Murphy's Law

First, a confession.

I have to admit, when I took the clownish charlatan Glenn Beck in my sights more than a year ago, I frankly underestimated his influence and staying power (or, to put a finer point on it, the unfathomable gullibility of the many million who follow him).

I couldn’t put it any better than the good doctor (MLK, that is) did: Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

So if I am a bit surprised to see Beck’s cult of personality disorder grow, it remains entirely too simple to trace his dubious lineage:

Think of phony purveyors of moral outrage ranging from Morton Downey Jr. to Jerry Springer, and the whole concept of infotainment to the hastening-of-the-apocalypse proliferation of Reality TV. Stage it and they will come is now the (un)official mantra of media’s M.O. And, in the end, it’s all pretty much a tempest in a teapot. Or, a tempest in a tea party. Which brings us to the unbelievable Glenn Beck. Of course, fabricated indignation has been good business in America since Jonathan Edwards first perfected the formula with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God back in 1741, shortly before the advent of cable television.

Capitalizing on the nervous consciences of the faithful created steady work well into the 20th Century, and Sinclair Lewis codified the archetypal character in Elmer Gantry (1926). That pernicious tradition was carried on faithfully by Confidence Men like Pat Roberston, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn and Rick Warren. But of course this act has always been too tempting for politicians not to embrace with every inauthentic bone in their bodies. The only hucksters that can outhustle the pols are the preening simpletons who rile up the credulous citizens who dial in each day for another dose of bad medicine. At the appointed hour, the idiot box transfigures into a burning bush and these rapt minions who otherwise behold Christ in their breakfast food (or, proving how crafy and omnipotent the Lord can be, at  lunchtime too), get their Godhead on in the form of a third-rate carnival barker.

As incendiary, and insufferable, as Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly are, you tend to appreciate how they sometimes can’t keep a straight face as they shovel the horseshit, whipping simpletons into a righteous lather for a steady paycheck. Yes, they are contemptible and yes, they wield their petty power over the powerless in incredibly irresponsible fashion. But with them you know to expect less than little in terms of originality, integrity or intellectual rigor. Thus, you have to remain content, in a free country, to let them hold sway over a semi-retarded audience who would crawl over molten coals for them. And to be certain, Glenn Beck’s senseless sensibility makes those two blowhards look like oracular paragons. He is an empty suit with an empty mind, offering regurgitated jeremiads and faux populism to a genuinely distressed viewership looking for answers but disinclined to trust the dirty Socialists currently in power. His histrionics are comprised of two primary objectives: to position himself as a voice of reason in these troubling times, and to use a time of crisis as the impetus for his own existence. If Beck was capable of experiencing even an infinitesimal measure of shame, he would combust quicker than a drummer from Spinal Tap.

More from that piece, here.

I’ve spent more time than might seem sensible trying to understand or explain (or, more often, excoriate) the prevailing sentiment from the types of people who would actually drive great distances to attend this past weekend’s “rally” here, here, here and here.

Having followed this phenomenon since Obama took office, I’m distressed to conclude that it’s going to get worse before it gets better (and even more depressing: it’s likely to never get better again; we are in a unique –and uniquely awful– place in many ways as a country right now, and while we remain at a crossroads of sorts, economically speaking, it is appalling to conclude that an entire political party is unwavering in its dedication to do everything possible to stymie growth and awareness, and stoke the flames of resentment and ignorance amongst its base).

But I’m more certain than ever that while the G.O.P. eagerly eyes up the cynically won votes it is certain to garner in November, beyond power and money, the primary motivation behind this carefully orchestrated (and generously bankrolled) “movement” is to render more and more people frustrated and indifferent.

Not sure I have any updates on a few of these observations I’ve made during the past year or so:

An ostensibly rhetorical question I read (and get asked) quite often these days is “Why bother?”

Why bother getting invested in politics?

Why bother reading all those papers and blogs and magazines?

Why bother wasting time since they are all the same?

Why bother voting?

Well, there are lots of good reasons, some of which are immediately evident to anyone who takes the time to be moderately informed and is aware of not-so-complicated concepts like cause and effect. That the policies of our former administration (and, more importantly, the power-to-the-powerful ideology that informs those policies) bankrupted our nation and –this is the toughest one to grasp– made us less safe is not a matter of opinion; it’s not debatable and there is no room for any possible nuance.

Also, there is only one type of Socialism being practiced in America today and it has been in effect for longer than one year. It’s Corporate Socialism. For evidence to support this claim, I submit every action taken by every Republican politician since 1980. Case closed, your honor.

To the haters, I certainly feel your pain, to a point. Yes, watching the Democrats try to govern is an often painful and occasionally pitiful spectacle (it’s amusing: Harry Reid is at once a man who should never, under any circumstances, have gotten involved in politics, yet he is, in the final analysis, the prototypical politician). Of course, in their defense, a reasonable person understands that actually attempting to govern is messy, difficult and frustrating. Particularly, as people like Andrew Sullivan regularly point out, our nation has become increasingly ignorant, self-absorbed and childish: we don’t want any government interference, we don’t want to pay taxes and we demand to see all of these pesky problems go away and take care of themselves. (Or even better, the stance of the Ayn Rand worshipping Libertarian-leaning bozos: just leave us alone and the world will govern itself, but if my house catches fire or a burglar breaks in or the roads need to be plowed or the country is attacked some non-tax funded enterprise better be at the ready to protect me!)

We have become a country of children who want to skip the main course and go directly to dessert, every meal, and then complain that we’ve gotten fat. And that in itself is a problem: that allows the Republicans to continue to frame the idea of shared accountability and responsibility as an inherently negative or intrusive notion. Let me be clear: that is, upon cursory inspection, a decidedly anti-American sentiment. The idea that paying taxes and supporting regulation of the food we eat and air we breathe is some type of burden implemented by a leering Big Brother is beyond moronic and borders on offensive. The idea that we can have no taxes, no regulation, no government involvement, unfunded wars and private interests in charge of everything  is exactly the intelligence-insulting ideology that landed us where we are now. And, for the last time, and as Thomas “What’s The Matter With Kansas” Frank elucidated, vigorously endorsing the notion that the wealthiest .01% of the population should not pay any taxes is going to put exactly zero cents in your pocket and create precisely zero jobs.

As anyone with a sliver of sociopolitical awarness can attest, many of these Tea Party puppets have genuine and understandable gripes. The dilemma, as anyone with a modicum of historical awareness (and proximity to reality) understands, it’s precisely the policies and obsessions of the GOP that took us from boom to bust in unprecedented and appalling haste. Less than a year ago, one of the only redeeming aftershocks of the Great Collapse was that, at long last, the “free market” farce of voodoo economics, which had reached its unfettered and full flowering during the Bush years had crashed and burned so spectacularly and unmistakably, at least, finally, we had black and white cause and effect for those misguided, irresponsible and demonstrably immoral policies. Ah, but how quickly those least-served by these policies forget! As usual, as ever, it was the taxpayers (!!) who got stuck with the tab, and now we are waist-deep in a massive recession and jobs crisis.

Suddenly, fiscal restraint is the operative priority, and these same charlatans who borrowed and spent like there was no tomorrow are decrying the same stimulus they initially supported (that same stimulus that may have kept unemployment from growing to 25% and causing a genuine Depression with a capital D). Rome is burning and the right-wing spin-pigs are not just fiddling, they are actively promoting disinformation and stoking the aforementioned fear and loathing. Not that the idiots foaming at the mouth at these tea parties understand the ways 2+2 =4, in part because they can’t count to four.

The GOP, led by the Tea Party Queen who, displaying her ceaseless loyalty to the “real” Americans whose pain she is profiting from, continues to enjoy those hefty speaking fees, presumably just to keep it real. And if she’s not whipping up the lunatic fringe into a lather over the manufactured controversy at Ground Zero, she is articulating the ways policies extending  unemployment benefits are part of a big government takeover by the Socialist president. And it works. Put us in charge again so we can kill some more jobs and bankrupt the rest of your 401-k and after that, get busy privatizing social security. It’s real America, all right. Real dumb America.

(If you find yourself discussing these matters with a Republican friend who claims to be appalled with the way Obama the Socialist is saddling future generations with mountains of debt, feel free to refer to this (taken from a must-read article by David Leonhardt article):

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.)

So, in sum, yes it is discomfiting to watch the Dems go about their business. But then you look across the aisle and see the obstreperous opposition digging in with monomaniacal zeal to do nothing. (You have to hand it to them, though, stoking the “Tea Party” frustration, which is largely a result of the situation their actions put this country in. It is imperative to recognize, and point out as often as necessary, that the same sadists pulling the strings in the not-so-big GOP tent are mostly angry and embarrassed because they got beaten, that’s all. There has been nothing approximating a concerned or sober investigation of what went so dreadfully wrong as a result of bellicose foreign policy, the reckless (and expensive) launch of an unnecessary war, or the thoroughly debunked and shameful worship of free-market, voodoo economics.

Nonetheless, if Obama is half the man History is setting him up to be, he would do well to dedicate all of his energy and eloquence toward making good on the promises he already made. We can hope for more, but we should expect no less.

This is why you have to choose sides. This is why you can ill afford (literally and figuratively) to let these cackling, wealthy and well-insured weasels lull you into a state of impotent rage or, worse, apathy. Because aside from the ceaseless corporate welfare they will fight for, their ultimate ambition is to render the actually literate and sentient amongst us fed up and indifferent. Without awareness, and with no resistance, they can more easily continue their unchecked assault on our collective well-being.

Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.

So saith the cretinous Charles Krauthammer in a piece that, unfortunately, makes many valid points about Obama, oil and the state of America these days –at least in terms of culpability, and what he (correctly) calls the cult of personality that Obama has mostly benefited from.

Here’s how bad it’s gotten: David Frum, the dude who used to write speeches for the worst president we’ve ever endured, has written the most lacerating epitaph for The (Tea) Party of No, here. The entire thing is a must-read, and the closing paragraph demands to be quoted in full:

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

Here is the really ugly part: Frum is not Monday morning quarterbacking. He was practically pleading with anyone who would listen how (self) destructive this unified and unyielding obstruction would be in both the short and long term. In fairness, the G.O.P. had deluded itself into thinking that the fantasy they were spinning was gold, not shit. And there were plenty of cowards and co-opted folks in the media and inside the Democratic party who still hadn’t figured out how to stand up to bullies. (Instant update and mid-post edit: holy shit, look who just got “terminated” by AEI. You really can’t script this stuff better, and how made-to-order this full-scale Republican implosion is unfolding. Can you say MISSION ACCOMPLISHED? Holy shit.)

Of course this problem was exacerbated in no small measure by Obama himself being way too cool and detached on the sidelines as the Fox News and RNC fear factories spewed out their garbage and took control of the narrative (and I’ll never forget, or forgive the cynical and craven Rahm Emanuel for folding like a shanty house in a hurricane the second Scott Brown pulled off his big upset in Massachussetts). Finally, at almost the last possible second, Obama joined the fray, inspired more by the need for survival than anything else. But to his eternal credit, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work. As we saw, the results were immediately apparent and quite positive.

Can we now, at long last, acknowledge what many of us suspected all along: the bill was never “wildly unpopular” with the general public. Or, to put a finer point on it, more than a little of that disenchantment was actually coming from Democrats who (correctly) felt the bill was not strong enough. But, as many of us suspected all along, when push came to shove of course they would endorse even a rather weak and watered down bill for two primary reasons. One, virtually any bill was better than the alternative the G.O.P. was offering, which was nothing (well, more tax cuts). And two, the Republicans absolutely meant it when they bragged that killing health reform would kill Obama’s presidency. In hindsight, if only a handful of Republicans had crossed the aisle, it’s likely the bill would have failed. By doubling down on the obstinance they have practically patented at this point the Republicans essentially dared the Democrats to pull together and see this through. Without that total, and arrogant, defiance, I’m not at all certain the Dems, famous for their inability to do anything, would have gotten the ball across the goal line.

As always, the so-called Liberal Media was about as useless as usual (and their general incompetence increases in direct proportion to the overall degeneracy of our political discourse). Obsessed with the trivial horse-race aspects of who won the most recent news cycle, and handicapping the odds and chances of whether some bill (any bill) might pass, they did less than a little to help dispel the truly hysterical talking points and outright falsehoods the right wing noise machine was expelling into the air.

And here is what I said to a friend last week: “If/when this bill actually passes you are going to quickly see the shameless media transition from the Obama’s presidency is doomed! meme to the Obama back on track! and all of a sudden we would begin to once again hear the t-word (transformative) associated with his presidency. In fairness, both of those assumptions are more or less accurate: if the bill had failed, it would have emboldened the Republicans and further intimidated the feckless Democrats (and we likely would have seen increased –and detrimental– influence from that paper tiger Rahm Emanuel); on the other hand, with the bill passing, it allows Obama and his party to regain (and more importantly, articulate) the narrative. Both parties knew what was at stake, although it (typically) took the Dems about eight months too long to feel the necessary urgency. For this alone, the oft-ridiculed Harry Reid should get his moment in the sun and be properly lauded for hanging in there and doing a ton of heavy, often thankless lifting. Likewise, Nancy Pelosi has gone from being a controversial figure to an instant legend: she, like Obama, was overlooked and underestimated, and it came back to bite her opponents in a big way. And man must that bite sting.

Lo and behold, look what happened to those opinion polls, literally overnight. Kind of hard to say the “majority” of Americans hated this bill, huh? And more importantly, that was always a bogus formulation. It was pretty obvious to anyone not at a tea party or on the NRCC payroll that more than a little of that antipathy was coming from the left. These folks (quite understandably) believed the bill was not strong enough: they (we) knew that this same bill was arguably to the right of what Nixon advocated in the early ’70s (!) and it was certainly close, if not a tad milder than what Bob Dole endorsed less than two decades ago (!!). Regardless, we understood that when putsch came to shove, (something made infinitely easier courtesy of the Republicans’ very vocal and uninhibited declaration that their sole intention was to stand as one in obstruction to the bill, and Obama) many of them would unite in support of this initiative. And that’s pretty much what happened.

So what about the independent voters?

Well, this coveted and often capricious demographic generally makes or breaks a sitting president and his legislation. How bad will the mid-terms be for the Dems? I felt they never would have been nearly as bad as many were predicting last month (or last week for that matter); I feel the prospects are much better now. In part because today, as much as ever, perception is reality: Obama (and this bill) is a winner. Equally important, people do tend to appreciate a leader who can get things accomplished. That he hung in there and did something presidents have been attempting to achieve for almost a century is also a self-fulfilling historical narrative. Obama has injected life, meaning and import into his first term.

To the victor go the spoils, history is written by the winners, etc. But it’s more (and less) than that: just as the fairly hysterical media coverage post-Brown did not paint an accurate portrayal of what was really going on, or what was likely to happen, the surprise passage of HCR is not going to transform moderates into liberals. It doesn’t need to. Unless the bill begins rescinding peoples’ coverage because of pre-existing conditions or bankrupting families who can’t pay their bills (oh wait, that’s what is already happening), it stands to reason that HCR will never be more unpopular than it was last Saturday. After Sunday, the bill can only get more popular in direct proportion to the number of people who realize it’s not only not the end of the world, but actually a pretty swell thing. This transformation is already underway(not just the big shift in public opinion in recent polls); each day that goes by without any of the more outrageous Republican predictions coming true is another opportunity for T&R (Truth and Reality) to vanquish the hysteria.

There was a good reason Karl Rove lost his shit on Sunday while David Plouffe toyed with him (and showed, about ten years too late, the most effective way to defuse this braying rodeo clown). Rove knew what everyone else on his team was figuring out: they threw everything they had, and everything they could possibly fabricate, in the monomaniacal pursuit of defeating HCR. And they still lost. The reason they wanted to beat it so badly was not because The Party Of No has the best interests of anyone at heart; it’s because they knew this would be political gold for Obama, and Dems for decades. Think about it for a second: if they even half-believed a fraction of the dire repercussions they were robotically shrieking about, they would have happily gotten out of the way and let Obama have his way. Because, if it was going to be so awful, and it was so clearly against the will of most Americans, the Dems would pay a very dear price for their assumptions. Of course, what is becoming increasingly clear, from the stimulus to HCR, is that during one of the worst years Americans have endured since The Big D, Democrats have scrambled and strategized to make things better while The Party Of No has held their breath, sucked their thumbs and egged on the worst elements of the lunatic fringe that now bolsters their base.

It’s a loaded term, particularly in light of the very recent outbreaks of violence, threats and manufactured outrage, but a day of reckoning is imminent. And it’s not for the party being targeted by this illiterate mob of mouth-breathing imbeciles; it will be for the party that has cynically, and eagerly, stoked the flames of this tea party silliness. These idiots were useful for the farcical “town hall meetings” (speaking of manufactured outrage, and an unhealthy dose of straight-up racism), and to provide flesh to bolster the dubious proclamations about how unpopular health care reform was/is. Now that the battle is over, and now that so many of these “real Americans” have exposed themselves for who they really are, it’s going to be difficult for the G.O.P. to disown them at the very moment that their association may finally be unwelcome.

But, as the song goes, breaking up is hard to do. It was truly disgusting to see the contemptible Eric Cantor go from expressing tepid disapproval at reports of violence and paranoid hostility to shifting the blame to Democrats. Look, one need only read this blog (filed under “Politics”) to see that I have few qualms calling out my own side for its inanity, incompetence and self-absorption whenever it’s warranted. But at this particular moment in time, there is no getting around the fact that one party alone is associated with this ugliness. That violence is being encouraged is a repugnant enough thing; that it’s underscored by explicit racist, homophobic, nationalistic rhetoric is another. That this racist, homophobic, nationalistic rhetoric is funneled out ’round the clock by a major propaganda machine disguised as a “news” network is yet another. That a major political party is applauding and abetting this sewage is still another. That it has been kicked up a notch by that party’s recent VP candidate finally begs the question: is there a bottom here? At what point does a semblance of shame or propriety or, when all else fails, the impetus for political survival override this insanity?

As always, only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s equal parts encouraging and appalling to see what’s left of the Republican Party doubling down on denial and the fake fury that is born out of fear. For the sake of all our moral and responsible citizens, let’s hope they continue racing furiously in the other direction while Democrats –and the future of progress they represent –leave them in this moribund fantasy land of their own making.

I love the smell of health care reform in the morning. Smells like victory.

Question: How many GOP staffers are looking for new jobs after agreeing to let the cameras roll during Obama’s smackdown at the Republican Retreat Q&A today?

(Answer: hopefully, none; if by some miracle that embarrassment was deemed in any way a success by the simpletons running the show in the not-so-big GOP tent, we should look forward to many more of these, like twice a day if possible.)

First off, let’s pause and consider something: can you imagine, under any circumstances, not only Bush alone (ha) but even if he had, say, Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove with him, ever appearing before cameras to answer direct questions in an unequivocally partisan environment? Please. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not wishing he had; dude humiliated himself just reading off of cue cards (or having answers directly piped to him during debates). Can you fathom the further levels of disgrace he would have brought upon the nation while endeavoring, under the hot lights and flashing digi-cams, to address unscreened queries from a hostile crowd? Of course I kid myself: he probably would have repelled into the auditorium sporting a flight suit and right-wing radio/Fox News masters of unreality would have declared it a TKO.

The fact that Obama would do it is beyond impressive; the fact that he can do it (and win, convincingly) is remarkable, illustrative and should give Democrats hope. We did not elect an idiot; we did not elect an empty suit. To watch him, in real time, wrangling with them, and (a la the undramatic eviscerations of McCain in the debates) calmly, methodically defusing them, without raising his voice, breaking a sweat or personally attacking, is to remember why people were overcome with the H-word (Hope) a year or so ago. It is like Reagan with Carter’s intelligence. Or Clinton without the smarm. Only more so.

This addresses the one tactical error I’ve complained about since last spring (!): Obama needed to be doing exactly this, then. About health care, about jobs, about any and everything, since at least early summer. That he’s only doing it now, after extreme circumstances, is unfortunate –and he and the party have paid a considerable price for it. But better late than never. Literally. And hopefully the feckless, spineless and mostly useless Democratic senate can take notes and learn a lesson or two. Their inertia has been worse than unacceptable (it has not done nothing; it has enervated and resucitated the braindead and tone-deaf Republican party), but to be fair, Obama’s virtual disappearing act from the public stage has not helped matters. Obama’s performance today is hopefully the salt spray required to move those slugs out from under their stones. Speaking of stones, maybe more than a few of them can grow some.

More of this, much more of this needs to occur as often and visibly as possible, effective immediately. Unfortunately, I don’t suspect the Republicans will make the same mistake a second time. That is, being seen in real time on camera trying to engage with Obama, and being shown –in color and without spin– having their collective asses handed to them on intellectual, moral and factual grounds. It is exhilarating, if lamentably overdue. And it’s up to the people with the majority (the majority of votes, the majority of ideas, and the majority of consent) to at long last begin bringing the fight to the party whose only goal is to accomplish nothing.

Don’t you dare say that Obama has not accomplished anything.

He has done something no president in recent times (if ever) has come close to achieving: namely, alienating and disillusioning a huge percentage of the people who put him in office. And it took him less than a year to do it. Is this guy incredible or what?

This health care debacle is obviously the last straw.  And blaming Joe Lieberman will not suffice (more on the despicable one here). Did anyone expect anything different from this self-absorbed, petty, childish, greedy, shameless clown?

I’m not proposing that we fail to hold this asshole accountable. Certainly we should. But I’m perplexed by my brethren who are unable to see exactly what’s going on here. Lieberman has been on borrowed time; he knows it, and he knows he has no chance to win re-election (if he is as insane as I’m beginning to suspect, he may have deluded himself that he has a better chance if/when he actually runs as a Republian: if so he is setting himself up quite nicely. Think I’m being facetious? I’m not. If/when he gets his old, wrinkled, money-grubbing, insurance-industry-owned ass called to the carpet, he can/will go into full martyr mode, then try to reposition himself as the sane man who stood up to the loony liberals. More on this another time, maybe, but spending any time thinking about Lieberman is actually making me sick.)

But as I said, don’t blame him. Hold him accountable, sure, but remember that these histrionics were entirely predictable.

If you’re looking for someone to blame, how about the person who is supposed to be running our country. That guy who, as soon as Shameless Joe went public with his transparently fabricated sanctimony (has there ever been a more insufferably sanctimonious hypocrite in politics than Lieberman?) Obama quickly dispatched the toothless bulldog Rahm Emanuel to get Reid in line (I actually feel pity for old Harry at this point: yes, he’s a putz and a mostly ineffective empty suit, but he has seemingly tried his best on this health care clusterfuck, and it certainly appears that all he has gotten from Obama is a big bowl of nothing. Obama long ago cut him loose and laid him out to dry, slowly and painfully. Translation “Hey Harry, do my dirty work and I’ll sit on the sidelines, carefully waiting to see how this plays out; if it works, I’ll happily bask in the glory, if not, I’ll distance myself”. It’s time to stop calling this pragmatism and call it what it is: opportunistic cowardice. Obama, whatever you do, don’t even entertain the idea of channeling some very righteous indignation, and possibly breaking a sweat or getting some proverbial dirt under those fingernails).

Prediction: As has been projected (by myself and many others), whatever this bill ends up as –once it’s been whittled down beyond all recognition– Obama will suavely declare it a “major victory” and trumpet it as the centerpiece of his State of the Union Address. Hence, the hurry to get something (anything!) signed by Christmas. (Well, that and the fact that we couldn’t ever expect these well-paid, well-insured sloths in the Senate to ruin their holiday having to pass meaningful legislation!)

Obama’s arrogance, combined with this disgracefully unprincipled cowardice, has become intolerable.

He wanted to be above it all last year and not alienate the man who actively campaigned against him (Joe L.), and has bent over backwards to not speak ill of any Republicans at any time under any circumstances. If this was shrewd politics, or if this could be illustrated as a sly way of enacting his agenda by cleverly keeping his powder dry and temper cool, I would stand back in awe of his discipline. As it stands, his stance has hurt him, repeatedly, and this recent Lieberman debacle is the King Chicken coming home to roost (crapping and pissing all over the floor as he does so). The President has not invested an ounce of political capital trying to do the right thing. The only move he has made with a ruthless disregard for the fall-out is …..bailing out Wall Street! That sweetheart of a deal, without any concessions whatsoever, entirely financed by the same taxpayers who got fucked over by these swine, made it clear that Obama owes allegiance to the special interests who own him. Therefore, it’s anything but surprising that just the other day some of these so-called “fat cats” were snickering that Obama’s alleged smackdown was “just a PR stunt”. It was. Let’s call it MISSION UNACCOMPLISHED.

If someone cares to explain to me any other rationale prompting this slapshod negotiating, and quick (spineless) capitulation other than political expediency, I’m all ears. What is most upsetting is that one can see through this like a watery turd: led by the increasingly clueless Rahm Emanuel, it’s all about the next election cycle. That, in and of itself, would be unconscionable on the human level. The kicker is, it is a non-starter on the political level as well. These guys actually seem to believe that it’s all about getting something, anything passed, then holding a press conference declaring it a huge victory with the word “reform” stamped all over it like a well-travelled guitar case, and that will be that. Of course, that is how the game is played; that is how it works. But at what cost? Sure, there will be folks who don’t follow the news that will buy the boilerplate. But at this point, even casually interested Democrats have to be scratching their heads: Gee, it smells like piss and feels warm and is kind of yellow…but they are telling me it’s Dom Perignon, so I guess I should open wide; wait, that tastes like…piss!

Put slightly less grotesquely (although that metaphor, unfortunately, is pretty accurate), if Democrats (not to mention the more ardent portion of “the base”) were understandably disillusioned by –but willing to grant benefit of the doubt on– the recent Afghanistan “surge”, this may be the proverbial bridge too far. Count me amongst that group.

Look, we all know the bottom line: this bill, no matter how shredded and soft, is still miles ahead of what any Republican could do (nothing) and, in the final analysis, will constitute progress. But good god, what a hollow victory. That’s like losing five hundred bucks at the craps table and then finding an unexpected $20 in your front pocket and declaring that it’s a net gain. Sure, that $20 is better than being broke, but it would be nice to have held on to that $500 (or even $250): the simile is strained, so insert one more suitable if you please. You get the picture. The key takeaway here is that the evolution (or devolution) of this process epitomizes the two worst characteristics any politician can encompass: cowardice and cynicism. That is a devastating combination. To his credit, as much of a craven buffoon George W. Bush has always been in his personal affairs (Daddy, bail me out again; Rove, don’t have me confront a single coffin returning from overseas; let’s do a fly-by of Katrina, etc.), he had the courage of his (admittedly idiotic and mostly backwards) convictions. Can you imagine Bush tolerating the brazen mechinations of Lieberman? At the very least, the threats and promises being made behind closed doors would be frequent and unambiguous. Could you imagine Slick Willy (the King of Triangulation himself) enduring this charade? Or Hillary? Sigh.

It would be depressing enough if you could chalk this up to arrogance or even naivetee on the part of the Obama camp (traits that have been demonstrated repeatedly, starting –and ending– with Lieberman, but also repeatedly throughout the health care “debate”): you can imagine them thinking “it’s really different now, we can rise above the muck and emerge unscathed; we’ll get them to see the light”. But I don’t think, at this point, that is feasible; nobody could possibly be that delusional (well, except Sarah Palin). What’s much, much worse, is the ugly reality that Obama (as a politician, as a person) is not terribly invested in any of this on a personal level. One has never gotten the sense, through any of this, that Obama is tossing and turning at night, or that he wants to sacrifice any of that (rapidly diminishing) political capital on doing this thing properly. (And any dupe who still furrows their brow and declares that Obama is only eating the shit sandwich served to him by the simpletons in the Senate needs to revist the always-astute Glen Greenwald today.)

Never fear, there is plenty of blame to go around:  these “moderate” Democrats are all going to lose their seats in 2010. Good riddance, obviously. Yet, it’s amazing that in the by-now cliched fear (did we not learn anything in the 2006 mid-terms) that catering to the center-right orthodoxy, otherwise known as not taking a stance on anything except status quo –a status quo that any middle class American would agree is FUBAR– is a recipe for ruin? In that regard, their collective comeuppance will be deeply satisfying. Except for the fact that all of them will be replaced by actual Republicans. Can you say lose/lose? Or just: loser.

Lastly, it was entirely predictable (and equal parts distressing and infuriating) that as soon as Howard Dean (the man who should be enjoying his second term right now…) spoke truth to corruption, the White House attack curs came after him. Let’s recap: Joe Lieberman emasculates the Dems (and Obama), several times, and there is not even a semblance of blowback. Dean, with facts at his side and a record of actually putting people before politics, voices his concerns, and immediately he is savaged (the fact that Emanuel apparently loathes Dean is all you need to know about Emanuel, and speaks volumes about Dean’s honesty and integrity). And of course, Dean will be easy to marginalize. He, after all, is the crazy left lunatic who screamed that time. To see Dean betrayed so ruthlessly (and so quickly: boy does the Obama team act quickly when it feels the need to) should be the final affront for anyone who fancies themselves remotely progressive. If you are even beginning to rationalize or spin this any other way, just stop.

So…to summarize: Obama endorses a bill that continues to have pieces hacked off, like the Black Knight from Monty Python’s Holy Grail, which becomes less popular with each iteration, and through this imbecilic obsession with a non-existent middle-ground, emboldens his enemies and infuriates his allies. In fact, Obama is the Black Knight: his viability is sliced away, chunk by chunk, and he (and his mouthpieces) insist this is exactly the way they wanted it. And after a while, there is little choice but to believe it is the way they wanted it.

Concluding thought: Bush was a modern day Nero in the sense that he fiddled away while the empire burned. But he was a child, utterly overwhelmed and mostly incurious about how the fire started or who might put it out. Obama, on the other hand, knows exactly what needs to be done. He also is aware that fire is hot, and that if you get too close you might just burn yourself. And why go to all the trouble of putting on that fire suit, and then you waste all that water when the fire would just burn itself out anyway. After a while. And no matter how the fire goes out, if it’s no longer blazing, we can claim credit for making it stop…

Right?

I guess there are a few suckers, like myself, who are holding out hope that the worst kept secret in Washington (i.e., the expected announcement from our president about another escalation of troops into the Graveyard of Empires) is yet another instance of Obama’s effective/annoying strategy of floating out a rumor to get a “read” of the public mood before shucking and jiving, then surprising the always-obtuse Beltway media bozos. Of course, that Clintonian triangulation on steroids act got stale a while back (certainly before and during the protracted death spiral of the public option which, to this day, Obama has been unconscionably quiet about endorsing –which leaves intelligent people with little evidence to counter the assumption that the public option in particular, and meaningful health care reform in general, is not terribly high on his personal radar. Which, of course, is more than a little disappointing, and disenchanting), between his waffling over how to handle the Wall Street catastrophe and his, well, dithering on the Afghanistan stalemate.

(Isn’t it depressing how easily Iraq has fallen back off the radar? What exactly is being accomplished there? Andrew Sullivan has a reliably succinct, and clear-eyed assessment of the muted returns on our considerable investment of lives and dollars:

All the surge did was provide a face-saving way for the US to create enough temporary security to leave. Given the chaos of the first four years of occupation, this was an achievement. But the achievement was in preventing total humiliation for the US, not anything close to victory or success stable enough to leave with anything but another civil war as the likeliest outcome. But the US didn’t leave, Obama took the neocon advice, and is still hanging on to the notion that a stable, democratic, self-governing Iraq is possible after only six years of occupation, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, 5,000 dead Americans, countless wounded and disabled vets, and up to $3 trillion in taxpayers’ money.

As Obama appears to be intensifying the lost war in Afghanistan, with the same benchmark rubric that meant next-to-nothing in the end in Iraq, he does not seem to understand that he will either have to withdraw US troops from Iraq as it slides into new chaos, or he will have to keep the troops there for ever, as the neocons always intended. Or he will have to finance and run two hot wars simultaneously. The rest is here.)

It is, suffice it to say, incredibly discouraging to think that Obama feels that a “modest” increase in troops will deliver anything approximating positive results. On the practical front, it’s a non-starter; on the political front, it is backwards bordering on masochistic. Does he think for one second that this move will buy him an ounce of credit or goodwill from the obstreperous (and increasingly single-minded) Republican base? Does he believe the chickenhawk ship of idiots (including, but not limited to Dick Cheney, Charles Krauthammer and John Bolton) will cut him any slack (and more importantly, why would he give two shits what any of those imbeciles think? Indeed, since those guys have been wrong about virtually everything they’ve blathered about over the last eight or so years, isn’t it intuitive to grasp that a position opposite of theirs practically guarantees success?) will get on board? Does he think this craven pandering to the mythical moderate demographic will satisfy anyone? (Not that anyone needs to be satisfied; that would be reducing the very real affairs that mean life and death for those involved to pure political gamesmanship, and we’re all better off when we leave that to Republicans, and we’re best off when we keep them out of office, where they are unable to keep the war machine chugging.)

In sum, this tactical cop-out would signify neither change nor anything that anyone can believe in. And that is where it gets ugly: Obama loses his base over this, and it’s over. Which is why it’s difficult to believe a man of his intelligence could fail to fathom this. And this is what this is all about.

I have opinions (few of which would surprise anyone who speaks with or reads me semi-regularly), and I’ve occasionally opined in the past, here, here, here, here, here, here and especially here.

So I’d rather step aside and let some well-equipped and quite persuasive writers put some things in perspective.

It is a ceaseless source of chagrin that the name George Orwell gets name-checked (by both the hard-left and the hard-right, proving that he was a genius and can be all-things-to-all-people as only the true iconoclasts, the genuinely original thinkers of their time, are capable of being)  so often but when you talk to people (especially people who work in or around politics) you come to understand that they have not only not read 1984 or Animal Farm, but they have not read anything else, either. Of course, coming into contact with Orwell at a formative age and engaging in some honest fashion with the truths he told almost a century ago, might have prevented these same people from wanting any part of the political scene…so it makes a sad sort of sense to realize how ignorant –in the literal sense of the word– these cynics and true-believers actually are. None of which is to imply that if they did read Orwell, now, it would prompt or compel any type of epiphany. But it would certainly cause confusion and uncertainty. And, as anyone who knows anything about politics (and the people who partake in the circus) well understands, confusion and uncertainty –which often lead to their unspeakable cousin nuance– are anathema to contemporary political hacks.

Nevertheless, it is important to point out that history predictably and inexorably repeats itself, and that many answers to our seemingly (and maddeningly) unanswerable foreign policy conundrums were articulated in stark, unequivocal fashion long before any of the actors in today’s world stage were born. Orwell’s indelible (and, it would seem, largely unread) evisceration of empire building (not just the practice itself, but the corrosive effects it has on the occupants’ hearts and souls), Shooting An Elephant is mandatory viewing. At least it must be for anyone who aspires to be taken seriously about any convictions they may have regarding our Sisyphean undertaking in Afghanistan:

As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.

That was written in 1936.

The next piece, which –without putting too fine or, I hope, melodramatic point on it– should be required reading for anyone who is ardently for these war(s), or has never had a family member fight in a war, and perhaps especially for the folks who don’t have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other, comes courtesy of Chris Jones in Esquire. This one, entitled The Things That Carried Him, won a well-earned National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. It is a shattering piece, and would give considerable pause to anyone with a half-functioning heart or brain.

“Honorable transfer,” they call it, the last in a series of military handoffs, when the Army finally turns over a dead son or daughter, husband or wife, to his or her family.

Staggers stole away behind the hangar to read his Bible. He had confronted grief for most of his adult life, but he had to get his head straight. He had somehow seen this future for himself while standing at the lip of a mass grave in Bosnia a decade ago, had seen it in the faces of two hundred men, women, and children massacred and thrown in a pit. “That was a spiritual moment,” he said. “That’s when I said I will follow this calling that you’ve been pestering me with, God, for all my years.” Since then, he has worked as a sheriff’s chaplain, and alongside one of the Army’s casualty notification officers, and in the trauma room of a city hospital. Most recently had come his tour in Afghanistan, where he had missed the birth of his youngest son to pray over the bodies of the sorts of men he hoped his son might one day become.

Today, though, was new and it was different: It was not a farewell but a return. Today would be about framing a reality that was only now coming home. “I was thinking, What would I want for my wife and kids if I were the one not to make it back?” Staggers said. “I would want someone to give them 100 percent of their attention and preparation.”

When Sergeant Montgomery’s family arrived from Scottsburg a short time later, and after Don Collins Sr. had parked his hearse and opened the door, Chaplain Staggers introduced himself and did his best to prepare them for what they were about to see. He went over the mechanics of the ritual, but he also tried to steady them for the emotion that would follow. There might have been times over the past week when they felt like they were in a movie, actors playing parts. That feeling would end this afternoon.

The guardsmen had carried enough caskets to deduce, from what their arms told them as they grasped the handles and lifted, something of the person inside. They know if the dead soldier was big or little, and they can also make a good guess at how he died, whether he was killed by small-arms fire or a helicopter crash or an IED. Sometimes they’d lifted caskets and been surprised by the weight of them — wooden caskets are heavier than metal, and that combined with a strapping young man can make for a considerable burden, several hundred pounds — and sometimes there was barely any weight at all, and they knew that inside the casket was a pressed uniform carefully pinned to layers of sheets and blankets, between which might be nestled only fragments of a former life, sealed in plastic.

Finally, from the Feb’09 Esquire, Michael Paterniti’s The  Garden, which looks at the lives (and livelihoods) of the crew who dig the graves (and perform the myriad custodial obligations) at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Football is like war,” he says. “To win, you’re going to have to gamble a little. But in war that’s gambling people’s lives. “Sometimes I just can’t fit it in my head,” he continues, “I see these stones out here, see that some kid was 18, 19. These are babies, man. Babies. And they could be any of us.”

The feeling somehow becomes more acute and immediate out in the living memory box of Section 60: Before one headstone sits a tin of Copenhagen; before another, a bottle of half-drunk bourbon. There are packs of Newports and laminated pictures of wedding days, births of children, and buddies during good times. There are condoms and lipstick kisses on the marble headstones and colored stones on top and, in the nearby trees, glittering seasonal juju: blue stars or tinsel, American flags or stuffed bunnies. Leaning against one headstone is a birthday card with the picture of a little boy who has just learned to scratch out the name Daddy, three years after Daddy’s death. And then there are the scrawled notes from friends and wives that say I miss chillen with you brother and I wish we were together, you fussing over my pregnant belly and buying me those awful coveralls to wear like we planned.

And, on hotel stationery, this note from a mother: Hello son, I miss you so much it hurts and sometimes I’m so proud I can’t stop smiling. You were a great son and I am very proud of you. Some times I feel your presents and some times I see you in my dreams. Those are the best times. We are together again and I get to give you those hugs I love so much. Well, I’ll get in touch with you again real soon and please make more visits to me in my dreams. I would really like that. Love you Son, Mom xxoo.

The Nobel Peace Prize –and the general sense of optimism and expectation– is not only about Obama. This was true before the election and it’s true now.

In addition to an overdue but thorough repudiation of Republican incompetence, Obama’s landslide was more about the majority than the man. This belabors the obvious, today, but it’s instructive to recall the folks (and there were lots of them) who were convinced of two things back in ’08: one, that Hillary Clinton represented the best chance for Democratic victory; and two, Obama had no chance to win. That he did was not only historic on multiple fronts, but tempted many in the country to reach the optimistic, if premature conclusion that race relations had turned the corner. While it’s obvious that a fair chunk of the population would diametrically oppose Obama no matter what, it only takes a cursory examination of the tactics and tenor of their resistance to understand the bile simmering centimeters beneath the surface. Nevertheless, what some people ascertained early in the Obama/Clinton face-off was that Hillary had the unenviable prospects of having about half the country hate her, before she even took office. At least it’s taken Obama a few months of not miraculously resuscitating the economy he inherited (even Superman, for all his unparalleled powers, was not able to create jobs) to earn some skepticism. But his ability to appeal to the moderates and middle-of-the-roaders was the key ingredient of his electoral success. And that possibility, beyond the charisma and the eloquence, was what propelled the audacity to hope.

Naturally, news of Obama’s Nobel Prize is going to explode the empty heads of the haters, but it will also give the mouth-breathers a new outrage to rally around. Let’s stop and pause at the irony: for the better part of eight years Dems worked themselves into a lather with every new Bush embarrassment; for the past eight months each Obama accolade is treated like an act of treason. Actually, there is not much irony there at all –the same idiots who held their breath like infants during the Clinton years (years that look better and better in hindsight) and marched lockstep with every Bush decision that set the country back, now throwing tea-party tantrums while Obama tries to clean up the playpen he inherited.

To be fair, whoever was willing (much less able) to tackle the myriad obstacles Bush & Co. left in the way is worthy of an award. But let there be no mistake: Obama’s honor is very much a repudiation of Bush’s hideous legacy. And if this is seen by the howling twits on the Right as a big “F You” from the rest of the world, it’s small recompense for the eight year “F You” the previous administration offered the world, to everyone’s detriment. (Speaking of those twits, enough can’t be said about how eagerly they seek to place our foreign and domestic disasters at Obama’s feet even though they vocally endorsed the decisions that led to this state of affairs.)

And that is the most disgraceful development: I’ve yet to hear many condemnations of the demonstrably failed policies of the Bush years. That is because there have been very few of them. Most of the post-mortems have appraised the political failures. And therein lies the rub: Bush stopped being popular and more importantly, Bush stopped winning, therefore his legacy is tarnished in the fickle, always opportunistic eyes of those who once ardently endorsed him. The actual recklessness and depravity of the policies have not been reevaluated or disowned; indeed, their supporters have doubled down on them (see last year’s election).

To be certain, the hardcore right-wing offered tepid support for McCain not only because he was such a woefully inadequate candidate (that is the sane view; the insider GOP view was that he had no chance to win, therefore his embrace by the powers-that-be was never more than lukewarm) but also that he wasn’t a real Republican. He sought compromise and he was viewed as too often too willing to work with the other party to get things accomplished. This shows you the diminishing returns of bipartisanship, circa Y2K: McCain’s scarcely heroic public stance against torture or his reluctance to offer full-throated support to the cretinous scaremongering that passes for Republican discourse on immigration hardly made him a moderate. But in today’s GOP, it does. And that is why Obama was elected, and why –despite the predictable and appalling fecklessness of so many elected Democrats — the Republican brand is at a nadir of sorts (don’t mistake the millions of citizens disgusted by the Wall Street shenanigans or the unemployment numbers –directly brought about by Bush’s domestic policies — as any sort of endorsement of a return to Republican rule).

It is imperative to recognize, and point out as often as necessary, that the same sadists pulling the strings in the not-so-big GOP tent are mostly angry and embarrassed because they got beaten last November. There has been nothing approximating a concerned or sober investigation of what went so dreadfully wrong as a result of bellicose foreign policy, the reckless (and expensive) launch of an unnecessary war, or the thoroughly debunked and shameful worship of free-market, voodoo economics. In this regard what passes for the Republican intelligentsia is quite identical to the flat-earth imbeciles who insist, even as the evidence otherwise piles up all around them, that Jesus was white and dinosaurs ambled about the Garden of Eden and the world is only a few thousand years old.

Even now, as unemployment numbers rise alongside escalating health care costs, you have right-wing scribes advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest half-percent and an intolerance for reform that undercuts the very principle of free market economics (Is it not a self-defeating argument that the same party who clamors for the inviolable advantages of competition suddenly opposes it in this one instance? Is it not more than a little revealing that the same big government they ridicule suddenly poses such a menacing threat to the insurance industry?) This is the one argument that reveals the hollow core of the Republican machinery: if any of these folks actually believed in the economic principles they espouse, they would reluctantly have no choice but to acknowledge that the public option epitomizes the theory of market competition in practice. But, naturally, the ideology can be adjusted as necessary (just like the anti-deficit hawks made no noise when the Iraq debacle and the immoral tax cut policy put the entire country deep into the red), and this brazen hypocrisy makes it impossible to ever take these people seriously, if anyone ever did.

In regards to foreign policy –and it is in this capacity that Obama is inspiring the world community, and the impetus behind his Nobel Prize– it is tempting to simply propose that any developments that rankle the rogues gallery below is inherently worthwhile.

Look at those faces again, and remember what they wrought. Just getting these sociopaths out of positions of power and influence is a substantial accomplishment.

On the other hand:

Those images are a sobering reminder of where we’ve been, and where we still are.

The most patient (and/or gullible) Obama endorsers keep reminding us that the president has a lot on his plate, and this much-vaunted change will take time. Okay, so how much time does he need? This is the same man who vowed to shut down Guantanamo on Day One, and end the farce known as “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. The fierce urgency of now quickly became the urgent ferocity of political ass-covering. And it would be one thing if the people Obama was inclined to infuriate (and they will be infuriated) represented anything approximating a majority, or anything more than a small minority. As it is, he’s avoiding making easy, sane and moral decisions to…appease the same lunatics who are already calling him a traitor and a socialist? It makes about as much sense as Michelle Bachmann.

And it is because of his extreme caution, and his infuriating equivocations on such no-brainers as gay marriage that the concern about Obama’s Nobel Prize is warranted. Not the superficial and trumped up consternation from the Right; but rather, the creeping skepticism on those from the Left (those who just today were dismissed by a typically anonymous chickenshit inside the administration as the “fringe left”). Talk about biting the hands that pulled the lever for you! I understand –somewhat– Obama’s foot-dragging on Guantanamo (perhaps once the health care debate is mostly sorted out it will be time to fight that battle, albeit way too late), but his cowardice on equal rights for all citizens is unconscionable and indefensible. It would be lame enough if this was a demographically polarizing issue (as it was during Clinton’s first term) but the fact that a majority of the people are behind this long overdue action makes Obama’s sluggishness a disgrace.

And there are some of us who are mortified by the prospect that Obama is now standing on the shoulders of his most loyal supporters to fortify his bulwark of prudent calculation. That is not what he was elected for, and it will be an unacceptable turn of events if, not a year into his first term, he is already more worried about his second term than the promises he made to get him in office. It’s almost enough to make one wish for the tooth and nail trench warfare we might have expected from a Hillary Clinton one-and-done term in office (because don’t kid yourself, Hillary would never have a chance at re-election, in part because she would exhaust all of her political capital just staying afloat, yet that 24/7 offensive might provide the required ferocity to affect some meaningful change). Put another way, I’d much rather have a bruising and contentious four year term that actually yielded some change we can believe in than eight years of triangulated calculation, unfulfilled promise and sweet but ultimately empty rhetoric.

Perhaps a wake-up call is necessary: Obama, by all evidence, is a moderate, and he has said and done little to convince anyone otherwise. And if this is the best we can expect, it’s unfortunate but far from the end of the world (again, always keep in mind the alternatives the other party had on offer, and by all accounts is still offering). I’m still mostly content to hang back and reserve judgment and consider both the man and his presidency a work in progress. Concern is, to my mind, entirely warranted and a good measure of healthy skepticism is required. And yet. Considering, once again, the almost inconceivable cataclysm he walked into, and the fact that we are –by any mature measure– much better off than we could (or would) have been, there’s no need for the Dems to eat their own, as usual. Not yet. We have the luxury of keeping Obama accountable in part because he didn’t let us fall off the cliff this year. And that is quite worth keeping front and center in the year(s) ahead. Also, for all we know, events that are underway and  far from fruition could turn out to be both historic and heroic, in hindsight. We’ll see. My bet is that the president will more than earn this premature encomium in the hard years ahead.

Nonetheless, if Obama is half the man History is setting him up to be, he is right to be humbled and he would do well to dedicate all of his energy and eloquence toward making good on the promises he already made. We can hope for more, but we should expect no less.

Okay, let’s see:

Violent rhetoric? Check.

Racist birther idiots? Check.

Ignorant assholes who have no concept what government care means? Check.

One or more of these people undoubtedly using government care? Check.

Invocation of terrorism, abortion and murder? Check.

All white people? Check.

From the pen of Neil Peart, circa 1981, reminiscing about yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is America.

Features distorted in the flickering light,
The faces are twisted and grotesque.
Silent and stern in the sweltering night,
The mob moves like demons possesed.
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right,
Confident their ways are best.

The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will.
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill.

They say there are strangers who threaten us,
are immigrants and infidels.
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves.
Those who know what’s best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves.

Quick to judge,
Quick to anger,
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand…

re. the above, three comments:

Wow.

Really?

No seriously, you’re joking, right?

I have more than a little to say on this subject (I could practically make a career out of Lou Dobbs, not to mention the cynical, ratings-scavenging scumbags at CNN who continue to let that geriatric ass-lizard spew his ill-wind on the public airwaves during prime time), but being surprised, or appalled at the number of people who endorse this horseshit, these so-called ”Birthers”, is like being astonished at the number of people who see starbursts when Sarah Palin is on the screen. It’s unbelievable and it’s very embarrassing, but this is where we are right now: this is America. It’s insane out there, and it would be unbearable (bordering on tragic) if it weren’t so fucking funny. These are actual adults who presumably work for a living, and are capable of forming words, yet they are willing to accept (embrace!) the notion that Obama’s birth certificate is a sham. The only thing, of course, that is a sham is the straw-grasping strategy that these losers are left with. Their party failed them (and the rest of us–thanks for that!) and what we’re witnessing is the adult equivalent of taking the ball and going home. It’s ultimately a rather simple matter of grown ups acting like little kids and the best thing to do with brats when they act up is to ignore them. But since these are adults, who can vote, and exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, this ridiculousness should not be ignored, but actively ridiculed. Often, and loudly. Let’s turn this idiocy into a righteous celebration.

Enter Bill Maher, who continues to do what no prominent Democrat is witty, intelligent or brave enough to do. That is, tell the truth.

Get some Bill.

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