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This is slide #31 from a PowerPoint presentation used at an RNC fundraising event in Florida.  The Obama caricature has been around for a while, and this is the first time I’ve seen Pelosi as Cruella de Ville, but Scooby Doo?  Harry Reid?  Really?

Politico reports:

The 72-page document was provided to POLITICO by a Democrat, who said a hard copy had been left in the hotel hosting the $2,500-a-head retreat, the Gasparilla Inn & Club. Sources at the event said the presentation was delivered by [Robert] Bickhart and by the RNC Finance Chairman, Peter Terpeluk, a former ambassador to Luxembourg under President George W. Bush.

…

The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.

“What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate…?” it asks.

The answer: “Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”

Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.

That’s probably because Republicans rarely even understand satire, so when they try producing it themselves, it turns out to be a failure – pretty much like everything else they do.  Although if obstructing progress counts as “doing something” they have turned pro in that regard.

I read an amusing article by Michael Kinsley on The Atlantic Wire yesterday.  It was about how Ronald Reagan, based on his record and his statements, would not be able to adopt the “Reagan Resolution.”  It’s a list of ten principles to uphold that many Republicans wanted to adopt as an acid test for their candidates getting any money from the Republican Party.  The ten principles are:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Kinsley writes:

He was a great one for assertions of principle but never one for mean-spirited anathemas. It’s a good thing, because if you judge from what he actually did as president, as opposed to what he said he would do—or, by the end, what he might have claimed (or even honestly believed) he had done—Ronald Reagan would not be able to sign the Reagan Resolution.

Kinsley then went through all ten principles and by his count came up with four apostasies of Reagan.  My interpretation of Kinsley’s summary follows, and I say interpretation because Kinsley might be saying Reagan did not comply with #2 (he had no stance on healthcare reform), and it’s difficult to say for sure if he would have adhered to #7.  But anyway…

He increased the size of the government payroll and increased tne national debt.

He signed a law that authorized amnesty for illegal immigrants.

On the “contaiment of North Korea and Iran” principle, the records shows that he publicly supported Sadaam Hussein’s regime, and secretly funneled money to Iran.  I wouldn’t call that contaiment.

He was in favor of the Brady Bill that imposed some restrictions on gun ownership.

(Read Kinsely for yourself to see if you agree.)

That was a good read, but even funnier was this comic that I just read on Mr. Fish’s site.

Paul Krugman writes about the politicizing of federal budget deficits in today’s column:

To me — and I’m not alone in this — the sudden outbreak of deficit hysteria brings back memories of the groupthink that took hold during the run-up to the Iraq war.  Now, as then, dubious allegations, not backed by hard evidence, are being reported as if they have been established beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Now, as then, much of the political and media establishments have bought into the notion that we must take drastic action quickly, even though there hasn’t been any new information to justify this sudden urgency.  Now, as then, those who challenge the prevailing narrative, no matter how strong their case and no matter how solid their background, are being marginalized.

And fear-mongering on the deficit may end up doing as much harm as the fear-mongering on weapons of mass destruction.

This is the year that the Bush tax cuts expire, so the Republicans will use their scare tactics to convince people that raising taxes on the rich is the wrong thing to do, and they’ll probably even argue that we should lower the tax rates to stimulate economic growth, because everybody knows that more money in the pockets of billionaires creates jobs, right?  WRONG!

Obama has been making a point of placing blame for the deficit spending where it belongs – with the Republicans – and he has been pretty vocal about how their tax-cutting schemes have not worked in the past.  He has pointed out that they are the party that reduced federal revenue by trillions of dollars by cutting taxes for the super rich, and they are the party that handed a blank check to Bush for the funding two very long wars.  Obama should keep hammering on the Republicans about the deficit they created and he should be very firm with Reid and Pelosi about not extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

The Democrats in Congress should not be pressured by the deficit hysteria Krugman writes about.  Now is not the time to cut funding for government programs that are essential to stimulating the economy and getting us out of this recession.

During the previous administration, Bush and his Republican chorus in Congress and the right-wing punditry exploited the fear and ignorance of most Americans to invade a country that represented no threat to us, establish what amounted to an offshore America gulag for our enemies, real or imagined, and to spy on United States citizens without judicial approval or oversight. 

Today, the GOP and allies are doing it again to stir opposition to the agenda of President Obama and the Democrats as they seek to enact comprehensive health care insurance reform and steer the ship of state in a more moderate and progressive direction.  And it’s clearly working.

Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted and Democrats have lost a senate seat in Massachusetts, of all places, and governorships in Virginia and New Jersey.  Never mind that the two previous Democratic governors in Virginia had been instrumental in making it one of the best administered states in the union.  Or that the seat won by a right-wing Republican with nothing to distinguish him save his abs was previously that of Senator Edward Kennedy, who accomplished so much for his state and his country and whose unrequited dream was universal health coverage for all Americans.

A grumpy and fearful electorate has bought into GOP lies and distortions to blame Obama and the Democrats for not fixing in a year what took the Republicans nearly three decades to break.  Sure, some blame attaches to Democrats who foolishly bought into or lacked the courage to oppose the deregulatory fervor of the right.  But it was the GOP, starting with Reagan and ending with George W Bush, who pushed the idea of the self-regulating free market and the notion that stricter government oversight unnecessarily and perniciously fettered our financial institutions.  We failed to heed the warning of the savings and loan fiasco of the 90’s and the result, in time, was an economic meltdown precipitated by irresponsible banks. 

Yet the GOP has succeeded in painting Obama as a typical big-spending liberal, ignoring the fact that junior Bush added three trillion dollars to the national debt after inheriting a budget surplus from his Democratic predecessor, and that the current deficit is partly the result of the $750 billion TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) passed under the previous administration.  The Obama $787 billion stimulus bill, on the other hand, was a necessary response to the deepest recession since World War II that he inherited and it has helped to ameliorate what would otherwise have been a much worse employment picture.

As for the health care bill, Americans again have been guilty of both woeful ignorance and susceptibility to GOP propaganda.  A Kaiser Foundation tracking poll found that whilst Americans are evenly divided on whether they support the Democratic bills, most have no clue what’s in them.  Furthermore, when told of the bills’ specific key elements, support rises significantly.  

Yet the GOP and the right-wing punditry have managed to convince Americans, falsely, that the Democratic legislation will increase the deficit, raise their taxes, and diminish the quality of their own health insurance whilst raising its cost.

Congressional Republicans may be a despicable bunch but their manipulations of the truth could not succeed without an American electorate too lazy to find out the facts for themselves.

While watching President Obama deliver his first State of the Union speech last night I was struck by how comfortable he was standing before Democrats, Republicans, Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and military leaders.  After one year in office, he appeared as though he owned the place.  He looked and sounded like he was meant to be there.  I never sensed that from Bush.  He always looked uncomfortable in those surroundings, and his speech delivery was, well… unnatural.  Perhaps even he realized he really didn’t belong there. 
 
President Obama easily moved from making serious points about jobs, national security, taxes, war, and healthcare reform, to humorous remarks about those same topics.  He also called out both parties in ways I wanted him to, but never expected to hear.  He even scolded the Supreme Court for last week’s ruling that allows corporations to fund political campaigns.

With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that done before, but there hasn’t been a ruling by the court as egregious as that one for quite some time. (For further reading and illustrations about how SCOTUS sold our country to the rich, go to Clowncrack.com.)
 
And while asking both parties to reach agreements to pass laws to help the American people, he called out the Democrats:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.

…and the Republicans: 

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town — a supermajority — then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well.  Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership.

And while speaking about the budget, the Republicans again:

From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument — that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.  The problem is that’s what we did for eight years.  That’s what helped us into this crisis.  It’s what helped lead to these deficits. We can’t do it again.

Obama really is a great orator, and when he spoke about the importance of putting aside petty political games that only further divide us and prevent our nation from moving forward, you really believed him – if you were a Democrat anyway.  We’ll see how the Republicans respond.  I have a feeling that they will remain obstinate, because politics is the only game they know.

Say hello to the new senator from Massachusetts.

He’s the newest senator representing the G.O.P. – the party of fiscally irresponsible, xenophopic, war-mongering, freedom-hating, money-loving, hypocritical Bible thumping, mendacious moral degenerates.

He is the the pawn on the Republican side of the board that they will use to kill healthcare reform.

But the Democrats still have a big majority, so the stalling tactics of 41 Republicans and one douche bag from Connecticut shouldn’t be a big problem for the 58 Democrats, right?

Wrong!

Jon Stewart explained it best:  “Democrats will only then have an 18-vote majority in the Senate.  Which is more than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to.”  (watch it here)

The feature segment of last night’s Daily Show illustrates how the Repbulicans can claim they are better at National Security than the Democrats. It’s pretty simple really. They are like that schoolyard kid that you never wanted to play with. Like him, they make up the rules as they go, and the rule changes are always in their favor. Stewart calls their game “Terror Ball.” It starts at about 2:20 into this clip with Rudy Giuliani making an incredilby stupid statement that he can only defend by invoking his party’s new rules for controlling the debate.

In the wake of the Christmas Day effort by Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to destroy an in-flight airliner over Detroit, Republicans are hammering home with renewed vigour the myth that Democrats are weak on national security.  Yet by any reasonable measure the invasion of Iraq by the Bush administration, with the enthusiastic support of congressional Republicans, has proved to be a national security as well as a foreign policy calamity.  And whilst it’s true that many Democrats voted for the Iraq War resolution, there can be no real doubt that the quest to invade Iraq was driven by the Republican Bush administration and its right-wing supporters in the GOP. 

Even setting aside the human and monetary cost, the adverse consequences to America have been severe indeed.  Perhaps the most serious is the fact that our failure to implement and sustain long term security and reconstruction in Afghanistan after driving out the Taliban has enabled the latter to rejuvenate and return as a more formidable enemy; one that we must now commit almost 100,000 troops to combat just when we were getting out from under the crushing Iraq commitment.  And the refusal of General Tommy Franks and then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to commit American forces such as rangers to the effort to trap and destroy the remnants of al-Qaida in the White Mountains at Tora Bora, which stands as the best opportunity we’ve had to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, must rank as both a colossal error of judgment and failure of nerve that ensured the terrorist organization’s survival.

Not only did our focus on Iraq divert needed military expertise and resources away from Afghanistan but, as we’ve learned to our cost recently, it also resulted in neglect of countries such as Yemen where branches of al-Qaida have taken root and flourished. 

If invading Iraq had truly been part of the war against al-Qaida rather than a fantasy and hoax peddled subliminally to the American people by the Bush administration and its right-wing cheer leaders at Fox News, maybe it could be forgiven.  But Saddam Hussein was hated by Islamic extremists and he, in turn, hunted them down as ruthlessly as anyone else who potentially threatened his hold on power.  Our invasion of Iraq may have unseated a tyrant but it also replaced an Iraq that represented a bulwark against al-Qaida with one in which a branch of the latter was able to establish and operate with devastating consequences, not least to the Iraqi people.

The Bush administration made other bone-headed decisions in the name of national security: Guantanamo and the secret CIA  prisons in Eastern Europe, torture, electronic domestic surveillance without court supervision to name but a few.  Along with the unprovoked invasion of Iraq they represent a darker America, one that is less than what we aspire to be.

Al-Qaida cannot destroy America but they can inspire a reaction that might change us into something we would hardly recognize.  Dick Cheney and the Republicans started us down that path in the panicked aftermath of 9/11 when what we showed was less strength than fear and weakness. President Obama and most Democrats recognize that in our quest to stay safe from attack we must not surrender what it is that makes us proud to be Americans in the first place.  That would indeed give the victory to al-Qaida.

Let’s get one thing clear:  the failure of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb on an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day was not only an extremely good piece of luck for the passengers and crew (who deserve credit for their quick thinking and courage), but also for those charged with security in the United States.  Why?  Because it highlighted flaws in the way in which we analyze and use intelligence information that has been collected on potentially dangerous individuals, and in our screening procedures at airports. 

Yet instead of celebrating our good luck we’ve been treated instead to unseemly hand wringing and finger pointing. The sources for most of this, not unexpectedly, are Republicans and the right-wing punditry.  President Obama has been criticized for his delay in making a statement and for not lending it more urgency by not, presumably, sounding sufficiently breathless.  And of course the GOP lost no time trying to make political hay out of it.  Former vice-president Cheney sounds more and more as though he can’t wait for an al-Qaida attack to succeed so that he can begin an endless round of I-told-you-so interviews on prime-time network TV.  He evidently blames Obama for not reacting in the same panicky mode as he did in the wake of 9/11.

The fact is this near miss is a gold mine of an opportunity to improve our intelligence collection and handling procedures, as well as to tighten security screening practices by, for example, speeding the more widespread introduction of newer technology such as full-body scans.

We seem to be missing a couple of essential lessons from this and past incidents.  The first is that no matter how much we may want it, the government cannot guarantee our safety.  I don’t happen to think that explosives sewn into underwear is necessarily a sign that al-Qaida has increased its effectiveness or ingenuity; quite the contrary.  But the fact remains our human protectors will always be fallible and the efficiency of our technology limited.  Big Daddy cannot always protect us.

The second lesson is that maybe Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was unwittingly correct when she said that the system worked. Part of the “system” has to be us, the ordinary members of the public.  Just as it was the action of passengers and crew that saved that flight over Detroit, and of others who forced the 9/11 hijackers of United Flight 93 to abort their mission to crash into the White House or the Capitol, so we must all realize that we, too, have a role to play in preventing terrorist attacks from succeeding. 

After all the next attack may not come on an airliner at five thousand feet but on a crowded city bus at ground zero.

It’s difficult to describe how disappointed I am with our government right now, especially congress.  We elected a Democratic majority last November, and a “progressive” Democratic president.  We all wanted change.  What we have so far with regard to health-care reform is at best just a tepid shift from the status quo.

Here’s what Howard Dean wrote about the Senate bill in yesterday’s Washington Post:

Any measure that expands private insurers’ monopoly over health care and transfers millions of taxpayer dollars to private corporations is not real health-care reform. Real reform would insert competition into insurance markets, force insurers to cut unnecessary administrative expenses and spend health-care dollars caring for people. Real reform would significantly lower costs, improve the delivery of health care and give all Americans a meaningful choice of coverage. The current Senate bill accomplishes none of these.

Real health-care reform is supposed to eliminate discrimination based on preexisting conditions. But the legislation allows insurance companies to charge older Americans up to three times as much as younger Americans, pricing them out of coverage. The bill was supposed to give Americans choices about what kind of system they wanted to enroll in. Instead, it fines Americans if they do not sign up with an insurance company, which may take up to 30 percent of your premium dollars and spend it on CEO salaries — in the range of $20 million a year — and on return on equity for the company’s shareholders.

He’s right.  We are never going to get an affordable health-care system in this country as long as it remains a monopoly run by greedy insurance companies.  The only way we can make significant cuts in medical expenses is to first do away with the obscene profits, and second have the government negotiate prices for services.  Giving the people the choice of a government-run public option would be a great start in that direction, but that idea is dead in the water.

Today I read Paul Krugman’s column, and he thinks we should push through passage of this bill even though it is very weak.  Here’s what he has to say:

A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.  Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama.  Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

But meanwhile, pass the health care bill.

…

At its core, the bill would do two things. First, it would prohibit discrimination by insurance companies on the basis of medical condition or history: Americans could no longer be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or have their insurance canceled when they get sick. Second, the bill would provide substantial financial aid to those who don’t get insurance through their employers, as well as tax breaks for small employers that do provide insurance.

…

Look, I understand the anger here: supporting this weakened bill feels like giving in to blackmail — because it is. Or to use an even more accurate metaphor suggested by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, we’re paying a ransom to hostage-takers. Some of us, including a majority of senators, really, really want to cover the uninsured; but to make that happen we need the votes of a handful of senators who see failure of reform as an acceptable outcome, and demand a steep price for their support.

The question, then, is whether to pay the ransom by giving in to the demands of those senators, accepting a flawed bill, or hang tough and let the hostage — that is, health reform — die.

Okay, I get it, but I don’t like it.  Neither does our fellow contributor Mr. N.J. Barnes who sent me an email this morning:

I actually believe now it’s going to fail. Incredibly, incomprehensively fail. Thanks to Nelson.  Thanks to Liebermann.  Thanks to the Republicans being good at parliamentary stalling and pr even as they are brain-dead in every other way.
 
It’s actually likely to fail.
 
You know, this country and the GOP deserve each other.  They really do.

Yes… the Grand Old Party.  The obstructionist Republicans.  They ruined our country while they were in power, and they continue to ruin it even when they are in what is supposed to be controllable minority.  (Read more about that in Krugman’s column.)

Anyway, the Senate health-care bill leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.  I kind of liken it to buying a very good bottle of Bordeaux a year ago and storing it in the cellar to improve it with some bottle age.  Now it’s time to open it and enjoy it, but it doesn’t pass the sniff test.  The bottle is corked and the wine tastes like shit.  Krugman says drink it anyway.  Dean says select a different bottle.  I have to agree with Dean.