Meanwhile, out in the real world

Neither Republicans, nor Blue Dog Democrats, nor the Gasbags of the Beltway are used to this. They're accustomed to having the Sheeple believe every word they say. They're used to having people believe it when Mitch McConnell gets up in front of a microphone and talks very self-importantly about how he and the other Grey Old White Closet Cases behind him are the only ones who can be Trusted With the Keys to the Coffers. They're used to people actually listening to Peggy Noonan when she shows up on Morning Schmegegge on MSNBC and talks lovingly about Ronald Reagan and how Barack Obama is just like Reagan -- or he'd better be if he wants to succeed. They're used to seeing hacks like Evan Bayh and Heath Shuler lauded in the press for being so "sensible" and "centrist". They're used to being able to feed this shit to the public and have the public eat it up with caramel sauce, wet nuts, and a bigass wooden spoon, then pausing to lick the bowl clean.

But times have changed. It may not last. It may very well be that in another six months the American Sheeple will forget that George W. Bush ever existed and that we went right from Clinton the Walking Penis to Barack Obama's Recession in the blink of an eye. But for now, after eight years of SUVs and Osama Bin Laden dartboards and immigrant bashing and interest-only mortgages and the continued Reagan delusion that if we work real, real hard the guys at Lehman Bros. will let us into their club, Americans have finally put down the bong and realized what's going on. And for at least one brief and shining moment, the American people have realized that when a presidency fails, we all suffer. When a president sits in a third-grade classroom while the World Trade Center is attacked and takes us to war against a country that did nothing to us and looks the other way while the housing market collapses, we end up with, well, today. And Americans realize, at least for now, that when the guys who enabled that president to be the biggest disaster in this nation's history, are blocking the new guy's attempts to try and set things right, that Mitch McConnell and his White Male Closet Cases don't warrant our ears.

So while O'Reilly and Peggy Noonan and Joe the Schmoe Scarborough and his Mini-Me Mika and Wolf the Shill Blitzer and John Magic Slate King and the rest of the nimrods in the media play by the some old playbook, out here in the real world, people want Barack Obama to succeed. Some of it is that they genuinely like the guy. They recognize that he means well, that he's inherited one hell of a mess. Most Americans took the "WE" part of his campaign seriously, and are ready to pitch in to help dig us out of this mess -- to "grab a hose", as Obama unfortunately but hilariously said while in the company of Florida governor Charlie Crist yesterday(which makes me wonder if our president has no idea about the rumors that always swirl around Gov. Crist or if he's snarkier than I gave him credit for being). But more importantly than any kind of "cult of Obama", they recognize that if this president fails, we all fail -- and fail in a way that we cannot even fathom.

Gallup:


So let Judd Gregg succumb to the threats of exile that were obviously given him by his party of Dr. Oh Noes. Let Scarborough have the vapors every freaking morning. Out here we know who the problem really is.

More from Howie Klein, who points out Gregg's connection to Jack Abramoff and also the inescapable reality that the supposedly Boy Genius Rahm Emanuel has done one hell of a shitty job vetting Cabinet picks. I wonder how long it's going to take the President to realize just what a fuckup his Chief of Staff is.

And Paul Abrams at HuffPo makes a strong case that once Gregg wasn't going to be able to rig the 2010 census in favor of the Republicans, he was no longer interested in the job at commerce.