A Pleasant Daydream

It's March, 2009. 

The inauguration of the new Democratic President is over, as is the installation of the additional 30 new (D)s in the House as well as the 10 brand new Democratic Senators.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is underway, and the horror stories are being proven wrong as UN and Arab peacekeeping troops move in after serious diplomatic efforts bear fruit.

The President sits down with the new Democratic leadership in Congress to discuss healthcare.

"Remember what I campaigned on for healthcare reform?  All that good stuff about making healthcare insurance affordable for all and leaving the insurers in place?" says the new President.

"Yes, Mr. President." say the leaders. (Hey, this is my daydream here and the next President isn't named 'Clinton' in it!)

"Well," says the President, "I don't want you to pass any of the legislation I proposed in the campaign."

"WHAT?!!" say the shocked Congressional leaders.

"What indeed.  What I want is for Congress to send me a single payer, universal health care bill.  Oh, I'll act suitably uncomfortable with the bill and say all the right things about how I'd prefer you all had gone with my plan - but I'll sign the bill into law."  said the President.

"Well, we certainly have the bills introduced to do just that - the question is, is this what you really want?"  said the Democratic Speaker of the House.

"And now the damn Republicans can't filibuster it to death." said the Democratic Senate Majority Leader.

"Exactly." said the President.  "As to the Speaker's concerns, yes - this is exactly what I want.  I couldn't run on universal health care, the Republicans would have lied and smeared it into extinction and I probably wouldn't be sitting here now either.  This is going to be political theater to be sure, but damn it, Harry Truman wanted to do this back in 1949 and it took until the middle Sixties just to get the elderly into it."

"Yes, sir." said the leaders.

The President continued, "It took us a long, hard slog to get to where we are.  We're doing what the people want by getting out of Iraq, now it's time to continue that by giving the country what it overwhelmingly supports:  single payer universal health care.  We'll do a bit of psycho-theater to get there, but that's what I'd like from Congress.  Do what you need to do to get this passed, and do so with my complete - if a bit undercover -support."

The leaders rose, shook the President's hand and began to leave the Oval Office.  As they left, the Speaker stage-whispered, "About damn time."

The President quietly smiled.

....and then I woke up.....

Progressive talk, part 2

I've been getting some interesting responses to my earlier post about progressive talk shows having rightwing guests on them.  After careful consideration, I have come to this conclusion: 

Progressive talk is still blowing it.

"But, we must hear the other side to know what they're up to!" the detractors say. 

Oh really.  Progressive talk has to do this for you.

Hmmm.

You mean to tell me that listeners to progressive talk can't find a rightwing talk show to hear for themselves what they're up to?  I find that hard to believe.  OK, if Rush and O'Reilly grate on your last nerve, I can understand that.  Don't have cable or Fox News?  OK.  I can take care of that for you too, and you don't even need cable.  I know you are online because you are reading this - if you really don't know what the far right thinks after all these years of a Republican Congress and President, have I got some sites for you! 

Take a quick little trip to these two sites - WorldNetDaily.com and NewsMax.com - and there you can find all the insight you need on the thinking and "issues" of the modern "conservative movement".  Read them at your leisure.  If those two aren't enough, you can always add in CNSNews.com and thedrudgereport.com.  That should clue you right in. 

Now, if you need to have those sites debated for you, I suggest mediamatters.org and conwebwatch.com.  There's always some excellent blogs that will give you that ammo for "winning the water cooler wars" too - DailyKos.com, Firedoglake.com, Sirotablog.com, and the granddaddy of them all, Bartcop.com.  Just to name a few.

There, now there's no more need to have anyone on progressive radio from the Heritage Foundation, Richard Viguerie, Pat Buchanan, or anyone else who represents the nutcase right.  Ever.  What they have to say is already there, repeated endlessly on various rightwing radio bloviators' shows and the internet.

Why is this important?  Here's a good example:  A.N.S.W.E.R. (http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage) is organizing a large anti-Iraq war demonstration in Washington, DC on September 15th.  Hear about it?  If all your information is coming from liberal talk, I can guarantee you haven't.  Mr. Rightwing Nut gets time on liberal talk and they don't.

Things are getting better.  Big Ed Schultz offhandly offered his entire 3-hour program to any Democratic candidate who wants to come on.  Dennis Kucinich took him up on it, and all of the other candidates should too.  We need more progressive talk like that - don't just say we need to get involved, tell and show us how and where.

As to bringing on the right to fight them, I thought that was why we needed progressive talk in the first place.  Tell the right when they want to come on your progressive talk show the lyrics from that West Side Story song:

"Stick to your own kind, stick to your own kind"

 

The unquiet desperation of the trash right

Hey, guess what?  All 60%+ of us Americans are all surrender monkeys again, ready to "retreat and surrender" out of Iraq!  And if we don't stay, there'll be a bloodbath, just like there was in Vietnam!  Oh, the horror!

Or so the cowardly, stay-at-home couch war supporters say. 

I have a real simple message for them:  screw off.

As Prezidunce Bush wants to kick the occupation down the road so anybody but him gets blamed for it, the idea here is to blame the people against the war for "losing" the war.  Not the architects, not the supporters, we people who were never for Bush's Glorious War of Oil Liberation in the first place are going to be blamed for this debacle.

Yeah, right.

Here's a few things they are clinging to as they see final defeat for the neo-nuts looming:  we - the only true, white, right thinking neocon patriots - really had the right idea about Iraq, it was just handled badly.  You stupid Americans just aren't wise enough to bow to our wisdom, and it's not our fault. 

What a pantload.

Here's the real deal for the rightwing fantacists.  Iraq still had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda under Saddam, no matter how many times you repeat your lies that it was otherwise.  The war was an unnecessary war of choice that had nothing to do with protecting us and everything to do with padding your bank accounts.  There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we went in, there are none now. The war against terrorists was in Afghanistan - the war to realize your dreams of a Middle East oil control empire is in Iraq.  I don't care if you call it a "surge" or pink cotton candy, your escalation of that imperial war is a failure.

Here's the bottom line for the rightwing bottom feeders:  You lost in 2006, and you're going to lose again in 2008.

And don't they know it!  Repub congressmen are bailing out left and right so they aren't defeated next year.  The far trash right is flailing out in all directions (they're even trying to re-write the history of Vietnam) to keep those paychecks for peddling hate coming in.  The people aren't with them, and the best they can hope for is to wring the last few dimes out of the ever-shrinking Bush cult true believers that are left.  Their leaders in the White House arebeing dismissed as delusional and out of touch by most of the country - heck, its gotten so bad for them that a majority of Americans have already said they won't trust that lip-sticked pig that will supposedly be the Petraeus "report" before it's even been fine-tuned by the GOP failed wizards and released.

So, thrash and crash and moan, righties.  The country's political pendulum was headed leftward in 2000 (combining the votes for Gore and Nader, 2000 was the first time in 20 years that the majority of the vote went center-left) - that was derailed for a while after 9/11.  You had your moment in the sun, but the pendulum has finished it's jog to the right and is headed left again.

The right didn't only lose the elections in 2006, they lost the argument well before then and it hasn't turned around for them.  Enjoy their wailing and gnashing of teeth - they're done.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Rightwing-nuts, iraq

Democratic ARRRRRGH

"The Democrats!!!  They're enough to make you scream!!!  What to do, what to do?"

Let's talk about this and do another reality check.  First of all, we won in '06 but we didn't win enough.   I know, I know - that's just excuses and we should be tougher on the Republicans and blah blah blappidy blah but there it is.  We did well in the House and weren't supposed to take the Senate...but we did.  Now we face a GOP ready and able to block whatever we do, and we just don't have the numbers to stop them.

This doesn't excuse "the Democrats" from caving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ..if that's what "the Democrats" actually did.  Despite the current meme going around the web, the numbers don't hold up.  There are 237 Democratic members of the House of Representatives:  41 of them voted for the Bush FISA bill as well as all of the Republicans.  28 Democratic Senators voted against the Bush FISA bill, leaving 17 Dems voting for it as well as all of the Republicans.  I don't know how you do math, but it appears that "the Democrats" voted against the bill, with a few strays going over to give the Republicans the margin of victory for their bill.  Since not even one Republican voted against this, the talking point is really that the Republicans passed the bill.

This doesn't let the minority of Democrats off the hook for letting this pass, and I know the urge is to go after these Democrats come voting time next year. 

I'm going to borrow from Air America talk show host Thom Hartmann and pass along his suggestion on how to handle this because I think this is what is going to actually work.  Instead of rooting around for primary challengers for the Democrats who voted with the GOPers, I say we send them a different message.  We contact those Democrats' offices not with anger but with this message:  We're not happy with how you voted.  We want you to vote the right way on (insert issue here) with the understanding that you have our support if you do.  Do the right thing and we'll have your back. 

All those Democrats who are in nominally conservative districts are hearing is what bad things will happen to them from the rightwing in their states and districts.  What they need to hear is that the people who voted for them support them in doing what they voted for them to do.  If all they're hearing is how they'll pay if they vote against Bush and the Republicans, they will cave.  If they hear that their support for voting the right way is not only appreciated, it will be backed up on election day they won't.

We may not give them an immediate spine implant, but we can start by giving them back support.

 

 

 

 

Well, what did you THINK was going to happen?

I was thinking over this Libby commutation of his prison term thing and getting all worked up over it when it hit me.  What did I expect Bush to do?  The guy has been nothing but a self-centered lying sack-o-shite from the day the Bush Supremes got together and awarded Georgie the White House.  I know the line has been that Bush is stoooooopid, but I never completely bought that - he's been bright enough to misdirect fire onto any target but him for the last 7 years.  And he knew damn well that if li'l Scooter heard the solid slam of a cell door he'd get real interested real fast in telling the real story of how Valerie the Spy got her cover broken because of politics.

Back to the mis-directed fire thing:  Think of it - most of the bad things that's happened during Dear Leader Bush's infestation of the people's White House has hardly ever been placed at his feet.  War on Iraq for control of the oil fields not going well?  Bush's fault?  Nawww.....that was because of D. Rumsfeld and those wacky neocons.  Economy not so great?  It was that durned Republican Congress and their mad spending ways (now the fault of the Democrats in Congress since they had the audacity to wrest control from God's Own Party).  Does even Katrina belong to GW?  No again - Brownie and Chertie screwed the pooch on that one.

Well, at least that worked for a while.  People are putting the blame where it belongs, on War President Dubya....right?  The darling of the left wing of the Democratic Party, Dennis Kucinich, did stand up and place into the hopper articles of impeachment....against Vice President Dick Cheney. 

Huh?  Who? 

Dennis says it's Halliburton Dick's fault that we got into Iraq.

Freakin' WHAT?  Oh dear gawd, Bush dodges another bullet - even if hardly any of Mr. K's fellow (D)s are signing on.

So, stupid George gets us to blame somebody but him again. 

However, commuting Libby's jail time is all his.  In the best criminal mindset, he had to do it.  There it is - notes from Cheney saying that "this President" wanted Mrs. Wilson to become a non-spy to get that husband of hers because the bastard went and told on him. Libby lied so well that any case against the real boss would be lost in the obstruction blizzard.  Loyalty like that needed to be rewarded - first no jail, then as George is heading to the real estate office to sell off his phony Texas as he leaves the White House, a complete pardon.

But what about all the outrage from the Democrats?  Well - so what.  Bush knows that he's still got the congressional Dems still acting like a battered wife so well that they'll make lots of noise but when the rubber hits the road they won't DO squat.  We already know what a club that huge 30-26% approval rating makes - but our party leaders still act like he won 49 states last time and has the loving approval of a majority of Americans even now.

Folks, it's time to do what it takes to impeach the bastard.  Not Cheney, not Rice, not Gonzalez - it's time to go for the main event and add the word "impeached" to George W.'s resume.  This post on the Democrats.com site, http://www.democrats.com/node/13509 makes the case on why we should push this.  Forget the Senate trial or whether the President is removed, the black mark is there for posterity.  Never mind that they finished their terms, rightly or wrongly Andrew Johnson was impeached, Richard Nixon was nearly impeached and Bill Clinton was impeached.  Deserved or not, the stain remains and will be in the history books forever.

Sending emails and signing online petitions is a start, but to get this done we're going to have to get off our asses and into the streets and our Representatives' office.  The time to ask politely is over - it's past time to remind that member of the House that we don't have the cash but we do have the votes and we demand that George W. Bush be impeached - for Libby and a carload of crimes. 

Enough is enough.

 

 

 

Tags: Bush, Libby, impeach

Progressive Talk Radio - are we blowing it again?

I love progressive talk.  I listen almost exclusively to Air America, and Big Eddie is my main man.  It's very existence has been given credit for giving elected Democrats the little bit of spine that is trying its hardest to emerge from those timid beings, in that it's where those same Democrats have a place to speak and be heard without fear of the slightest slip of the tongue being overblown into a 24/7 scandal of the day.

So why am I hearing less of them and more of the rightwing on their air?

Here we finally have a platform for the left, so who's on with our favorite left-of-center talkshow hosts? 

Medea Benjamin of Code Pink?  Nope. 

ANSWER talking about the next large anti-Iraq War demonstation?  Not to be found. 

How about the guys of MoveOn?  Rarely. 

Noam Chomsky?  Absent. 

What are we getting instead?  Big Eddie Schultz has Richard Viguerie on....RICHARD FREAKIN' VIGUERIE!!  You remember him, he's the neocon mail darling of the far right who's been selling the idea that liberals are evil Commies for years now.  He's on the Schultz show to cry about how Bush is selling out conservatives (funny how ol' Dickie neglected to mention this when Bush's approval numbers were over 60%).   Thom Hartmann has on David Horowitz.....DAVID STINKING HOROWITZ!!  You know, that guy who's convinced most professors are card-carrying Marxists.  What is he on with Hartmann for?  So Thom can debate him....when he's not debating speakers from the Heritage Society, or some libertarian, or some other rightwing nutjob.  Other talk show hosts have welcomed such luminaries of the left as Patrick Buchanan and Texas Rep. (and former Libertarian Party as well as current Republican Party presidential candidate) Ron Paul.

Excuse me, but with over 450 rightwing talkshows across the country and over 4000 hours a week of trash right reinforcement on the air, these guys can't get their ideas across anywhere but PROGRESSIVE TALK SHOWS??!

We're blowing it again, dammit.  Here...finally....we have a plaform for Democrats and other left-leaners who can't buy positive coverage anywhere else.  I want to know what the Pissed Off Grannies Against the War are up to.  I'd like a heads-up on the next major demonstration to see if a major city near me is joining in so I can too.  The Progressive Democrats of America - I'd like to know what their current campaign is about.  Tell me how the Green Party is doing.  I don't get to hear about any of that on progressive radio and I wonder why.

If I wanted to know what the barking-at-the-moon crazies of the right were up to, a little twist of the radio dial and I can get all the Rush, Sean, O'Reilly and their various clones I can eat.  Progressive radio is falling into the trap that the beltway Democrats have bitten hard on, namely the idea that the left is not as important as the right guest-wise.

It's not the hosts themselves doing this - when its just them talking and taking calls, progressive talk lives up to it's name very well.  I've heard the argument from them on why they have the trash right on - "we have to have both sides", "it's better if we have them on and destroy their false ideas one on one".

Nonsense.

We pushed and pushed to get liberal talk radio on because there was no balance to the myriad rightwing talkers and there was no way to get our views out.  Note to the progressive talk show hosts:  We already know what positions the far right takes on the issues and how they think - for years, those of us who love talk radio had nothing BUT them to listen to.  Groups like ANSWER are getting called communist fronts by the people you're bringing on the air to "debate" - how about leaving the cons to con radio and giving the left a chance to actually get to tell their side of the story and what they're really all about on a national radio show instead?

Let liberal/progressive radio talk to liberal/progressive PEOPLE - that's what most of us are tuning in to hear.  Help pass the word on to them.

It's time to talk about guns

"Oh no, not again."

That was the headline for the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, but it could have served just as well for the mass murder at Virginia Tech. Another disturbed young man with easy access to guns and another list of dead students - how many times are we going to watch and grieve before we do something?

It looks like it'll be quite a few.  The Democrats are triangulating and avoiding to keep from giving the Republicans an issue to run on that takes away attention from their Bush war.  The Republicans are clucking appropriately but are playing to their base, well demonstrated by GW being sure to mention that "we still support the right to keep and bear arms" barely before he could get out what a tragedy this all is.

The discussions range from the outlandish (Why weren't the students armed too?) to the usual "why weren't the laws we have enforced?"  The police on the scene answered the first one - if there had been armed students roaming the halls of that university during and after the shootings, the body count could have been much higher.  The police said the last thing anyone would want is them shooting an innocent student carrying a handgun, thinking they were one of the school shooters.

The second one is always a joy - when it's asked why aren't the "laws on the books" enforced when it comes to guns, I have to ask:  OK, which ones?  Washington D.C. and New York City's laws?  Or maybe Virginia itself, where it was that the shooter with a history of mental illness was able to walk out of a gun store with the two weapons he used at VT on the same day after just a 20 minute "background check" that failed to include that illness?  How about Hawaii's gun laws?  Montana's?  Utah's?  How about enforcing Concealed Carry laws, how would that have stopped what happened?  Then there's the law that says you go to jail after you use a gun in a crime - what did that one prevent?

There lies the problem.  Our gun laws are so varied, patchwork and contradictory that nationally they may just as well not exist.  They can vary and cancel out just by crossing another city limits, county or state line.  What good is a gun ban in the District of Columbia if a short drive to another state lets you buy as many guns as you want? 

What we need to do is this:  decide on gun policy then make it a national law.  If it's licensing gun owners, then license every single one in the United States.  If it's everybody should be packing, then make it everyone has to be armed to the teeth.  And yes, it is the guns.  Putting tighter controls on guns won't make the threat of violence go away completely, but it will make the death toll decrease.  The killer in Virginia would probably still have lost it and killed people, but it wouldn't have been so many in such a short period of time if he'd been the "knifeman" and not the "gunman".

In the interest of full disclosure, I do not hunt and have never owned any kind of gun so the allure of them escapes me.   Sure, I played "cowboy" and "war" as a little kid but as the old saying goes, when I stopped being a child I put away childish things.  I never fired a weapon when I was in the military and have never heard "a shot fired in anger" either.  So, guns just don't have the draw on me that they do on others and my opinions on the matter no doubt reflect that.

I do see that we have a choice here.  We can do something daring and make some people have to go through some admittedly inconvenient hoops to get a gun so that people who shouldn't have them don't.  Or we can do what we usually do:  grieve the dead, console the living and not much else.  Then we can do what we usually do as well:  pray that it never happens again while we wait for it and hope.

That's a sure way to clear the path for the next Columbine, Virginia Tech or something more local and personal.  It'll be along presently.

 

The Republicans still matter?

There's a meme going among the denizens of the conservative mainstream media (not unsurprisingly) and even among the genuine liberal media that's getting very annoying.  It goes something like this: 

See?  The Republicans want us out of Iraq too!http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/08/383/

See?  The Republicans want Gonzales out too!  http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/08/gingrich-gonzales-needs-to-go/#comments

And on and on and on.

We won the election last year and the argument well before that, but here we are, still acting like the opinions that matter are those of the right and the Republicans.  Hey, those guys are the minority!  Who cares that now, out of a desperate desire for self-preservation, the cons want to look like they've had their road to Damascus moment and are now on the side of good?  It's still a game of false fronts and misdirection.

Some Republican voters are against the war now and think we should get out?  Sure they are, as they decide which one of the "I'll keep the war going until we win!" candidates they'll support in '08.  Some Republican congresspeople now think Bush is doing a bad job and isn't a real conservative?  Gee, you sure weren't saying any of that when Bush's approval numbers were higher and you were all voting with him 90+% of the time. 

Here's the bottom line:  THEY LOST, WE WON.  We need to remind them of this hourly as they continue to be treated and act like they still control everything.  Don't tell me what Mitch McConnell thinks of the latest Democratic bill - he lost the Senate and only matters as to what he will do to stop it.  I don't care what the Republican House leaders think about Iraq - they lost the House by 30 seats and are irrelevant.  Let's see the Democratic leaders on TV - they WON and what they have to say does matter, even if Lame Duck Bush still gets to infest the White House for less than two years.

The majority of Americans agree with us on the war, on domestic issues, and for the first time sinceBush used the 9/11 attacks as political fodder they identify with the Democratic Party more than the Republican.  We don't need the Republicans' approval anymore, so enough with the "The Republicans are with us too!" nonsense.

WE ARE THE MAINSTREAM.  It's about time we started acting like it.

 

 

If we won, why am I still so pissed off?

Since this blog is just me and a few others (God Bless the 30 of you who've been here!), is it just me or are you feeling just as angry as you ever have?

I mean, we won! We won!  Things are supposed to get better now!  It's getting there, at least on the level of good things are getting passed even if they do end up dead in the Senate or vetoed.  I'm pretty much a half a loaf is better than none kind of guy but this is like putting a candle on a box of cake mix and saying 'Happy Birthday!'

I think what is getting my goat is twofold:  first, the Republicans are acting like they're still in charge and you'd be hardpressed to prove otherwise the way the Democrats are acting. C'mon, Dems - I know we're pretty nice people and want to treat others the way we want to be treated, but it's past time to understand that this is a one-way affair.  Mario Cuomo said the Republicans were nasty people doing nasty things a few years back and he's still right.  We need to stop laying down and writing welcome on our faces - the nasty right is still stepping on us and we need to start stomping back!  We are now LARGE AND IN CHARGE - start acting like it, damn it!

The second part of this is that, besides the GOPers trying to act like it's their ball, they still seem to be getting away with it.  Iraq, LawyerGate, WalterReedGate, on and on and on.  The 'news' tell us it's no big deal - this only deals with national security and little things like the rule of law.  It's not like it's sex or anything! Face it -  'the news' are still sucking up to the right.  Turn off your TV and turn on your computer - that's about the only place you can get informed nowadays.  I get more news about America from foreign newspapers than I get all day on CNN.

How about the 'getting away with it' bit?  How about starting some damn impeachments and taking these asses out of office?  To paraphrase Republican Spokeswoman Ann Coulter, it's time to warm up the courts and letting these wimpy, hire-someone-to-do-the-real-work rightwing "tough guys" know that they just can't do whatever they want without consequence.  They can be busted and jailed just like the corner meth addict.

TortureBoy Gonzalez would be a nice start, and then when the Democrats learn that the world didn't end when they got tough maybe we can go after the real crooks in this administration - all the way to the oil men emptying the Treasury from the White House.

 

Iraq and the Lawyers

It's amazing the lengths our "free press" will go to avoid talking about Iraq.

Anna Nicole did it for a while for the entertainment news TV set, but that's fading away as the cause of her death is revealed (overdose) and the court cases wind down.  Chipmunk-on-speed "singer" Britney MusicVideoBunny ("I'm really a good Christian girl - now watch me bump and grind") melting down was fun for a while, but she's now out of rehab and wig shopping.

What's a corporate media to do?

LAWYERS! THAT'S THE TICKET!!

The most partisan administration in memory (if not history) decides that some of it's Republican US Attorneys just aren't Republican enough and it's 24/7 on the newschannels.  What did they do to get fired?  They did their jobs and went after corruption, even if it meant going after more GOPers than D's.

Fire Attorney General Gonzalez! goes the cry as the Repugs try their damndest to do PR without a happily compliant Congress to watch their backs.  "Clinton did it too!!" has been about the best comeback from the Bushbots on TV, radio and the blogs and that isn't working for them. 

Let's get serious here for a sec - is it really such a shock and scandal that the Bushies would try and make the US Attorneys' offices into RNC HQs?  Outside of a "gotcha" benefit, calling for AG Gonzalez's head over shuffling one set of Bushbots for some even-more-loyal Bushbots is like the Academy Awards' habit of giving consolation Oscars the next year after they pass over a gangbuster performance or movie the year before.  This Texas Toady should never have been confirmed in the first place, and the bastard should have been flying out the door when he said it was OK for the chickenhawks to make us an international Torture Police State.

Back to the corporate media: if you depend on television exclusively for news (which places you as a part of the around-80% of Americans who do), you'd think the Democrats are buying into this too.  A tour around the newschannels and the evening news would have you believe that the lawyer flap is the only thing the Dem Congress is concerned with, which is only less than half true.

Which brings us back to Iraq.

After much prodding and spine-shoring-up, the Democrats are actually trying to do what most voters voted them in to do:  stop the Iraq war.  The House voted 218-212 to get our butts outta there.  Both houses of Congress are going to start putting people under oath and subpeona-ing them to get them to show up, and it's not all going to be about BushbotGate - the war and it's profiteers are about to get a good look-over too.

Try and find this on your TV though.  I'm sure the corporate CEOs of our main news sources are praying that Michael Jackson moves back to the USA before they have to start putting real news about the war and what most voters want to do about it on.

 

 

More encouraging signs from The Right

The Republicans are working overtime to help us out in '08.  I spent a bit of time looking at video and blogging from two recent "conservative" events today, the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in D.C. and the Oregon Republican get-together called the Dorchester Conference, and one thing struck me immediately.  Namely,

The cons have no idea why they really lost last year and are setting themselves up to do it again in 2008.

See what I mean - go watch the short but excellent video posted at http://www.thinkprogress.org from CPAC by The Nation's Max Blumenthal.  The wingnuttiness is breathtaking, but what stood out for me is watching the realization by a young college Republican that her party and comrades' stand on immigration shows that the con "movement" and the GOP are what they've always been:  The White Men's Party.  She doesn't look happy about it either.  Awww.  As the button I found online says, "Go home and obey your husband, you Republican bitch!"

The rest of the video pretty much speaks for itself, including the recent rantings of the Coultergeist - complete with chummy photo of the HateWitch with flip-flopping Repug presidential candidate Mitt Romney. 

The Oregon con con was more of the same (no video from that but some great blogging from it at http://loadedorygun.blogspot.com/ and http://blueoregon.com/).

The upshot of all of this?  The cons have convinced themselves that they didn't lose because the voters rejected the failure of conservatism and its programs - they lost because they weren't conservative enough! Bashing immigration cost the right votes?  Bash them harder!  The Iraq War is unpopular?  STAY THE COURSE!  And always, TAX CUTS, TAX CUTS, TAX CUTS!

It's not surprising that a "movement" based on self-delusion continues to delude itself, but you'd think there was a few cons who had a slight finger-grip on reality in there somewhere.  Oh well - we'll just have to settle for increasing our majorities in the House and the Senate next year.  And with the sitting-ducks the Republican presidential field is for '08, I'dsuggest everyone watch the 2008 Democratic National Convention very closely - you will be watching the nomination of our next President.

Thanks conservatives, we couldn't do it without you!

Post-election musings

Here we are - the Democrats control Congress and we're (we being liberals) still not happy.  Not that that's much of a surprise - too many people thought that winning would solve everything.  I guess they forgot who is still in the White House.

I have a few suggestions to relieve this:

First, remember that the Democrats have only been in control for under 3 months.  Give them some slack here - most of the members of the House and the Senate with a (D) behind their names are used to being a part of the minority party in Congress for as long as they've been in office. Then you have the newbies who've barely set up their staffs, let alone learned how to get around in their new positions.    Being the majority is new for them and us - let them settle in a bit.             

Second, keep in mind how our government is set up, and that is to slow things down.  As much as we'd like to breathe fire, expose all the misdeeds of the Bush administration and bring the neocon house down RIGHT NOW it simply isn't going to happen that fast.  It'll come, but again, give them some time to get it together and going.

Finally, Third, we're different than the Republicans.  The GOPers, once they got their real agenda of enriching the rich out of the way, spent most of their time trying to bust up the presidency of that guy named Bill who's main sin was not being one of them.  I'll happily admit that's part of the agenda now as well (and much more deserved now than it was back in the '90s), but we actually want to get things done.  Going after George is great, but there's people who need health insurance and the working poor who need a raise.  To do that, we can't go whole hog after Dubya - we will have to try and get some compromises going so he won't just veto everything the Democrats get passed.

I understand the frustration here, it's been a long slog for the 12 years we've been shut out and left to wander in the wilderness.  We want things going NOW. 

The best advice I can give is one word:  Patience.  Even with the missteps, the signs are good that the Democrats will get it together and do the things we elected them to do.

Now, if my nerves can just hold out until then, it'll be OK.