When do we start demonstrating for real democracy here?

This is what democracy looks like

Randi Rhodes had an interesting phone call yesterday, from a woman who started out asking why "we" let it get so bad in Egypt, and then under pressure from Randi, decided that what she wants is "a good election", by which she clearly meant 'ZOMG NO MUSLIMS!!" It was so painfully obvious, and yet this woman insisted in couching the fear that the Talking Heads of Television have been whipping up into concern trolling about elections.

When you take out of the equation this business about how the U.S. has a right to demand that someone we like lead Egypt because Israel needs it this way, the only conclusion you can come to is that people in Egypt have had enough of a government that only represents he oligarchs and the moneyed and have discovered that there really IS people power when there is common cause. Egypt differs from the U.S. in that here, Fox News has managed to convince a smallish but vocal group of people that giving more power to corporations, and allowing corporations to buy politicians in the government, and to have government be for sale, is a GOOD thing. Remember, this is a country where guys who have seen their jobs disappear are sending death threats to a 78-year-old academic who only "crime" is telling them to organize. That's the power of media in the United States.

So here we are with a two-party system that consists of a party of gutless whores and a party of batshit crazy lunatics. We have a car thief and possible arsonist collecting dossiers on anyone who questions the government, presumably so he can both monitor the American citizenry AND the Democratic (presumably only Democratic) administration they might petition. We have a Republican Congress whose first priority is redefining rape. And then we have so-called "Democrats" like Stephen Lynch, who thinks that conservodems like himself are the future and the rest of us should shut the hell up and get with the program:

Liberal groups need to stay out of Democratic primaries if the party is going to retake the House majority, according to a conservative Massachusetts Democrat.

Rep. Stephen Lynch was one of several Democrats who faced an aggressive primary challenge from the left in 2010. His challenger Mac D'Alessandro, a former top official with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), received almost $300,000 from labor groups for his campaign.

[snip]

Clearing primaries for members and discouraging liberal groups from spending against incumbents should be a priority for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said. “It would definitely help, I think. You need to talk to those groups.”

(via)

And having money-grubbing politicians tell us to go away, to shut up, to not have a right to air OUR grievances differs from a despotic government, how? Don't talk to me about dictators and how this is just a Congressman and how we can still vote for other candidates in primaries. The minute party politics, whether Democrat or Republican, trumps the right of the citizens to gather peacably in the form of grassroots campaigns for election challengers, and when the party makes the rules and controls the money, we HAVE lost democracy.

The teabaggers have one advantage that the progressive side of the fence does not -- a corporate media and corporate astroturfers plowing money into their efforts. This works as long as the teabaggers continue to put their energies into defense of the corporate state under the false doctrine of Rich People Create Jobs® On our side of the fence, we have blogs and what's left of MSNBC in the evening (where ratings have fallen since the Olbermann sacking, largely because MSNBC alienated much of its audience with this move...probably deliberately, so they can return to the golden age of Savage Nation and Alan Keyes is Making Sense). The teabaggers are dancing to the tune of their corporate masters. The left is still cats resisting being herded. And the party that's supposed to be a counterbalance to the likes of John Boehner being the guest of honor at insurance company dinners and passing out checks on the House floor is telling us to suck it up and stick with the status quo.

We ought to be taking a really good, close look at Egypt. Because what's going on there is what happens when people get their act together and realize that it is their own government that's working against them.

Buh-Bayh!!

Good riddance to bad rubbish:

"We want them doing more hiring, more investing..." When these companies' taxes were at the higher rates during the Clinton years, they were doing plenty of hiring. So this idea that we have to cut their taxes or they can't "create jobs" has been completely debunked. The Bush tax cuts were enacted nearly a decade ago and hiring has DROPPED.

Corporatist whores like Evan Bayh are the LAST thing we need. He's leaving. Blanche Lincoln is probably going to lose her seat. Other Blue Dogs are hanging on by a hair. What the election of these corporatists proved is that it isn't enough to work to elect people with (D) after their names. Republicans have succeeded in selling the American public a shit sandwich and telling them it's caviar. We have the message that ought to resonate with the Tea Party, but the Democrats have for far too long been willing to accept the fair-weather friendship of corporations who will yank away the football the minute a Republican shows them the bling. The programs that even Tea Partiers hold dear are the creation of Democrats, not Republicans. We should be proud of them instead of trying to sweep them under the rug, as "Democrats" like Evan Bayh would.

Just sayin' is all

Perhaps if Barack Obama had just gone and danced with the ones what brung him, he wouldn't seem like such a hapless dupe of corporatist Blue Dogs in his own party now.

But instead he listened to that little Napoleon Rahm Emanuel, who put most of them in there. And now the media smells blood in the water and is determined to turn Barack Obama into Carter II: Electric Boogaloo.

Nice work, Rahmmy. Did you get paid to do it?

What part of "You won" does Harry Reid not understand?

It's time to send this useless POS back home where he belongs -- and all the other corporatist, on-the-take, Democratic obstructionists who parrot Republican talking points, vote with Republicans, and are perfectly willing to go off to their cushy vacations, secure in the knowledge that their boating accidents will be fully covered by there state-of-the-art health insurance:

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday abandoned plans for a vote on health care before Congress' August recess, dealing a blow to President Barack Obama's ambitious timetable to revamp the nation's $2.4 trillion system of medical care.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., delivered the official pronouncement, saying, "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than try to jam something through."

His words were a near-echo of Republicans who have criticized what they have called a rush to act on complex legislation that affects every American.

Obama shrugged off the delay.

"That's OK, I just want people to keep on working," Obama told a town hall meeting in Cleveland. "I want it done by the end of the year. I want it done by the fall."

Reid said the Senate Finance Committee will act on its portion of the bill before lawmakers' monthlong break. Reid then will merge that bill with separate legislation passed by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee earlier this month.

The process will be difficult since Finance, led by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seeking a bipartisan deal while the health committee bill was passed by Democrats on a party-line vote.

Obama had pushed for votes in the House and Senate before August to ensure that lawmakers had enough time to meld the two bills into comprehensive legislation by December — before the start of a politically charged congressional election year.

Obama has made nearly daily appeals for the overhaul in the past two weeks and has summoned more than a dozen lawmakers to the White House to make his case. At stake is a massive remaking of the system. So is Obama's credibility.

Well, I don't know about that, except for the fact that the mainstream news organizations are going to make damn sure that it's spun as a question of Obama's credibility. What it IS demonstrating is the contempt that Obama's own party has for him.

This is starting to look like Clinton Redux -- someone who isn't from the Washington Insider's club is elected President, and his own party helps the Republicans to make sure he isn't re-elected. Some of this may just be a question of the refusal or the inability by nature of Democrats to fight back, except that we're seeing Democrats like insurance company shill Max Baucus and the equally on-the-take Blue Dogs fighting back against the President in their own party. I realize that the Democrats are more comfortable as a minority party, mewling in the corner about how the big mean Republicans are bullying them. But there are people's lives at stake here, and I frankly don't give a shit who's bullying them. If Harry Reid and the rest of these useless fucks didn't want to play hardball, they should go the fuck home and let someone take office who can -- and who will.

"Political realities": Translation: Don't piss off the Blue Dogs because they're so mean we can't control them

In case you had any doubts that Washington DC was one giant hackocracy full of venal, greedy bastards from both parties who just want to shovel as much corporate cash into their pockets, and listen not one whit to the American people, here's your proof:

All was well within the Democratic Party, which had finally received that elusive 60th caucus member. The Republican filibuster would be no longer be a threat.

Or maybe not.

Franken is expected to come to Washington after the July 4th recess. But not everyone is convinced that his presence will make a huge political difference. The reality, which few in the Democratic Party are willing to talk about openly, is that there are really only 58 caucusing members. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-MA, has been out for nearly all of the current Congress on medical leave. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, while released from the hospital on Tuesday morning, continues to face health issues of his own. Meanwhile, moderate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, D-La, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., have made it almost a point of pride in not allowing their votes to be taken for granted. And on specific issues, the party has proven strikingly allergic to philosophical unison.

"It is good news for the Democrats and it is bad news for the Republicans. That is a simple fact," said Mo Elleithee, a Democratic strategist who has worked on Hillary Clinton and Terry McAuliffe's campaigns. "Having said that, you don't want to get too far ahead of yourself here. It is not like the caucus is unanimous on every issue."

Talking on condition of anonymity, some Democratic strategists were even blunter. "Sixty is an imaginary number," said one operative. "You are always going to lose the Ben Nelsons and all the centrists. This is why 2010 proves to be so important because it can set a buffer for that 60 threshold."

The threshhold for a filibuster-proof majority is now exactly one more than the number of Democrats you have.

Useless sacks of shit.

Isn't it funny how Republicans never thought like this? They had 51 seats, they were king of the fucking world. But Harry Reid is folded in a fetal position in the corner, lest Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh and the other corporatist suckup say mean things.

Can we please vote these weasels out of office and get some Democrats with some stones in there? It's things that make me miss Paul Wellstone more every fucking day. And even though Al Franken has finally taken back that seat from the people who murdered Sen. Wellstone, I'm not convinced he's going to be significantly more progressive than the blue dogs.

I am hoping he'll surprise me.

The "Can't You See That Man Is a Ni--" House vote

Michael Lind argues that the House vote by Republicans and Southern Blue Dog Democrats against the stimulus package was less about ideology or any sense of fsical responsibility than it was yet another example of the South still fighting the Civil War:

On Wednesday, January 28, 2009, President Barack Obama’s $819 billion stimulus plan passed the House of Representatives, despite the solid opposition of the Confederates.

By the Confederates I mean the Republican Party and their allies among Southern conservative Democrats. The battle in Washington is not between liberals and conservatives; it is between the Union and the South.

The Republican Party that voted unanimously against the stimulus bill is, in essence, the party of the former Confederacy. In the House of Representatives, there is not a single Republican representative from New England. In the U.S. Senate, there is not a single Republican from the Pacific Coast.

The Republican congressional delegation is disproportionately Southern. Half of the four congressional leaders of the Republican Party are Southerners: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Virginia). (Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl is from Arizona and House Minority Leader John Boehner is a relic of the dying Midwestern wing of the GOP). The chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, is from Kentucky. Half of the candidates for the RNC chairmanship are Southerners: Duncan himself, Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, and Chip Saltsman, former chairman of the Republican Party of Tennessee. (The other three are Michael Steele of Maryland, Ken Blackwell of Ohio and, Saul Anuzis of Michigan.) If you think most GOP spokesmen on TV seem to speak with a drawl, you’re not imagining things.

In addition, a majority of the 11 House Democrats who voted against the stimulus bill are Southerners or from states that border the South: Bobby Bright and Parker Griffith, both of Alabama; Gene Taylor, of Mississippi; Heath Shuler, of North Carolina; Jim Cooper, of Tennessee; Allen Boyd, Jr., of Florida; Frank M. Kratovil, of Maryland; and Brad Ellsworth, of Indiana. (The other three are Walt Minnick of Idaho, John Peterson and Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.) Congressman Boyd, a prominent Blue Dog Democrat, was the only Democrat to support President Bush’s bill to partly privatize Social Security, which he co-sponsored. Appropriately, his 2nd Congressional District in the Florida Panhandle near Georgia and Alabama includes Dixie and Calhoun counties.

Do you see a pattern here?

The vote about the stimulus package was not about economics. It was about nullification. It was the bipartisan Confederacy sending a message to the rest of America, stricken by the greatest crisis since the Depression. That message? DROP DEAD.

Those who think that the Democrats could have won over more Republicans by making more concessions do not understand the neo-Confederate/Dixiecrat mentality. There was no one to bargain with on the other side. The Republiconfederate “alternative”—a joke of a bill consisting almost entirely of tax cuts—would not be taken seriously by any mainstream conservative economist. It was pure provocation.

If Lind is right, and I suspect he is, then Barack Obama is in for one hell of a rough ride for the next four years. Because if the South is still bound and determined to fight the Civil War, and the talking heads of the media are going to put the entire onus of "bipartisanship" on a president whose very existence in his post is an affront to everything the Dixiecrats and Republifederate Party believe in, this bunch has already shown ever since Ronald Reagan announced his candidacy for the Presidency in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964, that they're not having any of it.