Hey, GOP, Want To REALLY Know How To Win An Election?

It's not by moving to the right.

This Is What Ten Years Of Republican Economics Will Get You ...

Absolutely NOTHING!

If the American people are dumb enough to put these people in charge of Congress in the next election, there will be a Red revolution on American soil in a matter of years. If the Tea Baggers want a justified argument for their anger, they should invest in mirrors.

I don't think there will be a Republican Congress after 2010, despite last week's elections. The Republicans got lucky in the gubernatorial candidate match-ups; they're not going to be that lucky in a nationwide election. (Hint: there were two special Congressional elections on the same day, and the Democrats won both of them, one of them in a district that had elected Republicans for more than a century.) And, if employers start hiring again in a big way in 2010, tea bag politics may very well lose its steam.

But when Fox News is willing to cut-and-paste together the illusion of a larger opposition than the one that actually exists, and it takes a comedian to point it out, you really have to wonder: Where are the real watchdogs of the people?

On your toes, fellow lefties, for the next twelve months. On your toes.

Mr. Cooke, Do You Really Have A Blog?

If so, please feel free to share a link to it. I'm sure it's a never-ending source of entertainment.

Or would that take, as you might say, "guts"?

P.S. I do believe we all have an obligation to defend our country. The Iraq war was a war of choice, not of defense. If you're opposed to it, I have no objection to that.

UPDATE, 11/03/09: He's got a blog, but you have to join (or be a member of) Myspace to read or post on it. Sorry, Mr. Cooke. Myspace is yesterday's Facebook. Which is why it doesn't surprise me that you're worried about the threat of witchcraft.

And "thanks" for inviting me to look at your Facebook profile to find your blog, even though you knew I had to be your "friend" to have access to do it. Unfortunately for you, I know how to use Google. Liberals may not have invented the Internet, but they know how to use it (as opposed to conservatives, who only know how to abuse it).

Further update, with apologies to Mr. Cooke . He has a Blogger blog. Unfortunately, it turns out he's a pro-tobacco zealot. It fits it with the whole libertarian thing he's got going, but it's further evidence that the only thing wrong with libertarianism is that it's never been tried.

And, no, Mr. Cooke, I don't expect an apology from you for calling me "as stupid as I am fat." That would require class. I don't expect you to go outside your skill set.

Yes, I Know It's Been A Long Time ...

... but it's the end of October (Happy Halloween, everybody), and I think every good, decent, liberal American needs to get out there and do whatever they can to stop the barbarians at the gates. If recent polls are to be believed, they may carry the day in three elections next week. No matter what happens, however, we can't afford to give up or be discouraged.

I was reminded of this several days ago, when I got into a lively exchange on Facebook with a friend of a friend who believes, among other things:

1. that compulsory health insurance is immoral, but not compulsory car insurance because no one needs to drive a car (probably one of those Tea Party protesters whose hatred of Big Government led them to complain about the lack of extra Metro service for their protest);

2. that car insurance has nothing to do with the Federal government, despite the long-standing relationship between the automobile and federal funding;

3. that insurance makes the services it pays for more expensive, and that everybody should be compelled by the Federal government he hates to pay for their own health care; and

4. that his personal word means nothing, when he claims not to care that I drive a hybrid and then posts two additional diatribes about my choice in cars.

Oh, and I didn't even get into the fact that he doesn't believe in defending his country, probably because it doesn't fit in with his self-stated desire to be "left alone." He's like his hero, Dick Cheney; it isn't convenient to protect his country, but it's OK to root out new and more exciting ways to rip it off.

That's why all of us on the side of truth, justice and the American way need to get out and do whatever we can to ensure that what we believe carries the day. Letting morons like this sad sack run our country can only destroy it.

Personal footnote and disclosure: he accused me of hypocrisy because I criticized an obscenity in a comment he wanted to post on this blog, because of an earlier reference I had made to Cheney that played off of the former Vice President's first name. There's no hypocrisy. Taking responsibility for my own comments is easy; doing the same for others demands a little more concern for the sensitivity of my readers. My advice to my critic: grow a brain, get a blog and join the debate. I'm not afraid of you.

One Step Closer To The Second Civil War

The Van Jones affair, and the boycott of Glenn Beck's putrid Fox program that let to it, has sent my estimation of America and American progressives to a new low.

That a publicity whore like Beck has enough standing in the court of public opinion to drive out Jones, a man who has accomplished more in his lifetime than the Becks of the world can even dream about, is bad enough. That he is able to motivate and mobilize the idiocracy over which he and Fox presides to drive Jones to resign is far worse, in so many ways. And this is true without even taking into account Beck's sheer hypocrisy in attacking Jones for his past views of the Bush Administration and Republicans, coming from a "man" (I use the term advisedly) who accused a black President with a white mother and white grandparents of hating white people.

First, it's clear that whatever advantage progressives once had with new media and social networking is gone. The bad guys have learned, and caught up.

Second, it's equally clear that the Obama Administration, and its nominal "leader," have something less than a complete set of backbones when it comes to dealing with moral lepers like Beck. They should have trotted out Jones, have him issue one of those if-I-offended-anyone-I'm-sorry apologies that wingnuts routinely get away with issuing, and let him get on with his job. What chance is there that anyone with cutting-edge views is going to serve in the White House, knowing that loyalty to the President will only make it easier to be thrown to the wolves on the right every time they wake up and snarl "More"? For that matter, what chance is there for change anyone can believe in if this President defines bringing America together as a process in which the truth is systematically negotiated away to liars?

Third, I am sorry to say that a large measure of the fault lies with progressives themselves. We let Obama equivocate, negotiate, and frequently repudiate during last fall's campaign. We allowed him to become a bland, fuzzy symbol that voters could interpret any number of ways, by not holding his feet to the proverbial fire and insisting that he strongly campaign for progressive goals and progressive values. Like the rest of the country, we were so sick of Bush that we were willing to take anything. We forgot that in politics, as in the rest of life, if you're prepared to take anything, you'll more often than not get nothing.

And, as it is beginning to look more and more like President Obama does not understand the difference between compromise and appeasement, we have no choice but to take the battle back to the streets, in order to win not votes but the hearts and minds of the American people. Frankly, this doesn't bother me; if history teaches us anything, it is that true progress occurs outside of the corridors of power, and then slowly works its way in. What we have to remember is a lesson that conservatives never forget for a minute: winning anything in America is a matter of devotion, not numbers. An electoral majority is a luxury; an organized, focused, driven minority can do far more than any majority ever can. Margaret Mead was right.

We can start by doing two things: (a) expanding the Beck boycott to a boycott of Fox, making any advertiser who wants to do business with the network ashamed to do so; and (b) insisting that this pitiful excuse of a Democratic Congress investigate 9/11 top to bottom, once and for all. It's time to bring George W. Bush and the aptly-named "Dick" Cheney before the people's representatives and ask them the Watergate question: What did you know, and when did you know it?

If you're reading this, take any of this to heart, and start mobilizing on behalf of the real "truth, justice, and the American way," do not doubt that even the smallest gesture has value. It will echo throughout the corridors of history long after Glenn Beck has ceased to be a pimple on the hindquarters of humanity.

August Really Is The Cruelest Month ...

... which is probably why I haven't blogged at all during it. It's not as if there's been a lack of material. I could blog every day of the new month that's about to start in a few hours, and still not catch up.

But, frankly, the health care "debate" has depressed the hell out of me. The Republicans and their Astroturf agents at the town halls recognize no limits when it comes to exploiting the issue at the expense of potential solutions. And the Democrats expect us to believe that none of the could have been foreseen by them, despite past summer muggings.

Both parties misuse and abuse the concept of bipartisanship in different ways: the GOP uses it to leverage short-term gains of power at the expense of the country as a whole, while the Democrats use it as an excuse to avoid the ugly reality that change is not only worth fight for, but often can only be brought about by a fight.

And, while both parties fiddle, the health care system burns.

I have to fault President Obama for overlearning the lessons of the Clintons' experience with the issue. He has been missing in action on this and so many other issues for so long. It's time for him to get over himself and realize that he was elected to lead the nation, not mediate the differences of politicians who live to do nothing but differ with each other, while selling themselves to the highest bidder.

And he needs to understand that, for him, it's OK to have a point of view. Nobody expects to agree with him all the time. But they expect him to move forward, and take us with him by talking about what he wants to do, why he wants to do it, and why he believes it will work.

And, if he wants to be bipartisan, let him take a cue from the last Republican President to seriously proposed national health insurance, Richard Nixon: make a public appeal to the "silent majority" that wants reform and not ranting. This country has suffered enough at the hands of the angry minority that doesn't have brains enough to do anything but yell. Those people have effectively excused themselves from the democratic debate by acting like Fascists.

It is not too late, if we don't give up. I hope, and I pray, that we don't.

Off For The LHAT Conference

I won't be posting for the next week or so, because I'll be at the League of Historic American Theatres conference in Cleveland. If you want to learn more about the conference, and the League, click here. I look forward to sharing what I see and hear when I return next week.

And All You Need To Know About The Stimulus

This is the best article I've seen so far about the various criticisms of Obama's stimulus plan. There's a good case to be made, in my opinion, that anything simultaneously attacked by the far left and the far right is probably something that's right on target.

I could live, however, without the conservative lectures on public debt. Not that this isn't a problem, but the overwhelming majority of the debt we have was run up in no small part because their number two hero, relying on the advice of their number one hero, said that deficits don't matter. I guess they only matter to the GOP when they're not enabling their need for power.

Everything You Need To Know About Alaska's Ex-Governor

I don't like to even mention her by name, because even doing that gives her more publicity than she ever has had any right to deserve. But this article tells you everything you REALLY need to know about S.P..

The End Of Capitialism? (Part 2 And Counting)

Just when you think Republicans and conservatives have run out of ways to bankrupt our country and our lives, along comes this piece of nonsense from the New York Post. I supposed that I shouldn't be surprised; the Murdoch-owned tabloid has been an outpost of comic-book journalism for years (as well as editorial hypocrisy: family-values editorials mixed with topless-bar ads). But the author of this piece, John Crudele, has generally proved in the past to be one of its better writers.

The unsurprising aspect of the article, however, lies in the nature of its economic-bailout prescription, which is a variation of an idea that comes up from time to time in right-wing circles (and, sometimes, left-wing ones as well): easy access to retirement savings, typically framed as short-term "loans" that would have to be paid back at some point.

The obvious objection to this is that it would further weaken the banking industry and Wall Street, by allowing everyone to simultaneously raid the last stable asset in the American financial system. Banks would have even less money to lend, which would send interest rates skyrocketing. And, as interest rates go up while the stocks and bonds in pension plans are liquidated, privately-owned companies would have an even harder time raising capital to survive, let alone expand.

This is another illustration of how the classic vision of capitalism as a system based on personal initiative, hard work and thrift gives way in reality to a world in which something closer to piracy prevails: borrow and spend (and, when that fails, steal and spend). In the Reagan (and even in the post-Reagan) era, this generally has taken the form of highly leveraged buyouts and mergers, typically creating large amounts of short-term wealth on paper, but ultimately producing only unemployment, monopolization and, ultimately, bankruptcy.

I sometimes think about George Bernard Shaw's joke about Christianity--the only thing wrong with it is that it's never been tried--and conclude that it has at least as much applicability to capitalism as it does to anything else. Let's face it. It's hard to work, to take risks with little or nothing to fall back on, to forgo short-term pleasure in favor of long-term gains. It's much easier to focus on the next fifteen minutes, and hope that the day of reckoning never comes. Except that it does. And, to paraphrase Keynes, sometimes in the long run we're not dead when it does.

Ultimately, there is no easy road. Working hard, working together, paying for what we need and not what we want, and planning for the uncertainties of life are the only ways to get out of the current crisis. Sorry, Mr. Crudele, but there are no pain-free solutions. There are only the right ones.

And, by right, the last thing I mean is extremely right.

Robert McNamara And The Limits of Bipartisanship

Reading the obituaries for Robert McNamara over the past day or so reminded me of Lyndon Johnson's primary reason for forging ahead down the road to disaster called Vietnam: fear of being tarred by Republicans as being insufficiently anti-Communist. How might American and world history be different had Johnson realized that doing the right thing (i.e., ending the use of American lives as guerrilla fodder to support a corrupt regime) outweighed any kind of pretense about partisanship ending at the water's edge? How might they be different if Jimmy Carter had realized the same thing, with regard to American aid and comfort for the Shah of Iran and his family? And, more recently and even more painfully obvious, how might they be different if Congressional Democrats had called the Bush-Cheney bluff about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

I do not believe that the leaders and, more importantly, the peoples of other nations are particularly impressed when Americans stand together for the sake of a mistake (apologies for the paraphrase, Senator Kerry). I think they are more likely to be impressed when we choose one or more leaders who believe that truth and justice, even when deeply divisive, are more important to the American way that unity achieved through partisan bullying (and a second paraphrase apology to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who deserved the belated rewards they got for creating Superman).

Which is why I'm hoping that having a different kind of President is having the potential to make American and world history different in the right way. It looks like that might be a possibility.
We'll see.

As for McNamara himself, he seems to have been belatedly aware of the egregious nature of his tenure as Secretary of Defense, and he obviously spent much of his post-LBJ career attempting to atone for it in some measure, especially in his work at the World Bank. It's worth remembering, too, that he was one of the men who helped the Kennedy Administration and the world step back from the brink of disaster during the Cuban Missile crisis. I'm forced to confess that there may be a bit of self-interest in that observation: in preparing to play Dean Rusk for a local production of "The Missiles of October," I read Robert Kennedy's "Thirteen Days." However, thespianism aside, I'm happy to recommend the book (if you haven't read it) for any number of reasons--not the least of which is the testament it serves to the difference between being tough and being belligerent.

It's a difference I hope President Obama continues to remember.

At Least You're Still Alive ...

... so, David Vittner, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards, John Ensign and Mark Sanford, consider yourselves lucky.

Who would have thought politics was safer than sports?

When All Else Fails, Lie

You know the climate change deniers are losing the battle when they are forced to result to baldfaced lies like the one in this letter to the editor in yesterday's Baltimore Sun. It seems too obvious to point out that the real issue is not the presence of carbon dioxide, but the relative proportion of it to other chemicals. Not to Mr. Schvimmer, apparently, who may be either ignorant or lying.

"We are being had," sir? Only if we listen to the likes of you, and some of the more economically powerful interests in this country who have been pushing this same message for some time. The rest of us can only hope that the U.S. Senate, currently considering the climate change bill passed by the House of Representatives, turns 200 deaf ears to your dissembling.

The End Of Capitalism?

My friend John Tierney recently included a link in his blog to the following Web item. It's well worth a look all by itself. For me, the irony of this lies in the fact that the same basic argument had occurred to me, but someone else beat me to it with regard to putting it on the Web. Well, all I can say is, this is what happens when you don't post anything for an entire month or more!

Of course, it's perfectly true that a publicly-sponsored optional health insurance plan would no more destroy the private health insurance industry than the existence of the Postal Service threatens the existence of UPS and FedEx. What is amazing, however, is the fact that the Republican Party, the supposed ultimate defender of capitalism, is willing to make such an argument in the face of evidence to the contrary. They probably don't realize it but, in effect, Republicans in Congress are revealing the fact that they have absolutely no faith in the theory that supposedly gives their party its raison d'etre.

Put this in the context of their explanation for the end of the Cold War: the view that unfettered capitalism, led by an unapologetic defender of capitalism in Ronald Reagan, inevitably crushed the lesser system of Communism practiced in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In making this argument, they were essentially standing Marxism on its head by claiming that capitalism was the inevitable "end of history."

Well, inevitability apparently isn't what it used to be, if you believe the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell--who, along with the GOP colleagues in the House and Senate, benefit from the most generous health insurance plan in history, paid for with the very same tax dollars that they don't want to use to insure you. Reminds me of those arguments they used to make for "school choice," in the form of vouchers for private schools (priced at the level where they basically become federal aid for religious school's, but that's a topic for another day). Remember? "We want all Americans to have the same choice that Chelsea Clinton has." Leaving aside the obvious fact that the vouchers they wanted to offer you wouldn't have paid for more than five minutes at Sidwell Friends (where Chelsea went), this argument underscores the hypocrisy of their current arguments about health insurance and the public option.

John, you're right. They are scumbags.

And, apart from that, a belated Happy 4th to all, especially to those in uniform, who deserve all the health care we can give them.

Something Is STILL The Matter With Kansas ... And Maybe Everywhere Else

Well, despite my best intentions, it's been over a month since I've posted anything. That's partly about life getting in the way of blogging (to paraphrase Michael Crichton's words in "Jurassic Park," life will find a way to do that). But it's also about the fact that I've been wrestling with a topic that has reared its very ugly head in a number of ways since Barack Obama replaced Howdy Doody in the White House: right-wing violence.

As a political force, the far right wing-nuts in this country are at their lowest ebb. If they were Democrats, they would no doubt be forming a circular firing squad, aiming at themselves. But, lately, I've been getting the impression that conservatives, and their political allies in the Republican Party, have been forming a circular firing squad of their own. Unfortunately, theirs is aimed at everyone else. This reflects the competing character flaws in both of our major political parties. Democrats, political nebbishes that most of them are, are always on the lookout for new and more exciting ways to flagelate themselves for their failures. On the other hand, Republicans, who long ago reduced the question of "character" to keeping one's fly up, are always on the lookout for ways to bamboozle the rest of us to handing them power.

At least the Democrats, when they lose, are content to play by the rules and let democracy win. But, when the party of Lincoln runs out of ways to fool all of the people all of the time (thankfully, it periodically happens), it isn't content to let the proverbial chips fall where they may. They prefer to hurl the chips--and any other non-verbal weapons that they can find--at the people who have peaceably lifted the burden of government from their government-hating shoulders.

In this context, I recall the efforts by some wing-nut commentators to justify the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal court house by citing the anger many of their devoted followers felt about the 1993 destruction of the Branch Davidian religious compound, allegedly by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (never mind the facts that the fanatics burned their own compound, and that the ATF troops moved in solely based to prevent alleged child abuse). I have heard echoes of those arguments in some of the rhetoric of the past six months that has masqueraded as political commentary from such distinguished sources as Glenn Beck and Chuck Norris. As a consequence, I have spent much of the past month wrestling with this rhetoric and the proper response to it. I have wanted to hold back, out of respect for democracy and the freedom to disagree, even to the point of being disagreeable.

But, ultimately, I have been propelled forward by today's tragedy in Kansas. This sick, perverted, disgusting incident makes me question whether it is even possible to co-exist in a democratic society with a movement that treats "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as a slogan--or, even worse, as a club to brandish against the 99 percent of reality that frightens them so much.

This much I'll say for now, and I may have more to say about it later. As our wing-nut bretheren and sisteren are fond of reminding us, the Second Amendment is a civil right. I'm here today to recommend that all of my friends on the left exercise it. Buy a gun. Learn how to use it. You may need it to defend freedom--and yourselves. I'm not advocating lawlessness, and I'm not advocating murder. The law allows you to fight fire with fire. Democracy certainly allows a level playing field. And trust me on this: if there's one thing the wing-nuts REALLY hate, it's a level playing field.

Especially a well-armed one.