Hero

She's one of the most reviled people in America, and quite possibly the most reviled woman. A Google search of photos of her yields results that are overwhelming unflattering, and mostly just vicious. But she has been the most effective Democratic Speaker of the House in generations, and a true champion of the future. Today was probably her last hurrah, and she stuck it to those champions of ignorance and perfidity, the GOPers of the House.

TPM: "Using a wily procedural maneuver to tie Republican hands, House Democrats managed to pass, by a vote of 234-188, legislation that will allow the Bush tax cuts benefiting only the wealthiest Americans to expire."

Apparently the Senate is very unlikely to follow suit. But it's worth it to have this rare last moment, when somebody stands up for the change we believed in. Nancy Pelosi, I salute you.

The News

Here's the good news: as far as we know, the Earth did not get swallowed up by a black hole. Some people thought that might happen when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but it didn't. At least, not that we noticed.

But the outcome of the 2010 elections made it less likely that we're going to make an orderly transition to a safe future, let alone a better one. It wasn't likely anyway, but bad times that most Americans can't even imagine are likely to become obvious sooner, and the far future has really taken a blow.

I remind you of what Paul Krugman wrote about the short-term future: "This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness. "

A battle royal is ahead for the long-term future. Yesterday President Obama reiterated what he's said in interviews, that his emphasis for the next two years is on clean energy policy, which is the positive way of talking about efforts to control the Climate Crisis. But the GOP--the Grand Oil Party--has moved to unanimity on Climate Crisis denial, becoming the party of anticipatory mass murder. Writes Marc Ambinder (with my emphasis): "The GOP plans to hold high profile hearings examining the alleged "scientific fraud" behind global warming, a sleeper issue in this election that motivated the base quite a bit." (The rest of his analysis in that column sounds pretty sane as well.)

I find myself becoming less interested in the shifting winds of politics and more concentrated on both the longer view, and the much more specific. In terms of the longer view, some of us had the hope that the improvements and stability in our lifetime meant that humanity had become mature and smart enough to move into a brighter future for all, including the ability to meet challenges like global heating we might encounter along the way. Certainly a better test for human maturity could not be devised than the Climate Crisis, which requires intelligent analysis, emotional and psychological maturity, anticipatory thinking and imagination, high levels of skills and confidence, and a society that welcomes diversity and has outgrown petty divisions.

But another reading of these decades is that they were a fortunate but temporary aberration: a product of several kinds of luck (America's position after World War II vs. the rest of the world, an unusually beneficent climate period, etc.) These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive--in fact, this period of luck and relative stability, when so many scourges of disease, war and poverty were in abeyance for millions of people was the perfect opportunity to marshal our physical, intellectual and psychological resources to really grow up as a species spread everywhere in a global society, capable of managing our collective future.

That no longer seems at all likely. There was progress in some parts of the world, but not enough, and especially not enough here in the U.S. The consequences of the past and our inability to deal with them in the present (most notably, in the Climate Crisis caused by byproducts of industrial prosperity) are very likely to cause significant hardships and disruptions, already a reality for millions across the globe, as well as unheard and unknown numbers even in America. This is almost inevitably going to grow significantly worse in the next 50 years, and beyond.

The refusal to face this reality will be painful to watch now. Those who continue the daily struggle against it will need renewed courage, tempered by hard-won wisdom. But once again they will be fighting to keep our society and our country from slipping back even farther. We still haven't made up the ground lost in the Bush II years--not even the Reagan years. If Obama's election was a step forward, this election was at least a half step back. And when we need to move forward quickly, that may turn out to be too much.

And those divisions are clearly still there. Racism was a significant factor in this election, along with oil and tobacco money. It may be a Sunset Effect, but after sunset comes night. Actually this may have been the last hurrah for the Grand Old White People's Supremacy Party. Demographics will out eventually. But the cohesive society we need in emergencies, with some level of trust in times of chaos, has grown even more remote, and some or all of us may well pay a price for that.

I find myself thinking about how completely many people are locked in the present as they know it, as if it will last forever. It's probably not going to. This thought, maybe paradoxically, orients me towards appreciating the moment. I think about hot water gushing out of the tap. I enjoy my cat while we have her. I still imagine the future, but its rewards are different than I used to imagine. It's a different and more dangerous kind of adventure. Maybe I can still suggest ways to meet it, for people who will have to face it. I probably won't be one of them. I've got a different and shorter journey to make. Meanwhile, I'm just hoping the hot water holds out.

The New Speaker of the House

Today is Election Day: Guard the Change

"Tomorrow [meaning TODAY], you can help determine not just the outcome of this election, but our country's future."

(President Obama, in an email yesterday)

"The last election was a changing of the guard. Now we need to guard the change."

(President Obama, speech this fall)

Don't compare us to the Almighty; compare us to the alternative."

(President Obama, speech in September)

And for a scenario of the outcome that is still possible, there's this from Nate Silver.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

These are some of the Rabid Right extremists who have a good chance to be elected and to take power in the U.S. House and perhaps the Senate this week, plus two of their key facilitators. Here is some of what they've been saying: Social Security is evil, unconstitutional and must be abolished. End the minimum wage. End student loans, abolish the Education Department and abolish public schools. End the Veteran's administration. No separation of church and state--Christianity as the official religion, Islam is a terrorist religion. No right to vote for U.S. Senators. No legal abortions for any reason. Repeal health care reform, repeal consumer protection and Wall Street bank reform. Continue to subsidize corporations moving jobs out of America. Continue tax cuts for the super-rich. Keith Olbermann calls this election "an attempted use of democracy to end this democracy, to buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one another which have combined to keep us the envy of the world."

Paul Krugman wrote: "This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness."

And these candidates unanimously agree: Global warming, the greatest threat to the future, is a hoax.

Be afraid, be very afraid. This year, Halloween is real.

The Monsters Conquest

The monstrous amounts of money being spent on this election--dwarfing even the many millions that here in CA the two superwealthy candidates have lavished on their campaigns--comes secretly from corporations that--at least at this point--would not pour millions into purveying simplistic lies on behalf of candidates whose strings they expect to pull, unless they could do it in secret. Which for the first election in recent history, they can. We may never know to what extent the expected outcome of the 2010 has been bought by this secret money, but we can sure guess.

Who are these people? The kind of people (or, as the sign at yesterday's Washington rally points out, legally "corporations are people too") that deny the Climate Crisis for the same cynical reason they denied that smoking kills (often employing the same tactics and p.r. firms to do so), that continue to squeeze out the American middle class and yet convince enough members of it that it's the fault of blacks and browns and the federal government, that cynically take the resources of the country for free while running candidates against these programs, that demand their own taxes be cut so their billions can become more billions.

It's all got a living metaphor in this Halloween horror story, a book called The Monster by Michael W. Hudson (Times Books.) The apparent conventional wisdom about the sub-prime mortgage crisis that plunged the U.S. into a near Depression is that it was banks giving in to the bad choices made by people who really had no business wanting those loans. In other words: shame the victims.

The reality Michael Hudson exposes is very different: a morally corrupt and systematic campaign of predation, with no conscience and an excess of greed, by a sociopathic financial system--not at the fringes but in its vital centers. The victims are most often lied to and subjected to relentless psychological warfare, the records falsified and legal obligations of the lenders are circumvented. That the book begins with a primitive act of forgery is the signature of what goes on for the rest of its pages.

It is this streak within American business, politics and American life that is being empowered now. That is empowering itself through the cynical and ruthless manipulation of the unfortunately willing, as well as the helpless. We are watching our monsters become bigger and more powerful. This is a really scary Halloween.

Not Insane

Back in 1972, satirists the Firesign Theatre ran a presidential candidate named George Papoon whose slogan was "Not Insane." On Saturday satirists John Stewart and Steven Colbert filled the Mall in Washington with a rally to Restore Sanity. I'm not quite sure what that says about the march of American history, but Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon had impressions of the day leading to some beautiful and hopeful words, some of which I will now steal:

"What this crazy, not entirely well-thought out, quasi-free-for-all was about, it turns out, was we, the people. The proud, generous, spirited, non-yelling and non-bullying real Americans who know that "If we amplify everything we hear nothing." Having 4Troops perform the national anthem and Tony Bennet belt out "America, the Beautiful" was not irony. Even Father Guido's rambling benediction that ended with a "Thank you, and we really mean it," was sincere. Because the ultimate metaphor for who we are, in the competent words of Stewart, is our nightmarishly daily, eminently Yankee commute. The NRA members and the Obama voters. The soccer moms and the immigrants. And somehow we all generally merge into one harmonious lane. It's true that as Stewart explained, "Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the promised land. It's just New Jersey." But when we practice compassion and community, when we remember that the loudmouths are not a true picture of who we are, we can heal a nation, fly to the moon, and even get to work on time.

Was Saturday the beginning of a new dawn in the American character? Did it cure hysteria, paranoia and rampant jerkwaddery? Only time will tell, but don't hold your breath. .. But when Mavis Staples and the entire ensemble gathered for the finale to promise "I'll Take You There," it seemed, at least for a minute, something more. It was a message to the world that we are not the sum of our loudest, angriest parts. That most of our hearts, broken and aching and cynical and flawed though they often are, are in the right place. Oh, mercy. Mercy indeed. And though the rally may be over, the Peace Crazy Love Train is still at the station. The only question left is: Are you on board?"

Not that anybody noticed or cares but...

Bloomburg reported that:

Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in three months, a signal the labor market may be starting to mend.

Initial jobless claims decreased by 21,000 to 434,000 in the week ended Oct. 23, the lowest since early July when fewer auto plants than normal closed for retooling, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance dropped to a two-year low, while those getting extended payments also fell.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, is beginning to gain speed and may give companies reason to increase payrolls heading into the holiday shopping season. Ford Motor Co. is among companies planning to add staff as sales improve. "

But of course such realities can't possibly matter, or even be heard, when Bloomberg can also report:

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don’t believe it.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered."

A Real Halloween Scare

This 14 minute portion of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment is nothing but a recitation of the on the record statements and activities of various Tea Party candidates for Congress and the Senate. If you want to be truly scared for Halloween, watch it.

But It's Getting There

How wise is the conventional wisdom? We're about to find out.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post had big stories yesterday on the depth and extent of voter anger. The Times conclusions, based on their polling, was the most devastating: parts of the Obama coalition are defecting, especially women:

The poll provides a pre-Election Day glimpse of a nation so politically disquieted and disappointed in its current trajectory that 57 percent of the registered voters surveyed said they were more willing to take a chance this year on a candidate with little previous political experience. More than a quarter of them said they were even willing to back a candidate who holds some views that “seem extreme.”

Individual polls suggested that apparent Democratic gains over last weekend had disappeared. Yet the tenor of coverage today is a little different. Several stories (in Salon, at TPM),
picked up by cable TV say that the expected Democratic losses are in line with recent history for midterm elections in a bad economy, and that Republicans would be even farther ahead if the Tea Party candidates weren't so awful.

Still, the outcome is yet uncertain--despite all the ads and robocalls, the election is still days away, and even if most have made up their minds by now, it all hinges on who goes to vote. Several polls that either make sure to nab cell phone users or include statistics on cell phone v. land line calls show that cell phone users (presumably younger voters) would vote Democratic in larger numbers--enough to make close winners out of the many close races on the boards. The question is whether they will vote.

Americans have a choice: to take out their anger and confusion on all incumbents or the majority party, or to avoid making things worse. Americans never seem to foresee just how much worse their impulsive choices can make things. Bush v. Gore remains the most vivid example.

It's worth remembering that Republican anger isn't new. Rabid right GOPers were angry when Bush was in the White House. (One poll shows that 96% of Tea Partiers voted for McCain.) What is new is the primitive extremism of many of the candidates, from muddled theocrats like Sharron Angle to the out and out thugs supporting Rand Paul.

It may be our normal politics of two-steps-forward, one-and-a-half steps back (or two-and-a-half), but even that's not good enough. As it is, we're probably not making enough progress towards what we need to give us a fighting chance for an intact future. But this kind of an outcome, and the ensuing cacophony of idiocy we're in for, makes that possibility even more remote.

Well, it's not dark yet...

Election 2010: Guard the Change

The following is a bit of encouragement I'm posting on various political blogs today. I don't post there very often anymore, but I thought I'd add my voice now and hope that it helps.

It's the last week before the elections. It's the moment when potential voters are most focused. It's the time to nail down organizing for GOTV and get it started, especially in early voting states.

It's the time for action. And if you need a few words to keep you going, I suggest these: Guard the Change.

Because when you strip away the side issues, that's what this election is about.

President Obama said it in September: "The last election was a changing of the guard. Now we need to guard the change."

Part of the electorate is discouraged that the change isn't faster. Part of the electorate is going to scapegoat the President and blame the party in power for bad economic times. But the energy on the GOPer side is coming primarily from those who are afraid of change.

They are mostly white people who are feeling overrun by demographic change. They are afraid of Mexican immigrants and Muslims. They see President Obama as the leader who is taking away everything from whites and giving it to blacks and browns. They want their country back.

These voters are being managed with complete cyncism by corporate interests and their millions, who must hide themselves to retain credibility. They really want their country back.

This energy is coming also from people who see liberals as lording over their lives, anxious to take away the last of what they have--their SUVs, their big screen TVs--with the excuse of global warming.

The importance of the change underway can be measured by the extremism of the opposition. Many of the GOPer candidates don't even pretend to know very much, or base their actions on anything more than discredited ideologies and narrow religious faiths.

We know the political change that has begun will benefit everyone in this time of inevitable stresses, and especially that it is crucial to a decent future.

It's time to guard the change.

Some voters can still be persuaded, because many extremist zealots running for the House haven't been sufficiently exposed for what they are. I suspect most voters would prefer that the people they elect to be the government are competent.

But the most important task is to get Obama voters of 2008 to vote in 2010. This message is particularly potent for them: Guard the change.

What GOPers fear most is that black voters, Latino voters and young voters who believed in Obama will rally to his defense, to guard the change he began. That's why they are busily engaged in the voter intimidation tactics for which they are so justly infamous.

Change is hard. Political change is messy and often ugly. President Obama at USC:

"But I told you this was going to be hard. Power concedes nothing without a fight.

Inch by inch, day by day, week by week, we’ve been grinding it out. That’s the nature of change in a big complex democracy. And it seem so distant from those wonderful times [of 2008 and the Inaugural.] We haven’t gotten everything that we hoped for. Maybe a neighbor is out of a job, but don’t let anyone tell you that our fight hasn’t been worth it, or that we’re not making a difference.

Because of you, there are people right here in CA who don’t have to choose between cancer treatment or going bankrupt. There are women who can look their children in the eye and say, yes you are going to college. Businesses able to keep their doors open during a recession. 100,000 brave men and women home from Iraq. We will continue to fight to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We will have an energy policy for the future of America.

So don’t let them tell you that change isn’t possible. Here’s what I know. Change is always hard. And if your parents, if our gradparents, if our great-grandparents had listened to the cynics, we wouldn’t be here today."

This election is important, if only for this one reason:

Guard the change.

Election 2010: Fearing Forecasts

It's the home stretch for the 2010 elections, with a flood of final polls and forecasts ahead. One veteran forecaster at Kos writes of this election, "I don't have a freaking clue." Neither apparently does the superstar of evaluating polls, Nate Silver (now working for the New York Times.)

One fascinating reason is this (according to the above cited post): early polling was largely coming from Republican or Republican-leaning sources. Even now nearly half comes from such sources, while less than 10% comes from Democratic sources.

This could be why the polls haven't made much sense. There simply aren't that many Republicans--or Tea Partiers--to account for the percentages. But the outcome will depend on what it always was going to depend on: Obama Democrats showing up to vote, and enough Independents who aren't convinced by extremist zealots with nothing but push-mouth slogans and fantasy ideology to guide them in the important, complex and difficult tasks of governing.

Election 2010: To Turn the Tide

President Obama spoke at USC in LA before an audience that university officials estimated at 37,500. There was also a stop in Las Vegas, before a crowd of 9,000. All across the country Democratic candidates for the Senate, Congress and governorships are gaining support, closing gaps in polls or moving farther ahead--often just after Obama has spoken in the state. Meanwhile, the Newsweek poll says that Obama's approval rating has jumped from 48% to 54%. Democrats have higher approval, and according to Newsweek the "enthusiasm gap" has disappeared.

Republicans and their shadow billionaires and corporate sponsors are recognizing some of this. They concentrated some $40 million in Nevada to defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but now must send millions to Pennsylvania, where Joe Sestak is gaining momentum for the Senate.

But so far the media has not recognized this. Though political pros were telling them on Friday that the Democratic message is getting through--that the GOPer extremists threaten Social Security, tax relief for the middle class, student loans, Wall Street and credit card reform, health care reform and the federal budget itself, and that their candidates are being financed by millions from unknown donors. But the pundits weren't getting it. As diarist Freestatedem noted at Kos, there is little or no national TV coverage of President Obama's speeches and appearances, even though they are shaping up to quite possibly be a political phenomenon.

As I've noted recently, the GOPer media bias may be "a combination of 'what sells papers' emphasis on conflict and novelty, and their corporate interests." Now half of this is going to be tested, because the most natural way the media would go now would be to tire of the "GOPer tidal wave" mantra they've been pushing--it's old news now--and go for the novelty, the reversal of fortune. If Obama and the Democrats are coming on strong, then that's the news. Will this be their new angle? Or will they stick with pushing the no-longer-novel Sharron Angle and her fellow extremist zealots? Angle in particular is feeding the families of many a media person in Nevada with her advertising barrage. Is there any integrity left in news? We're about to find out.

And Now for Something Completely Different

All those great Obama songs helped make 2008 a lot of fun as well as inspiring. This is probably not in their league, but it's funny and fun. The song is "I Like Jerry Brown," concerning the governor's race in California.

Election 2010: Of Tea Parties and Kings

Yet another story details the reasons that Barack Obama has had the most impressive first two years as President in modern times--this one in Rolling Stone, summarized here at Daily Kos. And so the question recurs: why is this news to people? Why isn't he getting the credit? Why do people even believe the contrary of what's true: for example, that he's raised their taxes, when in fact he's lowered them?

There are a lot of complaints about "messaging," and that's part of it. So is the dominant media narrative, which somehow always seems to track with GOPerness, which I take to be a combination of "what sells papers" emphasis on conflict and novelty, and their corporate interests.

But there's something else, something more fundamental, at least in terms of the national psyche. It has to do with Kings.

It may be, as someone said, that humanity's greatest invention is the sentence. But quite possibly its most harmful invention was the King. Human beings lived for thousands of years without kings--but I suppose as populations increased and small groups merged into big ones, and organized warfare became more organized and more deadly, the emergence of the King was a reasonable if fatal step.

Despite the rewriting of prehistory, I suspect that the concept of the King emerged at more or less the same time as the concept of the single god. Which came first may not matter, for they each seem to depend on--and reflect--the other.

In any case, the King became the single ruler, the absolute power, who was directly connected to both the god above and responsible for everything that happened in the kingdom. So when things went well, it was the King's glory. And when things went bad, it was the King's fault.

At first (the story goes) the King's subjects took this pretty literally, so if the King failed, the King was killed. But this got changed, so that the King was symbolically killed, at first through killing a substitute person--a mental and/or physical defective, a fool--and then through killing a substitute animal, like a goat. Like a goat that lets the King escape his fate. The scapegoat.

These days we have Presidents, and though they have a lot of limitations on their governing, they remain the symbol of power. Sometimes what happens is mostly or somewhat their fault, and sometimes it's not at all. But it doesn't matter. They are Presidents of projection. When things go wrong, they become the scapegoat.

This is a powerful tendency, though there are others associated with the King. The King is a symbol of the nation, especially when it is at war. So people do rally around the King, the President, when war is front and center. It probably underlies why G.W. Bush got a second term.

But today there's the sick economy. People feel helpless about it, and need to punish someone, and that's often enough the President. Probably some of those people are going to vote GOPer, though I think mostly they will be among those who don't vote. Frankly, I don't think this is as big a political problem for Obama as some--it's more to do with the party in power--but it is a problem for Dems.

More important though is President Obama as the scapegoat for change. There are a lot of people who are afraid of change. White people mostly. They're afraid of change that at this point is mostly a product of demographics, and in some respects is inevitable. But that doesn't matter. They see the first black President, and they want their country back. "Liberal" to them means "favors blacks and mostly brown foreigners over whites."

Now, Washington liberals, government bureaucrats, self-serving progressives--they (and we) all bear some responsibility for the suffering of others. But much of the truly awful change that is affecting their lives is the product of GOPer policies of the past decade, and the policies of American and multinational corporations and banks. But there's this convenient scapegoat, the black man in the White House.

This is the Tea Party in a nutshell. This is why, as Rachel Maddow pointed out this week, we have the largest number of extremist zealots ever to be running for high office, and in a midterm election, they have a better chance to get the relative fewer numbers of votes they need.

Right now the smart money is some of them making it to the Senate, and a lot of them making it to the House. But things are trending away from them, the polls are shaky, there are numbers that contradict the supposed trends (like the declining viewership for Fox News.)

I think what the Tea Party and the GOPer establishment fears the most is that black voters understand who is being scapegoated, and rise to the voting booths to protect him. To guard the change. The GOPers are already organizing their voter intimidation efforts, for which they are so justly infamous.

The move of so-called Independents away from extremist zealots is a good trend, but the conventional wisdom on that also is that House candidates aren't as exposed as Senate candidates to any kind of scrutiny, so they may get away with hiding their agenda--and lack of basic qualifications, like knowing anything--behind the usual rhetoric. But Dem prospects depend on mobilizing young voters, Latinos and other minorities, and black voters, as Obama did in 2008. The polls underestimated them, too, remember.

The President is inevitably a symbol, and people project their hopes as well as their fears, both irrationally to some degree. Irrational hopes not yet entirely fulfilled may lead to disappointment. Irrational fears are easy to have confirmed these days, with Fox running wild and other more temperate authorities eroded. But Obama is not the King, he is the President. As the evidence shows, by real world historical and political standards, he's been a very good one. His ability to make progress that benefits all Americans, that benefits the world and above all the future, will be hampered by a GOPer majority House of Representatives, even apart from the circus of investigations that will ensue.

Early voting has begun in several states. Guard the change.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama campaign together before a crowd of 35,000 in Ohio.

Election 2010: The "I" Word, Coming to a Congress Near You?

Here I am, doing exactly what I've accused other blogs of doing too much of: mentioning Christine O'Donnell. But her "I'm you" ad campaign rang a bell in my memory. Wasn't there some other dubious person trying to deflect bad publicity with that phrase: "I'm you?"

Yes, there was. Her name was Linda Tripp.

Linda Tripp was the woman who recorded phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky and passed them on to Ken Starr and his $70 million investigation that led so slowly to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Up until then, one "scandal" after another proved to be little more than the inflated terms of attack by GOPer zealots. But Linda Tripp gave the torturous investigation new life. The public didn't respond to her well, though. Especially since it looked like she had used multiple deceits to make some money with a book deal. So she hired a PR agent and gave a little press conference, where she asked the question, Who am I? and answered it, "I'm you."

But my thoughts did not follow the path of comparing Linda Tripp to Christine O'Donnell. Instead they fixed on this period that Americans who lived through it have largely blanked from their minds. Months and months of accusations and attacks, culminating in a President being impeached for only the second time in history, on grounds that few constitutional scholars could reconcile with the charge of high crimes and misdemeanors, bearing on the office of the Presidency.

But the GOPers controlled Congress, and they did it, because they could. This--along with the federal government shutdowns--was in fact the Republican Revolution. Notice that at the time, the economy was in great shape, and Clinton was a popular President.

Now consider one more possible ramification of a GOPer majority in 2010, besides frustrating any progressive legislation, or anything and everything that President Obama backs, attempting to reverse, repeal and defund whatever hard-won progress that's been made while proposing to deform the constitution, promote official bigotry and ignore earth-shattering dangers. For some GOPers in high places have already promised government shutdowns--and lots of investigations.

Investigations, ending with what? The attempted impeachment of the first African American U.S. President? You say he isn't giving them the opening that Clinton did, with complicated business deals and personal misconduct. But do you think that really matters? That this would stop them? These folks who deny he was born where he was born, and that his religion is his religion? Many are running on claims that have no basis in fact whatever (Sharia law?). Because they can, and they have the money to make pernicious illusion into consequential reality.

The Obama administration could have pursued investigations and even prosecutions--including impeachment-- into multiple areas of the Bush administration, from politicizing judicial and other appointments, to ordering torture and starting a war by knowingly lying to Congress and the American people. But they didn't. The country was in a terrible economic crisis, brought on by Bush policies. The country was embroiled in complex wars, created and mishandled by the Bushcorpse. Obama put country first.

But immense threats to the future, including the current possibility of another economic crisis, won't stop the GOPers from their sociopathic approach to politics. To their less than subtle class war, they could very well add an open race war, as well as putting the world through another disgusting, depressing and immensely damaging political crisis.

Far-fetched? Is there a standard for that?

Guard the change.

Election 2010: Financing Lies

The news Thursday was the statistical extent to which those shadow organizations are dumping money into GOPer coffers--according to this study, they are outspending such groups for Dems by 9-1.

Some Dems sense this phantom money is itself a political issue that is resonating. But it's more than accountability for where the money is coming--it's about what the money is being spent on. And that is--surprise, surprise--lies. Blatant, systematic, repeated lies. High imagery simplistic and blatantly racist lies as well.

Apart from the sheer volume of these TV ads, and their free media support from Fox and friends, their potential effectiveness is possibly enhanced by the giddy attention that the media--including progressive media--is paying one person: Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. Her antics in that tiny state, in an election she is very likely to lose, is taking attention away from other more important races, with equally unqualified Tea Party candidates.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so. I heard a GOPer operative on TV(on CNN I believe) as I clicked through, brag that precisely this was happening--that all the attention on O'Donnell meant less attention on Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Carly Fiorina, etc. So without attention and scrutiny, voters had only those TV campaign ads to go on. Not good.

Election 2010: Oligarchy in America

Another story in the New York Times focuses on another front group for GOPer corporate attempts to buy the upcoming election, this time with the typically ironic name of American Future Fund.

But perhaps even more striking is the extremely blunt column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post which begins: "The 2010 election is turning into a class war. The wealthy and the powerful started it.

This is a strange development. President Obama, after all, has been working overtime to save capitalism. Wall Street is doing just fine, and the rich are getting richer again. The financial reform bill passed by Congress was moderate, not radical.

Nonetheless, corporations and affluent individuals are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats. One of the biggest political players, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accepts money from foreign sources."

He concludes: "The country doesn't need this class war, and it is irrational in any case. Practically no one, least of all Obama, is questioning the basics of the market system or proposing anything more than somewhat tighter economic regulations -- after the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression -- and rather modest tax increases on the wealthy. But even these steps are apparently too much for those financing all the television ads, which should lead voters to ask themselves: Who is paying for this? What do they really want? And who gave them the right to buy an election?"


Well, the who is generally clear: the oligarchy is seizing its opportunity to tighten its grip on power. The only question I have is: are they just recently taking advantage of certain opportunities--like the Supreme Court decision Dionne explains as a result of naivete or arrogance, and the successes of the Tea Party movement? Or has this been designed since November 2008?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's some combination. Somebody saw the opportunity that the Citizens United gave the Bushwhacked Court--kind of like Bush v. Gore II, only this time the intent is to steal all elections, not just one.

And Fox came all the way out of the closet, no longer trying to pass as an objective news channel, especially once it created Glenn Beck. But the Tea Party freak shows were probably just political theatre until they helped take Ted Kennedy's Senate seat and won some primaries. Then once Karl Rove got involved, the oligarchy was deep into regime change. After all, the oligarchy and the poor saps who worship Fox and wave their guns and Tea Party banners have at least one thing in common: they're old white racists.

Still, could it really have been an accident that two extremely wealthy ex-corporate execs decided at the same time to try to buy California--and that both are women in this huge and economically crucial state that has a lot of women voters and two women Senators? The oligarchy's ambition might have been to simply get a foothold here. And then suddenly the rest of the country opened up.

Whatever level of conspiracy existed, it's clearly big now. But sorry, Tea Party chumps: you're just plantation labor for the rich. The endgame is the oligarchy.

Election 2010: Follow the Money

There's a lot to be said about the politics and the psychologies involved in this upcoming electoral expression, and of course a lot is being said and will be said. But a lot of it will be disproportionately evaluated, because a lot of it may be less relevant than the cold hard cash silently changing hands. Right now as Dylan said, money doesn't talk, it swears.

So before I meander down those roads, let me state what should be obvious: the super rich and the merely rich are trying very hard to buy this election for the Republicans.

The general approach is ancient, as old as oligarchy. The rich stir up the fears and prejudices of the poor, and flatter them with attention temporarily by making a few stars from their number to voice their platitudes and mockery of their enemies. They do it to serve their own interests, not at all the interests of those they inflame and flatter. And they do it with money. They use money to bribe and buy people. Money to fund institutions that buy people, and buy them influence. Money to buy media, to buy media time, and to fund political campaigns. And of course, they do it chiefly for money. The kind the Tea Partiers they finance will never see.

This year they are empowered by a Supreme Court decision that both allows unprecedented amounts of money into the political system, and hides where it is coming from. Odd that it should come at such a propitious moment, after the Obama campaign showed how much cash as well as energy could come from the grassroots, and the Democrats as a party began to raise money more effectively than the official Republican party. They're doing so in 2010 as well.

But the evidence is growing that the secret corporate and rich folks money is overwhelming, and applied to GOPer candidacies. First a little exposing of a shadowy tax-exempt group operating in Alaska and elsewhere. Then another phantom in Oregon. Then articles exposing the billionaires behind the Tea Party movement. President Obama called it an insidious attempt to take over democracy.

Now the closer we get to election day, the more obvious it is--though only if you pay attention. At First Read Tuesday: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he expects labor unions will be outspent 20-to-1 by corporate groups aligned with Republicans. The CS Monitor focuses on the infamous Karl Rove, and his funneling of millions to GOPer candidates--the Monitor wonders if it is legal, but when has that stopped Karl Rove before?

Update 10/7: President Obama continues to hammer this issue, noting that Democrats are being outspent 6 and 7 to 1 in many races, usually by outside groups--including at least one race in which an outside conservative group is outspending Dem and GOPer candidates combined, on behalf of the GOPer candidate. He also pointed to evidence that some of this money is coming from foreign corporations--something he warned might happen at the State of the Union where one member of the Supreme Court that allowed this was seen to disagree. Some of the evidence of foreign money was turned up by Think Progress.

"A note to Tea Party activists: This is not the movie you think it is. You probably imagine that you’re starring in “The Birth of a Nation,” but you’re actually just extras in a remake of “Citizen Kane.” So begins a column by Paul Krugman, noting the other strategy of corporate interests funding institutions and people to press their case--especially the phenomenon of Fox. As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn’t currently holding office and isn’t named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. Now, media moguls have often promoted the careers and campaigns of politicians they believe will serve their interests. But directly cutting checks to political favorites takes it to a whole new level of blatancy." But that's hardly all that Fox does. While still claiming to be a news network, it relentlessly pushes one point of view and now, particular candidates, with no respect for accuracy or fairness, and with relentless distortion and innuendo in its daily toolbox. As Krugman and others note, the Tea Party movements owes much if not most of its rise to Fox News.

This simply adds new money, new muscle and new megaphones to old sleaze, and there's no better symbol of that, writes Bob Herbert, that the GOPer who could become Speaker of the House, John Boehner. Herbert recalls that he was the guy who literally gave out money from Big Tobacco to sympathetic members on the House floor. Boehner is even more of a tool of corporate interests today, he writes. "Both major parties have, with great enthusiasm, turned more and more of the government over to corporate and banking interests. But the G.O.P., with Mr. Boehner currently the point person, is fanatical about it, has barely tried to hide its willingness to offer up the government wholesale, no questions asked." He concludes "The U.S. is in terrible shape right now because far too much influence has been ceded to the financial and corporate elites who have used that influence to game the system and reap rewards that are almost unimaginable. Ordinary working Americans have been left far behind, gasping and on their knees. John Boehner has been one of the leaders of the army of enablers responsible for this abominable state of affairs."

The America the GOPers want is what their patrons want: very low taxes for the super rich, to be paid for by the cumulative poor of future generations; incomes for the super rich rising into further obscenity while most Americans slip back and more fall into poverty; corporations allowed to pollute their way to higher profits, to sacrifice the planet and life as we know it to their further financial enrichment and temporary power. And they will tell the most outrageous lies--pleasant ones and vicious ones--and with their own network, and others too scared to contradict them, they are given the legitimacy to do so.

They may get the country back all right, to be further exploited and despoiled, thanks to invisible money financing campaigns, and their visible shills--such as the failed actor Glenn Beck, noting with approval the spectre of a family watching their house burn down, killing their dogs and cat, alongside the fire fighters that refused to put the fire out, because the family had not paid their $75 fee to the privatized fire company. This is the GOPer future, and it could be coming to your town, too.

So when I write about other aspects of this election, other kinds of portents, please don't forget that politics and psychology may be potent factors, and ultimately the psychology involved may be the most basic. But for the winners and losers and what it all means, don't for a minute forget to follow the money.