Why Can't Obama Get Mad?

I'm as in favor of "cool" as the next guy. I also like a good snide remark, a nuanced response, a snippy reply. But a little controlled anger can be an excellent political tool as well.

Being the battler-in-chief presiding over a nasty, ugly sport - politics - a sort of Beyond The Thunderdome played in business suits - does not confer on the President the right to persist in rising above the messy fray obsessively, pathologically. We want a leader, not a powder puff.

Mr. Obama wears white gloves when he needs to be wearing work gloves.

Or better yet, boxing gloves.

Obama clings to cool.

One suspects at first that he is reluctant drop the smoothness because he just really, really likes his ultra cool, jazz world sang-froid. We suspect him of a form of narcissism.

Or one can ascribe it to his upbringing in Hawaii, one of the epicenters of laid back behavior. (Honk your horn aggressively there and they're ready to call the men in the white coats. Jaywalk and citizens go into convulsions - politely, of course.)

Perhaps we suspect Obama's inner coil because, in his rise to the political heap, he didn't have to scrap for decades like a Nixon, fight a world war like Ike, endure speculation about his intellectual worth like Truman, nor overcome a devastating disease like FDR. Regardless, his is a hard soul to plumb.

This is not to say that Obama hasn't had obstacles to surmount. Lord knows that becoming the first black president is an accomplishment that took enormous effort and considerable elan. Overcoming the perverse reactions to the color of one's skin, poverty, and feelings of being an outsider are nothing to sneeze at.

Which brings us to the Angry Black Man of mythology and history, for I believe it is that burden that prevents Obama from lambasting his relentless, unscrupulous attackers.

The rage of Malcom X, the glorious in-your-face attitude of Muhammed Ali, the raised fists at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City seem relics of another day. 

The 1960s were an angry time - far angrier than today - when war atrocities came with your bacon and eggs, when we regularly saw dogs and hoses turned on our fellow citizens, when women were regularly put down without a whiff of ramification, when an adolescent boy could catch a beating for having long hair, when children were treated as chattel, and the leaden hangover from World War II imbued society with a relentless conformity.

It was those social norms that led to rioting, massive demonstrations, bombings, and a left-right polarization the likes of which those under 45 can scarcely fathom.

Woven throughout this rebellion was the Anger of the Black Man. It was, and is, inescapable - unless you are President Obama, who seems intent on not indulging himself in this anger, on not using it to gain noble political ends.

He is terribly, terribly wrong to avoid doing so.

The caricaturing of him as everything from a monkey to a watermelon farmer to Adolph Hitler to Stalin should have been enough.

The attacks on everything from his birthplace to his clothing to his wife and girls to his "Muslim background" should have been enough.

The mindless attacks on his relatively mild policies should have been enough.

We are reminded of the righteous anger of FDR after Pearl Harbor. We are reminded of the battle cry that partisans shouted to Truman - "Give 'em hell, Harry!" Of Reagan's battle-horn blaring - "Tear down this wall." We are reminded of JFK's first inaugural address suffused with controlled anger - "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." (A word of warning to the truculent Soviets.)

Mr. Obama: you must be willing to pay any price, bear any burden, even if it means flirting with the stereotype of the Angry Black Man.

You must find it in your belly to rise up and strike down the radical right wing harshly, filled with piss and vinegar, with blood and guts. The left, and I believe the center and perhaps even the center right, aches to hear you fight back using righteous controlled anger. We all want you to succeed.

Other presidents - all white, obviously - have loosed their anger to work for them and the country. You need to find the meaningful core of your own anger and outrage - we know it's there, you're human after all - and express it full-throated and powerfully against the enemies of progress.
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The Ghost Of Barack Obama

As we've witnessed in the last two years plus, politics is one very dirty game. Depressingly dirtier than most of the games the rest of us play to earn our daily bread.

Barack Obama is one of the more elegant, almost regal Presidents we've ever had. His high style and rhetorical mastery begs on bended knee comparison with John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer." 

The President has mysteriously become a leader more in the mold of a Calvin "Silent Cal" Coolidge, and to many eyes and ears, appears cold, aloof, slightly supercilious and often tone deaf. The wisp of shallowness that appeared during the presidential campaign is now a full blown smoking stack.

Where are the ringing speeches, the great aspirations, the appeals to hope over fear? Gone, as far as we can tell. What happened?

There is no other place to lay the blame but to a kind of moral cowardice.

It seems Obama doesn't really believe in the Progressive vision. Was embracing it merely an election strategy? Either government is a constructive, positive force in our common life or it's a bystander.

No other developed country (and very few developing or so-called emerging countries) argue over this point. For instance, France is rated by the World Health Organization as having the best health care system in the entire world. Japan and even Brazil rank above us in the quality of their national mass transit systems. Our real literacy rate, which one approached 99% is now hovering around 85%.

Obama seems to forget that there are tangible problems that need government intervention and financing regardless of what any of the dangerous right wing fanatics shout. While he should be nailing his own 95 Theses to the door of Congress, he appears content to fiddle and adjust and essentially cower. Remember - he is the most powerful single person in the world, and even if a Progressive agenda doesn't pass legislative muster, simply using the bully pulpit will serve as a countervailing force against the reactionaries.

Presidents like FDR, Ronald Reagan, and the sadly sidetracked Lyndon Johnson had strong beliefs in a core set of values. Whether you agreed with them or not, one can easily summarize the three president's major stands, and we admire them for their courage if not the ultimate effects their beliefs had upon us.

So, advisory number one to the President: "Define your core principles, your ultimate philosophies, and sell them. Hard and often."

Another side of the President that is lacking is quite a bit more concrete.

He seems to consider himself above the ribbon cutting, baby kissing, the complimenting of the mayor's wife's new hat, walking the streets with a state senator who feels her district is slipping backward, or showing appreciation for the small business owner's dedication to achievement and her/his family. God is in the details, Mr. President. As the pundits put it, he gets an F in "the stagecraft of the Presidency."

His bumbling, half-baked touch was most evident during the oil catastrophe in the Gulf. He could not have plugged the leak himself, but he could have sent Joe Biden or a couple of Rear Admirals to set up a permanent base camp in New Orleans in order to "show the flag."

There have been literally thousands of stimulus bill projects around the country, yet we seem not to sense the President's, and therefore the Democrats', stamp on them. Everything seems theoretical under Obama's leadership. It keeps smelling as if he doesn't believe in his own actions. 

But it goes beyond that. One of the most important accomplishments of his 20-month tenure thus far is the winding down of the war in Iraq. It will save lives and save trainloads of money. Yet the initial announcement and his nationally-televised speech seemed lethargic, lacking ardor. We should be dancing in the streets and the President should have been leading the band music. But we saw a ghost of passionate, intense candidate Obama.

As Yeats wrote in "The Second Coming," The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

Second advisory to Mr. Obama, coming from the left, for now a still-friendly if disquieted quarter: "Learn how to get your hands dirty." You can't glide above it all for much longer without completely losing the gains of the last few years.

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Looking To The 1920s For Insights

We are left with entertaining icons of the 1920's that camouflage the realities that underlay the fascinating decade. Most of all those years appear frantic to us, we who live in a most frantic age.

The flapper, the mobster, the swell, the Babe, Dempsey, Lindbergh, jazz, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, the birth of big time Hollywood, the sense of victory in the air, of an America no longer a frisky colt but a thoroughbred upon the world race track.

Underneath that benign anthropology, though, was a dark side of America that has never been fully repressed. The same dark side has surfaced recently under the tutelage of the extreme right wing and its marionettes in the Tea Party.

Notably, these expressions of America's dark side erupt during or immediately after times of severe stress, whether called forth by war or economic dislocation.

While many people, particularly those in big cities and industrial centers, enjoyed the boom, a huge minority were disaffected, angry and anti-everything. Real incomes fell among 70% of all Americans in the so-called Roaring Twenties.

Rural people hated Big Labor. Big Labor despised Big Capital. Big Capital hated regulation. Women were repulsed by drinking men. Protestants hated Catholics and Jews. Old line whites hated southern and eatern European immigrants. The city and country were at loggerheads as farm prices stayed depressed for years. Prices of everything were too high, or prices were too low, depending on whether you were a buyer or a seller.

In the 20's, the Ku-Klux Klan saw its revival blossom not just in the newly assertive South, but in places it is now unimaginable: Oregon, California, parts of the Mid-West, even having mobs in suburban New York and New Jersey.

New York State, which at the time had 6 Socialists in its legislature, tossed them out for being un-American. In fact, most northern and Mid-Western states had socialist members of their legislatures, all of whom were defeated or otherwise deprived of their seats in the 20's.

This was part of the anti-Bolshevik movement that was funded by business interests in order to undermine labor organizing and is commonly called the first "Red Scare." Directly under the outer skin of this conflict lay "buyer's remorse" over the nation's having fought in WWI. Nothing seemed to come of the war and soon enough the Europeans would be at each others' throats once more. So, anti-communism was really about anti-Europeanism to a large extent.

Piled into this swamp was an anti-immigration fervor that makes the goings-on in Arizona look like a cricket match. Responding to the fears of white America, Congress passed two bills in 1924. (Click link for wiki overview of these acts.) The first was the Immigration Act (or Johnson-Reed Bill) part of which was the National Origins Act, and the second, (can you imagine anything more bluntly named?), the Asian Exclusion Act. (Today's border fence, below.)

Finally, the 1920's was a time of enormous technological change, developments rivaling our own era. The automobile became available to the common person; telephone communication was perfected; talkies came into being; the rise of radio began; the phonograph replaced the player piano in homes; and big cities as well as small towns were well-lighted by electric bulbs. While airline companies fledged before WWI, it was in the 1920's that they became fixtures due to a surplus of army aviators and the planes they had flown during the war. Advanced surgery techniques also grew out of the war experience.

These advances unsettled people, especially the older generation and led to a vague anti-technology movement that expressed itself more through skepticism (the Scopes Trial in 1925) tha through direct actions such as sabotage. 

 

 History rarely provides us with direct, one-to-one comparisons. It does often provide us with parallels and examples.

The feeling of a battle between left and right today is a real feeling.

The sense of dislocation from what many people feel is fruitless war conflicts with our natural patriotism.

The decline of real income in the last decade among the lower middle, middle and even upper middle class is a fact. Until 2009, the United States had been in stasis regarding job creation since the year 2000.

The ridiculous bandying about of the term "Socialist" in critiques of the President recalls other Red Scares. (Although it hasn't and won't work this time.)

The anti-immigrant Dengue Fever gripping parts of the country now also has its clear antecedents as described above.

We know that we are in the midst of enormous technological change when we see technocrats like Steve Jobs discussing the up and downsides of the iPhone4 on the front page of the paper or as the third lead story of the evening news.

That big business sees all the disruption and dislocation as a good opportunity for them is also quite clear. Exxon Mobile and the Koch family (owners of the world's largest privately held energy company) fund right wing non-profits who in turn fund the Tea Parties. (See: The Price of Tea, NY Liberal State of Mind, Feb. 12, 2010 by clicking here.)

Business always funds anti-union, anti-environment and anti-people initiatives. Why should it be any different in 2010 than it was in the 1920's?

Income inequality is at its worst since the 1920's. And the rich still don't want to pay their fair share of taxes. That should tell you everything you need to know.
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Why Obama Should Embrace Teddy Roosevelt - Substance and Style

 

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a letter today criticizing President Obama as being "anti-business." This to a president who rescued the auto and finance industries and set in motion an unprecedentedly enormous stimulus package for the overall economy. Unreason has knows no bounds.

Obama has much of the blame on his shoulders for not striking back at the fiendish money hounds who want George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich to be extended at the end of the year and want a rollback on crucial legislation such as health care reform, and a dead stop put on emissions restrictions. The President seems to have mislaid his trump card, his inspiring oratory,

If the status quo were so wonderful, why do we find ourselves in such a huge, seemingly unsolvable mess?

Just before the Panic of 1907, another point in our history when capital had been hyper-concentrated in the hands of a few, in a speech in Indianapolis on Memorial Day, Teddy Roosevelt skewered the "predatory man of wealth" who was increasingly using his power to manipulate labor, prices, and liquidity. (J. P. Morgan was the archetypal "man of wealth," but he was only one among the oligarchy, the cabal.)

Roosevelt said in full:

One great problem that we have before us is to preserve the rights of property, and these can only be preserved if we remember that they are in less jeopardy from the Socialist and the Anarchist than from the predatory man of wealth. There can be no halt in the course we have deliberately elected to pursue, that policy of asserting the right of the nation, so far as it has the power, to supervise and control the business use of wealth, especially in the corporate form.

Paralleling the unwarranted attacks in the business press on Obama, the Commercial and Financial Chronicle (click) began to refer to T.R. as "the irritant." (Fittingly, the monthly Chronicle, founded in 1839, went out of business immediately after the stock market crash of 1987.)

Roosevelt was anything but anti-business. Nor is Obama, of course. Both have a reasoned approach to regulation and taxation. What the big business community wants ultimately is to have all fetters removed so that they are free to prey on the stupidly greedy (as during the housing bubble), the sick, the poor, and the working classes. Today, most likely the term "working classes" includes you. 

We need look no farther than the tempest over health care reform, the vulturous behavior of the financial sector, the outlandish prices for pharmaceuticals, the cost of our wars, and the wanton destruction caused by BP in the Gulf to see where the Republicans and corporatism have gotten us.

The Chamber of Commerce in its role as attack dog for corporations, wants deficits to be rolled back precipitously. Meanwhile, according to Reuters, "U.S. businesses are holding onto some $1.8 trillion in cash." So, if business won't spend, and government is basically out of cash or should not take on new debt, what exactly is the prescription for economic recovery?

When the Republicans were in charge of the country through the better part of the first decade of this century, real income for the average American declined over $2,000. George Bush's administration created exactly zero net private sector jobs. 

The right wing agenda is no less frightening as the midterm elections approach. The mainstream Republican wants to do away with Medicare; privatize Social Security while raising the retirement age to 70; they are against extending unemployment benefits; against legislation that would forbid another Wall Street bailout; against the inevitable green economy; and for a return to offshore drilling at it was before the Gulf catastrophe. And that's the mainstream right!

Teddy Roosevelt called the unholy amalgam of purely self-interested corporations of his era the "malefactors of great wealth." 

Right now, the top 1% of people in the United States own over 30% of the wealth in the country. The bottom 50% owns less than 20%. 

The Republicans speak for the top 1% (and more). 

Obama and the Democrats need to step up and start speaking for the rest of us. And hey, Mr. President, start shaking your fist and crying out for justice all around.

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The Oval Office Oil Speech: What's Ailing Barack Obama?

I want very much to really like President Obama. I understood from the beginning of his quest that his politics and mine would not be in concord. He's far too centrist for me at a time when we need a heavy counterbalancing from the left. Our country has drifted dangerously to the right and it is destroying the national fabric, our prosperity, and threatening our future. 

But, center left is better than center right or radical right, so like many more leftist liberals, I jumped on board the Obama love train.

Last night's oil speech failed on a number of levels and succeeded on a small handful. First, it failed because Obama made no real personal connection between himself and the people, especially the people of the Gulf. 

Most adults have felt some form of loss in their lives. Loved ones, friends, a childhood home, a few acres of woods lost to development, a building demolished, a way of life vanished. 

And it is there in the shadow-land between sympathy and empathy that the President stumbled. He came across as sympathetic, but certainly not a man who could empathize with the dark plight of the watermen, the fear in retirees, the worry in the Gulf's resort trade, the hand-wringing moms and pops waiting for business to pick up. 

He violated the first rule of good writing: "Don't explain it, demonstrate it." He talked with shrimpers - good for him - but he didn't give us the feeling, the sense of dread and despair we all know lurks down there. 

In short, the speech felt technocratic rather than visceral.

On the future, the President was even weaker:

"Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny -- our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don't yet know precisely how we're going to get there. We know we'll get there."

If you're not sure, Mr. President, how can the rest of us be? 

Contrast this with Churchill's "We will fight them on the beaches speech."

"We shall fight them on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, 

we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight them on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills..."

Or with John F. Kennedy's "Moon Speech."

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish." 

Or even the words of Theodore Roosevelt:

"The object of government is the welfare of the people. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us." The New Nationalism speech, Osawatomie, Kansas, August 31, 1910

These ringing speeches, like all great ones throughout history, relied upon bold affirmations that a certain thing WILL happen. There was no glimmer that fighting the Nazis to the last person, going to the moon, or conserving our shared natural patrimony would ever NOT happen.

If we were to take Kennedy's speech and plug in new goals for a new time, we can see how leaden President Obama's words were last night:

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of achieving energy independence. No single technological project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range improvement of our economy and environment; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

Further, in the next few days I will lay out for the Congress my vision for reaching such a difficult goal. We must begin now, we must reach the goal with no more delays or risk becoming a second-class nation whose dim future will be in marked contrast to our glorious past."

Even if we don't yet know precisely how we're going to get there? Nonsense. Tell us how we'll get there and we will surely get there.

The Gulf, Obama's Presidency, JFK, The Pilgrims, And "Answerable Courage."

A few weeks ago, the right wing chatter was that the rig explosion, pipe rupture and spill in the Gulf were going to be "Obama's Katrina." It seemed far-fetched, more politically-inspired Democrat-baiting than serious criticism.

I'd like to take up the same cudgel, that this very well could be "Obama's Katrina," but as viewed from the left wing, not the right.

This is the golden moment to launch the complete transformation of our society from one almost completely reliant upon expensive, dirty, dangerous carbon-based fuels to a society that will lead the world toward a high-technology-based energy Utopia.

When the expression "American Exceptionalism" is used, it is that kind of innovation leadership that people around the world grasp. The words of John F. Kennedy's challenged the country, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."

Earlier in the speech, given almost 50 years ago in 1962 in Houston, Texas, Kennedy quoted a Pilgrim father: William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.

We yearn for President Obama and other leaders of the Democratic Party - for surely the right wing is completely incapable - to stir us not only with great words, but also to act with "answerable courage."

Each and every reasonably sentient American has seen the gushing wound on the sea-floor, heard the sailors' and fishermen's cries for help, watched the sludge violate the marshes, thought of the beautiful summer days on the water that will be ruined. Who hasn't thought of their children and grandchildren and what the planet we leave behind will be?

Toss aside the paralyzing global-warming arguments. Forget that we suffer untold hundreds of thousands of premature deaths because of our burning of fossil fuels. Even reject the notion of dirty water caused by road run-off.

Now is the real, concrete moment. This is a true crossroad in history for our country, maybe for the Western World as a whole.

That Obama has not stood upon this fulcrum in time worries many of us on the left who have secretly suspected him of being a lightweight. It is worse than disappointing.

It could quite well mean his administration is doomed, that his ringing rhetoric was just that, and that we can count on more business as usual with the energy oligarchs.

What the President says - or fails to say - on Friday in New Orleans will be the bell-weather for the fall 2010 elections and define, and perhaps shorten, the Obama era.

Change we can believe in? Time to deliver, Mr. Obama.

The Republican Lost Weekend and Some Advice From A Classic Mardi Gras Song

Surprise Video At End of Post :) It sums it up perfectly.

The Republicans now find themselves in the unenviable position of the drunkard who comes home, argues with his family, pees in the wastebasket, busts up the TV, yells crazed obscenities at the neighbors, kicks the dog then wakes up next morning to realize through his screaming-mimi hangover that he's the one who's going to pay for all the damage.

The GOP is now living in the ultimate lost political weekend. Lord knows what the headache remedy will be.

Gallup took a snap one-day poll yesterday regarding opinion concerning the passage of health care reform, and to put it mildly, nothing succeeds like success.

Of all adults in the country 49% say it's a good thing, 40% say a bad thing, and 11% have no opinion. Just for grins, let's split the no opinions in half and still leave the traditional 4% (terminally) undecided. That means we're splitting the remaining 7%, 3.5 and 3.5.

The result would then be 52.5% to 43.5% in favor of passage. That's 9 percentage points.

President Obama won the 2008 popular vote 52.9% to 45.7%. That's 7 percentage points. One can infer that reform is actually more popular than was Obama '08, but Gallup's measurement was of all adults, not likely voters.

I'd venture to say that the numbers are even more in favor of the Democrats since there is a certain percentage on the left who are still smarting from the exclusion of the government-option plank. So, some small fraction who say it's a bad thing, indeed are fairly far left on the spectrum. Scracely can they be lumped in with the right wing.

One other interesting stat of the moment - the stock market was up 103 points, or almost 1%, today.

Factoid(s) of the Day February 4, 2010 and some music

Before you read on... here are a few "work" songs: Working At The Car Wash Blues (Jim Croce), I've Been Working (Van Morrison), Get Back In Line (Kinks)

Now that you've been entertained, you can proceed to feel appalled (again).

When Ronald Reagan was president, unemployment was over 10% for a solid ten months and over 9% for another 9 months. Republicans canonized Reagan.

1982-09 10.10 10.1

1982-10 10.40 10.4

1982-11 10.80 10.8

1982-12 10.80 10.8

1983-01 10.40 10.4

1983-02 10.40 10.4

1983-03 10.30 10.3

1983-04 10.20 10.2

1983-05 10.10 10.1

1983-06 10.10 10.1

When Bill Clinton was president, unemployment at one juncture was under 5% from July of 1997 through the end of his term in January of 2001, occasionally dipping to 3.9 and 3.8%. The Republicans tried to impeach President Clinton.

Now that another Democrat is in the White House, we are going through the same drill with the extremist right wing Republican Party. They simply don't take ownership of their disastrous policies. Let's split 2009 in two, however, and give all responsibility for the first half to Bush and all responsibility for the second half to Obama. (After all, the current administration was not going to come in and flip a switch and make things better in the first six months - at least.)

In the previous 6 months while we struggled to get out from under Bush policies, unemployment was up 2.3%. Under Obama unemployment has ticked up 1.5%.

In fact, from a low of 4.4% in October of 2006, unemployment directly related to Bush policies caused it to rise to 9.5% in mid 2009, a difference of more than 5 full points.

And the radical Republican Party is calling for Obama's head?

Bring ME the head of George W. Bush and Jerry Garcia. 

Inception and Conception

Like so many people in the country, and around the world, upon Obama's election and the installation of huge majorities in both houses of Congress, I thought : "Ha. Finally, we 're back on top."

(cf Van Morrison's Back On The Top - http://s0.ilike.com/play#Van+Morrison:Back+On+Top:163236:s170823.14939.1335287.1.1.71%2Cstd_1e209daa1c039eb75bcb3be5f049b305)

But, as the interim elections have shown in NJ, VA and now MA - oh wherefore Bay State? - we have seen that the price of Liberalism is eternal vigilance - with a tip of the hat to abolitionist Wendell Philips's famous quotation concerning Liberty. Just yesterday, we had the ultra-right wing Supreme Court's decision on permitting unrestricted spending on campaigning by corporations.

Sad and intimidating. But, right now the worst thing a conscientious Liberal thinker/actor can do is to fall into despair and inaction. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." So said Edmund Burke. We saw the resulting debacle of the Coakley campaign. The campaign was smug, complacent, and inert. That's all it takes to lose.

So, what the hell am I hoping to do in this blog?

I hope that most of all it would not discuss people, as tempting as it may be. It's all too easy to open the steam valves and scream and shout about W, Cheney, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner - the Suntan Man, Limbaugh, Palin and the rest of that cynical, injurious gang.

I would rather discuss ideas. I am most particularly interested in the damaging effects of current right wing policy on the American way of life.

The thoughts could be very simple, but they should be clear-headed, well-written, and supported by fact rather than opinion. (Example - underfunding for Amtrak leads to x number of cars taking to the interstates and y number of tons of dangerous pollutants.) A little commentary would be fine; but laying out how the infection of right wing politics and policy is concretely hurting America is more the aim, for the moment.

It would be terrific if, say, you are in law, you would comment on legal issues - thinking the Supreme Cort decision here. If you have a background in energy, talk about energy. Education is also on the radar big time. But that's not to say we should limit ourselves to any set of topics. If your thing is zoos, talk about zoos. Hey, I'm Liberal.

With a little bit of diligence and luck, not too much spurious info will show up here. I'll try to be ruthless in rooting out the false, the insane, or the personal attacks so prevalent everywhere in the public discourse. "Misinformation followed us like a plague..." 

from Paul Simon's Peace Like A River http://www.rhapsody.com/player?type=undefined&id=tra.15172601&remote=undefined&page=undefined&pageregion=undefined&guid=undefined&from=undefined&__pcode=

I start by sending this to my old friends, my good friends. I count on you to send this to your friends and compatriots. So, please leave some trenchant comments and thoughts. And tell me what you think we all should be writing about.

--- RDL