In all, this elaborate sideshow we still call an election isn’t an election at all; it’s an auction, and the cheapness of the bids ought to offend us all.  Lobbyists and Hedge Fund managers at least coughed up bribes, er, bids of at least a million, since that’s what they spend on, say, shirt laundry, but when you get to the banksters, America looks like a four dollar tart.  Really, Goldman Sachs, you’re only coughing up $496,430 to save America from European-style socialism?  Couldn’t you have at least rounded it up?  And JPMorgan Chase only stuffed $317,400 into Mitt’s magic underwear, undoubtedly in crumpled singles.  That’s about what they make on fraudulent overdraft charges in about eight minutes; and yet that’s all they have to spare to oust that commie who once called them (oooh…) fat cats?  Why do they think buying a President is so cheap?

The wrinkle in this, which I don’t think the activist judges on the Supreme Court thought through as they planned to fulfill Karl Rove’s “Permanent Republican Majority” dream with their errant Citizens United decision, is obvious.  Republican voter totals in Florida were down from 2008, in the double digits.  Could that be the result of a merciless barrage of annoying, repetitive, and sneaky commercials, 13,000 of them?  Before the money tide rolled in, Republicans across the country were much more enthusiastic about voting than understandably dispirited Democrats.  After being doused for weeks in plutocrat-funded sewage, many must have decided they needed to shower on election day.

More interestingly, the attacks were directed at someone most everyone despises, Newt Gingrich.  Thus, though the ad onslaught must certainly have been annoying, it wouldn’t have beeen offensive to most people, particularly those elusive “Independents” needed in the general election.  It will be a little different when the gold-plated fire hoses are aimed at President Obama, who maintains high personal approval, even though both right and left agree he’s been a big disappointment.  Thinking people know Obama isn’t a European socialist intent on destroying capitalism, quite the opposite, and are likely to find attempts to smear him as such both offensive and dumb.  Best of all, Romney has nothing positive at all to say about himself that ordinary voters want to hear, not even 4% worth, so he’ll have to go on lying, flip-flopping, and bumbling while hoping some of his very expensive mud sticks.  Money can buy a lot of things, but love clearly isn’t among them.

Romney seems okay with that, but history might disagree.  Republicans (and the great majority of the media) loved Bush, and simply adored Reagan.  This undeserved and mostly unreciprocated adulation not only buffered them from criticism once in office, but more importantly, it got them there, and the same is true of Obama.  As I’ve said before, and it becomes more obvious each day, no one not named Romney loves Romney, or will admit it if they do.  The cheapness of the donors is, ironically, reflected in the listlessness of the voters.  On paper, Romney is the perfect candidate: looks, money, family, money, business experience, money, and money.  In real life, the paper turns out to be cardboard.

All eyes, including my own, are on Wisconsin tonight, and for good reason; six Republican state senators who supported Gov. Scott Walker’s Koch-funded Randian Fantasyland are facing recall.  Two of them, the loathsome Randy Hopper (whose recently-dumped wife has joined recall efforts) and Dan Kapanke from LaCrosse, are expected to lose.  A third, cocktailhag Alberta Darling, who couldn’t name a single job her beloved “job creators” have created, is in a dead heat against Sandy Pasch, and admitted last week that she was “nervous.”   She left out “….as a whore in church,” but it was implied.  If those three lose, Democrats regain control of the Senate, but as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted, won’t be able to do much to reverse Walker’s corporate coup, at least at first.

Nonetheless, such a stunning rebuke of Walker’s Shock Doctrine after only eight months, and set against tens of million dollars in corporate cash, would knock the Koch brothers and ALEC down a peg, a richly deserved outcome they obviously would like to avoid at all costs.  Walker himself, bless his heart, is already waxing philosophical, declaring that the race is “out of his hands,” all the while knowing that he’s already earned wingnut welfare for life (and probably his own show on Fox News), so if this doesn’t work out, what the Hell.  He added, in an almost Palinesque flight from reality, that people would see how great his education program is turning out and vote to stay the course.  In the middle of the summer, when schools are closed.  (Note to Kochs:  You want ‘em dumb, but not that dumb…)

Naturally, the President has been all but silent on the recalls, and that may be a good thing for Democrats, but it reveals yet another example of his well-earned political dilemma and cravenness as a politician.  He knows, and Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere have outright said, that the current battle in Wisconsin is about denying him reelection, which we all know by now is the only thing on God’s (formerly) green earth that he actually cares about.  His notorious “family budget” rhetoric and relentless talk of “shared” sacrifice, endlessly repeated, sounds a lot more like Scott Walker than it does like the Wisconsin 14.  So, like the darling Ms. Darling, Obama too is “nervous,” a condition which invariably involves his frantically pretending not to be President at all until the dust settles.  As we’ve seen in the past, such shrinking from political fights never produces a good outcome, but he’s trying it again anyway.  Yawn.

This time, though, he has no choice.  After dropping EFCA like a hot potato and freezing federal workers’ pay, he has shown himself to be no friend of either unions or public employees, and he would probably draw boos and depress Democratic turnout if he showed up.  Worse (for him), a resounding Democratic victory would show voters that forced austerity borne of failure to tax the wealthy and the gutting of the public domain is both profoundly stupid and wildly unpopular in a crucial swing state.  Too bad he just agreed to all that.  Guess it’s time to hide under the desk again.

Ironically, the message Wisconsin Democrats are sending is the diametric opposite of Obama’s.  They didn’t “compromise” with a loud, intransigent, and addlepated minority’s cockamamie ideas.  They didn’t meekly accept the imperious demands of shadowy corporate funders.  They didn’t betray, repeatedly, the citizens who voted for them in good faith.   They didn’t give up.   As a sign said in last winter’s protests, they’re badgers, not weasels.  Wish I could say the same thing for the president.

Keep your fingers crossed.

UPDATE: The ol’ cocktailhag was out there talking about that school thing again, and looking pretty thirsty on local TV. As usual, she complained that there was even a recall at all; why don’t voters just sit down and shut up, but she too launched into the talking point about how great the schools are going to be, would that they were open.

Now, I’m not sure who will be singing “Happy Birthday” to the President tonight, but I’m willing to bet it won’t be like this.  And it isn’t just sexpots, movie stars, and what have you that don’t feel like singing; heck, it’s Wall Street, too, although I don’t think Lloyd Blankfein would look very good in that dress.  While I’m happy to report that OFA sent me a slightly more suitably desperate entreaty today to attend what they’re no longer calling a “house” party, they sure as heck didn’t say that, say, Lady Gaga or Beyonce was going to be celebrating this non-event.  Hair washing can proceed as planned, methinks.

It’s remarkable, really, that a youthful, charming, purportedly liberal President who was so often compared to Kennedy back in the day is now, at best, compared to Nixon.  Usually unfavorably.  These days, if Obama wants a sexy broad to sing his praises, he’ll have to troll for rodeo queens and other lesser lights, just like Tricky Dick.  Al Gore may be fat, but he’s still got Melissa Etheridge.  At the rate Obama’s going, the Dixie Chicks might start slamming him at concerts (or at least I hope they will).  Come to think of it, he would look good in a Michael Moore movie, too.

That leads to an interesting question: is a tepid, halting, and relentlessly calculated embrace of gay rights enough to keep the vaunted Hollywood Liberal Elite in Obama’s camp, and more importantly, their vaunted wallets open?  Matt Damon provided a powerful shot across the bow when he loudly and publicly railed against just the sort of “centrist” education policies Obama has so far cravenly endorsed, which tend to involve screwing over teachers and lots of testing.

Perhaps this explains that the much-ballyhooed “pivot” on jobs seemed to be much more about “free trade” deals and deregulation, which in the past have failed spectacularly.  He’s clearly worried that having thrown away both small donors and Hollywood money, that Wall Street alone won’t carry him over the line.  What’s left?  Predatory corporations looking for handouts, natch.  But wait a minute, don’t those guys generally go for the other side?  Anyone who can explain to me how, exactly, Obama could beat a marginally credible Republican candidate with this unfolding strategy ought to do so.  I didn’t go to Harvard, of course, but to me still doesn’t add up.

Fortunately, the chances of Republicans nominating someone marginally credible do seem slight at the moment.  But they’ve surprised us before, and they surprise Obama, or at least seem to, EVERY FRIGGING DAY, so you never know.  But if I were him, I’d be happier right now if there were some famous sexy tart out there who would still at least sing to me.  I know of none doing that tonight.

Behold:

Cocktailhag:

As someone who got his start as a community organizer, President Obama’s entire career has revolved around the idea that ordinary people working together can do extraordinary things.

Not that any of these things are desirable, or anything.

So I hope you can take part in marking his 50th birthday next week in the way he would appreciate most: with a solid showing of grassroots action in every corner of the country.

I think I have to wash my hair that night.

This Wednesday, August 3rd, campaign volunteers will get together for house meetings in all 50 states. We’ll plan local events, strategize about how to grow the campaign in our communities, and talk about how to spread the word about the President’s accomplishments to our friends and neighbors.

And those accomplishments would be?

Best of all, folks will also have the chance to join an exclusive live video conference with President Obama at their house meeting.

That ought to be productive; the President is so famous for his responsiveness to the grass roots.  Of the other party.  Maybe this invitation ought to be going to the teabaggers.

Can you attend a house meeting in Portland? Here are the details:

Ah, a chance to schmooze with Obamabots and criticize their decorating choices?  Maybe I can just throw on a turban or something.

Because the President is focused on the job we elected him to do, it’s up to us to take the lead in building this organization on the ground.

No, because the President is doing the exact opposite of what he was elected to do, his campaign can’t find a single soul to host a party.
That’s why house meetings and neighborhood teams are at the core of our strategy. By building this campaign at a local level and putting grassroots volunteers in charge, we’re able to reach voters the best way we know how: through folks they know, in their own communities.

Or, alternatively, serving them crappy cake in a crappy building in a crappy neighborhood, to celebrate the birthday (!) of a crappy President.  Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that that “core strategy” will need to be revised.

And while there will be other chances to get involved as the campaign heats up, attending a meeting on Wednesday is the best way for you to help plan what the campaign will look like in your community in the coming weeks and months.

I see what it looks like, and it looks pretty danged pathetic, even without the dumpsters.

It’s also the only chance you’ll have to participate in this special video conference with the President.

Hmmm.  That could be actually tempting, but only if mooning is permitted.

RSVP here for the meeting in Portland:

http://my.barackobama.com/Birthday-House-Meetings

I’ll get right on that.

Thanks,

Mitch

Ah, we’re on a first name basis.  How empowering.

Mitch Stewart
Battleground States Director
Obama for America

A word of advice, Mitch, since we’re pals and all…..   You’ve got your work cut out for you.

The good part, though, is that as usual, Jim and Mike always accidentally include real information in their zeal to get every word right, and better yet, have to resort to such weak evidence to back up the inanities they’re propounding, that they do achieve a sort of low comedy.  In a breaking news article entitled, “The GOP’s Winning Streak,” we learn from Karl Rove himself, among many others, that the only thing standing in the way of his Permanent Republican Majority is a need for a little “education” targeted at unbelievers.  Remember when Condi Rice wanted to “educate” people about weapons of mass destruction?  Of course you did, because you aren’t Jim and Mike.

A few juicy tidbits:

—Deficits are all the rage on Capitol Hill, and will be until Congress wends its way through the debt limit fight and the next budget. The word “deficit” appeared in 470 documents in the Congressional Record between the beginning of January and the end of March, more than in any session’s opening since 1995, according to a review by POLITICO. And Americans listened: Asked by Gallup to identify the most important problem facing the nation, 13 percent said “federal debt” in March of this year, up from 8 percent a year ago.

Is it me, or is it pretty pathetic to claim that a rise from single to low double digits in the face of a 24/7 media barrage is something to crow about?  Thirteen percent?  Twice that many people, at least, think the moon landing was a fake.  Hint to Jim and Mike….  Don’t confuse us with the facts, as they tend to make the story fall apart.

—The broader budget debate is now fought on the tea party’s terms: It’s not whether to reduce government, it’s by how much. This helps explain why serious centrist commentators and even some liberals PRAISED a $6 trillion budget cut plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Remember how a similar plan was received two years ago?

Yippee!  People have gotten stupider, which must mean more of them are reading Politico.

—Thanks to a pickup of 675 legislative seats in 2010 – many because of these budget principles — the most sweeping work is getting done in states. Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are now working, real-time labs for discovering how much the party can cut government – without cutting off the support of independents. A GOP senator told us the party studies what happens in these state showdowns to test the limits of what will work here. One early finding: Many think Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) went too far, too fast by gutting union power without first educating the public.

Ya think?  How did these guys get jobs?

“The country knows it’s in serious trouble,” Gingrich said. “You see this with Scott Walker, you see it with John Kasich [in Ohio], you see it with Rick Scott [in Florida], you see it with Chris Christie [in New Jersey], you see it with Mitch Daniels [in Indiana].”

Ah, the most hated politicians in America look popular to Newt Gingrich, and the Bambi-like reporter goes ahead and types.  Better yet, he doesn’t get the unintentional hilarity of this morsel from John Thune, and thus makes his irredeemably boring and hackish little puff piece funny (emphasis mine):

“If you overreach too far, you can get a backlash,” Thune cautioned. “We have to sound reasonable. But the reason the president moved so far is that he has recognized that the government has gotten much, much larger, and that most independents in the country are very uncomfortable with that.”

No follow-up question, natch.  After hearing from Karl Rove about how we can cut “trillions” later, easy, we get more choice blather from Newt Gingrich, and then another word about how people just need the be “educated,” from, improbably, Tim Pawlenty, to wrap the whole thing up with a bow:

Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and 2012 presidential candidate, said by phone from San Jose, Calif., that fiscal arguments have given the party a broader appeal as more people “became aware and educated that it’s not just a matter of political rhetoric – it’s a matter of sixth-grade math.”

No, in sixth grade they explain some of the crucial differences between a Family Budget and the Federal Budget, which is one reason Republicans are so hot on home schooling.  Later, you learn that everything Republicans say is the opposite of the truth.  But not at Politico, despite all evidence.

“We are in for a sustained period of structural reform,” Pawlenty said. “The country is prepared for the change. The public deserves the truth. They can handle the truth. … Given how deep the hole is, I’m not worried about overreach. I think we should try to be as bold and courageous as the American people will tolerate, and we need to lead them there.”

That sounds like rhetoric to me, and of a kind of scary sort…  Reminds me of this:

At the opening of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell describes Scarlett O’Hara thusly: “…she wasn’t beautiful, but everyone thought she was.” Now, before you start thinking I’m going to bring up the battle axe of the borealis, I’m not, because my argument isn’t really about beauty (or lack thereof).  It’s about the deep and abiding character flaws that develop when people are encouraged by those around them to think they have gifts they simply don’t have, and how such delusional self-confidence leads people like Scarlett to repeatedly make drastic and irreversible mistakes which harm others and ultimately, themselves.  The plot is hardly new; would somebody please alert the (liberal) media?

When you look at today’s Republican party, today coincidentally centered in Scarlett’s old Confederacy, they might as well all be wearing hoop skirts at Twelve Oaks, perhaps even showing their bosom before three o’clock, against Mammy’s sage advice.  As such, a sneering, self-entitled jackass saddled with a lifetime of failures big and small like George W. Bush could simply step onto the national stage and magically become a “moderate”  regular guy you could “have a beer with,” but even more implausibly, a man who would never deficit-spend and would also pursue a “humble” foreign policy.  When Condi Rice made the laughable assertion, repeatedly, that “no one could have predicted _______,” you have to admit she had a point, she just defined “no one” a little differently than most of us would, meaning “no one who matters.”  The media fell for it, after all, along with enough credulous Americans, and just went ahead and put an erratic, destructive ne’er-do-well into an office where he could do quite a bit of damage, which of course he did.  By that time, though, anyone with two brain cells to rub together could have seen this coming.

Remember Newt Gingrich, the Historian and Intellectual?  How about Dick Cheney, the Statesman?  Colin Powell, the Incorruptible?  The New Nixon?  So confident that the media is as shallow and dumb as the Tarleton twins, for all of my adult life Republicans have built their success in getting people to believe they’re beautiful, against all evidence, and then screwing them over later, just like Scarlett.  Perhaps because he’s a fellow Georgian, Newt Gingrich even takes her fiddle-dee-dee a step further and marries someone better.  That always shows ‘em.

The competition for the new belle of the ball seems to be heating up of late: there’s the ravishing Scott Walker of Wisconsin (whose Mammy has unfortunately not suggested a hair piece yet… maybe she’s short); the elegant John Kasich of Ohio; the statuesque Paul LePage of Maine; the, well, striking Rick Scott of Florida; and pleasingly plump Chris Christie, who would no doubt benefit from some aggressive corset work.  As you’d expect, the media thinks they’re all so beautiful that it’s really too hard to decide, even as their regretful supporters have seen them once too often in curlers and cold cream to go there, even drunk.

The good news is that now there are a lot more profiteering Rhett Butlers to go around these days, and they have so much money they can afford a whole passel of Scarletts, so few of these worthies expect to be making any dresses out of the drapes anytime soon.  The bad news is that there’s a new Scarlett in town, out to avenge the burning of Atlanta and such, by the name of Paul Ryan, and with his prominent widow’s peak he even, disturbingly, looks the part.

The Kochs and their ilk  have already factored in a few millions lost here and there with their state-based “investments” that won’t pan out; when you’ve got $40 billion, that’s less than the dry cleaning.  The big goal was to grab the federal government, which is, as Willie Sutton put it, “where the money is,” and Paul Ryan and the Republican majority are the getaway vehicle.  Touted endlessly as “courageous” (even among Democrats), Ryan’s latest “plan” is the expected toxic combination of naked reverse Robin Hood horse shit, which is anything but “courageous” in our Foxified political environment.  Remember, the last time a President attempted to do anything but cut taxes was in 1993, and though that produced a surplus and unprecedented economic boom, to the media it was still the grave mistake they called it at the time because it resulted in Clinton losing Congress.

But in a way they may be right.  It is courageous to say, outright, that you plan to do away with Medicare while lowering taxes on wealthy corporations, just as it is equally courageous to say you are also going to do away with collective bargaining, give back direly needed federal transportation dollars, hand fancy jobs to unqualified cronies (and/or their predictably worthless children), rip art off the walls and call justices bitches (to their faces, to boot, not like Barbara Bush), and tell people to “kiss my butt.”   Few Republicans I can think of have ever been quite so courageous, especially with an election coming up, and I’m delighted to think they think it will work out for them.

What they’re saying is, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”  Even Scarlett got that message….  Will the voters?

CH: Kloppenburg/Prosser results tomorrow….  Keep your fingers crossed.

I’ve compiled a list, by no means exhaustive, of the many ways that Democrats have basically become Republicans, and a somewhat shorter one that makes them look like Appalachian relatives thereof, and an asterisk or two at the end where the alert might be able to spot a difference.

Things on Which Democrats and Republicans Completely Agree:

First, that voters are stupid, as you can see:

Wars (and military spending in general) are the coolest things ever, and as such, great domestic sacrifices of blood and treasure must be made to pay for them, now and forever.

These marvelous wars are the sole choice of the Commander In Chief, consulting with Fox News.

Social Security must be cut.

The rich must never be forced to pay even a proportionate share of taxes.

America never will join the rest of the civilized world in providing health care for all its citizens without the corporate plundering that makes it unaffordable.

What’s good for Wall Street is good for America, and the rich really are America’s Best People..

Nuclear Power is the greatest thing since cesium-laced sliced bread.

There’s such a thing as “Clean Coal.”

All mergers are good mergers, the bigger the better.

Last, my personal favorite:  That the Federal Budget is, somehow, like the Family Budget, and thus must behave the same way, errant nonsense that refuses to die, despite being repeatedly and catastrophically disproven.

I could go on, but I might be too drunk by the time I finish.

Things on Which Democrats and Republicans Differ Just Enough To Warrant Expensive and Deceptive Political Battles with Each Other Every Two Years:

Gay Marriage: Republicans oppose it maniacally, Democrats more politely.

Global Warming: Republicans don’t believe in it at all, Democrats agree we shouldn’t do anything about it.

Domestic Spying:  Republicans think we should be sneakier about it, Democrats prefer a more open approach.  (Wait a minute…  Does this belong in the first category?)

When having our awesome, badass wars, Democrats like to have the UN involved, whereas Republicans just want to git’er done; both don’t mind losing expensively and humiliatingly, as long as it takes a long time, by which time they’ll all be lobbyists.

Republicans think doctors who perform abortions are murderers and should be preemptively killed; Democrats agree that women who are such sluts that they go around getting pregnant should pay dearly.

Republicans think we should drill, baby, drill everywhere and anywhere, damn the consequences; Democrats agree, but only if we don’t drive every species into extinction along the way, or at least too rapidly.

Republicans want to kill the unions once and for all, while Democrats, like Rahm Emanuel, have intentions slightly less malevolent; they just want to fuck them.  It’s a little like Jeffrey Dahmer magnanimously stopping a date halfway through, but nonetheless not much to hold onto.

Republicans believe that Fox News is the only legitimate news channel; Democrats agree that it is important to appear on the “influential” network and thus accord it the prestige it does not deserve.

Republican believe that big business should never be regulated, ever, and Democrats meekly add that maybe here and there it perhaps should, but not in a time of (war, recession, meltdown, or on a day ending in “y.”).

Republicans believe that America is A “Christian Nation,” and would like our laws to be based on the Old Testament; Democrats agree and weakly point to parts of the New Testament, too, on their way to church.

Things on Which the Two Parties Actually Disagree, Sometimes:

Hmmm.  By the time I got through with the other two lists, I ran out of notes, leaving this category a tad bereft, which looks like poor work as far as formatting is concerned.  Maybe a particularly alert Hag reader could think of something for me.  Or better yet, for our dear President. So far all he’s got is to tell the “base,” assuming he knows what that is, to “swallow their anger.”  I hate to even metaphorically echo Rush Limbaugh”s “shoving it down our throats” comment on this one, but in this case, “swallow” is about right.

Back in the days when Republican leading lights said, “The business of America is business,” or “What’s good for General Motors is good for America,” such simpleminded assertions at least carried a whiff of plausibility; American businesses did lead the world in many ways, their vast industrial might having helped win two world wars and by the latter part of The American Century, created a secure middle class larger and more prosperous than the world had ever known.  The top tax rate was a whopping 91% in the tail fin era, and corporations paid more than a quarter of all taxes, rather than the single digits they do today, and perhaps most surprisingly, firing lots of people was rightly considered the failure it is, rather than some sort of act of heroism.

On the corporate side, the failures are all too familiar; the relentless pursuit of “profit”  and the riches that it offered the chosen few, though often contrived through deceitful accounting, almost always involved sacrificing quality, whether the product was cars, televisions, airplanes, or newspapers.  For a time, such festering weaknesses could be papered over with aggressive marketing, tax evasion, government contracts, and increasingly expensive anti-regulatory efforts, but in the America of 2011, there simply isn’t any business talent  out there capable of running a video store or telephone company properly, let alone a sprawling, multi-trillion dollar government.

Our CEO’s, like our Republican politicians, think they’re capable of something, and should therefore be allowed to do it, despite their track records, and everyone should just shut up and let them.  That worked out so well at Enron, you know.  Across the country, the Republican tea party temper tantrum is headed for a time out, because, like their financiers, these cretinous little Caesars don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, so much so that they can’t even fake it respectably.  From Florida to New Jersey, from Ohio to Wisconsin, a bunch of sleazy bamboozlers are bringing the slash and burn corporate ethic that goes over so well at CNBC to a neighborhood near you, and even the local Republicans are starting to feel the heat.  You see, layoffs, outsourcing, and executive plunder are too drearily familiar to actual Americans in their working lives for them to blandly acquiesce to them from their government, wherein they at least nominally have a say in the matter.

Leaving aside Scott Walker, whose fifteen minutes are nearly and quite ignominiously over, every Koch-funded nincompoop with whom the mainstream media has become inadvisably infatuated is singularly focused on utterly failing at their jobs for the greater glory of, well, Fox News or something.  Rick Scott, who had made a big name for himself ripping off Medicare to the tune of billions and was duly rewarded with Florida’s governorship, has now pissed away thousands of federally funded jobs for his state, where the unemployment is 12%. Longtime Wingnut Welfare Queen John Kasich has brought the warmed-over “Neutron Jack” hype to Ohio, with predictable results, just as Chris Christie has confirmed once again that New Jersey is a place where being a fat asshole is a competitive sport.  In Indiana, they actually elected George W. Bush’s budget director, Mitch Daniels, to fix the state’s deficit, an act akin to, well, hiring Bristol Palin as a spokesmodel for abstinence….  Never mind.

As disappointed as I am with President Obama and the Democrats as a party, none of them are as dumb, obnoxious, and/or self-defeating as the sanest Republican, if there were any, so I’m momentarily optimistic that in 2012 the Kochs et al will waste a lot of money and fall a bit short of their goal, which as we have seen, isn’t something anyone is going to like.  Failing upward is only tolerable when it doesn’t involve everyone else falling downward.

The majority report, not exactly going out on a limb here, notes that Greenspan’s silly Randian notion that banks and bankers would never be so irresponsible as to try and rip anyone off because they were such good hosts or something, sort of came a crapper in the final analysis.  Nay, the Righties said, it was because some commie law from the 70′s forced banks to lend to darkies.  The Democrats laid equal blame on banks and regulators, the Righties blamed Fannie, Freddie, and overreaching government.  I could go on, but is it really necessary?  In short, as with all pressing national problems, the Democrats attempt, lamely, to understand problems in hopes of preventing them in the future, while the righties just don’t give a damn about anything except their political hobby horses, even when they routinely ride them off cliffs.  Preserving the lies is all that matters.

Better yet, in a delightful new tradition of Tea Party America heralded by Michele Bachmann’s cuckoo rantings on Tuesday evening, there weren’t just one, but two Republican rebuttals, the first one being too “liberal,” and the other presumably blaming the whole thing on Al Gore’s weight and Frances Fox Piven, not necessarily in that order.  Once you’ve made reality the enemy, why not go whole hog?

Kidding aside, rewriting history in this case is of crucial importance as the right moves forward with its longtime goal of concentrating wealth and power in fewer, less accountable hands; the results of their previous efforts are staring America in the face as it grapples with unprecedented inequality, double-digit unemployment, and an establishment singing in angelic harmony about “austerity,” at least for other people.  But defending the banksters so fulsomely?  Is this smart, when bailed-out banksters are hip-deep in all the coke and hookers money can buy while they’re turning ordinary Americans out of their homes every day?  Far better to take their money, “fail” to re-regulate them, and write them a sternly worded letter, as the Democrats not unexpectedly did.  But for Republicans that sort of thing is soooo last century; better to believe in fairy tales and Citizens (!) United. That’s the ticket.

As the Nixon Administration collapsed under its own criminality, and with it both the draft and the Vietnam war, I felt that the clouds that had haunted my childhood had been lifted, and even if the prospect of getting rid of my older brother that way necessarily dimmed, that was still a very good thing.  The Church Commission hearings, which exposed the police state tactics of the FBI and the government in general led to important checks on government power, and here in Oregon marijuana had even been decriminalized for possession of less than an ounce.  Our Republican (!) Governor had passed the first Bottle Bill as well as landmark land use laws that protected forest and farmland from the sprawling development of the era, and one Republican Senator, Mark Hatfield, had been a staunch peace advocate, while the other, Bob Packwood, was outspokenly pro-choice, before that was cool.  (Later we found out Packwood might have had personal reasons for this stance…)

Then, along came Reagan, the first horseman of the apocalypse that is today.  Almost as soon as he took office, he made registration with Selective Service a condition of federal higher education aid, a clear signal that more wars were in the offing, and after his wife was lambasted for her extravagance and shallowness, she showed her serious side by revamping (and vastly escalating) Nixon’s failed “War on Drugs.”   Taxes were cut drastically on the rich as the military budget ballooned, and red ink flowed from sea to shining sea, necessitating savage cuts in social programs, and tales of “Welfare Queens” nipped whatever vestigial social responsibility that still existed in the middle class in the bud.

Worst of all, though, what Reagan ushered in was what I call, with a nod to one of my favorite authors of the era, David Wise, “The Politics of Lying.”   With his sunny talk of Morning in America, Reagan was able to unmoor political discourse from any connection with reality; facts did become, as he put it “stupid things,” and any politician who dared tell the truth to the American people would henceforth be rendered some sort of subversive party-pooper, and would lose.  Like his successors, he was able to cobble together the conniving rich and the religious bigots into and uneasy but enduring majority, trashing the country in the process, but what the hell?  It worked.

The “successes” of George Bush, which were many if you look at it from his party’s perspective, made Reagan look like an ineffectual semi-hippie by comparison.  Where Reagan denounced torture, Bush gloried in it.  Where Reagan attempted to salvage his legacy by negotiating arms treaties with the Soviets, Bush ostentatiously backed out of them.  And where Reagan had peppered his staff with quite a few venal cronies who personally profited by their government “service,” Bush’s administration had nothing but, right on up to his Vice President.

Being a natural optimist, I thought that these serial disasters would, once and for all, discredit the right and its dissolute and authoritarian ways, but I’ve been proven wrong once again.  Not only has Obama embraced the worst of Bush’s policies on civil liberties, war, and government overreach, but his economic policies are just as bad if not worse than those of his predecessor.  A serious primary challenge from the left, which will probably do nothing more than put a fanatical teabagger in the White House in 2012, seems the only, admittedly unappealing, prospect at this point.  All these years after the 70′s, Republicans have managed, with considerable Democratic support, to make voting all but irrelevant; we now have a choice of more of the same vs. more of the same, no matter how bad.  Makes me want to put on bellbottoms.