Hoodwinking the American voter.

I saw an article today that got my undivided attention. Which, given my very short attention span, was actually guite an achievement.

It was written over at Huffington Post by Robert Kuttner ( I hope Arianna paid the author) and it is cut and paste worthy.

"When you consider what has been happening to the average working person since the era of Ronald Reagan, it's amazing that the Republicans have fought the Democrats about to a draw.


The recipe of Reagan and both Bushes has been to weaken government, undermine the regulation of market excesses, attack core social insurance programs, tilt the tax system away from the wealthy and towards the middle class, gut the safeguards that protect workers on the job, make college ever more unaffordable, and appoint judges who undermine democracy itself.


That stuff is not exactly popular. Yet Democrats seem largely unable to convert Republican elitism to their advantage. And despite some phony populist trappings, every conceivable Republican candidate for 2016 is even further to the right than Reagan and the Bushes.


If the Republican formula had improved the economy, voters might say that, well, maybe the rich got richer but other folks did okay too; and you could understand why Republicans gained ground among working people. But that's not what happened.


Between the Reagan presidency and 2008, average economic performance was only so-so and the rich got nearly all the gains, the exception being the middle and late 1990s under Bill Clinton. The economy, you'll recall, crashed on the watch of George W. Bush, as the result of conservative policies that liberated Wall Street to have its way with the rest of the economy.


So, why is there not a groundswell of support for Democrats? Why don't people grasp their own economic interests?


The usual answers include the fact that the recovery under Obama has been weak; that the Affordable Care Act backfired; that there is a backlash among socially conservative white voters who resent everything from Obama's race to the sense that he is too indulgent of immigrants; the usual litany of complaints against Democrats on such social issues as guns, God and gays; and the fact that the Tea Parties have devised a kind of rightwing populism.
But it seems to me that the Democrats' problems run deeper.


Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the core Democratic proposition has been that regular people need government to offset the power of business elites and the injustices and inefficiencies of a capitalist economy. But that premise has been tarnished -- perhaps fatally weakened -- in three mutually reinforcing respects.


First, Republicans have succeeded in blocking Democrats from pursuing the sort of policies and programs that make a positive difference in the lives of working Americans. New programs that have made it through Congress despite Republican stonewalling, such as the Affordable Care Act, are typically so burdened with fatal compromises -- diversion of funds from Medicare, excess subsidies to drug and insurance companies, cumbersome bureaucratic compliance requirements -- that they give government (and Democrats) a bad name. Other rare successes are mostly token measures that don't change very much.


By contrast, the Democrats' Greatest Hits -- Social Security, Medicare, the G. I. Bill, the Wagner Act (and a strong labor movement backed by federal enforcement); college aid in the era when a Pell Grant covered most of tuition costs -- made a genuine difference in people's lives.


Secondly, as economic conditions have worsened for most working people and government hasn't provided much help, voters begin internalizing the Republican idea that we're all on our own anyway. Though people support affirmative government and progressive policies in principle, today's voters are increasingly skeptical that government can make much of a constructive difference. What the hell, better just to vote for the party of lower taxes.


Third, the Democratic Party is less of a counterweight to economic royalists that it once was because many of those royalists are inside the Democratic Party. How can the Democrats offset the malevolent power of concentrated finance when Goldman Sachs provides their top economic policy officials? In addition to counseling against breaking up the big banks, the Obama economic team persuaded the president to support austerity at a time when the economy needed oxygen.


All of this reinforces the media mantra that both parties are equally culpable in the gridlock that passes for today's political democracy -- and that Democrats as well as Republicans care more about insiders than about ordinary Americans.
You have to get to the left edge of the Democratic Party before you find leade-
rs and policy ideas that challenge the dominance of finance and that would make a real difference in the lives of working people. As my colleague Harold Meyerson writes in the new issue of the American Prospect, it's time for Democrats once again to earn the hatred of the rich, FDR-style.


Could that happen? The most likely nominee in 2016 is of course Hillary Clinton. If elected, she would be the third basically centrist Democratic president in a row, four counting Jimmy Carter. And let's be more precise -- centrist as in center-left on social issues and center-right on Wall Street.


She is certainly preferable to any Republican on the horizon. And with several Republican senators who squeaked through in 2010 up for re-election, a landslide Hillary victory might even sweep in a Democratic Congress.


Even so, it would be a long road back to the sort of Democratic Party that contained the abuses of financial elites and used activist government to better the lives of ordinary Americans -- or that could reasonably expect voters to reciprocate." [Source]

I would love to have some critical discussion about some of the points that he raised, but I know that given our troll infested and hyper- partisan internet environment that will be difficult.

 

Still, it's worth a shot.

 

Thoughts?

The republican's latest Negro experiment.

"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world--and never will." ~Mark Twain~

I wish my man Herman Cain well, I really do. I heard that he was in Iowa last week giving em his I am black but I am just like you speeches. I wonder how he is playing down there? It looks like they [the republicans] are going social again and forgetting the economy now that O and his peeps have the Dow over *12,000 and the unemployment numbers heading South and not North. Anyway, Herman might have some work to do before he can convince the rest of you Negroes that he means well.

"Listen, all token black conservative presidential candidates who Republicans keep trying to push on us colored folk; I really don’t have a problem with your decision to throw your hat in the ring. Why not, right? Everyone is entitled, and if you feel like you’re qualified then do your thing and show us just that – your qualifications. Do not, however, use the same tired and insulting tactics year after year in an effort to court a political base that has little interest in you by embarrassing the rest of your community.

First, This Year’s Black Conservative Herman Cain tried to get attention for his pending presidential campaign by telling anyone who would listen: “Don’t condemn me because the first black one was bad.” Yes, of course, the go-to sleaze tactic to use when you are eager to prove to some white people that you dislike President Obama as much as them is to say something attention grabbing like that.

Now, right on schedule, he has busted out the second in what I’m sure will be a series of cliché tactics to appeal to his conservative base: Christianity. Cain appeared on the Christian Broadcast Network and told the interviewer that he believed God brought him through cancer so that he could maybe become president, Politico reports. Stop it, dude. And I say that as a Christian. We know that professed religion is pretty much a requirement for all conservative candidates, but to take advantage of that moment in your life and twist it for political gain is really sleazy." [Source]

Now now Mr. Smith, don't be so hard on Herman. Maybe he means well. Why don't we give him a chance before we call him a house dwelling hypocrite?

Carry on Herman.

I will take Rush over the black guy.

"Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think,"..." I think my take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican."

That was the devil himself disguised as an old white man named Dick Cheney. He was telling CBS News and anyone who would listen that he would rather have a fat drug addicted [alleged]pedophile in his party, than a genuine "American hero", Colin Powell. Wow!

Now I am no political expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am guessing that if you asked most A-murder-cans who they would trust more to be their leader, they would say the good general and not anyone from the new "axis of evil"; Cheney,Rush, and Newt. Just a thought.

But I knew the marriage couldn't last. I always thought that my homie, Colin, was too decent to be associated with the party of Lincoln. He has disappointed me along the way and left me scratching my head at times (like when he went in front of the world and announced that Saddam had WMD's), but at some point any human being with even an ounce of decency has to realize who these people are and what they really stand for. What they stand for is themselves and their own selfish interests. They are all about power and how to keep it, and damn everyone and everything else. It's why Rush has no problem making fun of people losing their jobs--even people who work for his own company---on his show while he pockets millions of dollars. It's why Dick Cheney will not lose a minutes sleep, even though, thanks to him, over 4,000 will never wake from theirs. It's why Newt Gingrich had no problem divorcing a dying wife as he kicked the tires on his new model. (What is he on now? Number three?) For the record, Powell has been married to the same woman since 1962.

But Powell represents a bigger problem for the folks in the republican party: They are fighting more and more among themselves with each passing day and they can't decide if they should move to the center, become more moderate, and try to be relevant again. Or, if they should move farther to the right and become extinct.

"The Republican Party is in “deep trouble” because it is “getting smaller” and being led by far right polarizing figures... Rush Limbaugh “diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without.”

"Well, if I had to choose — in terms of being a Republican — I’d go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. My take on it was that Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican."

Hey, way to go there Dick; "stand by your man". Even if he is a lying self centered drug addicted one. Let's just hope, for his sake, that he doesn't like hunting.

"Profile in courage"?

Poor Randy Gray, seems he is a little disappointed with his country for electing Barack Husein Obama to be its 44th president. Randy is a self-avowed member of the Klu Klux Klan and he is a very important man in Midland, Michigan. Yes, it seems that old Randy is a precinct delegate for the Republican party in his state. (Why is it that these self declared racist are always republicans? Can one of my African American republican friends help me with this please?)

So anyway, Randy held a one man protest for about 15-20 minutes at a busy intersection in his hometown to protest the election of the "socialist, Islamic negro" (the Klan's words, not mine) while dressed in his Klan robe. I am sure Randy thinks that his little act was a profile in courage. But sorry Randy, I didn't exactly have Tiananmen Square flashbacks while reading about your little episode.

Still, I feel your pain there buddy. And guess what, the field has no problem with you exercising your First Amendment right which was guaranteed to you by our fine Constitution. I am glad that you came out of the KKKloset. People need to know who you are. I just wish that more folks like you would do the same thing. I suspect that in places like Michigan, where the economy is sinking like the Titanic, there are more and more folks signing up for your organization every day. Jobs are scarce, and those Jews own all the businesses; they only recruit the blacks and Mexicans to do all the jobs, so what's a poor white guy to do?

“I feel white people feel more oppressed,”... We’re basically told as white people we can’t have any organizations. We’re ruled by communists...“It’s not just about Barack Obama. It goes deeper than that.”

Well Randy, let's hope that changes. Let's hope that you are free to organize and advocate for your own cause. (Without physically hurting anyone else of course) This is the A-merry-can way. Although it seems that not everyone agrees with you:

“If, in fact, he’s associated with the KKK, [then] yes, it troubles me.”

That was the GOP Chairwoman, Diane Bristol.

Spoken like a true "Nigger lover".

Story here.