First of all, it was clear last night that Newt Gingrich, who was unaccountably surprised at his loss, will now dedicate the rest of his life and non-Tiffany’s budget to clobbering Mitt Romney, presumably starting today.  Most deliciously, his tactics will include calling him a “moderate,” and a lying flip-flopper about it, to boot.  That ought to go over big with the “Live Free or Die” crowd up in New Hampshire, not to mention the God-botherers of the old Confederacy, without whom no Republican could hope to win.  Up till yesterday, the Frothy Mixture had no reason or inclination to attack Romney, but as his victory speech made clear, Santorum plans to attack Romney as the pampered, out-of-touch 1%er he is, which will resonate with pretty much everybody in the country with the possible exception of, say, Jamie Dimon.  Of course, Ron Paul has been leveling similar attacks, with some justification, at all the Republican wannabes, but to little effect outside his own base; things are clearly different now.

Best of all, this utter crackup on the right emboldened President Obama to finally go ahead and pick a fight with Senate Republicans, something that somehow never crossed his mind before.  He overrode Mitch McConnell’s phony “pro forma” non-recess and appointed Richard Cordray as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  The spittle-flecked response from Grandma McConnell was as tone-deaf as it was predictable; so much so that even former nude model and soon-to-be-ex Senator Scott Brown had to side with Obama against his own party.  Turns out that fighting the good fight for the banksters is about as popular as Santorum, the man or the stuff, in a whorehouse.  Nobody told the Republicans, evidently.

In sum, the Republicans’ stupidity, mendacity, and all around repulsiveness are not only being loudly promoted by the Republicans themselves, but the resulting hubbub is actually creating room for the President to belatedly try to differentiate himself from them.  Just imagine what the reaction will be to Romney et al relentlessly calling Obama a socialist, while Republican voters are just as relentlessly being told by members of  their own party that the candidates saying this are the scum of the earth….  it won’t just help Obama, it might make socialism not look that bad, either.  Especially when Romney becomes the bloodied nominee and is finally forced to release his tax returns.

In this scenario, Obama may end up being forced to become more liberal, since the Republicans are not only writing all his campaign commercials for him, but they are also, one by one, discrediting each others’ lame-brained sloganeering that passes for a platform at the same time.

Let the Bum Fights begin; they couldn’t hurt, and they might just help.

Here he is back in his salad days, posing as Underdog in Cosmopolitan, minus the, you know, stuff underneath:

Long before he was a politician, the Republican candidate vying for Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat posed nude for the centerfold of Cosmo. Scott Brown won our “America’s Sexiest Man” contest and appeared in the June 1982 issue. In those days he was a 22-year-old law student at Boston College who was cramming for finals just days before stripping down for our photographer.

My, but that boy has just always been an underdog, hasn’t he?  Elizabeth Warren wiped the floor with the cowed and overmatched Morning Joe bunch today; to no one’s surprise except possibly their own.  It’s must -see TeeVee, but sadly, I can’t get the video to embed, so go look yourself, and gape in astonishment.  One week after her announcement, she’s polling ahead of the “underdog.”  Fancy that.  Now I know one place where the money I save by stiffing ObamaCorp will go.  If Warren can’t beat this admittedly hunky shill, it’s game over, to use her own words.   Tellingly, by the end, no one on Morning Joe disagreed, even the slimy, dumb, and visibly defeated Mark Halperin.  Pass the popcorn.

Nonetheless, the administration has made a “bold” shuffling maneuver in its staff, which essentially amounts to making up a new fake title for David Plouffe to come in and be the vocal coach and choreographer, reprising the role he played so brilliantly, so long ago and far away, in 2008.  They’re going to need a serious orchestra, and maybe the Rockettes, to sell this number.  Here’s Plouffe:

– We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them. Even without a difficult fiscal situation, the government can have only so much direct impact on job creation, on top of the millions of jobs created by the president’s early efforts to restart the economy. There are some terrific ideas that we can implement, from tax credits for small businesses to more incentives for green jobs, but full recovery will happen only when the private sector begins hiring in earnest. That’s why Democrats must create a strong foundation for long-term growth by addressing health care, energy and education reform. We must also show real leadership by passing some politically difficult measures to help stabilize the economy in the short term. Voters are always smarter than they are given credit for. We need to make our case on the economy and jobs — and yes, we can remind voters where Republican policies led us — and if we do, without apology and with force, it will have impact.

I mean, really.  Here we have depression-level unemployment and poverty, which is the main reason Obama and the Democrats suddenly fear oblivion in November, and the “new, improved,” Plouffe has come up with a plan for it that makes Clinton’s school uniforms idea look consequential.  Never mind that the myriad failures and capitulations in nearly every other area important to liberals and ordinary Americans have whittled away the Democratic base to a point where it would fit in a phone booth, these guys are proudly announcing that double digit unemployment is like the weather; you can talk about it, but that’s about it.  Then you change the subject, “Can we talk about three vaguely related other things we haven’t (yet) fucked up quite as badly?”  It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic, and harmful to real people, not just the bunch of tone-deaf actors putting on a Presidency made for television, who deserve what they get for their clunker of a show.  Rotten tomatoes incoming.

Increasingly, I feel as though I’m watching a thrown game.  The really big issues that were supposed to differentiate this administration from the last were casually tossed aside with surprisingly little anger: FISA, Guantanamo, indefinite detentions, both wars, torture, bailouts, and on and on, and I guess they’ve decided that if people will put up with that, why not Hoovervilles, too?  Well, Mr. Plouffe, if you’ll remember, Hoover was a Republican, and things ended badly for him.   FDR was the Democrat, and he didn’t waste everyone’s time talking about tax credits for small business.  He actually did things, something this administration seems to regard as viscerally indecent.

The only hope of restoring American jobs is to wind down the military adventurism, restore regulations of the financial sector, repeal ruinous “free trade” agreements, and eliminate the Bush tax cuts.  None of these things, though many songs have been sung about them, have happened or will happen, at the rate they’re going, in time for November, and if they even did by 2012 I’d be more than a little surprised.  Americans can put up with a lot of things, as they demonstrated so well for the last ten years: pointless wars, corruption, crimes against humanity, and widening gaps between rich and poor.  What they won’t put up with is living under bridges, and it doesn’t take a Harvard Law graduate to figure that out.

If Plouffe’s statement is any indication, I can only conclude that they want to lose.  He might as well have promised a (salmonella-laced) chicken in every pot.

The news for liberals and Democrats is depressing in the first year of the meek Obama Administration and filibuster-crippled Congress culminating in the election of Scott Brown and the Supreme Court free speech decision announced today rolling back restrictions on corporate spending on federal campaigns. Wall Street and the bankers are drooling as this week they doll out $144 billion in bonuses. Both Obama and the Congress have shown they will not restrain, let alone seriously punish, those who have heavily damaged the U.S. and world economy.

The last year has made clear that the Corporate Communists, as Dylan Ratigan has labeled them, hold far too much power. The CCs, just as earned or stolen money is never enough, have no desire to rein in their ever increasing money-power. The voice and power of the people is being drowned out.

As usual, the M$M seems to have missed the major lesson from the Mass. Election. This was not a triumph for the Republicans and a disaster for the Democrats. It actually was a disaster for both and a triumph for the people.

Independent voters make up 51% of Mass. voters. They were sending a message to both parties and the Obama Administration. They want leaders who are as angry as they are about Wall Street and the insurance companies. Someone like Scott who claims he will get tough with both. That’s why they voted for Barack who promised he was an outsider bent on cleaning up Washington. Much was promised; little was delivered when all those insiders became his key appointments. Obama has been unwilling to fight for the few outsiders he nominated. Even with the Christmas bomber, Obama let his nominee to run the TSA languish until this week he quit in disgust. 176 other White House appointees are still unconfirmed. The Republicans put up a fuss and Obama caves issue after issue.

Mass. voters are very familiar with health reform and all its incumbent problems due to heartless insurance companies because they bravely voted for serious reform to provide universal health care in their state. They watched Obama and Congress give away a very modest public option that would have only affected five percent of Americans. They know and have felt the impact of a severe recession thanks to the CCs. In his victory speech, Brown never said the word Republican once. The movie character who yelled “I am mad as hell and won’t take it any more!” worked for a Boston TV station.

If you examine the character and beliefs of national guard, Lt. Col., judge advocate Brown, he is unlikely to be the spokesperson for all those independent voters across America who are also extremely angry. Independents make up a third of more of the U. S. electorate and they are desperately seeking a real leader. No Republicans have emerged especially when it has Beck and Limbaugh as the nominal spokepersons. There is one Democrat who could fill the void.

A man born of teacher-parents who grew up in the tenements of the Bronx working his way through Harvard graduating summa cum laude in three years. A man who earned a Harvard law degree and worked as a law clerk for two very different supreme court justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia as well as two other opposite-poll judges, Abner Mikva and Robert Bork. A man who then obtained a masters in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and has passed the exams for a Ph.D. in government.

A man who teamed up with a fellow Bronx High School of Science graduate and started an innovative telecom business that began on the second floor of a funeral home and grew to be a $2 billion-a-year business, on the Fortune 1000 list, and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. A man who reported a worth of $31 million as a freshman U.S. Representative.

Yes, if you haven’t already guessed, I am talking about outspoken Florida congressman Alan Grayson. After just a few years amassing considerable wealth in business, Grayson decided to leave in 1994 and return to law representing whistleblowers, who witnessed fraud against the Government. After the war in Iraq began, Grayson was the only attorney who was willing to pursue such cases, in the face of hostility from the Bush Administration. Congress called on him four times to testify about contractor fraud in Iraq.

Grayson shot into the national limelight last October when with only a few Republicans within earshot, dramatically declared the GOP health care plan is “Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.” No matter how much the media or the right wing has attacked him, he has not backed down. He is impervious to anything but what he believes. He can’t be bought because he has substantial wealth. He came from modest roots and understands the pain Americans are currently undergoing. He is a very effective voice of the people who could lead them in a very needed uprising.

Below is a list of YouTube videos where you can see him in action. If you know of a potential leader who can energize the people in a positive fair way devoid of ideology as effectively as Grayson, tell me who it is. Elizabeth Warren could be another candidate so there are others out there.

YouTube videos

$1.2 Trillion Slush Fund: Congressman Alan Grayson Grills Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn 1-13-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj0JAfq4esk&feature=channel

Alan Grayson on the Worst Deal Since Manhattan Was Sold for $24 in Trinkets 2-11-09 Deal with Citigroup 306 billion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-DOwLnQ4nk&feature=channel

Alan Grayson: Is there any way to save the system other than showering taxpayer money on banks? 3-5-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jO5Z-9yy54&feature=channel

Grayson to Geithner: What Rules Do We Need to Prevent the Taxpayer from Being on the Hook? 3-26-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZLiu_9Q2FE&feature=channel

Alan Grayson: “Which Foreigners Got the Fed’s $500,000,000,000?” Bernanke: “I Don’t Know.” 7-21-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ&feature=channel

Rep. Alan Grayson on Rachel Maddow: No One Cares About Bipartisanship 10-20-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWbTzbadG0I&feature=channel

Alan Grayson Introduces Amendment to Stop People From Going Broke or Homeless 10-20-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCylyNv-RHw&feature=channel

Grayson v. Broun on the Constitution ACORN 10-21-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKz5ZHM8kFM&feature=channel

Alan Grayson on Hardball: Is Dick Cheney a Vampire? 10-22-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0sgwv0rNUA&feature=player_embedded

Thus, Democrats are always suspect, tied as they are to those tacky unions and caterwauling minorities; like Baroness  Schraeder in “The Sound of Music,” they like to keep the money in the family.  Clinton was slow to catch onto this dynamic; even though he had abandoned spending any money to revive the last catastrophic Bush economy, he had the nerve to attempt, successfully, to raise taxes on the rich to balance the budget and then try to reform the amoral yet lucrative health care system.  For this intolerable breach of protocol, he was pronounced dead a few months into his Presidency; an irrelevant annoyance that would soon be sent back to the trailer park from which he came.   Of course, when Clinton produced a growing economy that propelled him to reelection, the Village again recoiled at the horror wrought by those silly voters, and joined hands with the Republicans to hound him out of office for his audacity.  By then of course, Clinton had already become a Republican, but the taint of his populist roots never washed away; made metaphor as it was in the stained blue dress.

When George Bush came to town, the Village rejoiced at the sight of all the private planes on the tarmac, and thought the furs, jewels, and glorious excess of the Reagan era were finally back, and the government could get back to its proper business of afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.  They were right about the second part, and how, so they forgave the first when they discovered that he and his frumpy librarian wife bedded down at 9:30.  He even brought the almost forgotten glamor of war back to the jaded Capitol, and the lush contracts that started flowing to the right coffers made Washington a boom town again; dowagers on the way out could unload their mansions for rich profits to the new elite, and every Washington party looks better with dress uniforms all about.  Like in Louis XIV’s Versailles, the national wealth was flowing in the right direction again, and Sally Quinn and her ilk could say “let them eat cake”  and  mean it.

When the predictable (to others) collapse occurred, the Village of course suddenly looked at Barack Obama and the Federal Treasury and saw, as did Lady Bracknell, “social possibilities in his profile.”  Though obviously one of “those,” both a Democrat and a well, you know, they were understandably used to deference from both, and expected it from the new President.  Sadly, Obama gave them just what they wanted, leaving in place the Generalissimos of Bush’s military junta, the consiglieres of Bush’s financial fixers, and quickly dismissed out of hand the notion that even Bush’s worst thieves and torturers, those that went to the smart cocktail parties anyway, would face any legal unpleasantness.  That, apparently, wasn’t enough for the Village, and their unfounded worry that maybe someday Obama might rock their luxurious boat, what with his overwhelming congressional majorities and all, led them to cast about for a Republican revival in time for the next social season.

In Washington, Republican presidencies are forever, while Democratic ones are never allowed to last much longer than a spa visit, so I suppose we should be grateful that they waited almost a whole year this time.  But the Queen of the Village Slutterati, Sally Quinn, has spoken….  The age of Obama is over, and the age of Scott Brown has dawned like a bright new day in her Georgetown Manse.  If I were Ben Bradlee, I’d hire a taster for my Metamucil.  The Estate Tax comes back in less than a year, you know.

The wars have not only not stopped but escalated.  Torture has become as American as apple pie.  Secrecy is being defended just as fanatically in court, and illegal imprisonment, warrantless spying, and absurd invasions of privacy continue.  The Bush tax cuts remain holy writ, the deficits blossom, and the military budget grows like topsy.  Gay Americans still can neither serve openly in the military nor look forward to any movement on the federal level toward marriage equality.  The “too big to fail” banks are larger and even more arrogant, and gutting “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare is more likely than Bush could have ever hoped.  Why, In Heaven’s name, would Democrats reward such behavior with their votes?

As Obama’s approval ratings continue to plummet, deservedly so, he thinks his magic presence will save a lackluster candidate from defeat at the hands of a teabagger  centerfold.  Good luck with that.  If I were Coakley, I’d say, “Stay home.”  She’d probably win if she did.

Republicans will naturally declare the loss of Teddy Kennedy’s seat to be a harbinger of  things to come, and they’re probably right.  They understand, as Democrats don’t, that once in office you actually have to DO SOMETHING if you want to stay there.  Obama and Coakley seem to think this is some kind of myth.  I guess Bush wasn’t bad enough for Democrats to clue in to the idea that Republicans have to be defeated because of the damage their policies inflict on all but the richest Americans, and reversing that dysfunction, utterly, is the only way Americans will see beyond the bleatings of the right-loving mainstream media to relegate them to the irrelevancy they have so richly earned.

And you don’t do that by being just like them.  The 60 seat majority that supposedly makes Coakley’s seat meaningful is nothing but a pile of garbage with Joe Lieberman sitting on top.  You know, the guy Obama campaigned for back in 2006……

I am as disheartened as any other liberal would be by this revolting development, but Obama has done it to himself, his own party, and America, and this loss, should it occur, is probably his last wakeup call before he becomes the irrelevant one-termer  he seems determined to be.  Hell, if I weren’t so cheap, I’d give some money to the Brown campaign.