Might as well earn it

Why should someone like Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) be selected as the next leader of the Democrat minority in the House? Because Democrats might as well earn the characterizations that the Dems are presenting policies that are from the far left of American politics. Perhaps a few years of seeing an actual progressive politician in charge will remind America that killing the public option for the Affordable Care Act was not the result of some vast socialist conspiracy. Watering down the financial regulations at the behest of the banks was not part of some radical liberal strategy. And yet both the Dodd/Frank Act and the Affordable Care Act were made out to be the result of the Democrats in Congress forcing through a supremely leftist agenda. So if they're going to do that when the policies are already center-right to begin with, what more can they say?

If there's one thing I wish that the Democrats would learn from their Republican colleagues it would be that there's no inherent problem with advocating policies that are far from the middle, so long as you do a good job of making your opponent's most moderate proposals seem extreme, and you phrase your own arguments so that people can identify some familiar aspects of your policy. We've seen this with the Sarah Palins, Jim DeMints, and Rand Pauls who advocate very right wing policies yet attack anyone who opposes them as some far left wing nut.

Having a true progressive at the reins for a few years will remind people that they really are in favor of the so called "socialism" in America; from social security to Medicare, Americans like their government programs. Somehow the Democrats' messaging in the past couple of years was so weak that they allowed the GOP to take up the mantle of defending Medicare against spending cuts.

So now that Pelosi has to hand in her gavel, maybe it's time to take a real progressive activist, who almost voted against the Affordable Care Act because he recognized it was far too big of a gift to the insurance companies and not focused enough on providing quality care to Americans, a chance to lead his party and remind America about the differences between what the GOP offers and what the Democrats can offer. Maybe if the public could see what real liberal policies were, they wouldn't be so quick to accept Karl Rove's and Sean Hannity's instant labeling of so many moderates as extreme leftists.

As crafty as they are...

From the sidelines one can almost admire the efficacy and the cunning that the flapping lips of the Conservative movement (since no one but Colin Powell still calls themselves Republicans anymore) have when attacking the Progressives' agenda. It conjures up a feeling, if only for a second, of awe and even a little bit of jealousy as you ponder what might be if Harry Reid lashed out with even 1/10 of the vigor and passion that Karl Rove seems to expend on his porcelain throne before going on FoxNews. But alas, that's one of the big differences that exist within our two party system.

Certainly, without any doubt, the Conservative attack machine is always fueled up and ready to go, waiting with bated breath for a signal, or an order to come down the Rove/Limbaugh/Hannity bat-phone and announce who the day's target shall be. As it turned out yesterday, the target was Sonia Sotomayor, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judge that President Obama has just nominated to replace Justice Souter upon his retirement. It was no surprise to see Karl Rove jump out in front and begin his typical attempt of labeling her "a liberal". Truth be told, I wouldn't even mind all this incessant labeling if it was even remotely accurate. The sad truth of the matter is that most of the people FoxNews and friends label as being "unabashed liberals" are really Liberals in the Phil Ochsian definition, meaning that they are unabashed moderates.

Consider this Supreme Court nominee and her history. While the one case that Sean Hannity harped on for half of his show on Tuesday focused on a decision to allow a fire department in Connecticut to choose to not promote anyone in favor of only promoting white firefighters, that's not that earth shattering of a decision since all she did was affirm the lower court's decision in the case.

You would think that if they really cared about Liberal vs. Conservative issues, they would be happy to have Sotomayor given her likely views on abortion, but that's not even what's at stake for the GOP. Better for them to attack her as a Liberal and have it established that yes, she is a Liberal, so that the next person they talk about will seem really liberal in the eyes of the public. The game they are playing is redrawing the lines and trying to move the "moderate" line to the right...and sadly, it's working.

Pundit after putrid pundit on the cable news programs use terms like "unabashed liberal," "out spoken liberal," and "established liberal" when discussing Judge Sotomayor and they go completely unchallenged by anyone out there. If she is those things, what does that make someone like Dennis Kucinich who is one of the only true Progressivs in Congress? And if she is so far the left as they claim, does that make Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), with his record of supporting torture and opposing voting rights initatives, a moderate? It is this kind of rightward shift in the public perception of our political battlefield that allowed John McCain to pretend to be a moderate republican. Truth of the matter is, moderate republicans like Jim Jeffords (Vermont) and Arlen Spector (Pennsylvania) have been forced out of the GOP and the ones that remain (Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) may not last much longer.

Personally, I hope this whole nomination of Judge Sotomayor is Obama's Harriet Myers, albeit far more qualified. It's not that I don't think she'd be a fine Supreme Court Justice, but given the Bush appointments of Alito and Roberts, and the current makeup of the Senate, now seems like the perfect opportunity to seize the day and put on the bench a young, progressive, healthy justice who might break William O. Douglas' record for longest serving member of the Court.

Socialism and other scary words Part 1

While the windbags of the right continue to brandy about the "socialist" label on President Obama, they are either too stupid to remember the past or they are deliberately ignoring it. Take for example all the hullabaloo about taxes. President Obama is promoting the idea that we should roll back the tax cuts on the top income earners to what the rates were under Bill Clinton, that big pinko commie socialist. Forget for a moment all you've seen on FoxNews about how Bill Clinton was Lenin and Stalin's love child and look, intelligently and rationally at the fact that his top marginal tax rate was 39.6%. Under Republican presidents Ford and Nixon it was in the 70s. Under President Eisenhower, who it would be pretty hard to call a Socialist, the top marginal rate was in the 90s.

What this goes to show is what a farce it is to actually believe President Obama is a ramming his socialist agenda on America through a "massive" hike in the top marginal rate. President Obama is no more a socialist than Rush Limbaugh is a decent human being. I wish that we could get ourselves a real progressive candidate into the White House one of these days, but unfortunately, there are so many ignorant, uneducated piles of garbage voting these days that still get goosebumps when they hear words like Socialism because they don't realize that Socialism doesn't mean the government spying on your phone calls; kidnapping and torturing people in secret prisons; or even coming between you and your doctor concerning medical matters.

No, those are all things that are happening and have been happening during that oh so capitalist President George W. Bush. Socialism means your kids can finally go see a doctor when they cut their foot on some rusty metal in the trailer park, or you can go and start that business you've always wanted without worrying that your family might get sick. It means you can send your kids to school and they'll get a good education and you won't have to sell your house to afford it. It's time that America got over its irrational fear of the S word and started fearing the real bogeymen like Rush, Sean and all the others who shout about standing up for the little guy that they then proceed to piss all over.

President Obama is not a socialist, but I really wish he was.

Sean's the gift that keeps on giving

This was really fantastic. Sean has now blamed President Obama for the lack of rebuilding in Katrina devastated New Orleans. This is great because maybe, just maybe, Foxnews will begin being a strong advocate for the people of New Orleans who they abandoned with their President after the storm. What he is referring to is the fact that the current stimulus bill, which he has night after night said is too costly already, doesn't contain any extra money for Hurricane Katrina recovery. Well guess what Sean, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. That was 3 years in which your idol in chief could have fixed that mess but floundered again and again to the point where it is an even bigger mess, in many ways, than it was shortly after Katrina. In all fairness to the stimulus bill, had it included such measures you, Rush and Bill (O'Reilly) would probably have attacked it on those grounds.




Now, while I hate to increase their viewership by adding the video below, it is a great example of how easy it is to produce clip segments so long as you use O Fortuna from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

Thanks Sean

I wanted to write a new post but I didn't watch any cable news over the weekend so I was sort of at a loss for what knucklehead to write about. That's where Sean Hannity rode in on a white horse to save the day. All I had to do was log on to http://www.foxnews.com/hannity/ and I knew I would find something that would anger me to the point that I needed to write.

His featured video is about the evils of FDR's new deal and the "lasting damange" it did to the economy. Rabid conservatives like Sean Hannity (who have no problem throwing hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars to firms like Halliburton for oil and food not supplied) are constantly trying to re-write history and attack social spending programs like the new deal. Their argument is that it didn't work, that unemployment did not drop enough during the new deal. What they ignore is what would have happened without the new deal. We wouldn't have the roads, bridges, dams and other public works projects and Sean, in all of his Limbaugh infused wisdom ignores the facts of the day, and that was massive poverty. While today's victims of the financial crisis are hurting, we have yet to see the shocking poverty that existed during the great depression. To criticize the spending that took place and to make comments as Governor Huckabee did that FDR should have let the free market correct itself, is basically saying that millions of Americans should have been left to starve...to DEATH. Sorry Sean, but sometimes you need to actually act on all those bumper stickers that say "united we stand" and stand united as a people those around you are suffering. This notion that the market will correct itself is like hoping the driver who plowed the bus into the ditch will be able to get it out. Frankly, I'd rather rely on a tow truck than that bus driver.

Karl Rove

Now that he has made the giant leap from Republican west wing schemer to Foxnews contributor Karl Rove gets to go on TV and continue to lie to the American people, something he got to practice for more than 6 years working in the White House. Last night he was on Hannity (no longer Hannity and Colmes) and got to spend some quality time with Reaganphilic Sean as they bashed Obama and the stimulus package.

Suddenly, it seems, Mr. Rove believes that deficits are bad for the country and the economy. Suddenly, after saddling my generation with hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions in debt to pay for unnecessary wars and unnecessary tax cuts for his buddies, Mr. Rove is disgusted at spending what we don't have. WTF?! At this point, I don't even mind ideologues. If there were any real ideologues left in the Republican party who actually stood up for some principle of conservatism like fiscal responsibility or balanced budgets I could respect that. I would still disagree when they say we need to balance the budget at the expense of health care and education, but I could respect the stance. When you've spent the last 8 years championing unbridled spending coupled with gratuitous tax cuts for the wealthy and all the while allowed the economy to completely flounder what business do you have to advise anyone on anything?

No less than 3 times did Mr. Rove mention that the discretionary spending by the federal government was going to expand from 300 something billion to 512 billion dollars. Why he felt the need to go over that number so many times is lost on me but perhaps he should have also listed how much we've spent on contractors like Halliburton and Blackwater and the increases in the budget those required between 2000 and now.

My biggest regret about the Obama administration so far is that I doubt he, or the Democrats in Congress will have the courage to haul you, Alberto, Dick, and the rest of your criminal administration before the American people to answer for what you've done.

Sean Hannity Gone Wild

Like many cable news junkies, I find myself in a perplexing state of (I can't believe I'm writing this) missing the days of Hannity AND Colmes. Now that he is alone Sean has seriously gone off the deep end. After whining and sobbing for years that the "LIBERAL main-stream media" was being unfair to Bush and not supporting the President. Now, less than one full week into President Obama's first term, Sean already has an entire segment attacking the administration. In the defense of the evil main stream liberal socialist communist partisan democrat tree-hugging chai drinking crunchy granola media, they at least weren't dedicating whole segments of their shows to attacking George until after the man took us into two awful wars and took away the very rights he said those poor soldiers were sent to protect.

Sean, please look over some of your old episodes and realize what a raging hypocrite you are. You aren't an ideologue because to have a real ideology takes integrity and understanding of that ideology. All you are is a stray dog that's frothing at the mouth and snapping at anything that moves. Grow up.

The real Barack Obama

To all of you who are pretending to be so shocked that Obama is shaping up to be a rather moderate President and not the rabid leftist pinko-commie Trotskyite that Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly told you he would be all I can say is, you're a moron. If you actually "drank the koolaid", as Bill is so fond of saying, and believed that President-elect Obama was a Socialist then you obviously don't know what a Socialist is. And at the same time, if you are now shocked because you had hoped he would be a radical leftist then you too are a moron.

Barack Obama is, above all else, politician. Granted, he is a phenomenally better politician than George Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin or Joe Biden, but he's still a politician. I believe he will make some great changes (or try to) for this country, and I believe that we as a nation will benefit from greater respect abroad, but he's still going to try and keep most of the country happy (or at least not angry).

He's not going to take your guns, he's not going to force you to abort your baby, he's not going to burn your church to the ground, and he certainly isn't going to get every last American soldier out of Iraq and Afghanistan in the next 4 years. These are the compromises that exist in American politics and we should be grown up enough by now to recognize them. Americans need to stop taking what they hear on the campaign trail as the gospel and start viewing it for what it is...campaigning.

At the end of the campaign Republicans were without a message so they ran ads calling Obama a risky radical. Not because they believed he was, but because they believed that would stop people from voting for him. Likewise, the Democrats pushed the notion that McCain was the same as Bush, not because they really believed it, but because they thought it would resonate with the anger people had towards this administration and be good for their candidate. If you want to be disappointed, fine. If you feel disgusted by it, fine. But it's just how the game is played.

The most important thing isn't getting someone elected but making them do right by you once they are in office. President-elect Obama has vowed to make his administration one of the most open and transparent administrations in American history. Good! Use that! Go to the websites, send emails, make phone calls and not just to his organization but to your local elected officials: your Congressman/woman, your Senators, your Governor, your state assemblyman/woman and your city councilman/woman. If you sit around with your thumb up your butt don't be surprised when nothing happens because despite what anyone says on the campaign trail, they are influenced by the voices that keep talking after the voting is done.

Some interviewers don't really want their questions answered

One of Sean Hannity's greatest skills is to rant his monologue while making it appear to be a question.  I'm not entirely sure why he does this so often.  I used to think he just did it to people who might serve him up a smack down and it was his way to run the clock out, but he even does it to people like Karl Rove so I'm at a loss.

It could just be that his massive ego requires him to fill up more than half the air time on the show, or, as I am starting to believe, it is so that he spew out a bunch of non-sequitors to communicate something to his audience.  Tonight he was talking with Karl abouthow McCain can win the necessary 270.  When they discussed Pennsylvania Sean once again brought up the comments Senator Obama made back during the primaries about the folks who cling to guns and religion.  He spent about 20 seconds rehashing this comment and then finished it up with asking how, after hearing something like that, could the people of PA ever vote for him.

Ed Rendell did a decent job of stuffing it back at Sean and before Sean could do his typical interruption Rendell shut him up by pointing out he hadn't interrupted Karl Rove.