Each time the Republicans launch a new hate campaign, over the long haul the targeted group ends up benefitting, and the Republicans end up, well, toxic. The young, who are comfortable with the diversity of modern life, are invariably repelled by the antiquated, bigoted bile that spews forth, and each day another racist old coot tips over, probably while watching Glenn Beck.  One can say that anti-Black racism has enjoyed a resurgence of late, but given that we have an African American President I wouldn’t call it that much of a success over time.  Anti-gay bigotry and the mainstream acceptance of gay rights marched together hand in hand, the former nearly always paradoxically helping the latter, as well.  In so doing, Republicans probably permanently lost the vote of the two groups, by more than 90%-10%, but they considered the effort worth it.

Now, after a decade or more of right-wing demonization of “illegals,” which really just means “brown hordes,” the ever-escalating hate rhetoric of the Republican Noise Machine has driven Arizona to just go ahead and go Nazi, leaving the Republicans in something of a spot.  The media voices from FOX and talk radio will of course want to turn Arizona’s bizarre and race-conscious new law into a mariachi Turner Diaries, whereas politicians who wish to get elected in a darker America simply can’t afford to drop another, much larger and growing, demographic group into the permanent “D” column.  Once again, the Noise Machine, so lovingly tended all these years, has grown into a Little Shop of Horrors man-eater, and Lindsay Graham’s tantrum and John McCain’s pathetic waffling on the subject make clear that Republicans are lying harder than ever to get this thing out of the way, and for good reason.  Republicans just love hate campaigns when they work, electorally at least, but they’ve surely seen how these things have played out in the past, and must have access to Karl Rove’s “math” that showed that with Hispanic votes at Black or gay levels, the Republicans might want to take up golf for something to do.  They’d have hated their way into oblivion.

Even such unqualified and extremist Republican candidates as George Bush loudly proclaimed themselves to be “uniters, not dividers,” at least before they took office, saving the divisions for later when they were running things.  Divider extraordinaire Nixon himself spoke of “the lift of a driving dream” at his first inaugural, for Pete’s sake.  Now, the perennially Chamberlain-invoking Republicans have only Churchillian “blood, sweat, and tears” to offer (for other people, of course), and they’re depending on unscrupulous and rabid media celebrities who daily declare the government criminal and add new targets for assassination almost every day, to rally their followers.  What happens next?  Well, if you listen to Michele Bachmann, Republicans will sweep to power in November because all Democrats are either dead or hiding under their beds, the first part of which, at least, seems a bit unlikely.  Or, as in the Clinton era, a suitably enraged right-wing psycho kills enough people to preserve the party in power, whether they deserve it or not, because the “resistance” looks not only obstinate and backward but downright terrifying to most Americans?  It’s no longer a close call.

Like most Republican policies, this one is headed for disaster, but as ever before, they love it because of, not in spite of, that fact.  Disasters, they think, become them.  Riding a wave of the pro-wrestling style TV that continues to make them somehow relevant, John McCain and Sarah Palin today not only excused the recent attacks but proudly upgraded their party from the relatively mealy-mouthed “party of no” to the more eagerly bloodthirsty party of, “Hell, no,” and AEI thinks firing David Frum will keep people from noticing that things are going a little off the rails.

Fortunately for them, the many voices on the right are spared a lot of deserved infamy for their cravenness and lies by the usual Democratic fear of mentioning the fact, at least publicly, that they were given a commanding majority to battle just these elements that brought us to this sorry pass.   Worse, Democrats have been equally at fault for the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and the deregulation-aided demise of  what we used to call the free press, so when they belatedly looked around, no one is left to speak up as the media-created chicken-fried Kristalnacht erupts all around them.

Having lately obtained just the kind of power to pervert democracy that the Founders couldn’t have envisioned but were reflexively recognized as radio and film greatly aided Hitler’s rise, the media giants have not only embraced, but have effectively seized, the minority political party and sent the majority running for cover at the worst possible moment.  Effectively, Glenn Beck and his many imitators are challenging the political system itself, and so far are thus still able to declare victory at each defeat.  Cleverly, they are also preparing their audiences for the showdown they know they are provoking as they incessantly call for revolution, daring either party to stop them.  Win or lose, it will all look the same on cable, so why not?

Though the book deserves a full Book Saloon at some point, what brought it to mind today was the the multiple incidents in which “Decca,” as she was known, was drummed out of the most menial jobs because of her party affiliation, and later denied a position as a Distinguished Professor with the University of California for refusing to sign a loyalty oath; this after her book, “The American Way of Death,” had made her  an internationally famous author and muckraking journalist.  UC students would therefore be denied the privilege of learning from this remarkable woman because, y’know, she used to be a commie. (Alert Hag reader Mrs. Tarquin Biscuitbarrel points out that it was San Jose State, not UC, that leveled the boom on Decca; my apologies…)  She was dead before California finally rescinded its McCarthyite loyalty oaths in 2008.  Enter Glenn Beck:  (h/t newshounds.us)

Standing in front of his trusty chalkboard, “Professor Beck” first complained that FDR was “surrounded by people who were communists” before sneering that John Sweeney, the former president of the AFL-CIO removed the anti-Communist clause from the union by-laws. Unions, of course, are one of Beck’s regular scapegoats. “Question,” Beck said, pretending he was “only asking.” “Why would you need to repeal this old law on your by-laws… of your union unless there was some new demand or desire for communists to join your ranks?”

“Now let me take you to California,” Beck said self-importantly. He was referring to a 2008 bill that, he said, “amazingly, allowed communists to teach in school, to become schoolteachers in California. Oh, and public employees would no longer have to take an oath of office which reads in part, “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic.” His voice rising, Beck added, “And I do further swear or affirm that I do not advocate, nor am I a member of any party or organization, political or otherwise that now advocates the overthrow the government of the United States or the State of California by force or violence.”

“Why would you want people to stop taking that oath? Who wouldn’t want that taken, especially by teachers, other than people… looking for social justice?” Beck asked accusingly, before moving on to suggest that it was all somehow related to the fact that unions are big supporters of President Obama.

It’s sad how little we learn from even the most embarrassing elements of our past.  Now that McCarthy has been rehabilitated by Coulter, Beck, The Texas Textbook Commission, you name it, can ol’ J. Edgar be far behind?  Of course, Beck is either too craven or stupid to know the difference between the communism he deplores and the fascism he is unwittingly supporting, but he would benefit a bit by reading some of Mitford’s work; on civil rights, economic justice, peace, women’s rights, and nearly everything else she was right more often than FOX News has been in its dismal 15-year run as the voice of American Fascism.  Mitford was something Glenn Beck will never be; a true American patriot.  Would that she were alive today to eviscerate this doughy nitwit with her scathing humor;  ”The Fine Old Conflict” goes on.

Outside of Wolf Blitzer’s pathetic show, Liz Cheney’s McCarthy Palooza against the Obama DOJ isn’t going quite as planned, despite the enthusiastic boost it received from the LA Times.  Numerous prominent conservatives have branded Cheney’s insultingly ignorant fear-mongering as reminiscent of or worse than McCarthy, and even Condi Rice called the campaign, “unfortunate.”  When you’ve lost Condi Rice, you’ve lost America, Liz. I always thought it was odd that any credence and or airtime would be given to A) the unqualified daughter of the most despised politician in America, and B) the dumbest and most often wrong Neocon flak of that same dark and repudiated era, but the US media is an odd place, where no show is too unpopular to take on the road, once again.

Fortunately for Kristol and Cheney, but unfortunately for the party they think they’re boosting,  only FOX-addled Americans and overpaid media gasbags sit around worrying about terrorism anymore…  the rest of the country has its own problems, which have the advantage of being real.  The fact that they’re playing the terror card this early simply shows that they don’t have anything else, which is pretty foolhardy, since most Americans realize that Obama is as far to the right as any President could go on terror without getting hauled into the Hague.  Worse than that, these cynical, fear-based campaigns remind Americans of the worst aspects of Bush’s disastrous Presidency, something any smart Republican ought to be running from as fast as they can.

But they aren’t, of course.  A party which offers nothing but war abroad and police-state repression at home can only sell itself through fear, and as the recently released RNC PowerPoint starkly revealed, that’s what they’re going to do.  Of course, since Cheney and Kristol are more interested in papering over their shameful pasts than they are in getting Republicans elected in the future, they’re peddling the same fears from the glory days of 2002-2004, striking a dissonant note when the new, improved fears are supposed to be about creeping socialism and whatnot.  Micael Steele ought to tell Cheney to shut up, but he obviously doesn’t know what that means.

If the Republicans think, seriously, that such tired, discredited strategies will do anything but play right into the hands of the feckless Democrats who, having few good alternatives either, have already picked the Bush years as their opponent in 2010, they will remain in the minority for a long time.  The Bush years were not just about ruinous economic policies, reckless spending, and corruption at all levels, but more importantly they were about a manipulative and sleazy method of governing by fear, smear, and innuendo.  And while the former have remained stubbornly unchanged, America is happy to be free of the latter.

Liz Cheney utterly fails to recognize this, and after having successfully harangued the DOJ into making public the names of the perfectly mainstream lawyers she vilely called the “Al Qeada Seven,” is still beating her dead horse:

Cheney, for her part, shows no signs of relenting. Hours after her organization was able to browbeat the DoJ into releasing the names of the seven officials who previously represented detainees, it put out a statement demanding even more disclosure.

“We regret that they still refuse to tell the American people whether any of these lawyers are currently working on detainee issues inside the Department,” said Aaron Harison, the executive director of Keep America Safe. “The American people have a right to know whether lawyers who voluntarily flocked to Guantanamo to take up the cause of the terrorists are currently working on detainee issues in President Obama’s Justice Department.”

“Flocked to Guantanamo to take up the cause of terrorists?” Really?  How dumb and blindly hateful does Liz Cheney think we are?  Americans fell for fear in 2002 and 2004, and, unlike the media, remember what it got them.  They also remember that almost all of it was unmitigated horshshit, much of it coming from someone named Cheney.  Liz should be glad she didn’t inherit her father’s looks, but sadly, she did get his personality, and that’s good news for Democrats.

UPDATE: Mistakes were made, apparently, at CNN:

On Friday, Blitzer apologized for the graphic and called DOJ lawyers “patriotic.”

“CNN had no intention of suggesting that the Justice Department supports terrorism. Lawyers at the Justice Department are patriotic Americans and we certainly regret any confusion that may have been caused by our graphic.”

Not by his insultingly ridiculous reporting, natch, but it’s something.

Hmmm.  Sounds reasonable enough.  Closer reading reveals, however, that Julian and Rick are actually the same person, kind of like Hayley Mills in “The Parent Trap.”  That’s my theory, anyway.  To wit:

Reporting from Washington – (Don’t you just love that?  You can almost hear the teletypes in the background…) The U.S. military must use measured and precise strikes, not overwhelming force, in the wars it is likely to face in the future, the nation’s top uniformed officer said Wednesday in outlining a revised approach to American security.

Yes, the dozens and dozens of wars in addition to the current ones.  It was only in those boring old days that we sat around waiting to see if we won or lost to come up with new strategies for the next time(s).

The view outlined by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, differs both from the doctrine of overwhelming force advanced by Colin L. Powell, a onetime Joint Chiefs chairman, and the “shock and awe” approach of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Yeah, Powell wasted time thinking about the aftermath, and Rumsfeld didn’t bother with such minutia.  Both never were involved with actually winning any wars, but why not start with them?  They both certainly knew how to sell wars, and that’s all that matters these days.

“There is no single, defining American way of war,” Mullen argued. “It changes over time, and it should change over time, adapting appropriately to the most relevant threats to our national security.”

I’ll say, not when we have so many wars we can’t even keep up.   But wait, there’s actually a “relevant” threat out there?  Do tell, Mr Admiral man.

Mullen’s views, presented in a speech at Kansas State University, mirror the latest U.S.-led offensive in Afghanistan, a showcase effort in which troops in Marja are trying not only to seize control of territory but to obtain influence over the local population in a bid to break the hold of insurgents.

His comments are significant because the Joint Chiefs chairman under the Constitution serves as the president’s chief military advisor.

And thus, in the new and improved America, he pretty much tells the pissant President what’s what.

Mullen held out Marja as a model of the kind of warfare he was describing. There, the military announced in advance plans to retake the city and emphasized careful use of force.

“We did not prep the battlefield with carpet bombing or missile strikes,” he said. “We simply walked in, on time. Because, frankly, the battlefield isn’t necessarily a field anymore. It’s in the minds of the people.”

Well, then why not have a seminar or something?  Is refraining from carpet bombing the new touchy-feely?  Sheeesh.  Who could type up such horseshit without laughing?

The ideas outlined by Mullen are not universally accepted within the military. For instance, to minimize the risk of civilian casualties, Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, placed restrictions on the use of bombs and other air power.

Some officers and analysts think that those self-imposed restrictions have allowed the Taliban to escape the most effective and potent U.S. weapons, potentially endangering American and allied troops.

Here we’re listening to the bonkers rantings of a modern-day Atilla the Hun with $700 billion in borrowed Chinese money to throw around each year, and even crazier people than he are calling him a peacenik, and this is considered worthy political discourse.  May I suggest that Mr. Barnes broaden his circle of friends, if only for his own safety?

In addition, the Marja offensive showed that even deliberate, measured force can produce civilian casualties.

Which no one cares about, of course, but can always be dragged in from the cold as a talking point, in a pinch.

In another shift in thinking, Mullen said in his speech that policymakers now and in the future should consider the U.S. military not as a last-resort solution in a crisis, but as part of early American responses to conflicts and disasters.

Ah, what was once merely “on the table” has now shoved everything else off, and henceforth we bomb first, ask questions later.  I’d noticed that happening, but thanks for clarifying.

“Military forces are some of the most flexible and adaptable tools available to policymakers,” Mullen said. “Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy.”

And afterward, boy howdy!  Another 20-year war or three is born.  These guys are geniuses!

Mullen emphasized that military power must be used alongside other government tools. Similarly, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, speaking at the same venue in 2007, called for increased spending on the State Department.

As long as the general trend continues toward completely draining the treasury for somebody’s pointless and delusional dreams of world domination, some panty-waist diplomacy stuff will have to be tolerated here and there too, especially if it helps to bring Tom Friedman along.  Luckily, this means more moats (literally, at least in London…) around our embassies, which sound like economic recovery to me.  Maybe Blackwater can supply the gators, cost plus.

“U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military,” Mullen said, “too dependent upon the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands and not enough on the State Department.”

I had not noticed that.  Had you?

Overall, the speech represents a refinement of military doctrine, reflecting the wrenching policy and strategy review last year over Afghanistan as well as the debates in 2006 concerning strategy in Iraq.

Which were all resolved, you guessed it, in favor of the military industrial complex over the needs of everyone else, natch.

Policy and strategy, Mullen said, must “constantly struggle with one another.” Rather than setting a strategy and stepping aside, political leaders must remain involved. The day the U.S. stops adjusting is the day the country loses, he said.

Guess what, Mike?  We already lost.  But don’t tell the remaining readers of the LA Times.  They all loved Dr. Strangelove down there, I hear.

Bachmann thoroughly rejected the idea of a social guarantee of health care, saying that the rights guaranteed in America’s founding ideals affirm “your right to own property, not necessarily the right or a guarantee to a specific item, to a specific service, like health care, or a to a specific piece of land. Rather, the underlying principle and the ideal is that if we choose, when we choose, we can choose to strive for as little or as much as we want, and once we acquire that property, nobody can take it away from us. That’s a radical idea, that what I provide belongs to me, not to the king, but it belongs to me. “

Ah, leave it to crazy Michele to even drop the 2nd amendment from the Bill of Rights; it seems to her that all the Founders cared about was property; evidently “e pluribus unum” was a typo for the real national motto, “I got mine.”

Bachmann also attacked the Obama administration’s latest budget and it’s trillion-plus deficit: “Our government is intentionally choosing failure, they’re choosing failure and they’re handing you the budget. How do you like them apples, and how are you going to pay for it? You have to give up up more of your private property, your pursuit of happiness, to pay for their failure. That’s what they’re doing to us.”

Never let the facts spoil a good teabagging.  Despite the fact that only 2% or so of Americans have seen their taxes go up, and ignoring the structural deficit created by the Bush tax cuts, Bachmann conjures up for her credulous followers an alternative universe where Obama’s (imaginary) tax increases threaten our future and the Feds are coming to take away the RV parking next to your trailer.

An overriding theme was that the Obama administration is taking away the freedom of the American people, and reducing them to a subject population. “And the president also wants to raise your taxes to about 40 percent this year. When your taxes are raised to 40 percent, that means government is laying claim to owning 40 percent of you, of what you earn,” said Bachmann. “Think of it that way, because that isn’t just it, the federal income tax, you need to add to that Social Security tax, Medicare tax, state tax, county tax, city tax, township tax, school tax, metro authority tax, sales tax, gas tax. Pretty soon Uncle Sam owns more of you than you do. Is that America? And that’s government depriving you of your God-given right to the pursuit of happiness. That’s not what the Founders thought, they thought that should you should work for you, and you should work for your family, they weren’t about to condemn you to a life of indentured servitude. That’s not the great hope that they had for you, because they thought you were free. They respect you, they saw you as free people. And they knew that you could figure out your own future, you didn’t need to have them for that.”

This last part is the kookiest of all; as usual it invokes the dead, who seldom beg to differ, to support a tirade of Beckian nonsense that, in the end, is little more than a call to survivalist anarchy.  On Planet Bachmann, the metro authority is in cahoots with the school board and state government to pick the patriotic pockets of the average teabagger, all directed by that sinister ringleader, President Obama.  Boy does that guy get around.  Best of all, she defines “America” as some sort of place where we ought to lay our own roads to get to work, home-school our children, burn our own garbage, dig our own wells, and practice frontier justice in the absence of courts and law enforcement.  If this is the platform that is going to catapult her nutty party to the full-spectrum dominance they demand, well, good luck.

Like most Republicans, Bachmann needs to turn off FOX and get out more;  Glenn Beck and the gang may have developed a Unified Theory of The World that has captured the addled brains of the 30 percenters, but selling such a crazy and unrealistic “program” so dishonestly, since all it means is handing over still more power to those who already control the lion’s share of the “property” already, seems unlikely to have broad appeal.

Of course, Bachmann may or may not actually believe her own propaganda, but the idea that Americans are going to rally for the continued upward transfer of wealth and power in the name of “freedom” and “property” seems like something of a non-starter to me.  But no doubt worth a try, in the climate of mass ignorance and alternate reality the right has so systematically crafted in this winter of their discontent, a magical place where the only thing wrong with George Bush was that he was too liberal.  As Bush once said, “…you can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones we’re focusing on.”  Bachmann maybe took that message a little too much to heart.

The Repugs have been sent to Obama’s outhouse to Shit Or Get Off the Pots. They know it and are now wiggling like crazy to free their dumb asses. The stink the GOPers drop into American political discharge has not reached enough Americans, but if Obama’s long-term plan works, it will reach them before voting in November.

Obama’s plan reached its second stage with his State of the Union address where after waiting patiently through his first year as president, he began the attack phase. The launch became more immediately successful than planned once the House Repugs allowed him to have its House Retreat session televised which started the GOPers inevitable march to the outhouse. If I’m right about Obama’s plan, all Repug lying, deceit and hypocrisy tactics will no longer work nearly as well except on those whose brains are frozen and ears only hear what they want to hear regardless of the facts, logic or history presented.

The first stage was simple and excruciating to those voting for Obama on the hope he could actually have some success in changing partisan Washington mowing down as many lobbyists as possible in the process. As one of those voters, of course I knew that it isn’t Washington that’s broken, but our entire election system that quickly snuffs out the vast majority of those congress critters and executive branch leaders who go to Washington to bring change. I don’t buy into those who claim Obama’s naivete is being crushed by those ruthless Repugs. He knew who and what they are and who they really represent- the Corporate Communists.

For his plan to work during the first stage, he needed to use the best weapon anyone has against this group of compassion-less hypocrites, give them enough rope and they will hang themselves. The most modern and robust example, Dubya and The Dick. That meant spending an entire year not fighting back against congressional Repug PON and Waterloo tactics no matter how emotionally tempting.

Obama does possess remarkable restraint- probably too much at times. He was clearly the right man for this job. When vicious attackers think they are winning, they become careless and don’t notice the noose that is about to lasso and strangle them. Although Obama is now fighting back in all areas. For the rest of this post, I am only going to address health care reform. It can’t take a back seat to the economy and jobs because it was Obama’s biggest legislative agenda his first year and with all its complexity the best area to defend against foolish, fear mongering, fact-less proclamations.

Obama revealed his health care reform tactics during a surprise press conference on Feb. 9 just after Sen. McConnell and Rep, Boehner held their meeting with the media at the doorstep of the White House after leaving the meeting with Obama to plan the Feb. 25 Summit Clash of the Titans. Well, only one Titan, the Repugs, definitely are far from Titans, hopefully more like road kill after the Summit. The Repugs will be in Obama’s den where he determines the agenda and sets the rules. Not a fair fight from the start.

Allow me one emotional digression before listing selected paras from the transcript of that press conference that reveal in Obama’s words how he will likely keep the Repugs from escaping until they are thoroughly pummeled. Sen. McConnell sobbed on the Senate Floor (link includes video) on Friday talking about his long tenured chief of staff who was heading for K Street to make his delayed fortune while spending his Senate career catering to Wall Street and helping them and his boss to ruin lives and our and the world’s economy. This sobbing senator is the same leader who never gives a damn about the hundreds of thousands of Americans dying due to our sick health care system and is doing all he can to murder millions more by killing health care reform.

Here are the paras:

Now, bipartisanship depends on a willingness among both Democrats and Republicans to put aside matters of party for the good of the country. I won’t hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party, but I also won’t hesitate to condemn what I consider to be obstinacy that’s rooted not in substantive disagreements but in political expedience.

My hope is that this will be the first of a series of meetings that I have with leadership of both parties in Congress. We’ve got to get past the tired debates that have plagued our politics and left behind nothing but soaring debt and mounting challenges, greater hardships among the American people, and extraordinary frustrations among the American people. Those frustrations are what led me to run for President, and as long as I’m here in Washington, I intend to try to make this government work on their behalf.

So I’ve got these goals. Now, we have a package, as we work through the differences between the House and the Senate, and we’ll put it up on a Web site for all to see over a long period of time, that meets those criteria, meets those goals. But when I was in Baltimore talking to the House Republicans, they indicated, we can accomplish some of these goals at no cost. And I said, great, let me see it. And I have no interest in doing something that’s more expensive and harder to accomplish if somebody else has an easier way to do it.

So I’m going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals. What I will not do, what I don’t think makes sense and I don’t think the American people want to see, would be another year of partisan wrangling around these issues; another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and the Senate in which there’s a lot of posturing.

What I agree with is that the public has soured on the process that they saw over the last year. I think that actually contaminates how they view the substance of the bills. I think it is important for all of these issues to be aired so that people have confidence if we’re moving forward on such a significant part of the economy as health care, that there is complete transparency and all of these issues have been adequately vetted and adequately debated. And this gives an opportunity not just for Democrats to say here’s what we think we should do, but it also gives Republicans a showcase before the entire country to say here’s our plan; here’s why we think this will work. And one of the things that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell both said is they didn’t think that the status quo was acceptable, and that’s, right there, promising. That indicates that if all sides agree that we can’t just continue with business as usual then maybe we can actually get something done.

To your question about the 25th, my hope is that this doesn’t end up being political theater, as I think some of you have phrased it. I want a substantive discussion. We haven’t refined exactly how the agenda is going to go that day. We want to talk with both the Democratic and Republican leaders to find out what they think would be most useful. I do want to make sure that there’s some people like the Congressional Budget Office, for example, that are considered non-partisan, who can answer questions. In this whole health care debate I’m reminded of the story that was told about Senator Moynihan, who was I guess in an argument with one of his colleagues, and his colleague was losing the argument so he got a little flustered and said to Senator Moynihan, “Well, I’m entitled to my own opinion.” And Senator Moynihan said, “Well, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” I think that’s the key to a successful dialogue on the 25th or on health care.

Let’s establish some common facts. Let’s establish what the issues are, what the problems are, and let’s test out in front of the American people what ideas work and what ideas don’t. And if we can establish that factual accuracy about how different approaches would work, then I think we can make some progress. And it may be that some of the facts that come up are ones that make my party a little bit uncomfortable. So if it’s established that by working seriously on medical malpractice and tort reform that we can reduce some of those costs, I’ve said from the beginning of this debate I’d be willing to work on that. On the other hand, if I’m told that that is only a fraction of the problem and that is not the biggest driver of health care costs, then I’m also going to insist, okay, let’s look at that as one aspect of it, but what else are we willing to do?

And this is where it gets back to the point I was making earlier. Bipartisanship cannot mean simply that Democrats give up everything that they believe in, find the handful of things that Republicans have been advocating for and we do those things, and then we have bipartisanship. That’s not how it works in any other realm of life. That’s certainly not how it works in my marriage with Michelle, although I usually do give in most of the time. (Laughter.) But the — there’s got to be some give and take, and that’s what I’m hoping can be accomplished. And I’m confident that’s what the American people are looking for.

Of course, the predetermined Beck/Teabagger memes will have to be used; Socialism, Death Panels, Hitler, Woodrow Wilson, Government Takeovers, blah, blah, blah.   It would be inconvenient, you’d think then, that the Republican “Road Map,” as it were, presented by the naively direct Wisconsin wingnut Paul Ryan, has a whole lot of socialism in it (for rich people, natch), envisions steadily increasing Medicare cuts which will undoubtedly cause premature deaths, incorporates the worst aspects of both Hitler’s and Wilson’s “Internationalism,” and takes the most popular and enduring “Government Takeover” in US history, Social Security, and hands it over to Wall Street.  You’d be wrong.  For Republicans and their fawning cheerleaders in the media, down is up if Jim DeMint says so and FOX News unsurprisingly agrees.

The tinny Victrola of terrorism is of course going to be cranked up anew, to play scratchy recordings of 2002-2003 and somehow claim that we’re not clobbering the Constitution fast enough, not torturing people with sufficient eagerness, and not invading enough countries to Keep America Safe.  This angle may be dropped later because in early rollouts it only fooled Richard Cohen, a feat akin to convincing Tom Friedman that Lexuses are preferable to olive trees.  You heard it here at CHNN first, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the terror well will finally be recognized (by the voters, not the media…) as having run inconveniently dry in a country with 10% unemployment and an economy still collapsing.  Please make a note of it, Rudy.

Of course, the real power behind the GOP, money, has already set the stage, and as such one can expect a lot more unnatural couplings between square pegs and round holes to ensue.  The way to “create jobs” is to abandon environmental regulation, any vestigial remains of progressive taxation, and give more tax-free money to worthless heirs and heiresses.  Neither remarkably nor evidently as a joke, the strikingly unattractive and almost as untalented version of Paris Hilton, Steve Forbes, has a new book out, not entitled “I Got Mine, Fuck You,” but might as well have been, to emphasize these not very new ideas.  Frank Luntz has almost just absentmindedly trotted out the same old anti-government crap that was so successful in perpetuating our third-world health statistics for another decade or three, to stop desperately needed banking reform,  but will people really fall for the notion that Wall Street banks that every day continue to rob Americans blind ought not be regulated?  That’s some pretty heavy lifting, even for the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

As they always do when they’re in a pickle, the GOP is making a lot of noise about teh ghey, this time about the long-overdue abandonment of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a policy so ridiculous on its face that I have trouble believing it’s been the law of the land for almost eighteen years, and touting the purported “uprising” against marriage equality, financed by a bunch of wealthy churches whose primary concern is avoiding reality, even when it drops on their curiously adorned heads.  But time has shown that since the cynical 2004 “victories” that resulted from gay-bashing have only driven more younger voters away from the GOP, and even if John McCain doesn’t listen to Cindy and Megan, America does, and has.

They think, of course, that they have a new big thing in the Teabaggers, which is the first sign of actual non-astroturf political activity on the right since Tomothy McVeigh, and they understandably don’t want to waste a development like that .  Sarah Palin surely didn’t…  she got half a wardrobe’s worth of Teabagger dough for mouthing vaguely intelligible Randian Haiku in Nashville, just tonight, so I’ll bet she’ll be wearing something extra pretty for the occasion.  Still, given that even some of the craziest Republicans, Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn, finally slinked away from the teabaggers, realizing they were already so bought and paid for by Wall Street and the real corporate Death Panelists in the Health “industry” that they might not have much in common with the teabaggers after all. Rotten vegetables are notoriously unflattering to the complexion.   Naturally, they both disingenuously blamed the annoying “big government” intrusion of pesky “ethics” laws for their fortuitous absences from a crowd that in the end, evidently didn’t “share their values.”

No wonder Sarah Palin quit her part-time day job; this evolution-denier can gaily fleece her (socially) Darwinistic inferiors for all they’re worth and not be unduly shackled by silly old “big government” ethics.  The Republican Party, not so much.  The policies they have chosen and continue to fight for are the exact ones that caused and will only merrily perpetuate the very pain the Teabaggers are feeling, and their overconfident claim to Teabagger loyalty is already wearing alarmingly thin, given that their craven, almost Cheneyesque money-grubbing went on lurid display at about week three of their “revolution’s” existence.

I have previously criticized the Democrats for running against Bush, after  all this time and so many of their own failures, but the only thing stupider than that would be the Republicans running as “Bush, Only More So.”  I can’t decide which one I want to lose more.  Let the (h/t Jon Stewart) “thinnest kid at fat camp” win.

Also.

Basically, much of the Washington establishment has decided that, despite the deficits they howled maniacally about two minutes ago, a few more wars should be immediately undertaken, minus any help from gay and lesbian service members, of course, and paid for by the elimination of Medicare and Social Security.  Well, that would be nice indeed, and who could complain, but isn’t two lost wars enough?  These things do run up, just like the credit card bills they are, and consumers can only watch one war at a time on their notorious flat screens (that they’re still paying off at usurious interest) and wonder that the Administration that told them a few days ago that the  government had to “tighten its belt” just like everyone else also still seems open to an extra war or so.  Sarah Palin runs around regurgitating gobbledlygook about “common sense,” but somehow common sense is never understood as reticence about starting wars; common sense means something about old people working until death, which minus Medicare, will at least be sooner.   Common sense also seems to mean that ordinary people are willing to sacrifice their futures and a decent life at home for a never-ending parade of Imperial ventures abroad, which only further aggrandizes its proponents as it exacerbates the shocking disparities in wealth and power Americans have come to accept as the “Free Market.”  In what free market, pray tell, would everybody be shopping for Predators and SAMmies?

With all the wars, war provocateurs like the CIA and NSA, weapons, and other police state bloat (excluding the equally disturbing and lavish militarization of local law enforcement) we’ll easily spend a trillion in one, ONE, year on wars even if we don’t start any more of them, which seems at this point unlikely.  This leads me to the inescapable question for which I have no ready answer:  as a people, as a society, what the fuck is wrong with us?  We step over homeless in the streets, we watch neighborhoods deteriorate under waves of foreclosures, and yet we gape in amazement and envy rather than anger and demands for justice at the astonishingly small cadre of people who have so obviously robbed us all blind.  The Republicans offer them tax cuts, and the Democratic Administration appoints them to its economic team, and lo and behold, a lot of people on both left and right end up unnervingly angry.  The answer?  Let’s have another war; if you can’t find a job, I hear Blackwater’s a pretty good place to work.

Admittedly, if those were my policies and record, I’d probably punt like that, too, and have done so routinely in nightmares from which I’ve awakened in a pool of sweat.   If I were Obama, I’d probably have Palin envy by now, and if I were a Democratic congressperson, I’d be as nervous as a whore in church.  The only thing the Dems have going for them at this point is the Republicans, and they’re stupidly tossing that overboard to get their war on, or at least let their righty fringe do so.

CHNN NEWS FLASH:  People do not want to hear about any more wars, declared or undeclared, nuclear or no, until the current two stop costing trillions.  Media, please make a note of it.