Gee, the Bath's Getting Awfully Warm...

Anglachel:

The battle to properly institutionalize a movement goal, for example having health care for all on the model of Medicare instead of some hodgepodge of tepid ideas and bones thrown to the insurance companies, or declaring that Social Security is not in trouble and will not be on the table instead of allowing it to be nibbled to death by ducks, or that the banks need to be reformed and their criminal management brought to trial instead of handing them bags of cash, or declaring that there will be a stimulus package big enough to jump start the economy instead of preaching fiscal austerity and allowing unemployment to rise, is what a president is supposed to do.

Anthony McCarthy at Echidne of the Snakes:

[Quote from Ted Ralls' book]

Even if a leader like Obama were inclined to push for the sweeping reforms that might save American late-stage capitalism from itself, as did Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and there is no evidence that the thought has crossed Obama's mind -- his fellow powerbrokers, fixated on quarterly profit statements and personal position, would never allow it.
The media talks a lot about reform. But it's too late for nips and tucks. Reform can only fix a system if the system is viable and open to change. Neither is true about the United States of America.

...Nor can we do it with the lazy click of a mouse as we send another $20.00 to Move-On.org. No, it can only be done by a radical change, and I mean RADICAL, namely, a radical change in HOW WE SPEND OUR MONEY.
If there is something predictable about a call for a real boycott that would have a real impact, it is that the cynics and the slackers will discourage even considering trying it. They will say that it is unrealistic because it is destined to fail. [...] 

One of the first things the left could do would be to BOYCOTT ALL FOX PROGRAMS, ALL OF THEM AND ALL OF THE MURDOCH EMPIRE'S MEDIA PRODUCTS . A left that can't give up The Simpsons to avoid fascism and civil war is a left that has already given in.

The Sideshow:

None of our "Deficit Hawks", of course, are talking about getting rid of the genuinely wasteful public expenditures that harm rather than help us - an over-inflated war-making machine that squanders billions on destructive policies that actually make the world a more dangerous place for all of us, for example. And a security state that terrorizes ordinary people going about their ordinary lives while, with the help of the odiously destructive War on (Some) Drugs, imprisoning more hapless citizens than any other country in the world does.

[...]

For quite a while, now, The Sideshow has been trying to remind people that what the conservative ruling class wants is not merely to make money, but to push the rest of us back down into the dirt. The hard-scrabble existence you and your children face is not just an unfortunate by-product of their "grown-up" program, it is the goal.