Obama Needs to Lead with Strength, Not Compromises

Hello Papamoka Bloggers! I'm beginning to wonder if great Democratic candidates make lousy politicians. I agree with Keith Olbermann when he said on his show last night that President Obama could be facing a serious Democratic challenger in 2012 unless he stops negotiating away real reform.

Leading Republicans are going completely insane all around us (just watch FOX "News" for a taste), providing us with plenty of opportunities to label them unreasonable wackos, yet leading Democrats like Obama and Reid insist on trying to reason with them. What the hell are they thinking? Are they nuts?

We need leadership, not negotiations - and certainly no more compromises! Unless Obama surprises us with an aggressive approach to health care reform during his speech to Congress next week, we could very well be witnessing another great Democratic defeat - a bad bill would be a defeat for many of us. The White House seems hell-bent on getting a health care deal, any health care deal, no matter how horrible the result. What the hell is that about?

Unless the White House is playing a close hand, I'm beginning to wonder if Obama was a mistake. I don't know if Hillary would have been better, but I would like to think that she may have been tougher fighting the Republicans and controlling her own party - something I see lacking with Obama.

I don't think I'm alone wanting an all-out war against the lying and cheating Republican Party today. Screw bi-partisanship! Obama needs to get tougher, and soon.

The media and the pundits could be lying, but if they are correct and the White House is intending to sacrifice extremely important Democratic Party positions in favor of a lousy compromise with a bunch of Blue Dogs (or even one or two Republicans), then we're all in trouble.

A bad bill could be worse then no bill. Most experts agree that it would signal a defeat, and the beginning of a weak presidency.

The only solution is to get tough. There's been too much compromise with their side already. To give away more is unacceptable. Find out what the Blue Dogs want and make a deal - anyway, anyhow! Everybody wants something. Offer them MONEY! Offer them POWER! Offer them whatever they freaking want! If that doesn't work, THREATEN them!

If the White House and the president agree with us that a viable public option (the only way to control costs and abuses) is the best approach to real reform, then why can't they find a way to make it happen? The Blue Dogs must need something of value besides standing their ground on this one issue.

The so-called options to the public option (triggers to form public options, regulations and oversight, etc.) are all highly questionable as to their purported effectiveness. The only way to ensure market stability and control abuse is to form a viable public option now.

Half-ass solutions would also leave the system vulnerable the instant the Republicans regain power.

The dogs need to be tamed, and somebody has to do it. I thought Obama was our man, but if he's really a wimp, then we need to find a new progressive leader. The only viable alternative at the moment would be Nancy Pelosi. She's been talking a lot lately about how a public option is non-negotiable.

Pelosi has been speaking a lot tougher than the White House. She may be my new favorite Democrat.

If Obama and his team wimp out, Nancy Pelosi will be the best candidate to carry the torch for the progressive movement. I'll admit she has been on my bad side ever since refusing to impeach Bush, but those feelings will fade each time she stands up against absurd and unnecessary compromises. Somebody in the Democratic Party needs to stand-up for what is right.

We cannot allow a handful of rural politicians to dictate terms to the rest of us. It's time to let the White House know - NO MORE COMPROMISES!

It's time for the White House to get smart and creative instead. For God's sake, figure out what the Blue Dogs want someplace else and give it to them. Any negotiator worth his salt knows there's always a work-around.

If they don't, like Olbermann said, I think they're risking their second term. I think they will be seen by most of us as unworthy of our support. They will be seen as weak by both Republicans and progressives. Like the slimy Republican Jim DeMint said, it may be their Waterloo.

Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat (and excellent campaigner) to find out that popularity and support fades quickly. Unless President Obama and his team show strength and determination on this issue, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end. I hate to sound negative, but for me, hope is already fading.

Michael Boh
Papamoka's Left Coast Contributor
from Our Rants & Raves blog

I'm Starting to Get Mad People!

Hello Papamoka Bloggers! This wonderful editorial cartoon from The Independent in London sums up my feelings about our Democratic leaders right now, and their lack of cojones when it comes to health care and the other reforms we elected them to tackle. To be blunt, I'm growing tired of the bi-partisan boob jobs. What a bunch of tards!

My Open Rant to Democratic Leaders

I know it's a tough fight against a tough enemy, but unless we see more competence, offense and strategy, we're going to start to think you guys are bought-and-paid-for just like the Republicans. We're beginning to wonder what's up people. What the hell is wrong with you?

I know many of my readers will disagree or think I'm too harsh, but come on, why do you seem to get blown away in the media by the lies and distortions of the right-wing so easily? Why can't you fight fire with fire? Why can't you fight harder? Nobody's going to blame you for it.

I think it's pretty obvious you allow yourselves to be chased, kicked around, and spat on. You guys almost seem like idiots, or worse, masochists.

Why do they always seem to win when it comes to swaying public opinion? Any good answers? Why are you so bad at getting our message out? The Republicans have a horrible record, so why can't you talk about it more? Repeat it! Beat it to death if you have to! Repetition can be a good thing.

"Civilized" responses to Republican shit-slinging is pathetic. Sling it back for God's sake. Get angry! Get passionate! Tell the truth about them! Stop acting like a bunch of gutless wimps! Demand to get on FOX "News" and FIGHT BACK against the LIES!!

Oh yea, and what about your latest offers to give up everything important, such as the public option? What kind of negotiation skills are those? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING? You seem almost incompetent, ready to give away the store. Why?

President Obama, Pelosi and Reid better have a good plan, because right now you all seem like a bunch of rank amateurs. It's hard to tell what the hell you're thinking!

Btw, the only improvement to that cartoon might be to put Harry Reid on top of the donkey, since he seems to be encouraging all the running these days. He's our biggest pussy of all. I'm beginning to think he's a Republican spy.

It's true the Republicans and their propaganda machine are large and scary, but where's the damn leadership we voted for? Grow a pair you bunch of overly sensitive political hacks! Get out there and fight fire with fire! Get nasty if you have to!

Once again, many readers will think I'm too harsh, but I'm tired of losing. I say counter their lies and deceit with our own "spin" about their motives and intentions. Tell the truth about their horrible records! Talk about their horrible history!

DO SOMETHING!!! Get the freaking job done! Stop running away and stand up for what is right! Republican assholes are laughing at us for God's sake!

We gave you our money, time, energy and votes! I know you're each a little different in some ways, but FIND SOME COMMON GROUND - to lower costs - AND BEAT THOSE LYING CHEATING BASTARDS OR GET THE HELL OUT OF WASHINGTON!

Michael Boh
Papamoka's Left Coast Contributor
from Our Rants & Raves Blog

PS - I hope I'm wrong and that President Obama and the leadership know what they're doing, but I'm afraid that may be too much to hope for. Unless we see some improvement, hope is a luxury I can't afford right now.

What is Pelosi Hiding

When it comes to this nation using torture, authorizing its use, and engaging or contemplating in the practice of torture, political parties on both sides of the aisle are showing severe signs of guilt and our representatives in our government, based on the land of the free are not innocent by any means. Even leaders in high positions in our Congress such as the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is waffling on what she knew and how she knew it. Speaker Pelosi is dodging the Sunday news shows that more or less ask the most pertinent questions based on the latest issues. Running from them is a sign of guilt in my honest opinion and Speaker Pelosi has refused all interviews for Sunday.

Pelosi turns down Sunday show invitations
By Emily Goodin
Posted: 05/16/09 03:03 PM [ET]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) turned down invitations to be on several Sunday morning talk shows and is instead spending the weekend with her family.

The Speaker was invited to appear on NBC's "Meet the Press,” ABC's "This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to sources at the networks.

One source said Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be attending her granddaughter's first communion in Phoenix on Sunday. - The Hill

Video Link


A person in the position of Speaker of the House has to be very careful what they say and how they say it. Speaker Pelosi claims that she was never told the truth by the CIA on the issue of torture and when it was first raised under the Bush Presidency and yet the new Director of the CIA under President Obama claims she was told the truth. So who is telling the truth? I’m betting my poker chips on neither and just folding my hand. That doesn’t make me a fool, it just lets me play the next set of cards and study who is better at bluffing the media into thinking that Pelosi is innocent, the CIA is innocent, or that former Vice President Cheney was a political guru in manipulating the media once more. When everything is said and done, Cheney went on the Sunday morning news shows, he pointed out his reasons to defend torture. (I still think he is the Anti-Christ) So why is Speaker Pelosi avoiding the Sunday news circuit when it could clear her of any doubt?

If Speaker Pelosi has nothing to hide then I’m sure that the networks would have been willing to accommodate her for a delayed broadcast if she had personal family obligations. All of the networks would have flown their crews to her. This is the news story for the week! And yes a grandchild’s first communion is a valid reason for not attending the Sunday news requests for a guest spot. And yet something still smells funny and I can’t put my fingers on it.

If you look at the torture issue with an open political mind then many people are guilty of compliance and allowing it to happen. No political party is innocent and it was a severe lack in judgment by all affiliated with our nation endorsing and using torture against an enemy that has no qualms against killing thousands for the sake of their twisted belief in God. Is President Obama wrong to think that this issue, all of the people involved and prosecuted under his predecessors orders could be detrimental to moving on and making sure that it never happens again?

If we are to be true to ourselves as Liberal American’s then we need to look at those amongst us that have not served the standards we expect our leaders to stand up to. If the Speaker of the House has a clear conscience then she should have gone out of her way to clear her name on Saturday when she was available and then had the full right to have chucked the bird at the Sunday news shows.

What are you hiding Speaker Pelosi? This Liberal Democrat wants to know! And how does this help Darth Cheney and President Bush look innocent when it comes to torture? Is Speaker Pelosi playing right into the Cheney mastermind of the media? We shall see. Or as my cousin Jules says, only God will ever know.

Papamoka

Thanks to Memeorandum for the hat tip!

Pelosi Travel Gate NOT Busted

ABC News has tracked down all the documentation on Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her use of Military aircraft and the results are shocking! Apparently the Speaker fly’s back home to San Francisco about once a month. I’m shocked! I’m outraged and disgusted at this abuse of our military. Who the hell does Nancy Pelosi think she is? Um… third in line to the President, you say? And this practice of the Speaker of the House using military aircraft was instituted after 9/11 to secure the succession of our government should another terrorist organization attack our government. Well I didn't know that. Never mind this near miss controversy.

It turns out that Judicial Watch, who originally broke the case has overblown the situation and never looked at the comparison factor of one Denny Hastert, AKA former GOP Speaker of the House. Denny racked up frequent flyer miles every single weekend but that fact is lacking in the Judicial Watch report. It looks like this sword cuts both ways but one of them was really taking advantage of the service.

Just when the Mini Publicans thought they had a beauty of a scandal it turns out they shot themselves in the foot… again! Open mouth, insert bloody foot.

Thank you Memorandum for the tip!

Papamoka

Other folks talking about this issue:

Snopes

Crisis, Republicrats, and "Change" Elites Can Believe In

As the saying goes, I don't come around here much any more. It's not for lack of interest. To the contrary, my interest in the political health and happenings is as strong as ever. Certain things beyond my control limit my ability to write. So you might say I'd have to get fairly fired up to print anything.

No one was more pleased on November 4th last year to see Barack Obama win the presidency. For, like many, I believed. I believed an unprecedented crisis called for a cessation of "more of the same." The nation simply can't afford it. I repeatedly said that if Barack Obama turns out to be another Bill Clinton; we're screwed. Not since March of 1933, when Herbert Hoover handed a flaming torch to Franklin Roosevelt has there been such a stark choice put before those who govern.

That is, play the same game, side-tracking onto issues that fit an ideology, or really DO something about the steady, corrosive dismantling of the middle class in America. The people of the United States do not have the luxury of pretending that this whole mess is just a little hiccup on the road to "recovery"...that is, recovering the status quo prior to the economic collapse in September 2008. In fact, the collapse was nothing more than the end result of 40 years of separating politics from economics.

Mr. Obama has not even assumed the office of president, and already the signs are there of the choice being made. Same 'ole same 'ole....throw the old bums out; put the new bums in, as Stephen King put it once. The first is the S-CHIP program, voted on this week. It involves a $33 billion dollar budget for a very laudable and worthy program. However, in light of current events there is something disconcerting about depending so strongly upon tobacco taxes.

S-CHIP will benefit those of lower incomes who make too much for Medicaid yet not enough to afford private insurance. Congress (and the new President) are ensuring an extension and expansion of S-CHIP by levying a huge tax increase on the lower economic strata. It's simply a fact that most smokers are not well off; in fact most are not far above or are below the poverty line. But smoking is evil, etc., and that's just too bad. After all, it's .....FOR THE CHILDREN!!

So our new government is going to transfer a huge amount of money from the bottom and to the bottom. Now that is an exchange any Wall Street banker can believe in.

Additionally, President-elect Obama is making noises about "fiscal responsibility" that involve Social Security and Medicare. Granted, Medicare is a mess, especially after that ridiculously irresponsible "drug benefit" launched by an idiot president and an equally idiotic congress.

But Social Security has been stolen from EVERY YEAR since the mid-1960's. Remember, even the "surpluses" at the end of the Cinton years wouldn't have looked so rosy if the money stolen from Social Security was not included. If the word "stolen" seems a little excessive, I'm just quoting the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, testifying before a senate committee many years ago, made that claim. I clearly remember him telling the committee that if General Motors was doing with their pension funds what the congress was doing with Social Security, the board of directors would have been in prision a long time ago. But, legality is not a problem when you're the ones making the laws.

Nevertheless, the Obama administration is making it clear that this "Grand Bargain" is going to require some people in the country to bend over. And it isn't going to happen on Wall Street.

So lately I'm asking myself what the difference is between this new era of "change" and the status quo? A Democratic Party that is more like the Republican Party means the change is in the rhetoric, not the substance. Peeing on my leg and telling me it's raining is not change.

I personally don't matter. The nation matters. And if, through stupidity and myopia the "leaders" in government kow-tow to the elites who have fairly well run us over a cliff and into a manure pile, ....well that DOES matter.

War, Veterans and Unemployment Funds

In a typical Washington D.C. style of diplomacy and legislative ignorance the war in Iraq is funded, veterans from the war get a GI Bill for education, and the unemployed get and extension of benefits. Senate President Harry Reid was right, you don’t get services for Americans or Veterans if it isn’t attached to a bottomless pit called the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I talked about this a while back here.

Domestic Spending Intact as House Passes War Bill

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2008; Page A03

In a pair of bipartisan votes, the House yesterday approved $162 billion to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well into 2009 and a separate measure that would allow veterans returning from those battlefields to receive increased education benefits.

The domestic spending measure, approved 416 to 12, also includes a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance for laid-off workers who have used all 26 weeks of their current benefits, and $2.65 billion for Midwest flood relief.

"It became clear this is what we had to do," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during debate over the bill. "I will enthusiastically vote for the domestic piece of this."

The emergency spending bill -- which authorizes $95.5 billion for the unemployment and veterans benefits and a variety of other programs -- heads to the Senate, where leaders say it could be approved next week.

After weeks of gridlocked negotiations, President Bush threw his support behind the legislation yesterday despite the tens of billions of dollars in domestic spending above his original demands. Despite his original preference for a slimmed-down version, Bush embraced the veterans' plan drafted by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), then demanded that the education benefit be transferable from veterans to military spouses and children -- adding an estimated $1 billion a year to its cost. - Washington Post


What will be interesting is to see how the political candidates in the race for President vote on this spending bill in the Senate. This is a catch 22 piece of legislation. If Obama votes for it then he is putting his name to the war in Iraq, if he votes against it then he is telling the unemployed and veterans to get lost. Same scenario goes for McCain. Vote for it and he is all for another hundred years in Iraq, vote against it and he is bashing the veteran base he allegedly loves to vote against time and time again.

On the other side of this coin is the current resident of the White House who has all of a sudden found this is legislation he can sign with pride. Do ya think the money that will find it’s way into the coffers of his and Dick’s bank account has anything to do with it?

I don’t even want to think about what Bush’s signing statement will look like!

Papamoka

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Unemployment Extension, Veteran Benefits, VA, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Bush, Senate Votes, House Votes, Congress, John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Education of Veterans, Washington Post, Paul Kane

Clarification Of The Damage Done To The Republic

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

In a recent post, CANDIDATE FATIGUE, I wrote something that a reader at THE GUN TOTING LIBERAL asked me to clarify:

“This may be an old refrain, but it does not serve the republic well when the greater good of the nation is forsaken in order to provide relief for numerous complaints. Said complaints having been institutionalized through organizations whose focus is extremely narrow. And in many cases damaging to the republic, and what is stands for. Or used to, anyway.”

In answering the reader's question about clarification I will refer you to a piece by Gaius at BLUE CRAB BOULEVARD. Entitled "Common Sense On Common Language," one can get a close look of what I was referring to:

John Fund comments again today on the deal Nancy Pelosi made with the Hispanic Caucus to kill a bipartisan amendment to a funding bill that provides money to FBI, NASA and Justice Department. That amendment would have indemnified the Salvation Army and other employers from efforts by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to penalize them for enforcing English language requirements in the workplace (original post here.). The Hispanic Caucus had refused to vote for a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax bill if Pelosi didn't kill the amendment. Fund points out the destructiveness of the position taken by the Hispanic Caucus - to Hispanics and other immigrants.

SNIP,

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), who authored the now-stalled amendment to prohibit the funding of EEOC lawsuits against English-only rules, is astonished at the opposition he's generated. Rep. Joe Baca (D., Calif.), chair of the Hispanic Caucus, boasted that "there ain't going to be a bill" including the Alexander language because Speaker Pelosi had promised him the conference committee handling the Justice Department's budget would never meet. So Sen. Alexander proposed a compromise, only requiring that Congress be given 30 days notice before the filing of any EEOC lawsuit. "I was turned down flat," he told me. "We are now celebrating diversity at the expense of unity. One way to create that unity is to value, not devalue, our common language, English."

Gaius' post is listed under "Immigration Reform," which on the face of it is accurate enough. However, this goes beyond the issue of immigration. It is a good example of how the special interests of a particular group can quite effectively weaken the glue that holds the republic together.

What Nancy Pelosi (that great defender of American Somoa tuna cannery workers) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus did was to further ensure that the great melting pot of the past is now a great big salad bar. Or more precisely, a neo-Tower of Babel.

Millions of Americans, facing the ever-growing net of the Alternative Minimum Tax, were held hostage by the Hispanic Caucus. Not that funding for the FBI, NASA, or the Justice Department mean much to us, either.

No, what was more important was the temporary placating of a group of legislators bent on what they perceive as a greater loyalty: their ethnic group's right to refuse to assimilate. That goes WAY beyond mere "immigration." It involves the future of the nation and how it will be in a generation or two.

That's one thing I failed to point out in my original post. Candidate and officeholders today give no true thought to the future; only the here and now. Our "representatives" take what gifts our ancestors passed to us as a birthright (which it is NOT) and could care less about those who follow us.

We are swiftly becoming a nation of men and women, not laws. On that premise alone we are dismantling that nation. I won't hear of a "better nation because of it" since there won't BE a nation to debate about.

Anticipating the presidential election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln observed that should his opponent win, he would do his best to preserve the republic between the election and inauguration day, as his opponent could only win by ending it.

The forces of destruction are not always in the physical. Tried and true bad thinking, no matter the perceived good intent, have done as much damage to governments as any invading army.

Is it any longer possible to expect people living in this nation to forsake their ethnicity long enough to be Americans?

Is it asking too much?
*************************
Cross-posted at Michaellinnjones.com

YES, THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE WAS THE MAIN REASON I VOTED IN 2006

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

There are those who condemn the Democrats for not ending the Iraq War upon assumption of Congressional power after the 2006 elections. I've always felt that, as unpleasant as it may be, we must be realistic about what Congress can actually do. A presidency without oversight for years is a dangerous thing. Restoring some semblance of that is constitutionally justified; an absolutely necessary.

Now we're being given a lesson in Congressional irresponsibility. Take your pick among the different stories, but I found this one by Brian Knowlton of the International Herald Tribune: U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER VOWS DEBATE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION.

WASHINGTON: The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives insisted Sunday that she would bring to the full chamber a resolution condemning the killings of Armenians nearly a century ago as genocide, even as a Turkish general warned that this could lastingly damage a military relationship crucial to American forces in Iraq.

A House committee Wednesday passed a nonbinding resolution declaring the killings, which began in 1915 in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, to be genocide, and the speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, said Sunday that "I've said if it passed the committee that we would bring it to the floor."

SNIP,

If Pelosi does bring the matter to the full House, probably late this month or next month, it would be "the most irresponsible thing" to come from Congress this year, said Representative John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the House minority leader.

"There's no question that the suffering of the Armenian people some 90 years ago was extreme," he said on Fox-Television. But that chapter in Turkey's past, Boehner added, "ought to be a subject for historians to sort out, not politicians."

An ABC-TV interviewer put to Pelosi the tough question at the core of the debate: What if forcing a vote on the resolution were to endanger the security of American troops in Iraq?

"Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values - Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, torture," said the California congresswoman, whose district includes thousands of Armenian-Americans. "Our troops are well-served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect people have for us as a nation."

SNIP,

Representative Steny Hoyer , Democrat of Maryland, the House majority leader, said he hoped Turks would understand that the resolution was not aimed at modern-day Turkey or its people. But he seemed to imply that the economic and political costs to Turkey of cutting off U.S. access might be so great that it might ultimately back down.

"Turkey's help to us is vital," he said on Fox TV, but "more vital is the United States' help to Turkey."

Eight former U.S. secretaries of state oppose the resolution, and on Sunday, former President Jimmy Carter joined them.

"I think if I was in Congress I would not vote for it," he said on CNN.

It's a strange day when I find myself in agreement with John Boehner, eight former secretaries of state, and former President Jimmy Carter. There are many definitions of maturity, one of them being the process of anticipating the consequences of our actions before we actually take such actions.

As someone with an avid interest in history, I am always saddened and outraged by man's inhumanity to man. Josef Stalin once said that killing one man is murder; killing a million is a statistic. Stalin was right and wrong; when the numbers of victims reach into the millions it is impossible to grasp the true horror of mass deaths.

But let me say that I am horrified by the needless deaths of millions of Irish during the great hunger of the 19th century. The Irish "Famine" as it's known is not accurate because while people were literally collapsing and dying from hunger, wheat was being exported from that country. The Holocaust, the systematic extermination of Jews, the millions murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the millions slaugtered by Stalin BEFORE World War II, the millions who died under the tutelage of that moron Mao Tse Tung, the suffering of Native Americans......I could go on for pages and never finish listing all the atrocities.

The suffering of the Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century was no less nor no more horrible than other instances of the callous application of power. For the Congress to take up a resolution NOW, aimed at what is purported to be an important ally which just happens to be a NEIGHBOR OF IRAQ, is one of the more bone-headed things I've ever heard of.

Like it or not, foreign policy is determined by the president. It is not wise, or mature, for Congress to alienate a nation that the president is trying to work with during combat operations. For this I voted for Democrats in 2006? I don't think so.

One comedian said that Congress was issuing a strong warning to the Ottoman Empire. But it's true, that's exactly what they're doing. How stupid would it appear if Congress passed a resolution condemning Britain for what happened in Ireland between 1854 and 1865? What purpose would it serve other than to unnecessarilly anger and alienate a nation that only shares the name of those who caused such suffering?

For once in his life John Boehner is right: it is a matter for historians, not politicians to debate. Nancy Pelosi is illustrating Harry Truman's point about a "do nothing Congress."

More precisely, this Congress is turning out to be more of a "do something worse than nothing."

Is there such a thing as a voter's refund?
****************
Cross posted at Michael Linn Jones.com

This post kindly featured at MemeOrandum

PELOSI & REID FOLLOWING A PATH TO IRRELEVANCY

By Michael Linn Jones

Ever heard of Al Smith? He was once governor of New York, and the first Roman Catholic in a major party to run for the presidency. This was in 1928, and he was nominated by Franklin Roosevelt. That year Roosevelt won election as governor of New York himself.

Smith lost the election to Herbert Hoover. Some might say the nation lost the election, too, considering what followed. In 1932 Smith was one of Roosevelt's rivals for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. In the years that followed Smith was a strong opponent of Roosevelt's New Deal. For all of his progressive attitudes of that time, Smith was a firm believer in government action needing the close cooperation of business.

FDR was born rich. Al Smith was a classic rags-to-riches story. One of the problems with rags-to-riches is that many forget all about the rags as soon as they see the riches. Al Smith was far from being a bad man; in fact, a good one really but not in step with the realities facing the nation at that time. As President of the Empire State Building, Smith found himself in the circle of the wealthy. And, according to historian William Manchester, he liked it. (THE GLORY & THE DREAM, VOL.1)

Brevity requires an injustice to the memory of Governor Smith, but certain aspects of his career remind me of the current Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. It can be very difficult to articulate some thoughts; to put them into words that capture both the meaning and emotion. Here is my best shot:

The election results of 2006 was a message of sorts. A lot of people were fed up. Yes, Iraq was a big topic but not the only one. Voters weren't exactly on the war path yet were also beyond patience. After six years of a presidency that was somewhat short of competence and honesty, along with a Republican Congress that was more cooperative than Hitler's Reichstag, people wanted a strong gulp of Jack Daniels.

What they've gotten is near-beer. The highly-touted Democratic victory in 2006 is a Roman Candle that is sputtering. And with very few sparks. House Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid have a big problem. The majority of the people who allowed them to gain the positions they now hold are not represented. That is, the voters.

No, there will be no talk of impeachment; no talk of de-funding the Iraq War (which is the ONLY recourse of Congress, really) nor anything else that might rock the boat. For that boat floats upon the invisible sea of campaign cash. In order for their nets to continue to haul in a harvest, that boat must be stable. The rules of life in America (which they write) must remain essentially the same.

When something needs to be done, there is something worse than doing nothing. And that is to APPEAR to be doing something when in fact doing little more than nothing. And THAT is the story of the Lilliputian Legistature in 2007. The boat remains steady, the nets keep hauling in the silent harvest, and a holding pattern is established that awaits the self-destruction of the Republicans.

In times past, there were convergence points; economic and social forces removed the status quo from the stage. It usually is unpleasant but somehow inevitable. In Europe, 1848 was such a time, not to mention the French Revolution.

Here, there is the Civil War, the Great Depression, and 1968. That particular year is relevant because that is when the Democratic Party started to dissolve from being a voice of millions to a thousand voices of narrow-minded interest groups. The glue that held the party together was diluted on purpose.

The years the Democrats spent out of power were not so much because of the effectiveness of the Republicans (which was considerable nonetheless) so much as their own slide to irrelevancy. What mattered to the party didn't matter to the people. Or vice versa.

Despite all the political science and election specialists, there are forces that build, much like along a geological fault line. They can be ignored (and usually are) for a very long time. But sooner or later those in power discover that their usual remedies no longer work. When the balance is lost no one knows what will happen.

But like Al Smith, Pelosi and Reid and all those they truly represent (and they are NOT "little people") have climbed to the heights and find they like it there. The rarified air of power not only corrupts, but blinds.

In the end, misused power has no power at all. It just creates a vacuum that will be filled by radical change. That does not always equate with wisdom or good.

****************************

Cross posted at Michael Linn Jones.com & The Van Der Galien Gazette