learned about her open-mike comments on the Palin family after Gov. Sarah was chosen as John McCain's running mate.

Katie was going over Palin's bio with her news team when she came to the name of her eldest son, Track.

"Where the h--- do they get these?" she asked, flashing a pearly smile. And when she read that the governor's parents were out hunting caribou when they got the news of the selection, she cracked, "You can't make this up."

It's understandable small talk when you're chatting in private with friends and colleagues. It's embarrassing when the word gets back to the object of your levity.

But Katie's embarrassment is small-time when compared to the embarrassment felt around the world over the release of secret diplomatic cables by a hacker who runs a website called WikiLeaks.

How would you like to be the king of Saudi Arabia and have it get back to the president of Pakistan that you called him the biggest obstacle to progress in that country and that "when the head is rotten, it affects the whole body"?

How would you like to be the U.S. ambassador to Eritrea and let it get back to the despotic leaders of that little country on the Horn of Africa that you told your bosses, "Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying"?

How would you like to be Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the eccentric leader of Libya, and have the world told that you're spending most of your time with your voluptuous Ukrainian nurse? And how would you like to be the diplomat who confidentially disclosed that juicy bit of gossip to his superiors?

If you're realistic, you know that people say things behind your back that they wouldn't want you to hear - and that you probably wouldn't want to hear.

In the case of Couric, Palin is using the "gotcha" tape to show that the CBS anchor was biased against her during the presidential campaign and therefore made the Alaska governor look bad during their famous interview.

News flash: It would be wretchedly hard to find anybody in any news organization that isn't biased one way or the other in a presidential race. Good journalists recognize their biases and struggle for objectivity in spite of them. Bad journalists let their biases bleed through their reportage.

And most journalists have a strain of cynicism - or at least irreverence - that surfaces in the privacy of conversations among themselves. It's one way of keeping your equilibrium in a wacko world.

So yeah, I can imagine even a conservative Republican looking over Palin's bio, coming across the unconventional names of her kids and saying "Where the h--- do they get these," especially when she's reading up on the candidate for the first time. And Palin's folks out caribou hunting when the word reaches them? It's a classic "You gotta be kidding me" situation.

But that doesn't explain why the interview turned into a fiasco for Palin. The governor was like a rookie up from the minors who was not yet ready for the big leagues. The questions Katie asked her were fair questions, and they were asked in a neutral way. The governor, who is normally articulate and quick-witted, was poorly prepped. The responsibility for the debacle lies with her and her handlers, not with her interviewer.

As for the kings and presidents and ambassadors who are being embarrassed by the blogger's harvest of "gotchas," I say a pox on the leakers instead of the speakers.

There are times when candor is necessary; when one has to speak in the confidence that what you say will go no farther than the ears you're speaking into.

I remember once when a new executive editor called me into his office and asked for my candid appraisal of the people who supervised me.

"Let's have it with the bark off," he said.

I gave it to him as honestly as I could, and I think it helped him lift the newspaper a notch or two above the mediocrity in which it had wallowed for years.

Later, I was asked for written appraisals of the people who worked under me. I considered them all to be friends, but I felt that I owed top management candid assessments. The appraisals were a long way from scathing, and I thought they reflected my generally positive feelings toward my staff. But when one of the staffers found the memos unguarded and shared them with his fellow workers, it created some tensions.

So I can understand the anxiety Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must feel as she engages in damage control with the foreign governments who are now hearing what the United States has said about them to their backs. And I can understand the angst foreign diplomats may feel as they wonder which of their unguarded comments might get back to the officials who have the power to fire them and even to execute them.

Diplomacy is like liver pudding coated with chocolate. It's supposed to look nice on the outside, but the inside is smelly and messy. Maybe the public needs to know all the smelly and messy details. But once they learn about them, North Korea will still have nuclear arms and a recklessly contemptuous attitude toward the rest of the world; Iran will still be eager to flex its nuclear muscles; China will continue to be on the rise, hoping to emulate the West's technology while spurning its human-rights values; and Russia will still be a ponderous giant unsure of whether it wants to take the plunge into democracy or to retreat into its traditional tyranny.

And the hackers out there will continue to make it difficult to have a confidential conversation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/06/AR2010120605923.html

FILE - In this May 3, 2010 file photo, Oprah Winfrey arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute gala in New York. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, file) Email This Story IM This Story Print This Story

Winfrey picks 2 Dickens novels for book club

HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer Sun Dec 5, 11:36 AM PST

Better set some time aside for Oprah Winfrey's latest book club pick.

The talk show host has selected a pair of Dickens classics, "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations." The two novels are being issued in a single bound Penguin paperback edition, around 800 pages, with a list price of $20. The electronic version, also from Penguin, sells for $7.99.

Because the copyright has long expired on the 19th-century novels, they are available through a variety of publishers and even directly from retailers. "Great Expectations" can be downloaded for free on Amazon.com's Kindle reader. "A Tale of Two Cities" costs 99 cents on Barnes & Noble's e-book device, the Nook.

Winfrey is to announce her selection Monday, when her long-awaited reconciliation with Jonathan Franzen will air.

Winfrey picked Franzen's "Freedom" nine years after his ambivalence over her selection of his novel "The Corrections" led her to withdraw his invitation to appear on her show. Franzen has written enviously of Dickens' time, when a new literary release "was anticipated with the kind of fever that a late-December film release inspires today."

On Sunday, The Associated Press purchased a copy of the new Dickens volume, which has the book club logo on the cover.

Messages left for Winfrey's Harpo Productions in Chicago weren't immediately returned.

Winfrey has chosen older works before, including Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" and John Steinbeck's "East of Eden." Her website recommends Dickens' "David Copperfield," noting it was a favorite of Tolstoy's.

___

Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen contributed to this report from Chicago.

Monday, December 6th 2010, 4:00 AM

SpaceXFalcon 9 rocket with Dragon capsule will launch from Florida.

The future of the space travel will undergo a crucial test Tuesday when the first privately owned spaceship attempts a launch into orbit.

If it succeeds, SpaceX's Dragon capsule will then try to reenter the atmosphere - also a first for a nongovernment-owned spacecraft.

The outcome of the launch will play a vital role in determining the direction of U.S. space travel as NASA looks to private companies to fill in the gap as the space shuttle program is put into mothballs next year.

"[It is] a huge thing, gigantic, historic," TV science host Bill Nye told AOL News. "It may very well lead to everyday people having access to space."

Other commercial firms - most notably Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic - have achieved suborbital flight, but this would be the first to break free of the atmosphere.

SpaceX - founded by PayPal guru Elon Musk - signed a $1.6 billion contract with NASA in December 2008 to conduct 12 resupply missions to the International Space Station

A second rocket-building company, Orbital Sciences Corp., has a similar $1.9 billion deal with NASA.

Tomorrow's test launch from Cape Canaveral will attempt to put the gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule into orbit atop an 18-story Falcon 9 rocket.

If it makes it back, it's hoped the capsule will land in the Pacific off California.

It would mark an important step in showing that private industry is technologically up to snuff to take over travel into space.

Musk, 39, said when Congress authorized the private launch in October that it set "NASA on an exciting course" while "recognizing the valuable role American companies are ready to undertake."

With News Wire Services

Huffington Post Reporting

State Department To Columbia University Students: DO NOT Discuss WikiLeaks On Facebook, Twitter

Senate blocks Obama's tax plan

Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times

Updated: 1:37 p.m. on Saturday, December 4, 2010

Republican Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., arrives for a rare Saturday lame duck session of the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010. The Senate agenda features a pair of votes: one on a proposal to extend all expiring tax cuts on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000; the other to renew them for all tax filers with incomes of less than $1 million. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

The Senate blocked President Obama's and Democratic leaders' tax cut plans Saturday in a foreordained symbolic vote that now sends both sides back to the negotiating table to work out a viable deal.

A bipartisan filibuster, led by unified Republicans and joined by four Democrats and one independent, proved there isn't enough support to back Mr. Obama's preferred option to extend income tax cuts for couples making less than $250,000 and tax increases for those making more than that.

With that vote out of the way, attention turns back to the high-level working group Mr. Obama and congressional leaders set up this week to try to work out a solution. That group met three times already, but Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and one of the negotiators, said it was clear to him that Democrats weren't going to negotiate until they had gone through the votes to prove to their political base that raising taxes on the wealthy wasn't viable.

"It's been very clear that we're not going to be negotiating anything until all of this political process is over, until the partisan votes have been cast," he said an hour before the votes in a rare weekend Senate session.

The negotiators seem to be headed toward an agreement that would extend all the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts temporarily. Still to be decided was what sweeteners Democrats would secure to make swallowing the tax cuts more palatable. Possible options included extended unemployment benefits.

But emotions on both sides are running high, which is complicating matters.

Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, Louisiana Democrat, lashed out at Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the Senate floor, saying she didn't know how Democrats were supposed to negotiate with him after the Kentucky Republican said before the elections that his top priority is to see Mr. Obama defeated in 2012.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Mr. Obama accused Republicans of holding the middle-class "hostage" in their push to extend all tax breaks.

"I am very disappointed that the Senate is not going to pass legislation that has already passed the House of Representatives that would make the middle class tax cuts permanent," he said. "Those provisions should have passed."

Tax cuts are just one of a host of issues still unresolved by Congress even after two weeks of a lame-duck session.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said the Senate must act on tax cuts and the outstanding spending bills, and said he wants to see it take up a nuclear arms reduction treaty, a massive immigration bill, the defense policy bill that would overturn the ban on gay and lesbian troops, and several other measures sought by his party's liberal base.

In January, Republicans take control of the House and increase their clout in the Senate, likely cutting off chances for Democrats to secure many of those priorities.

The Senate on Saturday first rejected an option that would have extended the Bush tax cuts for individuals making less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000, but let the rates rise back to pre-2001 levels for everyone else. The vote was 53-46, leaving Democrats seven votes shy of the 60 needed to end the filibuster.

Next, senators blocked an option that would have raised the threshold for extended tax cuts to $1 million. That also fell seven votes shy of the threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

"Republicans are willing to hold hostage the middle class tax cut so they can get a tax cut for the very wealthy," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, who offered the higher income threshold.

With Republicans unified for months, the votes' outcome was not in doubt. But Democrats held the votes anyway in response to liberal lawmakers who said they wanted to show the country exactly where lawmakers stoof.

On Thursday, House Democratic leaders used their tight control of the rules and their soon-to-expire overwhelming majority to force through the president's position.

National Geographic ChannelAbout 70 elephants went on a wild spree near the border states of West Bengal and Orissa.

A herd of about 70 elephants got drunk on a fermented rice-based drink and then went on a four-day rampage in India, killing three people and smashing dozens of homes.

Local officials said Thursday that the herd left a path of destruction near the border states of West Bengal and Orissa. In the wake of the drinking binge, several of the elephants were found sleeping it off, according to The Guardian newspaper.

Villagers had stockpiled the drink in preparation for a festival.

Experts say encounters between humans and elephants are becoming more common in India - often with deadly results. About 100 elephants are killed by villagers each year.

"These herds are effectively semi-urbanized," Amirtharaj Williams of the World Wildlife Fund told The Guardian. "There are elephants who are getting a taste for food that humans prepare because it is tastier, stronger-smelling and often more nutritious, and that includes rice- or molasses-based drinks. Some go looking for it."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/04/2010-12-04_boozedup_elephants_go_on_deadly_rampage.html#ixzz179v0kfmE

Obama pardons 9 convicted of drug, other offenses

 

AP – President Barack Obama talks briefly about taxes and his meeting yesterday with Republican and Democratic …

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has granted the first pardons of his presidency, to nine people convicted of crimes including possessing drugs, counterfeiting and even mutilating coins.

No one well-known was on the list, and some of the crimes dated back decades or had drawn little more than a slap on the wrist in the first place — such as the Pennsylvania man sentenced in 1963 to probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins. The White House didn't explain the charge, but tampering with federal currency is a crime.

The White House declined to give details on the cases or comment on why these particular people were selected by a president who previously had only pardoned Thanksgiving turkeys.

Presidential pardons often come in the holiday season toward year's-end, but they can sometimes be extremely controversial, such as when Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich at the end of his presidency.

President George W. Bush drew heat for commuting the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, in the case of the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. But Bush rejected Cheney's vigorous urging that he later pardon Libby as well.

"The president was moved by the strength of the applicants' post-conviction efforts at atonement, as well as their superior citizenship and individual achievements in the years since their convictions," said White House spokesman Reid Cherlin. The White House announced the pardons Friday as Obama was in the air on the way home from a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

Obama has received 551 pardon petitions in the course of his presidency, of which he's denied 131, according to the Justice Department. Another 265 petitions were closed without presidential action.

The people pardoned were:

_James Bernard Banks, of Liberty, Utah, sentenced to two years of probation in 1972 for illegal possession of government property.

_Russell James Dixon, of Clayton, Ga., sentenced to two years of probation in 1960 for a liquor law violation.

_Laurens Dorsey, of Syracuse, N.Y., sentenced in 1998 to five years of probation and $71,000 in restitution for conspiracy to defraud by making false statements to the Food and Drug Administration.

_Ronald Lee Foster, of Beaver Falls, Pa., sentenced in 1963 to a year of probation and a $20 fine for mutilating coins.

_Timothy James Gallagher, of Navasota, Texas, sentenced in 1982 to three years of probation for cocaine possesion and conspiracy to distribute.

_Roxane Kay Hettinger, Powder Springs, Ga., sentenced in 1986 to 30 days in jail and three years of probation for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

_Edgar Leopold Kranz Jr., of Minot, N.D., who received 24 months of confinement and a pay reduction for cocaine use, adultery and bouncing checks.

_Floretta Leavy, of Rockford, Ill., sentenced in 1984 to 366 days in prison and three years of parole for drug offenses.

_Scoey Lathaniel Morris, of Crosby, Texas, sentenced in 1991 to three years of probation and $1,200 restitution for counterfeiting offenses.

___

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

  December 3, 2010 12:44 PM

Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State is "My Last Public Position"

Mary Dooe 

At a town hall meeting appearance in Manama, Bahrain on Friday, Clinton denied intentions to run for either president or vice president on the ticket with President Obama, who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some experts have also speculated that she could replace Robert Gates next year when he retires as secretary of defense.

"I think I will serve as secretary of state as my last public position," she said. Clinton's career has included not only her current position as secretary of state, but also eight years in the Senate representing New York.

Clinton has repeatedly laughed off rumors that she may seek the highest office in the country, and she was notably out of the country during the midterm elections when Democrats lost control of the House.

When her current position is over, Clinton "would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she said, adding that she will "probably go back to advocacy work, particularly on women and children and probably around the world." This marks the first time Clinton has publicly discussed alternatives to political office in her future.

In returning to advocacy work, she could follow in the footsteps of her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who has largely turned to humanitarian work through his Clinton Foundation since leaving the White House.

Mrs. Clinton has formerly worked extensively for the rights of women and children. She went on to note that while she has had a "fascinating and rewarding public career," she particularly enjoyed her time as a lawyer for the Children's Defense Fund, which advocates for abused and neglected children, as well as her women's rights work, according to Reuters.

"I feel very lucky because of my parents and then my education, the opportunities that I've had, so I would like to continue working to improve lives for others," she added.

In addition to personal passions, Clinton also noted the strain of the job of president as a deterrent towards seeking further election.

"Every president, if you watch what they look like when they come into office, you can see their hair turn white because it's such a hard job," she said.

Sierra/APMexican army soldiers escort a 14-year-old suspected of working as a killer for a drug cartel in the city of Cuernavaca, Mexico.

The suspect is nicknamed "El Ponchis," or "the cloaked one."

This hit man is a mere boy: "El Ponchis," a 14-year-old killer who claims he was involved in four decapitations while working for a Mexican drug cartel.

The teen assassin, whose existence was considered more rumor than reality by many, was busted late Thursday at a Mexican airport as he tried to flee the country, officials said.

The alleged young killer is known as "El Ponchis" or "the cloaked one." He confessed to his role in the gruesome killings to reporters at the Mexican Attorney General's office in Cuernavaca.

"I participated in four executions, but I did it drugged and under threat that if I didn't, they would kill me," the teen said Friday, speaking calmly and without remorse.

He was arrested with his 16-year-old sister, who reportedly disposed of her brother's victims by dumping the bodies on streets and freeways, officials said.

The boy also said that he was employed by the cartel since he was 11 years old.

He and his sister are suspected of working with the South Pacific Cartel headed by Hector Beltran Leyva, whose drug lord brother Arturo was killed last year by Mexican Marines.

Hector's war for control of the drug cartel is blamed for an upsurge in violence in the region south of Mexico City.

"El Ponchis" and his sibling already had plane tickets when they were taken into custody. The sister told reporters that they were heading to join their mother in San Diego.

The boy and his sister were living in a working class suburb outside Cuernavaca.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/12/03/2010-12-03_14yearold_hit_man_el_ponchis_says_he_was_drugged_before_killing_4_in_mexico_drug.html#ixzz175ZYRAYk

Funeral director tried to hide ashes mix-up

Families got wrong remains; 30 days in jail, $10,000 fine

A suburban funeral director concocted an elaborate plan to illegally hide an error that sent two sets of cremated human remains to the wrong families, even going so far as to secretly dig up a buried urn of ashes.

Marcee Dane, 32, also tried to cover the mix-up by obtaining the cremated remains of a third person, then telling a grieving family the ashes actually were from their deceased relative, Lake County prosecutors said Thursday.

Dane was sentenced to 30 days in jail Thursday after pleading guilty to felony charges of desecrating human remains. She also was ordered to serve 150 days of home confinement, spend 30 months on probation and was fined $10,000.

As part of her plea deal, Dane also is barred from ever working again in the funeral industry, authorities said.

The mix-up began in May 2010 when Burnett-Dane Funeral Home in Libertyville inadvertently switched the cremated remains of two unrelated people. Dane took unlawful steps to hide the error, authorities said.

When one family became suspicious that the ashes they were given weren't from their deceased relative, Dane obtained the cremated remains of an unidentified person from a suburban crematory, prosecutors said. Dane later mailed those ashes to the grieving family, assuring them they were the remains from their deceased family member, authorities said.

When Dane learned investigators were probing the mix-up, she traveled to a Des Plaines cemetery and under the guise of planting flowers at a gravesite, secretly dug up the urn belonging one of the relatives of the families involved, prosecutor Christen Bishop said.

She then removed an identification tag on the urn in an attempt to obscure whose remains were buried at the site, Bishop said.

LINK TO VIDEO AND PICTURE

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2010/12/02/funeral-director-going-to-jail-for-cremation-cover-up/

Tongue-in-cheek Boehner refers to Dems' tax cut vote as 'chicken crap'

Costanza for NewsMelissa Petro, who admitted in an article that she was a sex worker before becoming a teacher, has been charged with conduct 'unbecoming a teacher' by the Education Department.

Sex worker-turned-teacher Melissa Petro was charged Wednesday with conduct "unbecoming a teacher," a city Education Department spokeswoman said.

The mayor chose to remove Petro from her classroom in September after she published an article admitting she'd been paid for "sexual services."

Education Department officials declined to explain what grounds they have to fire the tenured art teacher from the Bronx's Public School 70 on the basis of an article she wrote.

Her sex worker career ended before she started teaching, Petro's article says.

Officials also declined to release the investigative documents that might explain the specific charges and refused even to explain why the documents are not public.

Spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said, "On advice of counsel, I am declining to release the report.".

That's an apparent switch in policy.

Less than two weeks ago, when officials announced they wanted to can Brooklyn principal Jonathan Straughn, the agency released a full explanation.

Petro did not return a request for comment.

In her Huffington Post article, Petro defended Craigslist's right to post sex-worker ads, but that's not the only public evidence that she views sex workers as unfairly vilified.

"I wouldn't encourage my daughter to be a sex worker. I wouldn't discourage her either. Ultimately, every woman is free to choose. ..." she wrote in a blog post.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/12/02/2010-12-02_education_dept_charges_bronx_teacher_exsex_worker_melissa_petro_with_conduct_unb.html#ixzz16x6aDurm

WH 2012: The professional left better learn to live with disappointment

 

White House officials do not expect liberal commentators who view President Obama as the compromiser-in-chief to lessen their criticism of the administration in the coming two years.

In fact, they expect it to get worse.

That’s because Obama has shown every indication that he is reading from former President Clinton’s playbook and moving toward the right in the name of bipartisan compromise. And nobody at the White House is pushing back on that description. 

In the days following the Democrats’ November shellacking, Obama has given every indication that he is serious about joining Republicans in their at-least-rhetorical push to cut spending. 

That continued Tuesday as Obama, after meeting with Democratic and GOP leaders at the White House, said that he is looking for “common ground” with Republicans.

Obama made it clear: He favors results to ideological purity, and he expects the same from Republicans.

“[Americans] did not vote for unyielding partisanship,” Obama said. “They’re demanding cooperation.”

The president even told the GOP that he didn’t do a good enough job of reaching out to it over the past two years. The Republicans did not reciprocate. 

So is the president “bending” while Republicans show no signs of moving in Obama’s direction?

“I’m not sure I call that bending,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “I call that trying to work together.”

While that sounds like the basis for Triangulation 101 and a feel-good Washington story of sacrifice for the common good, all liberals hear is more of Obama giving while Republicans take. 

And labor unions, the most fundamental and well-organized constituency within the left, were nothing short of furious at Obama’s call for a two-year pay freeze for federal workers this week.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Obama’s move risks “reinforcing the myth, pushed by some for politically convenient but cynical reasons, that America suffers from a federal government comprised of unproductive and overpaid civil servants.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trumka said.

If the White House is worried about further angering its base, aides certainly aren’t showing it.

White House officials do not take seriously any talk, no matter how preliminary, of a credible primary challenge to the president, and the larger view is that the more Obama is seen as a centrist, the better off he’ll be. 

Liberals, they think, can shut up and get on board to help Obama paint the portrait of moderation the White House is hoping to have framed before November 2012.

After Tuesday’s meeting at the White House, it was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who used Clinton as a model, noting the bipartisan efforts of that era in words that undoubtedly caused nausea within the ranks of the professional left.

“I think of the second Clinton administration, with welfare reform, with balanced budgets, with trade agreements,” McConnell said. “I think we all agree there’s no particular reason why we can’t find areas of agreement and do some important things for the American people over the next two years.”

While it turned out well for Clinton, liberals say Obama is missing the point.

Democrats didn’t lose because moderates broke for Republicans, lefties say. Democrats lost because liberal independents, the same ones who were chanting, “Yes we can!” in 2008, stayed home in 2010.

The kind of energy that swept Obama into the White House will not be replicated during the president’s reelection campaign if liberals feel abandoned by Obama, says the professional left.

In other words, the enthusiasm gap that Obama repeatedly dismissed in 2010 could cause him serious heartburn in 2012 even if he doesn’t have to fight another Democrat for the nomination.

Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, warned of just that on Tuesday, saying that the midterms should be a “wake-up call” for Obama.

“President Obama shouldn’t be worried about criticism from ‘the professional left,’ ” Taylor said. “He should be worried about criticism from millions of former Obama voters who are severely disappointed in him right now. The fact is that many former Obama voters stayed home in 2010, and unless he starts enacting the popular progressive change he campaigned on, they may stay home again in 2012.”

If members of the left are holding out hope that Obama will come around to their reading of the midterms, they had better learn to live with disappointment. And Obama had better hope disappointment doesn’t lead to disengagement.