read Rep. Grayson's comments

on CNN.com, today

My New hero

I fervently believe that Dick Cheney is the worst person in America. If he had come out of Rhode Island (where people outnumber cattle) as opposed to the West, he would have had a career in dry cleaning or shop-keeping at best. The wing-nuts at Fox continue to give him an audience, which is why Rep. Alan'> Grayson is my new hero.

Cheney and the wing-nuts can't come to grips with the fact that their policies were discredited in the 2008 election. If they keep it up, the Democrats can make them the issue again in the mid-terms nect November.

So keep blathering on, Dick: you are doing us all a great favor.

I do so enjoy any New York loss

What is is about Gotham? OK, the Yankees were terrific in 2009, and (gulp) deserved to win the Series. But the Jets? This is a team of pure, unadulterated BS, a team that has done nothing since the days of Joe Willie Namath.

in the proper spirit

The Phillies are showing life, momentarily delaying the dreaded inevitability of a Yankees' World Series victory. With Pedro on the mound tonight, one can only hope he will find some of his '04 magic. That said, another New York event bears notice today.

In up-state political news, a darling of the wingnuts went down in inglorious defeat yesterday, more than canceling out the news of GOP gubernatorial elections success in NJ and VA. In a clear slap at the antics of Caribou Barbie et. al., a Democrat won the congressional seat in what had heretofore been a reliably GOP district. Ah, sweet schadenfreude!

What about Afghanistan?

We should never have invaded Iraq. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Sen. McCain, Sen. Lieberman et. al. lied to us. In my state, Sen. Kennedy and Congressman Capuano had the courage to oppose their lies. Very few of our leaders will be shown to have been truthful in the post-9/11 hysteria that gripped the country. It was a terrible error to abandon Afghanistan for the Iraq sideshow, and now a new President is stuck with the wingnut's mess. Despite my initial enthusiasm for our Afghanistan invasion, it was tempered after the disaster at Tora Bora. And now the solution is to engage in another surge? More troops? I am beginning to believe that we should abandon the ground.

Frank Rich's column in the October 11, 2009 New York Times is a persuasive journey through the Bush years. Make no mistake: this fiasco is not the result of President Obama's actions, but it is his and our problem. Those who are actually responsible can safely lob their criticism from the sidelines, but it is important that they were repudiated in the last election. The president should find a way to remind America of that fact.

On the Nobel Prize: Just Say Congrats

Republican leaders and their media proxies are incensed that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. Commentary from the Right continues to meander a predictable course, as the wing-nuts somehow find a way to use this prestigious award to challenge the integrity of the 44th President. Perhaps it is true that the Prize was awarded to distinguish Mr. Obama for the accomplishment of being someone other than the last occupant of the White House. So what?

Of all the comments I've read and heard over the last 24 hour news cycle, my favorite comes from a voice of the minority party, quoted from the New York Times today:

"One recognition of the tricky politics the award presents came from Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a Republican who is considering challenging Mr. Obama in 2012.

“I know there’s going to be some people who are saying ‘Was it based on good intentions and thoughts, or is it going to be based on results?’ ” Mr. Pawlenty said on his weekly radio show on WCCO in Minneapolis. “But I think the appropriate response, or an appropriate response, is when anybody wins a Nobel Prize, you know that is a very noteworthy development and designation and award, and I think the proper response is to say congratulations.”

SNL is famous for wicked send-ups of our Presidents. In this tradition, the 10/03/09 show presented a classic.

Dear Mr. President:

We won the 2008 election. Said differently, the Republican Party (not just Mr. McCAin and Caribou Barbie) LOST the election. Enough bi-partisanship: the minority party doesn't want to play. It is ass-kicking time.

Out of the loop whilst in Africa

I returned from a 16 day trip to Senegal in time to learn that the Red Sox had fallen 7 games behind the Yankees, the GOP continues to bash the President's health reform proposal, and the Justice Department may finally take on the many abuses perpetrated by the last Administration. Without internet access while accompanying students on a service learning experience in west Africa, I needed a few days at home to get a handle on what I had missed.

If the baseball standings were reversed, I might have used this posting to gloat, but alas, reality runs counter to the title of my blog. I suppose I can take pleasure in the movement to boycott Whole Foods, in the aftermath of its CEO's controversial op-ed piece in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. In short, there was not a lot of good news, until I learned that there might finally be a chance to see Cheney do the "perp walk".

I hope that the investigation, an opportunity to celebrate the long-standing tradition of respect for the rule of law, will focus on the policy-makers, and not just the CIA agents who carried out the orders to torture terror suspects. The nation requires the services of a non-politicized intelligence arm. For proof, witness the damage to the CIA created by Cheney's Valerie Plame outing. While the President may wish to look forward, it is right to uncover abuses of the past that damaged America in the eyes of the world.

President Obama should borrow a play from the George Bush first term playbook and begin campaigning now for supportive Democratic Party candidates in the 2010 midterms. The only way to move his agenda forward is to scare the living hell out of the GOP and the so-called "moderate Democrats".

And while I'm on the subject of agendas, the exploration of space deserves much greater attention. The first moon landing was 40 years age. My teenage self would be astonished at how little we've accomplished since that glorious day in July. It is in our nature to expand humanity's horizons. With over-population, global warming, and diminishing natural resources plaguing the planet, we need a collective great adventure.

What's worth Discussing

The Gov. Sanford scandal provides perfect fodder, but in some ways is just too easy. A strident critic of President Clinton a decade ago, it is a partisan pleasure to witness Sanford's fall from grace. Exposed as a hypocrite and a liar, another of the stable of "rising GOP stars" finds his national career over before it had a chance to truly develop. Yippee, skippee fiddle-dee-dee!

Referring to what he characterized as the "myth of Republican moral superiority, Paul Begala writes

The problem with Sanford... is that he's been "incredibly judgmental about other people's sex lives." As examples, Begala cites Sanford's opposition to same-sex marriages and civil unions, and his vote in the House of Representatives to impeach Clinton.

At the time, Sanford said, "The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of democratic government ... because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything.

"http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/25/sanford.fallout/index.html?iref=newssearch

Now some in the political chattering class believe that Sanford is being unfairly criticized - give me a break! He is a hypocrite, and if the GOP keeps serving up helpings of such as their standard-bearers for 2012, I predict an easy victory for President Obama. And while I am on the subject of the President, I wish he would heed the advice of my favorite economist, Paul Krugman, who politely suggests in the New York Times today that the President abandon his desire for bipartisanship and govern as he campaigned. The GOP offers nothing of substance to unite a true opposition. And the party fails the test of a "loyal" opposition as well.

I am a bit less polite: I implore the President to grow a pair.

Cheney should shut the hell up

President Obama gave a thoughtful address yesterday at the National Archives. Press accounts today suggest that he did so because he knew that a former vice-president was scheduled to give a speech on the topic of terrorism.

In the immediate aftermath of Al Gore's stunning defeat in 2000, the former vice-president disappeared from the national scene. It was if there was something unseemly about a defeated candidate for the nation's highest office continuing as the face of the opposition. In doing so, he joined the legions of defeated former veeps who vanished from the scene in order to re-invent themselves: Nixon in 1960 also comes to mind.

So what to make of the current former VP? He shows no interest in vanishing from the scene. And he certainly feels no need to re-invent himself. To the ever-dwindling ranks of GOP true believers, of course, he is a hero. It is hardly surprising that the American Enterprise Institute would give him a platform. But why must the national press pay him any attention at all? As the principal author of the web of deception that led us into Iraq, his take on foreign policy was twice repudiated at the ballot box. He has officially "jumped the shark".

“The auto industry’s refusal to act for so long has left it mired in a predicament for which there is no easy way out,” Mr. Obama said.

In announcing new mileage guidelines, the President has decisively moved to resolve a long-simmering debate about the nature of American federalism. During the hell that was the Bush years, California and 13 other states wanted to increase the mileage standard. Bush and Detroit automakers did not. Now that two of the former Big Three are on life-support and have become virtual wards of the United States, real change just might be realized.

Conservatives, of course, will be apoplectic. "How dare the Government meddle in the market", they will shriek. "Socialism", they will scream. It is worth remembering that since the days of Henry Clay's "American Plan" the national government has often taken a stake in our transportation policy-making. Was 19th Century transfer of western lands to the rail roads socialism? How about the space program? Interstate highways?

photo source: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/images/080603_hummer.jpg

Ed Rollins weighs in

Ed Rollins was one of the smartest political operatives in the Reagan White House. I remember wishing that the 1980's Democratic Party had someone like him. In an article on CNN.com today, Rollins suggests why it is too early to consider the GOP dead and gone. His take on Cheney's future in the party is well worth considering.

In his suggestion that the party return to its core principles, however, I do detect just a whiff of hypocrisy. To return to its historic beliefs it would have to eschew its tilt toward the religious right, a path it took during his years as a GOP operative.

A terrific take on the hypocrisy of GOP leadership

While I don't reflexively agree with all that Maureen Dowd has to say, I enjoy her columns. At times, her humor rivals that of the late great Molly Ivens. An expert observor of the peculiar world of the Bush family and it's many retainers, she has lately aimed her wit at 43's dark alter ego, Dick Cheney (by the way, if Cheney had come of age in a populous state like Rhode Island, would he ever have achieved prominence in American politics?).

Cheney and his aid Scooter Libby are the great Americans who outed a CIA agent in an act of political revenge. And for this act of treason Cheney was allowed to skate away into lucrative retirement.

A schandenfreude exemplar

The news that "Manny being Manny" now includes a suspension for doping comes as no surprise to the traditionalists of Red Sox Nation. A batting idiot savant, Ramirez is capable of wonderful moments at the plate, but those moments are often sandwiched around incidents of laziness and sheer lunacy. For those of us who grew up admiring the exploits of Yaz, Rice, Fisk et.al., Manny was not a favorite. When he actually quit on his team several times in the last few years, the legions of his enablers began to shrink. He represents everything I dislike about modern baseball.

Currrent events drives the questions we ask of the past

As I think about the state of party politics in America I am preparing my final lecture for my U.S. History I course. The two-party system of the 1850's devolved into a competion between sectional parties, as southern Whigs and southern Democrats began to seek common goals. In the north, the pattern was replicated, as northern Whigs and northern Democrats did the same. The outcome was not pretty. I will ask my students today to consider if we can find any similarity in the modern GOP's headlong dash to regional specialization. They may villify Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, but is history on the march?

I wish Cheney ran in 2008

The Times carried a fascinating op-ed piece today. Ross Douthat posits that a Cheney bid would have ended in total defeat, demonstrating that the country has had enough of the right-wing chicken-hawks we endured the last 8 years. In other words, Cheney and his ilk would have gotten smoked last November. As he emerges from his cave to cast doubt on the Obama administration, he can safely do so as one who was never truly tested in an electoral campaign. He can pretend that his way (torture, lies, outing a CIA operative in an act of pure treason) was endorsed by the American public. But as the republicans and the conservative media continue to embrace him, it is clear that he is the titular head of the party. This bodes well for the Democratic Party in the mid-terms.

A story only a Red Sox fan can love

The New York

papers are all

agog about the

empty premium seats

at the two shiny new

ballparks. The photo appears

in this April 20

article from Newsday. The writer

makes a

fascinating comparison between the teams

and the larger forces that have brought on this

terrible recession.

Since the Age of Jackson, this country has battled over the degree to which the national government should be involved in the banking system. Edmund L. Andrews reports in the New York Times today that the Government may take an equity stake in as many as 19 banks. This will antagonize conservatives, not doubt, ramping up the accusation that we have a socialist regime in Washington. But the strategy worked for Sweden in the '90s, I've learned.

Teabaggers

With these folks as the opposition, I think the future is bright for the Democratic Party and my country.

(thanks to Time Magazine, this week)

Here is an impressive argument presented in Charles Blow's recent column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/opinion/18blow.html

This matter came up in class this week as we were discussing Free Speech guarantees. I asked if they were willing to extend the right to groups that spout hate. Save for s student from Germany, the vocal participants think you can stamp out hate by suppressing voice. My German student explained how that strategy failed in her country in the 1920s, and is failing again today.

Why we need another blog

I named this blog for the emotions derived from the defeats the republican party has suffered the last several election cycles. After 28 years of reaganism, there is an opportunity for the nation to set a new course.