The country's dire straits could present the Obama administration with an opportunity to achieve much needed reforms of health care, financial markets and the environment. At the same time the Republican spin machine is busy spitting out alternative do-nothing proposals disguised as actual ideas. In the face of unusual economic stress conservatives have been pitching the old familiar refrains about tax-and-spend Democrats, the need to assert budgetary controls, cut the deficit and ensure our national security.
Unusually virulent partisan rhetoric accuses President Obama of everything from the development of fascist-socialist programs to pursuit of a hidden traitorous agenda in support of 'the other side' whoever that might be. The farcical approach of right-wing media pundits isn't all that unusual; what is passing strange, however, is the willingness of party regulars to accept dangerous nonsense as if it were part of a serious debate. Apparently their idea of a big tent is a mixture of traditional ideology and gibberish.
What seems to be happening, however, is that the desperate machinations of the party machine are taking hold among a nervous public. After just six months in office, the country has grown impatient with the Obama administration's handling of the economy or so the latest polls indicate. For people who have lost jobs or homes nothing can be done fast enough to relieve their distress. It isn't easy for ordinary, hard-working Americans to understand that shoring up the financial sector had to be a first step to keeping a recession from turning into a full-blown depression. And it is even harder to accept that bankers and securities analysts who gambled away the economic health of a nation continue to receive huge salaries and bonuses for failure and deceit.
But some of the system's inherent problems are so arcane they are not easily grasped by even the most sophisticated economic practitioners. So when tea-bag enthusiasts like information-light Joe the Plumber pontificate about simple solutions to our financial plight, it is perhaps understandable that his equally uninformed audiences want very badly to believe his simplistic, hard-line rhetoric. The thicket of financial jargon and derivatives markets is simply too far outside the daily experience of most people.
What Republicans have done so well is to use public misery as a stepping-stone in hopes of making political headway even if their ideas are mostly a return to policies and programs that offer little hope of healing a wounded economy and fail to acknowledge responsibility for the part they played in the current downturn. It seems to be enough to say things still aren't going so well, and the national debt is piling up. What Democrats have failed to do is defend procedures that couldn't possibly be expected to reconstitute the fortunes of a weakened financial sector or reinstate jobs in one grand sweeping moment. Changing the too-big-to-fail syndrome and creating new kinds of business models while trying to save traditional industry jobs are goals not easily realized.
If history is any guide widespread dissatisfaction can lead to instability and a tendency of voters to turn their anger against scapegoats and political enemies in unproductive disorder. It also allows incompetence wrapped in false patriotism to claim a place on the political stage. It is astonishing to hear Republican 'strategists' say that Sarah Palin still has presidential potential despite her resignation of the Alaskan governorship and her ridiculous rationale for doing so. In that absurd tendency toward equivalence so prevalent today some point to an obscure pol from Chicago whose a meteoric rise led him to the White House - - as if there were any correlation between President Obama's credentials and the confused verbal gymnastics used by serial quitter and Queen-of-the-Wink Palin.
We are beset by a constant barrage of mindless chatter in our 24/7 media cycle. During a discussion about whether the CIA failed to provide Congress with timely and accurate information MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Thursday's Morning Joe declared, "I will defend the CIA because I love America."
Joe and the other bloviators should read a speech Senator Carl Schurz gave in Chicago in 1899. Remarking on "...the false pride...or dangerous ambitions which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism 'our country, right or wrong,' he asserted, "...the coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'our country - - when right to be kept right, when wrong to be put right." Point taken, Senator. www.Bartleby.com/73/1641.html
It's Obama's Economy Now
Sure, all of the current crap began under Bush, but there should by now be some tangible evidence (however small) that even Red Staters couldn't deny that things are improving. There is NOTHING that benefits Main St. happening right now, and the people know it. Giving away our future tax dollars to back the banks has been a failure, unemployment continues to increase as foreign companies buying into failed American firms make plans to move even more production offshore, medical care becomes harder to get, energy costs continue to climb, and we are supposed to remain patient????
I have had Republicans tell me that if Obama had paid down the troubled mortgages, the banks would still have gotten the stimulus capital they have since stashed offshore, but the accounts of the borrowers would reflect lower balances and reduce the excuses the banks are using to strangle lending. This all would have happened by now, and this would be a tangible sign that Obama's economic policies were working. He has, however, not chosen to help the little guy out in any way, and this fact is going to come back to haunt him next year when the people return the GOP to power.
Stop blaming Republicans for DINO Blue Dog Fascism
The Democrats have complete control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and now a filibuster proof Senate.
Why are you even talking about Republicans other than to call attention away from the real issues? The Republicans are nothing but powerless, irrelevant Dodos who refuse to change, even in the face of their own political extinction.
The situation we face today is enough Democrats (DINO Blue Dog Fascists), including Obama himself, have been bought and paid for by the upper 1% plutocracy via the K Street lobbyists, to once again, steal democracy away from WE THE PEOPLE.
Oops! I meant to say wee the sheeple.
That's change you can believe in that remains the same! So it doesn't matter to the Plutocracy which party is in the majority in Washington, D.C., which is the real issue that needs to be brought out in the open, and then dealt with effectively.