The Republican Party’s 12-Step Platform for ’12

(In no particular order)

1. Tax cuts for the wealthy

2. Curtailment of female reproductive rights

3. Repeal of Health Care Reform and, ultimately, social safety nets

4. Privatization of everything (see above)

5. Crush unions

6. Start least one more war

7. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

8. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

9. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

10. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

11. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

12. Obama is an uppity —— who hates America

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Liberals for Romney: The Accidental SuperPac

The right to vote—the very foundation of the American idea—is drenched in blood, something precious beyond value, for which men and women have fought, suffered and died. The franchise is a right once confined to white male property owners, and only after centuries of struggle was it extended to African-Americans, women, and all other citizens over the age of 18.

Now, all across the nation, Republican state governments are waging war on voting. Using the ruse of “voter fraud”—an invented non-crisis—GOP governors and legislatures, many of them installed in the 2010 elections, are ramming through Voter ID laws that may suppress turnout by several million in 2012. These laws disproportionately affect the elderly, infirm, minorities, the poor and students—most historically Democratic constituencies. In many cases, voters who have cast ballots for decades must now obtain and produce new forms of identification in order to make their voices heard. Often this requires travel and considerable cost—effectively, an unconstitutional poll tax—and a descent into Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

The goal, of course, is that millions of potentially Democratic voters will throw their hands up, surrender—and stay home on Election Day.

The goal, of course, is to defeat Barack Obama.

It’s an old story. The GOP has always sought to suppress turnout. What’s tragic is that the right wing is receiving some unexpected help—from some of our friends on the left.

Disappointed that the President has not ushered in a progressive utopia, some liberals in the media and in cyberspace are encouraging their compatriots to stay home, or perhaps, waste their votes on quixotic “Obama alternatives” like Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Despite unbending opposition from GOP filibusterers in the Senate, and a radical Tea Party House, President Obama has forged a record of domestic legislative accomplishment unsurpassed since the Great Society era of Lyndon Johnson. He saved the American auto industry—and saved America from a second Great Depression.  Millions more Americans will have health coverage—saving untold lives. Gays and Lesbians can now serve openly in the military. In the area of foreign policy the Obama years have seen the end of Osama bin Laden and many  other al Qaeda leaders, the fall of Ghadafy, the end of the Iraq War and a drawdown in Afghanistan. And the Obama administration has ushered in a new era of “smart power”—an antidote to the cowboy neoconservatism that brought on one needless war, another grossly mismanaged and prolonged conflict, thousands of deaths and the accumulation of massive debt. Not to mention the diminishment of America’s standing in the world.

I do not assert for a minute that President Obama is beyond criticism. I have been frustrated at times by his over-willingness to compromise with uncompromising foes, among other things, as well as the Big Pharma deal and a failure to address adequately the foreclosure crisis. But I would take Barack Obama on his worst day before turning the country over to a radicalized, right wing Republican party.

Some liberals seem to think otherwise. They are miffed that Obama hasn’t broken up the big banks and prosecuted Wall Street malefactors who destroyed the economy. They are miffed that he hasn’t closed Gitmo, and that he signed the NDAA. They are miffed that he “caved” on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (never mind that everyone else’s taxes would also have risen). They are miffed about his environmental record, and the Keystone Pipleline. They are miffed that he has not come out strongly for marriage equality—even though he repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and has ceased to defend DOMA.

They are miffed that he hasn’t beaten the crap out of Dick Cheney.

All those criticisms have validity. What does not is the response of some disappointed, self-styled progressives: To elect the likely GOP nominee, Willard Mitt Romney.

Oh, they haven’t come out and said it. But the liberal pundits who—like spurned lovers—daily trash the President, who urge progressives to stay home and “send a message,” or vote for a doomed third party candidate, or write in Pat Paulsen—they are essentially wearing Romney 2012 buttons.

For anyone to the left of Joe Scarborough, this is sheer folly. The notion that “they’re all alike” and that a vote for Obama is cast for  “the lesser of two evils” is patently absurd.

Look what’s happening in Congress and across the country. Not only are voting rights under siege, but…

The right wing has waged war on women’s health and reproductive rights—God help the rape or incest victim who seeks to terminate a pregnancy. Even birth control might be imperiled

Republicans advocate the destruction of social safety nets, privatization that will force many seniors and working Americans into poverty. Their “trickle down” policies have yielded historic income inequality—can you imagine what life would be like under Mitt “Bain Capital” Romney?

The radical GOP has also waged war on unions and workers—advocating not only the elimination of the minimum wage and workplace rights, but a rollback of child labor laws. Yes, for the love of God, child labor laws.

A Republican-dominated government would  see the end of myriad environmental and safety regulations—making Barack Obama look like Bill McKibben.

LGBT? Tough. If the GOP has its way, DADT will be reinstated and marriage equality will become a hopeless cause—and Dan Choi can chain himself to the White House gates till Doomsday

Disappointed with Obama’s record on civil liberties? Try your luck with a GOP administration.

What of the Supreme Court? Imagine the ramifications if Romney appoints two more conservatives: A 7-2 right wing majority that, for many of us, will last the rest of our lives.

And, lest we forget, foreign policy: Mitt Romney will bet you 10 grand that within the next four years we will be at war with Iran—or Syria, or someone else—if he’s elected.

Elections have consequences. Several hundred fewer liberal Ralph Nader voters in 2000 might have saved us the Bush years. A bit less liberal apathy in 2010—especially at the state level—might have spared us Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Snyder and Rick Scott, not to mention a House full of teabagging wingnuts.

Liberals, before you stay home or throw your vote away, think. Would you rather press President Obama for the next four years—or surrender the country to the Dark Side.

That’s what I call “caving.”

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On Gingrich: Dems—Stop With the Victory Dance Already

In 1976, shortly after Jimmy Carter was elected president and the post-Watergate GOP lay in ruins, there was an episode of All in the Family in which Archie and Meathead argue over the election. Archie, of course, has the last word—and the final line of the show:

“Yeah—we’ll you’re gonna get Reagan in ’80!!!”

It was meant, of course, as a laugh line—pathetic and absurd. And—whether enhanced in the studio or not—it achieved the desired guffaws, chortles, et. al.

Well, we know how that one turned out.

I’m reminded of that episode today, as Newt Gingrich surges to the top of the GOP pack. Many of my fellow liberals in the media are crowing, rubbing their hands in glee, and all but doing a victory dance—a year early—over the prospect of corrupt, caddish Newtie going up against President Obama. Rachel Maddow—whom I love dearly—crows about it most every night. Pundit after pundit—Republicans included—dismiss Gingrich as unelectable.

Maybe they’re right. They probably are. Newt’s bubble may burst well before Iowa.

But please, Democrats, liberal and otherwise: Don’t spike the ball yet. Despite his titanic flaws, we might still get Gingrich in ’12.

I say this not only because I’m superstitious and constitutionally pessimistic—on Election Night 2008, I sat with my wife in a Barnes & Noble café until I’d learned from the barista that Obama had won Pennsylvania and Ohio, and only then raced home to watch the returns, and savor Keith Olbermann’s announcement of my candidate’s resounding victory.

I clung to this pessimism because I simply did not think this country would elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. This despite all the polls, despite the fact that some weeks before the election, a friend of mine who’d appeared on a show with GOP strategist Ed Rollins, had relayed to me that a disgusted Rollins had said off-camera, “It’s over.”

But even leaving aside my own neuroses, there are plenty of reasons to be very afraid. The President could be undone, Newt notwithstanding, by any number of factors, such as

1. GOP economic sabotage continuing to work
2. The Europe mess
3. FOX news—and friends; yes, they were there in ’08, but the propaganda and disinformation juggernaut is larger, more virulent than ever. And remember, there was no Tea Party in 2008.
4. The other mainstream media: They’re sloppy, lazy and terrified of being labeled “liberal.” Hence the false equivalencies, etc.
5. Citizen’s United, which has given ALEC, Rove et. al., unlimited influence. Next time liberals bash Obama for going to a big-ticket fundraiser, keep this in mind. We’d love to get money out of politics—but for the moment, it’s very much here.
6. Race: A recent study concluded that Obama lost 5 points because of racism. Do the math. And Newt Gingrich, an angry old white guy, is the perfect candidate to channel Caucasian hate and rage.
7. Voter Suppression: One of the dire consequences of the 2010 elections has been the dominance of the Right Wing agenda on the state and local level. Using the ruse of near nonexistent voter fraud, there is a coordinated—and downright evil—attempt by Republicans to make it difficult for minorities, the elderly and young people to vote. Of course, this chiefly affects constituencies far more likely to vote for Barack Obama
8. Liberal self-sabotage: I am not one of those people who says that one must never criticize the President. I disagree with many of the things he’s done. But at some point before the election, Cenk Ugyur, Bernie Sanders (my favorite Senator), Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and all those aggrieved lefty bloggers had better lighten up. Liberal disaffection and apathy may well have played a role in the 2010 debacle. That was disastrous. In 2012 it could be catastrophic. The GOP is doing enough to suppress Democratic turnout. Let’s not abet them. If Romney or Gingrich wins, you will beg for Obama on his worst day
9. Maybe Newt isn’t so unelectable: Americans tend to have short memories, and believe in second (or third) chances. Perhaps even for someone who got kicked out of Congress, did shady deals, supports child labor, and dumped his cancer-stricken wife on her hospital bed. What Newt has going for him is the appearance of strength. Americans like that—more, perhaps, than the cringing, dissembling, waffling displays of Willard Mitt Romney.
10. Wild cards, domestic or international

There are other hazards, of course. At bottom, I believe—much as I genuinely love Joe Biden—that the only way to ensure the President’s reelection is for him to run with Hillary Clinton. He’d take heat for having her bail him out. But I believe it would secure most every swing state.

That’s not going to happen. In my heart, I believe the President will be reelected anyway.

But in the meantime, don’t gloat over Gingrich.

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2012: The Old White Guys’ Last Stand

The 2012 Presidential Election is all about the hot steaming pile we call the American economy, stupid, right? Whether you blame President Obama or the Republican obstructionists who would sacrifice the nation just to destroy him. It’s all about the unemployment rate and the debt and revenue and entitlements and the GDP and the Tea Party and Wall Street and #OWS and the one percent and the 99 percent—in sum, as Keith Olbermann now signs off each night, the day after day of “this crap” we’re all trying to get through.

On a broader scale the election is also about the wars on women, labor and voting rights. It’s about repealing the 20^th century, whether a Right Wing coup will take us back to a Kochian-utopia circa 1893, when folks worked in sweatshops—and liked it, goddammit—for magnates and robber barons and other plutocrats who threw parties at Sherry’s and Delmonico’s and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish’s —and essentially ruled the earth (even more than now).

And it was about an America where “our blacks,” as Ann Coulter so Ann Coulteresquely put it, knew their place.

Indeed, as much as anything—perhaps more—the 2012 election is about race.

For three years, we have heard the Right vow to “take this country back.” We have heard endless other coded messages—“dog whistles,” they call them these days— reinforcing the fact that Barack Hussein Obama is an uppity African-American. Aside from the racist signs and blogs and GOP emails, and the efforts  to paint this moderate (too much so for much of his base), reasonable, enlightened man as a wild-eyed radical who does not believe in “American exceptionalism,” there is (still, remarkably) “birtherism”—a racially-charged lunatic conspiracy theory designed to smear him as an “other” or even a Manchurian Candidate foreign agent.

There have also been the systematic attempts by leading Republicans to delegitimize the President—the “You lie!”style dissing by members of Congress–including Speaker Boehner, who historically denied the Commander-in-Chief  his preferred date to address a Joint Session.

And now, as Rick Perry would phrase it, they’re “having some fun” with his grades—for, after all, how could a black man legitimately make it through two Ivy League Schools, head the Harvard Law Review and teach constitutional law?

The GOP is a white man’s party, still pursuing its pernicious Southern Strategy (which certainly works in states like Mississippi, where a recent poll showed that 46 percent of Republicans either believe interracial marriage should be illegal, or aren’t sure). There are exceptions, so few you can name them. Some well-paid TV pundits. Michael Steele. Wingnuts like Alan Keyes and Allen West.

And then there is  Herman Cain. Whether or not you dismiss him as a “minstrel” providing the GOP cover against charges of racism–as the African-American writer Toure has said; or as just another part of the Republican sideshow, no one can take this demonstrably ignorant carny barker for real presidential candidate.

And of course there is his campaign commercial. Not the “cigarette man” spot, but the one nobody talks about–the climax of which shows a white redneck punching out a black man.

No, the real candidates are two 60-something white guys, one a plutocratic Mormon—and while I wouldn’t brand him racist, his sect  has, certainly, a complicated racial track record; the other a states rights Texan who sees nothing wrong with confederate flags, secession talk and rocks inscribed “N—–head.”

So, Barack Obama, who had the temerity to defeated an old white guy in 2008, will likely  face another in 2012. Should he lose, God forbid, they’ll get their country back—or so it will seem for a time.

But the national complexion is changing—it’s getting browner, and there is nothing Pat Buchanan or the racist wing of the Tea Party, or Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump or the Florida GOP can do about it.

 

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#OWS: If the Right Wing Elites Win in 2012: There Will Be Blood

The other night, my beautiful wife was crossing a Greenwich Village street; a group of Occupy Wall Street marchers had just passed by, peacefully chanting and carrying signs en route to Union Square.

My wife crossed on the green—and came within an inch of losing her life: A NYC motorcycle cop—chasing after the protesters—ran the red light at high speed. A slight move the wrong way and…

We are supporters of #OWS, horrified by the gross inequality and corruption in our system—though we haven’t walked the walk and marched (yet). At the same time, we’ve always been fans of the NYPD and Commissioner Ray Kelly, who have helped transform our long-maligned city into one of the nation’s safest. I believe we have an excellent police force, and that the overwhelming percentage of our NYC cops does a fine, honorable job. I have never had a bad experience with a New York City police officer.

But here and elsewhere—Oakland, most egregiously—an overreaction to OWS has unleashed authoritarian demons reminiscent of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the dogs and hoses of Bull Connor.  Perhaps a few bad apple cops are getting paid off by Wall Street; perhaps it’s the post-9/11 mindset, in which “security” sometimes trumps civil rights.

Or perhaps it’s because the spirit of social protest has been awakened after decades of post-Vietnam slumber, decades during which, beginning with the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan, a passive populace allowed “trickle down economics” to crush the national spirit at home, true “class warfare” creating today’s historic income inequality while neoconservative ideologues embarked on devastating misadventures abroad. And those who should have known better—Democrats, in other words—looked the other way, fearful of being branded “liberal,” a word twisted and corrupted to denote permissive, drugged out, anti-American, tree-hugging, promiscuous, baby-killers—oh, and they’re soft on defense, too.

Maybe it’s been so long since we’ve seen anything like this that our authorities can’t cope. They don’t know how to respond. Most of our cops and many of our public officials know nothing but a post-Vietnam, indeed, post-Reagan America.

What of the Tea Party? Well, it was stoked—perhaps even invented—by powerful moneyed interests, the Kochs and the ALEC types, who played on fear (as the Right always does)—especially fear of an uppity you-know-what with an exotic name.

Add the validation of a complicit media, and the fact that some of the Teabaggers brought guns to presidential events or spit on Members of Congress—including civil rights icon John Lewis—well, that was just Democracy in Action.  OWS, on the other hand? That’s dangerous unrest. Even though the former represented an overhyped fringe funded by Big Money, and the latter represents a huge majority—99 percent, in fact—of a nation that just can’t take getting crapped on anymore.

How this plays out depends largely on what happens in November 2012. I am a Barack Obama supporter still—yes, I have disappointments, yes, I understand that he’s been too tied to the banks, and I wonder why, of all the capable, progressive minds who have passed through his administration, he’s hanging onto Wall Street insider Timothy Geithner.

But there is no other choice. To throw up one’s hands and say “they’re all alike” is foolish and misguided. Imagine Mitt “Corporations are people” Romney in the White House. Imagine he has an entire Congress dominated by the cold-eyed likes of Paul Ryan, defenders of privilege, apostles of crackpot novelist Ayn Rand and her vision of a winners-take-all-no-matter-who-gets-screwed America, wherein compassion and altruism are weakness. Or the Herman Cains, who blame the poor for their poverty. A reversion to the 1880s-1920s, when plutocrats perpetuated themselves from generation to generation, and upward mobility—the American Dream—was a myth.

If you think what we’re seeing now is “social unrest”—you ain’t seen nothing yet.  OWS has been overwhelmingly peaceful—on the part of the protesters, at least. But if Washington continues to move rightward, if the Kochs and Alec and the top 1 percent of the 1 percent get their way, if their attempts to crush unions and suppress youth, minority and other Democratic-leaning votes is successful, if the anger, fear—and, yes, hope—of the 99 percent are met with nothing but the heel of a boot.

Then, I am afraid, there will be blood.

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Barack & Jackie: Has the President held himself—and the country—back because of race?

Even those of us who strongly support Barack Obama concede that this may be the nadir of his presidency. His approval ratings are dreary—though perhaps a bit better than expected, given that job and economic growth are maddeningly—and tragically—stalled. We live under a cloud of fear and pessimism.

Precisely why crippling inertia has gripped the nation—well, that question provides job-creating stimulus for pundits on every point of the political spectrum.

To be sure, Republican obstructionism—the willful suppression of the US economy, the resolve to maintain a dire unemployment rate, no matter how many lives it shatters—all support the main plank of the GOP platform. As party boss Rush Limbaugh declared, they want Obama (and by extension the other 300 million of us) to fail. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell echoed, the party’s prime objective is to make Obama a one-term president.

But liberals and center-leftish moderates would argue that it didn’t have to be that way. That Obama yielded the national narrative to the Right. That instead of pursuing a robust progressive agenda of job creation and growth, he got sucked into a job-killing (to borrow the GOP’s favorite Homeric epithet) deficit-cutting obsession (and perhaps wasted his first year on Health Care Reform). And that in a quixotic quest to preserve the Obama Brand (“there are no red states, no blue states, only the United States…”)—as well as POTUS’ innately non-confrontational nature and a kind of fetish for compromise—he has repeatedly capitulated.

Or, to use the preferred term, “caved.”  On the public option, on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, on the debt ceiling, and just today, on anti-smog regulations. Even on “Speechgate,” the flap (or was it a kerfuffle?) with House Speaker Boehner over next week’s Jobs, Jobs, Jobs address to Congress (minus wingnut Tea Party Rep.—and deadbeat dad—Joe Walsh).

At worst, some liberals compare the President to that iconic appeaser, Neville Chamberlain. They’re the most extreme faction. But many less strident critics on the Exasperated Left say that, in an obsession with the political center, Obama has forsaken the core values of his party. And that he’s losing the center anyway—that Adult In the Room bit only goes so far. Moderates like strong leaders, too.

Lately, Obama has received a healthy helping of tough love from the African-American community—wherein unemployment is nearly double the 9.1 national rate, and nearly quadruple the national figure among young adults. Rep. Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, and non-politicians like Princeton professor Cornel West and Tavis Smiley have been particularly vocal. Indeed, on Tavis’ show last night the host got into a civilized, but spirited, debate with Prof. Randall Kennedy of Harvard over Obama’s “Black Problem.”

Tavis argues that the President seems to be running away from African-Americans—for instance, on his recent Midwest “listening tour,” when he did all his listening in white neighborhoods— and from the progressive agenda that, skin color aside, fired up an unprecedented African-American turnout in 2008 (if you think it was just a Black thing, and not ideological, see Cain, Herman, West, Allen, et. al.)

Prof. Kennedy countered that, while he, too, is sometimes disappointed in Obama, one must never forget that he is “an electoral politician.” Democrats always lose the white vote—as did Obama in 2008, though he fared better than John Kerry did in 2004. The more the first black president is identified as “The Black President,” the longer his odds of reelection, especially in this bleak economy.

In short, faced with an extravagantly funded Right-Wing hate machine that, despite his mild manner and moderate policies, repeatedly portrays him as a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Anti-American Manchurian Candidate Other—Obama has to be careful. He has to walk a fine line. He has to be Jackie Robinson in his early years with the Dodgers, absorbing all the slings and arrows (and beanballs and spikings) and turning the other cheek.

But eventually, Branch Rickey unleashed Robinson—and the great second baseman’s naturally fiery, combative temperament, flying fists, flashing spikes and all. Anyone who played major league baseball during the 1950s will attest that Number 42 took no shit from anyone.

Obama, while intensely competitive, (ask Hillary Clinton; or, for that matter, Osama bin Laden) isn’t likely to challenge Eric Cantor to fisticuffs under the Capitol dome next week.  And, if we recall, that cool, temperate mien—contrasting with McCain’s post-traumatic anger issues—is one of the reasons we elected him.

But we also elected him to act, and to fight—in his way—for Democratic values, for the middle class, for workers, for the environment. No, direct confrontation isn’t Obama’s style. But is it also possible that he’s holding back, even subconsciously, because of his race?

Specifically, has such race-based restraint done more than mute further Obama’s constitutionally cool public demeanor? Does it carry over to the negotiating table—and, above all, to his policies? Has pulling his punches meant not only refraining from “losing it” on the GOP—but from aggressively pursuing the principles he and his much maligned “base” believe to be right? And, in the process, giving away the store, essentially governing as what, in saner times, used to pass for a Republican

While under Branch Rickey’s gag order, Jackie Robinson channeled his suppressed rage into his work, his .300 hitting, superb fielding and thrilling exploits on the basepaths. The President too, has many accomplishments to boast (see the wonderful web site wtfhasobamadonesofar.com).

But at this crucial juncture, with the nation’s economic and social future hanging in the balance—and the looming threat of a far Right GOP that, (perhaps in the nightmare-inducing person of Rick Perry) strives to undo the 20th Century and take us back to circa 1893—maybe it’s time for Barack Obama to start flashing his spikes.

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Is the “Narrative” of Economic Hopelessness Self-Fulfilling—and Fueling Even More Crippling Fear?

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.“

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, March 4, 1933

The economy is a steaming hot mess, God knows, and maybe the cause of our joblessness crisis is some mix of Bush administration policies, GOP obstructionism to sabotage Barack Obama and the Obama administration’s own miscalculations and reticence. Or three decades of trickle-down economics, or automation, or outsourcing or corporate greed and corruption, or all of that and more, but…

One can argue ad nauseum about what got us here and what’s keeping us here. But there is another factor at work—no doubt secondary to concrete policies, legislation, economic theory and business practice. And yet a factor nonetheless:

Psychology.

No, I’m not saying it’s all in our heads. But some measure of the economy does seem to depend on psychological and emotional issues. Optimism, pessimism, hope and fear help drive consumer and business confidence, hiring and firing, the stock market, et. al. The news right now is bleak—indeed if you watch cable, or read print and blog editorials on all sides of the political spectrum, the prevailing view is not only that our recovery is stalled—or, in Paul Krugman’s view, that it never really began—but that the future is all but hopeless.

The jobs aren’t coming back . Government is broken. The debt deal screwed us royally.  Obama still hasn’t “pivoted” and even if he does, he’s helpless against gridlock and an opposition determined to prevent him from achieving victories of any kind. This inertia will continue if Obama wins reelection, and if he doesn’t, the Teabag-dipped GOP actually will drive us off the cliff, or ensure continued prosperity for the wealthy on the backs of a vast underclass—while wiping out the middle class entirely.

We have descended from Woody Allen’s “miserable” into the “horrible.” Our economy should be in a hospice.

All of this may be true. Or perhaps only part of it—these are predictions, after all, and we’ve certainly seen how off-the-mark those can be. But meanwhile, we have sunk into utter despair.

My question is, how much of this psychology of gloom and futility is self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling—however slightly? How much is the “narrative”—to use a pet pundit phrase—of hopelessness and despair helping to engender even more hopelessness and despair?

I’m no Polyanna—my wife can tell you that—and I am inclined to anxiety and pessimism. We know how bad the economy is. (Personally, I’ve lost one job to downsizing—even though my employer was raking in huge profits—and was lucky to find another.) We see businesses closing around us and we’re plenty scared. Our fears are not “nameless, unreasoning and unjustified.” But to hear our punditocracy, we might as well take a black capsule.

Of course, journalists should—at least outside Fox News—report the truth. The latest employment figures indicate 117,000 jobs added and that the jobless rate ticked down a point to 9.1. As we’re told, it’s still lousy, but not as godawful as last month and not as cataclysmic as feared.

But I wonder what would have happened if, say, the Labor Dept. had lied its ass off and cooked the numbers—some say it does already, but I mean, think really big.  What if we’d been told the economy added 317,000 jobs and that unemployment dipped to 8.7—and a similar lie next month and the next?

Would people start feeling better—I mean, the people who do have relatively safe jobs and some income to spend? Would pundits start harrumphing about a recovery revival—and help inspire just a bit more confidence among consumers and businesses? We’ve seen how some of our flat-earth friends on the far Right, talk radio and Fox invent their own facts, rewrite history to serve their ideological narrative.

What if we rewrote the present? The Big Lie used not for hate-and-fear-mongering—but as the long-awaited Second Stimulus?

Before Bellevue sends an ambulance for me, know that I’m kidding.

Okay, maybe half-kidding.

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The GOP Plot to Tank the Economy Is–Duh–Winning

Today’s stock market dive was about more than our miserable debt deal, and more than our own economic inertia–it’s not always all about us. There’s, like, Europe and Asia, for instance.

But it is another indication that the GOP’s strategy to destroy a charismatic, brilliant–for whatever missteps he’s made–incumbent president is working, in the words of Dick Cheney, big-time. Indeed, it is the Republicans’ only strategy, given their lame group of wannabes–ranging from the smarmy, job-killing Romney, to utter wingnut, flat-earth lunacy.

That’s the plan— stall the recovery and maintain the high jobless rate. If the rate even approaches 8 percent, or shows some kind of steady downward trend, the GOP is (white) toast. And Mitch McConnell‘s prime objective, a one-term Obama, is hopeless.

To be sure, the President has admitted that he  underestimated the depth and severity of the Bush Recession. In retrospect, it seems to have been a grave error to spend his entire first year in office—and most of his political capital—wrangling over Health Care Reform, instead of working to stimulate more job growth. Perhaps out an inherently non-confrontational nature, perhaps out of an obsession with courting moderate, swing voters he has often seemed to govern on the Republicans’ turf—this after the 2008 election resoundingly rejected GOP policies.

Nevertheless, President Obama and the Democrats have proposed numerous jobs initiatives, some of which Republicans themselves have endorsed in the past. Of course they’ve all been stalled, blocked by GOP filibusters in the Senate, or squashed under the Boehner-Teabaggers in the House.

And the GOP jobs bills? Well, there aren’t any, of course. Republicans know the President owns the economy, and regardless of whose ideas improve it, POTUS gets credit–or blame if it goes south. So why help Barack Obama out–even if it meant an end to suffering, fear and deprivation?

In this time of obscene income inequality, the wealthy are raking it in and sitting on their money, or investing overseas. Corporations, meanwhile, are making the most out of fewer employees, working them longer hours, making them do the jobs of two people and either cutting salaries or keeping them flat. You’re lucky if you have a job, goes the philosophy, so don’t complain or it’s the highway for you. And with the decline of unions, there’s no advocate for fair treatment.

Where are the jobs? Well, they’re either being shipped overseas, or they’re simply not coming back for the reasons I list above–if you’re making a profit by overworking fewer employees, why rock the boat?

Oh, we might see an expansion of employment if we had more consumer demand by the middle and working class. But the Catch-22 of flat wages or joblessness precludes that.

I’m no economist, and our problems are far more complex than all that. But so far, GOP, Mission Accomplished

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Liberals: Vent at Obama, But Take Him Down in 2012 and It’ll Be Worse Than You Ever Dreamed

Like many, if not most, liberals, and probably more than a few moderates, I am sickened, or at least saddened, by the so-called “debt deal” on the verge of passage. It was pure political/economic terrorism. And one can argue ad infinitum about President Obama’s negotiating skills, lack thereof, whether he’s a true progressive, a centrist, a closet Republican or simply so fixated on “swing” voters that he risks alienating his entire base in the belief that, come Election Day, it’ll fall in line. Or how this manufactured “crisis” played out entirely on Republican turf—how the Beltway media, and our politicians obsessed over long-term deficits at a time of high unemployment and lame economic growth.

Indeed, worst of all is what the deficit mania, and this deal, may do to the economy, specifically to the middle class, the poor, the unemployed and the soon-to-be-unemployed. Obsessing over deficits at this economic moment is like cutting back on cement while the dam is bursting. You might save some extra cement for those “children and grandchildren” in the pols’ talking points—but nobody will be around to care.

And yet, disappointed as I am, I am also realistic enough to know that if a Republican were in the White House—especially the GOP Version 2011—the outlook would be exponentially worse. Of course, one could reasonably argue that under a GOP president, the Republicans in Congress would simply have raised the debt ceiling, just as they have myriad times in the past. But we have a Democrat at 1600 Pennsy—and everything the GOP does, especially ensuring that the unemployment rate remains elevated, is in the service of destroying Barack Obama’s presidency. The owlish legislative master Mitch McConnell told us as much, in a rare moment of absolute candor.

Aside from destroying Obama, the far Right—backed by the likes of the Koch boys—hopes to dismantle our safety nets, expand the growing chasm between rich and poor, and whites and minorities, and take us back to the Gilded Age, when workers had no rights, Big Business ruled unchallenged, and Black folks were lucky to get jobs as maids and sleeping car porters. My father-in-law worked his ass off for 50 years as a salesman; he lives on a piddling pension and Social Security. Without that safety net, and especially without Medicare, he and his wife would either be dead or on the street today. And that’s where I’ll be when I’m his age, if the Teabagger fringe has anything to say about it.

Look at what the Republicans are doing on the state level, in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere. Assaulting union and women’s rights, and suppressing voter turnout in minority areas, among other outrages. They are out to remake America in their image—or, “take their country back” as they like to say.

But the Progressive backlash against the Walkers, Kasiches, Scotts and Snyders, should be inspiring. And instructive. Now is the time to vent. If you’re pissed off at Obama, go write a blog post. Tweet your ass off. Get it out of your system. Then mobilize in productive ways and fight for progressive change.

Criticize and push and prod the President, sure. But whatever you do, don’t attack him so hard, so viciously and for so long, that you help take him down. He still boasts more progressive achievements than any President since LBJ. And if there is one lesson to be learned from the debt debacle, and the attempted Right Wing takeover in the states, is that elections have consequences. To the extent that liberal and moderate Democrats’ apathy, or exasperation with Obama, led to the 2010 “shellacking,” perhaps the most disastrous election of my lifetime— not for liberals, but for the nation as a whole—those who stayed home, or registered “protest” votes bear some responsibility.

Next time will be even worse. Don’t fool yourself, throw up your hands and say “Meh, Obama, Schmobama, might as well let Romney win.” I remember how ticked off a lot of liberals were at Bill Clinton, how he was viewed as a Republican in Democratic clothing, how he triangulated and dissembled and moved rightward. If there’d been a blogosphere then, God only knows the level of vitriol he might have absorbed from his left. Then, thanks in part to the Ralph Nader candidacy (as well as outright thievery and the stacked Supreme Court), we got Bush-Cheney. And in the depths of that catastrophic administration, I would bet most liberals would have begged to have ol’ Bubba back, warts, stained dress, and all.

And so it will be if we help the Teabaggers take down Barack Obama. But far, far more frightening.

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Mr. President: Wanna Give the Tea Party Crazies the Kiss of Death? Endorse Them!

Dear Mr. President,

I apologize for having been out of touch lately. Life has intruded and I’ve taken a break from my blog. But recent events, and the looming 2012 election have roused me from my slumber.

I needn’t tell you, or any reasonable person, that the sane wing of the Republican Party (and there is one) is being held hostage by its ignorant, fanatical, lunatic fringe—the Mo Brookses, Allen Wests, Joe Walshes, Paul Brouns, Louie Gohmerts and, of course, Michele Bachmanns—known loosely as the Tea Party. And, since the GOP controls the House, thanks in part to catastrophic Democratic and moderate-independent apathy in 2010, these inbred nutbags—and I say that with tough love— have a gun to the entire nation’s left temple.

It is considered vile to casually invoke 9/11; I’ve criticized plenty of people for comparing you and other Democrats to terrorists, merely, for example, because you believe every person’s life is equally precious—regardless of investment portfolio—and that, therefore, we are all equally entitled to the best health care. But the analogy here, amid the trumped up “debt ceiling fight,” is inescapable. Just as the al- Qaeda fanatics flew planes into the World Trade Center, symbol of American corporate and commercial power, the Tea Partyists are on a suicide mission to take down the entire U.S. economy, either in the service of their hysterical Ayn Randian ideology, a belief that the world is only 6,000 years old and that the moon landing was staged, or simply because they figure that you will go down in the wreckage and that we’ll have a white president in heaven. (Harold Camping, if possible.)

These people must be stopped. And after wracking my brain, I’ve realized that the answer has been staring me in the face since November 2008. And it finally struck me this week: When you more or less endorsed the Gang of Six deficit reduction strategy, a GOP aide immediately proclaimed that you’d doomed the plan just by praising it. We’ve long known that if you discovered a cure for cancer, the GOP would attack you for endangering the medical, pharmaceutical and funereal industries. If Obama is for it, we’re against it.

So how best to undo the Tea Party? Embrace it. Sing the praises of Loopy Louie and Batshit Bachmann. Just as you may have given Mitt Romney the kiss of death by praising his health care program, wrap your arms around the Teasters and give them a big , sloppy smooch. Borrow one of those Lady Liberty hats from Mrs. Clarence Thomas and slip on an “I Heart Grover Norquist” T-shirt. Let Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald  and Adam Green and Ed Schultz go medieval on you. That will only help (especially if they’re in on the plot, then they can lay it on extra thick).

I you say “Up,” they say “Down.” If you say, “For the love of God, don’t let us default,” they’ll say “Default, shmefault—what, us worry?” So, if you want to drive them even more nuts than they already are, and consign their dangerously psychotic ideology to the dustbin of history, agree with them. Give them some love.

And question your own birth certificate while you’re at it.

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