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Unemployed at last.

In the end the medium is the message, and the medium of Glen Beck was hate. Not to mention naked greed. The distribution channel was Fox. No surprise there.

One could have hoped that the half of America’s political system that lost the election would have accepted its loss, and worked on better policy. But with all the energy of the Glenn Becks of the world, why bother?  Absent choherent policy, incoherent hate keeps the Republican ball bouncing. Until as one Fox propagandist put it, something could ‘stick’ to the ‘teflon’ president that could bring him down.

Frustrating as it might be for the Hannity’s of the Fox ‘verse’, the timing is not with them. The timing works against them when the unemployed, the near homeless and the weight of what remains of America’s middle class is being crushed by the consequences of Republican policy.  And in plain terms, a person has to be just plain stupid to cut themselves off from their revenue while increasing their expenditures. Which is exactly what the Bush tax cuts did.

Stupid is as stupid does, to paraphrase the movie.

Mad as Beck

Bill Buckley was a lion of the right unlike few the world has seen.  His  intellect was a force of nature and relentless in pointing out weakness in liberal thinking. So confident was Buckley he would on a weekly basis both in print and on television engage with the strongest minds of the right for a political skirmish that could only be described as must see political theater. Always polite, always respectful but devastating non the less to those arguments raised against his conservative principals . Respected and admired by friend and foe for those principled arguments, Buckley elevated the public discourse not to mention the conservative brand.

And so when Bill Buckley saw the usurpation of the conservative  brand by the craziest in society he spoke out decisively.  Buckley’s action in part prepared the way for the right to take the presidency under Regan.

Today the right faces an even great threat from the likes of Glenn Beck.  Becks access to mass media allows his voice to be injected into society in ways the Birchers of Buckley’s day could never have hoped for. Described variously as ‘crazy’, ‘delusional’, ‘dangerous’ and worse, Beck has successfully reanimated that long dead corpse of the John Birch movement. A movement that Buckley so long ago exposed and put to rest. And in the process is redefining the conservative brand.

Buckley is now sadly gone. Who now will stand up for conservative values?  Who now will protect the intellectual and principled conservative values from the mad who usurp the brand for their own profit?  And make no mistake, Beck is making a fine living reanimating the fringe right with his ‘communists everywhere’  tactic’s and his pseudo intellectual shows. Becks brand of ‘say anything do anything’ to make a buck  hate speech will continue as long as he perceives a buck to be made.  If the conservative party loses every seat Beck will be richer than ever.

Republicans seem unable to find their modern Buckley. The lack of a powerful intellectual voice on the right brings into question if the party even has an intellectual foundation any more.. Or perhaps the absence of a reaction is a case of short term tactics, an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ approach. If the later it is a dangerous approach. With Beck attempting to redefine conservatism, remaining silent will only alienate the majority of Americans, both left and right.

Beckola…

Oh come on Glenn…really…giving a little kid health care is not the end of yours or anyone’s liberty. I mean seriously. The only ‘turning point’ is the end of political fraud by your clients, the end of the medical insurance fraud by your clients, a whole lot less suffering and reduction of the national deficit.

You’ve managed to find a demographic that prefers an uneducated ignoramus rather than facts.  Your money train will go on Glenn.  You will never be discovered for your own lies. And the poor, and the sick will stop suffering. It’s a win win situation.

Save the party, save the country? Yep.

Too dramatic I think I can hear you say. Too partisan. Too ‘Repbulican’ like. No party is the country. In a more normal time, I would have to agree. But we are not in normal. We are so far from normal, we can’t even see normal. The Republican party is stealing not just an election, but a democracy. Our democracy. And its time for Democrats to adopt a Win America attitude.

Lets be clear about what the political dynamic is in Washington. Lets be clear about who is doing what, in Washington. One one side we have the Democrats who persist in ‘bringing textbooks to a knife fight’ as a former congressman said, and on the other we have the specter of a Republican party wanting to sink the ship rather than let good policy do good things for America. Not to mention, the world.

As important as the Democratic agenda is, more important is the integrity of our system of representation. When a party that lost an election can prevent the will of the people from taking form, the system itself is in trouble. How much trouble?  How about the failure of the electoral system of government for starters. The underlying fact is this…a losing party refused to allow the winning party to implement the platform the people demanded. It is as if the election hadn’t happened. The Republican party has executed a a ‘putsch’ . Worse they are being rewarded for their efforts.

It is time the President and the Democratic party to a person start thinking of the future of the country they love, and less about their sensibility’s. It is time the winning party’s agenda advanced and the rebellion be quashed in the most ruthless of ways.

Nothing less will save our land.

No Country for failed Hope and Change.

When the Republicans started saying that the President played politics in the Chicago way Americans knew oppostion tactics had changed. No more policy differences. No more compromise on how best to achieve a policy end. It was all, every bit, now hard scrabble’.  There is no country for failed hope and change.

It didn’t help that his own party was spineless, and possibly leaderless. Shall we add ‘clueless’?  All the Republicans and the Tea Party had to do, was keep their own base angry, and disenchant the President’s. Policy frustration has multiple benifits. After ‘hope and change’ fails, who will care who runs things if they all lie?  Paraphrasing a famous author about a different kind of politics, ’the thing about supporting a failed hope and change campaign, is that it takes to0 many weekend evenings for not enough result’  More or less.

And now Obama is on the brink of a presidential failure perhaps unparalleled in modern presidential history. The greatest unaddressed equality issue remaining in the modern industrialized world, equal access to quality health care is in danger of being rolled back. Imagine if you will if the result of the civil war were rolled back.

Its just that significant.

How Weak can one President be?

How weak can one president be? The answer is, ‘very’. When Obama took office he thought to do politics differently. Less acerbic, more cooperative. Good idea I say. So too, did the people who elected him.

The problem with the strategy is one needs a willing partner on the other side of the table who will equally embrace the value. What the president got was ‘team rope a dope’. Frustrating as that can be, more frustrating is the absolute lack of spine on the part of the majority in both houses. With far smaller numbers Republicans would ran their opposition over with out a second thought. Note to self, Republicans do not play nice, and have no intention of doing so.

And now, having slow walked the Democrats to the brink of elections, the end game is here.

Is anything salvageable? The answer depends on how much spine the Democrats can muster, and how quickly.  No plan will succeed without unity. And with out a ruthless single vision of success. Next, Democrats starting with the president and down to the most junior member must have a sense of their own political peril. One might btw, add the peril of the country. Next the entire party needs a whiff of reality. Labels mean nothing at this moment. Calling oneself a Democrat, enjoying the benifits of the majority but voting against the party platform is traitorous.  Pure and simple.

Game Plan

Not that everyone else hasn’t said, I just have a need to say it too. The game plan for Republicans is to win back power. How that is done, who or what gets sacrificed is besides the point. And while the party in power has been trying to do politics in a new way, the party out of power has been playing rope a dope. Successfully.

What will happen next is this; the administration will be slow walked to the brink of the next election. Soon Republicans will begin a new line of attack-’to let the people vote’. The argument will proceed along these lines…’we are so close to the election, why not let the people be heard?’. Any votes during that period will be labeled as ‘rushing to deny Americans a vote’.

So, let me be the first to declare Obama’s presidency a failure and predict his a one term presidency. It gives me no comfort to say that. But unless the president and his party get serious about what they are doing, they will loose about 8 seats in the Senate and about 36 in Congress come November.  At that point, Republicans will no longer need the stupidity and timidity of the democrats to assure  failure.

Democrats will cry foul over the dishonesty and ‘dirty tricks’  of their opponents, and rightly so, but in the end,  Obama will be labeled a “Jimmy Carter”.  As someone once said, ‘you can’t score points if you don’t know the game’.

Meet the New Boss

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how ‘Chuck’, has managed to derail the democratic agenda? Almost single handedly?  Give this man credit. He knows what he is doing. And considering the trashing his party took in the last election, it is no small feat to topple the agenda of the winner soon soon after an election.

‘Chuck’ never got that memo. He acts, and thinks and gets results as if his party still controlled the agenda. Down home farm boy charm, has charmed the big city rubes right out of power. His job is almost done. Another few months of lies, slow walking legislation, and insulting the intelligence of the nation,  and he will be back in the high life.

What the dem’s wouldn’t do to have their own Chuck?

Break bread with this guy at your own risk.

Meet the big problem for Democrats not to mention,  public policy. Max Baucus is Democrat in the same way Benedict Arnold was American, which is to say, in

name only and for one purpose only. While enjoying the title his membership in a majority party has given him, Max has been an integral part of the Republican game plan. I’m betting a big Mac that next election if Max runs, he will run as either independent or Republican.

Let’s not blame Max. He got his seat and held it because a timid party allowed it. At any time he could have been gone had anyone in leadership had the spine to take him one. But like the failed courtship of a handful of Republicans, Max was a date that was never going to happen. And now that he has so damaged the Obama agenda, Max will continue to enjoy the benifits of his chairmanship.

Say what you will about the Westminster system, but in that system Max would have been sitting in a dark corner somewhere the first time he tried to thwart the governments agenda. And that is where he should be, outside the party. He was not then, nor will he ever be a Democrat.