President Obama Getting Tough With Congress

For the first two months of his administration President Obama tried to show due deference to Congress, but now President Obama is thankfully starting to play hardball with the Republicans and right-leaning Democrats who are threatening to sink his ambitious proposals for this country. He's both calling out his critics and raising the option of using a legislative shortcut that would eliminate the threat of a Senate filibuster. Here are what a few new's sources are saying.

According to the New York Times:

"During an appearance on Tuesday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Mr. Obama took a swipe at Republican critics of his $3.6 trillion budget and its agenda for health care, energy, taxes and economic recovery.

"'If there are members of Congress who object to specific policies and proposals in this budget, then I ask them to be ready and willing to propose constructive, alternative solutions,' Mr. Obama said. '"Just say no" is the right advice to give your teenagers about drugs. It is not an acceptable response to whatever economic policy is proposed by the other party.'

"The strong words were the latest in a push that has come to resemble elements of the two-year-long presidential campaign. Mr. Obama may hold his second prime-time news conference as president, perhaps as early as next week, to talk up the budget."

In addition Walter Alarkon writes in The Hill that Obama's change in rhetorical strategy is his response to "substantial pushback from lawmakers in both parties who sharply attacked key elements in his $3.55 trillion proposal."

And the Associated Press writes:

"In a new Web video, President Barack Obama is asking Americans to help him pass his $3.6 trillion budget."

But Obama's big shot across Congress's bow is this from McClatchy Newspapers:

"A top White House official threatened Tuesday to use a congressional rule to force some controversial proposals through the Senate by eliminating the Republicans' power to block legislation.

"Peter Orszag, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the Obama administration would prefer not to use the budget 'reconciliation' process that allows measures to pass the Senate on simple majority votes.

"Orszag said he wouldn't rule it out, however. The legislative tactic is being considered to push through Obama's global warming and health care programs, and perhaps his proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy....

"Under normal Senate rules, it requires 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to shut off debate and force a final vote. Democrats currently have 58 Senate votes. Under reconciliation, 51 votes can force anything through.

"There is plenty of historical precedent of using it by both parties, including Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who used it force through big tax cuts.

"'Pretty much every major piece of budget legislation going back to April 1981, April '82, April 1990, April 1993, the 1990 act, the 2001 tax legislation, they were all done through reconciliation. Yet somehow this is being presented as an unusual thing,' Orszag said.

"'The historical norm as opposed to the exception is for a major piece of budget legislation to move through reconciliation.'"

The Washington Post reports the predictable Republican response:

"Republicans are howling about the proposal to expand health coverage and tax greenhouse gas emissions without their input, warning that it could irrevocably damage relations with the new president....

"Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has argued against reconciliation as well....

"'There are many more problems with using reconciliation than is commonly appreciated,' Conrad said yesterday, after he and House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) met with Obama at the White House. The topic of reconciliation came up 'in passing,' Conrad said, but no decisions were made.

"One big problem, Conrad said, is that reconciliation was conceived as a way to force hard budget choices, such as tax increases or spending cuts, not as a means to advance substantive legislation."

Roll Call reports on the opposition from some within Obama's own party:

"A bloc of Senate Democratic moderates is quietly maneuvering to keep open the
option of vetoing two of President Barack Obama's most ambitious agenda items
this year — climate change and health care reform.

"Eight Democrats who want to water down new climate change legislation have already joined with Republicans and signed a letter opposing any attempt to use fast-track budget rules to prevent filibusters. Many of the same Democrats also oppose using those budget rules to prevent filibusters of health care legislation...

"Democratic moderates have been couching their opposition to reconciliation with terms like 'bipartisanship' and 'regular order,' but when pressed, some Senators acknowledged they want to ensure their voices are heard during upcoming debates on global warming and health care.

"Senators from energy-producing states like West Virginia and Louisiana are worried new carbon taxes could be slammed down their throats. And fiscal conservatives are concerned they could be left out of the room while liberal Democrats push for a series of tax hikes proposed by Obama....

"But other Democrats said they were concerned that Republicans will filibuster anything Obama pushes on energy and climate change, and the recent run of near-total Republican opposition to Democratic priorities doesn't give them cause for hope. They argue that reconciliation — and the simple majority it requires — would ensure Democrats can forward their top agenda items.

Despite the tougher tack with Congress and Republican's in particular, it's worth nothing that President Obama is still not taking anything like Bush's "imperial presidency" approach to dealing with the legislative branch. For instance, he's actually asking Congress to write major legislation itself.

Robert Pear reports in the New York Times on how's that going:

"Three powerful House committee chairmen have agreed to work together on legislation to overhaul the health care system, starting with the view that most
employers should help finance coverage and that the government should offer a public health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance.

"The unified approach contrasts with the competition and rivalry among committee
chairmen that helped sink President Bill Clinton's plan for universal health insurance 15 years ago....

"In a letter to President Obama, the chairmen said, 'Our intention is to bring similar
legislation before our committees.'"

Americans Trust Obama, Republicans Not So Much

So far the American public is giving President Barack Obama their approval for handling the government's efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill, while they don't believe the Republicans in Congress have been doing a very good job. In a new Gallup Poll the Repugs receive an approval rating 31%, in fact fifty-eight percent of the public openly disapprove of the GOP’s actions.

This is really surprising.

You might have read how Think Progress released a report showing that Republican members of Congress outnumbered their Democratic counterparts by a ratio of 2 to 1 on the cable news shows. Apparently these Republicans and their talking points haven't been very persuasive. This is surprising because not only have conservative Republicans been dominating the discourse, but their talking points have been largely internalized by journalists covering the debate.

Let's hope this is not a outlier, and that the American public is paying attention.

Now a new CNN poll found similar results to the Gallup poll.

Seventy-six percent of those quesioned [sic] in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday give President Obama a thumbs-up when it comes to the way he's performing his duties, with 23 percent disapproving of the way Obama's handling his job as president.

While Repuglicans have been exceedingly pleased with their actions over the last few weeks, the American public is not.

Three out of four say that President Obama is doing enough to cooperate with Republicans in Congress, but only 39 percent feel that congressional Republicans are cooperating enough with the President.

Six out of ten approve of the way Democratic leaders in Congress are handling their jobs. But only 44 percent of those questioned approve of the way Republican leaders in Congress are performing.

Republicans may like to act as if they are not concerned with public attitudes, but they are. Republican leadership is the biggest set of cowards you have ever seen, and they will start feeling the heat. Watch them begin to fold this week.

How will Obama respond?

Now that the Republicans have shown President Obama the back of their hand, and have proven to be a bunch of whiney children, what will he do? Will Obama continue to work for bipartisanship as an end in itself? Will he agree to more GOP modifications just to buy a few votes?

I really do not know.

I understand the want for bipartisanship, but at what cost? At what point should Obama push for a real progressive stimulus package, knowing that success will bring Republican support after the fact?

I just don't know.

The public overwhelmingly supports President Obama, so at what point does he have to stop waiting for Republicans to act in good faith, and instead move forward?

At the end of the day some sort of stimulus package will inevitably make it into law. But whether it passes with meaningful support from Republicans, or is a meaningful package, is the first test of Obama's administration.

What’s up with the Republicans?

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert asks the question, why is anyone even listening to the Repuglicans?

I would like to know too.

The Same Old Song
By Bob Herbert

What’s up with the Republicans? Have they no sense that their policies have sent the country hurtling down the road to ruin? Are they so divorced from reality that in their delusionary state they honestly believe we need more of their tax cuts for the rich and their other forms of plutocratic irresponsibility, the very things that got us to this deplorable state?

The G.O.P.’s latest campaign is aimed at undermining President Obama’s effort to cope with the national economic emergency by attacking the spending in his stimulus package and repeating ad nauseam the Republican mantra for ever more tax cuts.
“Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all the spending in this package, we don’t think it’s going to work,” said Representative John Boehner, an Ohio Republican who is House minority leader. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Boehner said of the plan: “Put me down in the ‘no’ column.”

If anything, the stimulus package is not large enough. Less than 24 hours after Mr. Boehner’s televised exercise in obstructionism, the heavy-equipment company Caterpillar announced that it was cutting 20,000 jobs, Sprint Nextel said it was eliminating 8,000, and Home Depot 7,000.

Maybe the Republicans don’t think there is an emergency. After all, it was Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, who told us last summer that the pain was all in our heads, that this was a “mental recession.”

The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.

The Republican answer to this turmoil?

Tax cuts.

They need to go into rehab.

The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.

A stark example of this unholy collaboration between the G.O.P. and the very wealthy was on display in the pages of this newspaper on Jan. 18. The Times’s Mike McIntire wrote an article about the first wave of federal bailout money for the financial industry, which was handed over by the Bush administration with hardly any strings attached. (Congress, under the control of the Democrats, should never have allowed this to happen, but the Democrats are as committed to fecklessness as the Republicans are to tax cuts.)

The public was told that the money would be used to loosen the frozen credit markets and thus help revive the economy. But as the article pointed out, there were bankers with other ideas. John C. Hope III, the chairman of the Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, in an address to Wall Street fat cats gathered at the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton, said:

“Make more loans? We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.”

How’s that for arrogance and contempt for the public interest? Mr. Hope’s bank received $300 million in taxpayer bailout money.

The same article quoted Walter M. Pressey, president of Boston Private Wealth Management, which Mr. McIntire described as a healthy bank with a mostly affluent clientele. It received $154 million in taxpayer money.

“With that capital in hand,” said Mr. Pressey, “not only do we feel comfortable that we can ride out the recession, but we also feel that we’ll be in a position to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves once this recession is sorted out.”
Take advantage, indeed. That, in a nutshell, is what the plutocracy is all about: taking unfair advantage.

When the G.O.P. talks, nobody should listen. Republicans have argued, with the collaboration of much of the media, that they could radically cut taxes while simultaneously balancing the federal budget, when, in fact, big income-tax cuts inevitably lead to big budget deficits. We listened to the G.O.P. and what do we have now? A trillion-dollar-plus deficit and an economy in shambles.

This is the party that preached fiscal discipline and then cut taxes in time of war. This is the party that still wants to put the torch to Social Security and Medicare. This is a party that, given a choice between Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, would choose Ronald Reagan in a heartbeat.

Why is anyone still listening?

Republicans have decided to "rule by hissy fit" as Atrios calls it. It is time to stop listening to them. After all the damage that John Boehner, Mitch McConnel, George W. Bush, Dick Chenney and all the GOP have done to our nation, they need to be relegated to the back of the closet. Democrats need to step up and take charge. Republicans are now lead by children who need to not be heard from.

The Hoover Party

Rachel Maddow gives a brief history of Herbert Hoover, and accurately ties the modern Republican Party to him.


LibertyAir Blog

Colin Powell On The GOP and Rush Limbaugh

Years ago the Republican party embraced anger, hatred, and divisiveness, which is why I stopped supporting them. They turned to leaders like Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay. They hired men like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove who ran on scare tactics, and dividing the electorate. The Conservatives built a message machine with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck; people who preach anger, hatred, and divisiveness, which became the overall tone of conservative talk radio, and Faux News.

Now finally a prominent Republican is speaking out against this. Read about Powell's interview here.

The Republican party must stop "shouting at the world" and start listening to
minority groups if it is to win elections in the 21st century, former Secretary
of State Colin Powell said Thursday.

In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for Sunday's "GPS" program, President Bush's former secretary of state said his party's attempt "to use polarization for political advantage" backfired last month....

"I think the party has to stop shouting at the world and at the country,"Powell said.

"I think that the party has to take a hard look at itself, and I've talked to a number of leaders in recent weeks and they understand that." Powell, who says he still considers himself a Republican, said his party should also stop listening to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

"Can we continue to listen to Rush Limbaugh?" Powell asked. "Is this really the kind of party that we want to be when these kinds of spokespersons seem to appeal to our lesser instincts rather than our better instincts?"

Senate Republicans Threaten to Throw Nation into another Great Depression

Republicans are idiots.

Its that simple.

Only these idiots could think that this is a wise course for the nation. If I have to listen to one more sanctimonious windbag from the right come onto the radio or TV and say that the auto companies should just file for bankruptcy, I am going to scream. Do any of these idiots even know the laws that govern bankruptcy? To file for Chapter 11 you have to be able to get banks to offer lines of credit to back up the company. If these companies could get lines of credit, they would not be asking for the bailout.

Now the idiots in the Republican party are ready to force this nation to lose another 2 million jobs, while in the throes of a massive recession, so they can break the unions. And that's what this is about folks, this is a play to break the unions. Remeber these are the same Republican idiots who were happy to throw the stock market into a tail spin because they didn't want to bail out the banks, which lead to the credit crisis that is now bringing down the auto industry. Now they don't want to bail out the car industry.

Yesterday the House passed a bill to speed $14 billion in loans to Detroit's automakers. But it does not look like it will get past the Senate because Republican opposition could derail the emergency aid in the Senate. The Republicans still hold 49 seats, and it looks like they plan to use this number to challenging lame-duck President George W. Bush on the package. They are lamely arguing that any support for the domestic auto industry should carry significant concessions from autoworkers and creditors and reject tougher environmental rules imposed by House Democrats.

See this has nothing to do about the economy, or basic values, it's all about destroying the unions and the environment.

John Boehner Is an Idiot

Congressional Republicans seem bound and determined to prove they have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to the economy.

Republicans quickly criticized the idea of such a vast [stimulus] initiative, saying Congress should instead cut taxes to spur economic growth.

"Democrats can't seem to stop trying to outbid each other -- with the taxpayers' money," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. "We're in tough economic times. Folks are hurting. But the American people know that more Washington spending isn't the answer."

Actually the American people know that more Washington spending is exactly the answer the nation needs. You would think that Republicans would just shut up for a while, considering their policies drove this nation into a ditch.

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly's Political Animal had some great advice for people during an economic crisis.

In a time of severe economic crisis, it's important that all of us -- voters, policy makers, investors -- remember to do two key things. First, keep a cool head and avoid panic. Second, pay absolutely no attention to congressional Republicans, who have no idea what they're talking about.

Luckily Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress seem to be taking this advice to heart and seem to better understand both the gravity of the circumstances this nation faces and the necessity for a remedy. While Barack Obama, during the presidential campaign, had talked about a $175 billion stimulus program, he now is looking at a stimulus package that may be four times larger.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York told George Stephanopoulos yesterday that the stimulus should be between $500 billion and $700 billion. Schumer said:

"It's a little like having a new New Deal, but you have to do it before the Depression. Not after."

ABC News' Jake Tapper reports that Obama's transition team would like to see the stimulus package be passed by Congress and be in the Oval Office waiting for the new President literally the day of the inauguration. There are lingering concerns, though, that a Republican filibuster may scuttle the plan.

This is why we really need Al Franken to win in Minnesota, Martin to win in Georgia, and we need to pull in Collins and Snowe up in Maine to keep Republican's from interfereing. If Republicans want to offer constructive advice, or real suggestions, they should be at the table. If they are going to throw up road blocks for no other purpose than to scuttle the Democrats, then they need to be shut out of the room.

Republican Strategy

Remember when Senator Mitch McConnell opposed an open amendment process for legislation in the Senate? Remember when Republicans were in the majority and they thought the worst word in the English language was "filibuster"? Remember when Mitch McConnell and every Republican would go on the cable news shows and threaten the nuclear option if Democrats tried to work within the rules and put their stamp on legislation, or block hardcore conservative judges. Remember how George W. Bush used to believe "up or down vote" were the four most important words in the English language?

Its pretty hard to remember, isn't it? Considering the record of the Republicans the last two years when they as the minority party, with 49 seats, filibustered more legislation than any Senate minority in congressional history.

Now Senator McConnell, the highest ranking Republican in the Senate speculated about another two years of filibusters.

A feisty Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned Friday that while he looks forward to working with President-elect Barack Obama in the coming months, Republicans will continue to demand that they be given the ability to amend legislation or will filibuster bills as they move through the Senate.

McConnell released a letter signed by the entire GOP Conference to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) calling on him to use a more open process for advancing legislation in the 111th, a clear warning to Reid that Republicans will be looking to stand together over the next two years.

"The 42 Republican Senators represent 157 million Americans. Their voices are entitled to be heard, and the way to be heard in the Senate is an open amendment
process," a clearly rejuvenated McConnell told reporters.

The thing is I don't think Senator McConnell has thought through this threat. There are a few things working against him.

First, Democrats will have at least 58, probably 59 Senators in their caucus. While I hated not punishing Lieberman, the way Obama handled it, he has effectively neutered Lieberman, there will be no crossing the line by him anymore. I know a lot of people think that Lieberman will feel free to cross the line, but a President Obama and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual will know how to smack him down.

Second McConnell will not be able to keep Republicans in line, like they were for the last 8 years. Senators like Luger, Specter, Collins, and Snow will be convinced to cross the ailes often, and on specific issues like SChip particular Senators like Hatch will cross the line. There is no central leader in the Republican party, and the in-fighting will ensure there is no united minority.

Third, and most important the Republican's no longer have the bully pulpit. President Obama will have the biggest bullhorn, which will drown out McConnell, and a debate between President Obama and Senator McConnell is a no brainer.

Last, McConnel completely screwed up by making the threat. You don't bluster if you have the power, you stay quiet, and use your power when needed. Now he just looks like an obstructionist.

So you go McConnell, make your threats, keep proving what a pathetic politician you are.

Paul Krugman: The monster years

From Paul Krugman's New York Times blog, The Conscience of a Liberal

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people. And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.

Juan Cole: Are We a Nation of Masochists

Professor Juan Cole of Informed Comment has an interesting view of the American public. I have to agree, what could possibly be going through the conscious of this nation, that we might consider putting another Republican ticket in charge of this nation.

Professor Cole believes we may be a Nation of Masochists. Is he right? Read below and see what you think.

Let's get this straight.

The Republican Party came to Washington, DC, in 2000 with a solid majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court, allowing them to steal the presidency, as well. If you wanted to know what a pure Republican-Party government unhindered by the Democrats, Libertarians, Greens or Socialists might look like, this was the moment.

So they came to power when there was a budget surplus bequeathed by a Democratic president.They immediately ran up a big deficit every year since, doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. You don't run big deficits of $300 and $400 billion a year in good times according to Keynes. You save the the deficit spending for a recession, when the economy needs a jolt. If you're already racking up a big deficit every year in a good economy, you have no way of making a difference during a significant downturn except by then going for a truly mega-deficit, which risks destroying the value of your currency abroad. In a service economy like that of the US, a dollar with a declining value might not even help the economy via exports very much, since the manufactured goods are being made down in Mexico now, anyway.

Note that Clinton had been talking about using the surplus to pay down the debt or to fix the looming crisis in social security.

With the government encumbered with $5 trillion in new debt before September, and now with another trillion and a half (probably when it is all said and done with), how exactly will social security be fixed?

(Hint: Republican leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich hated social security, because the people are grateful to the Democrats for it. Bush tried to privatize it and McCain would have helped him; you wonder if they are trying deliberately to destroy it. Social security is the main reason for which the elderly are not now, as they were in the 1930s, the poorest and most miserable section of society.)

Then many the Republicans came to Washington with a crooked plan to use fraudulent methods to ensure that campaign financing went almost exclusively to them through super-lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. Grover Norquist's K-Street Project aimed at guaranteeing big corporate dollars for the Republicans in exchange for their granting the corporations the right to write the legislation affecting their industry. Thus, laws governing pharmaceuticals were written by the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and just signed off on by the Republicans.

This scam goes beyond Marx's fear that government in a business society was just a "managing committee" for the business classes. Tom Delay, from 2002 the Republican Party majority leader in the House, was too lazy even to be the managing committee! The K-Street crowd just let the business classes run the legislature directly, themselves, having the regulatory laws written to suit them.

So Abramoff, Delay, the K-Street crowd are busted. Once upon a time such a thing would have been a huge political scandal and would have haunted the party that produced it. But because US Big Media is mostly Republican-owned, it just quietly subsided as a story.

It is not just that the rap sheet against the Class of 2000, 2002, and 2004 among the Republican politicians is longer than a trans-Atlantic cable, it is that so much of the corruption took the form of a conspiracy.

All parties have people in them looking to get rich on the side. But the K Street Project and various other such scams weren't just about individual aggrandizement. They were about fixing the whole American system permanently to kow-tow to the super-rich without so much as a whimper, and to positively punish the middle classes.

After the 2002 mid-terms, even George W. Bush wanted to do a tax cut for the middle classes. But Cheney over-ruled him, insisting on another deep tax cut for the very wealthy. We won the mid-terms, Cheney said. This is our due. Deficits don't matter. "Our" due? Cheney is saying that the Republican Party is the party of the super-rich, of the 3 million at the top of American society who own 45% of the privately held wealth (as though we were Brazil), and they are the ones that will be exclusively benefited by Republican rule.

Of course, there were many other conspiracies by the pirouetting pirates of plunder.

There was the Iraq War, one of the great criminal conspiracies of modern times. Barton Gellman has how related the story of how Dick Cheney lied to Dick Armey before the vote on the war, telling him that Saddam's family was all al-Qaeda and that Saddam's evil scientists had made a suitcase nuclear bomb that he would certainly turn over to Bin Laden, and such rank horse manure as that. Dick Armey weeps, says he deserved better than to be bullshitted by the vice president of the United States.

They took us to war against a country that had not attacked the United States; they killed or maimed 33,000 Americans, and turned a whole Arab Muslim country into a burned-out hulk, displacing millions and continuously bombing the very cities that they had conquered and occupied, killing and disfiguring.

They propagandized us with implausible lies about mobile biological weapons labs and Baathist al-Qaeda, and our journalists and their corporate bosses bought them hook line and sinker, as did the public.

Cable and satellite television "news" tells us nothing of elections in India or constitutional crisis in Thailand, and barely mentions a major workers strike at Boeing. Dozens of car bombs go off in Iraq and we are told it is "calm" now. It is a vast electromagnetic form of bread and circuses, wherein hapless celebrities and philandering politicians are fed to the lions before millions of cheering plebes, by corporate moguls desperately hoping that the marks will not notice the legion of pickpockets in the arena, relieving them of their purses.

This crew in Washington thought nothing of assiduously attempting to induce the press to out a covert CIA operative working against Iranian nuclear proliferation, Valerie Plame. Their culture of lies is such that they attempt to divert attention from all the phone calls to journalists by Irv Lewis Libby and Karl Rove trying to get the press to print her name by saying that those two did not succeed. As if the attempt were not dastardly!

Why is trying to inform the Iranians of the identity of a CIA field officer assigned to spy on Iran not an act of treason? After all, you can't inform the world without also informing the Iranians. Isn't the punishment for treason hanging?

The Republican Party conducted a vast illegal spying operation on Americans and on foreign diplomats. We still don't know why exactly, and that the operation had domestic political motivations cannot be ruled out.

They imposed on us this so-called PATRIOT act that gutted the Constitution. The peaceful protesters in St. Paul at the RNC were actually charged with being terrorists, in this Brave New World.

By their incompetence and cupidity the Republican politicians deeply damaged the relief effort for one of America's great cities, New Orleans, which will never see the $33 billion pledged for its reconstruction. Not to mention that levies and bridges are breaking and falling down all around us because Cheney did not want to tax his billionaire friends to pay for the country's infrastructural upkeep.

And then they so radically deregulated and removed any oversight from the banking system that they came within hours of presiding over a 1929-style absolute meltdown of the entire financial and securities system. To cover the criminal activities of their cronies, they are now proposing to impose a fine of one trillion dollars on the middle class, to ensure that their partners in crime will receive their $25 million Christmas bonuses and be held harmless for their misdeeds.

And in the wake of the greatest and most sustained act of systematic plunder since the Mongol hordes appropriated to themselves the riches of everyplace in Asia from Beijing to Isfahan, the reaction of the supine and slave-like American voting public is to scratch their heads and have a hard time deciding if they would like more of the same.

Despite his aristocratic prerogatives and connections in high society, even the Marquis de Sade himself was brought down by a lowly maid, who complained to the police of his cutting her while having his way with her, leading to his arrest.

In contrast to that plucky domestic servant, the American public appears to enjoy being lacerated while being badly used, moaning with delight at each new act of abuse and abasement, while, blue-lipped, gasping for air.

One worries for our children, threatened with the fate of the homeless street children so common in the sort of third world country into which we are being turned by our managing committee.

But, well, if you are determined to bend over on November 4, at least I hope you enjoy pain. In that case, you are going to be ecstatic.

posted by Juan Cole