On the Contrary

Remember Jaws?  It wasn’t safe.  Now they are out in force telling us everything is okay in the Gulf.  It’s not and the real extent of the damage may not be understood for many more years.  See Antonia Juhasz’s article in The Nation Magazine, Two Years Later, BP’s Toxic Legacy.  And in many ways it is kind of like global warming where if you are dumping all that CO2 into the atmospher it has to be doing something.  Well the effects of dumping toxic oil (and dispersants) into the Gulf and exposing so many people has to be doing something also.

There are now troubling reports of damage to shrimp, mussels, clams, and other fish populations and the oil did not go away.  It is still sitting on the bottom..  The data is being hiddden because of the law suits, but it will come out.  And like those who told us the air was fine in New York after 9/11, they are out there protecting their businesses assuring you it is is safe.  But it really isn’t.  For every clean beach there is an oiled one and nobody really knows the long term effects, but they can’t be good.

Meanwhile you will see slick ads about how things are back to normal, but like an economist who knows the economy is in deep trouble, but doesn’t want to start a panic, they are out there telling us it is fine.  We should know the truth because we cannot let something like that ever happen again and it would seem that the only time Americans really learn anything is when the consequences are dire.  Well this time they are.  In the meantime see all the great laws passed by Coongress (Republicans killed them all) to protect us from another oil spill?

You hear it all the time.  If the two sides would just work together.  If they could just compromise.  Both sides are at fault and what this reflects is a belief that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, because both sides can’t be completely wrong can they?  Here are two examples;  The first is from a Jon Stewart interview with Robert Reich:

Jon:  It strikes me that we are in a very strange time in history where both sides of the political debate, and we are only allowed to have two because we are chimps, but one side believes in more laissez faire capitalism, tax rat that frees up the rich to create jobs for the rest of us, sort of a 1920 income model.  They seem to have gotten a lot of what they want.  The other side is the new deal side where the state is a larger social safety net, where there is a lot of infrastructure spending.  They seem to have gotten what they want.  So now we have two camps who have basically codified their desires, but cannot exist without imploding.

Now Jon makes some statements here that are patently false.  If the safety net he is referring to which is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, he has bought into the the conventional wisdom that we can’t afford them.  As Dean Baker and others try to point out over all the noise is that Social Security is sound, is not hurting our deficit (it pays for itself) and with some minor structural fixes, will be there forever (past 2038 which under present funding would be only sound to 80% of its obligations).  He also points out that if Medicare and Medicaid cost us what health care does in the rest of the industrialized nations (single payer systems) these would not be problems either and our social programs are modest compared with other nations. But one side refuses to consider these solutions.

Then Jon goes on to say we have got what we wanted in infrastructure spending.  Exactly where would that be Jon, as our infrastructure is crumbling?  Our spending has been on a downward slide since 1975 and even hurting Europe outspends us on infrastructure improvements.  So the assumption that both sides have gotten what they wanted is false and since the Ronald Reagan days, we have been transferring wealth to the rich and our economy is declining for the middle class.  Every study says we are moving further and further right, and you don’t need a study to see that moderate Republican policies proposed by a Democratic President go down in flames to understand how far right we have been moving.  One side has gotten what they wanted, the other side continues to capitulate in the spirit of “compromise”, and the country is getting worse and worse off.  The only thing Jon had right here was that we cannot continue this divided nation “without imploding”.  Blaming both sides equally is tilting at windmills.  It is also a lie.

Now we get to Exibit 2 which is Tom Friedman’s column on Sunday (Down With Everything) and we hear the same thing:

“A system with as many checks and balances built into it as ours assumes — indeed requires — a certain minimum level of cooperation on major issues between the two parties, despite ideological differences. Unfortunately, since the end of the cold war, which was a hugely powerful force compelling compromise between the parties, several factors are combining to paralyze our whole system…such as senatorial holds now being used to block any appointments by the executive branch or the Senate filibuster rule, effectively requiring a 60-vote majority to pass any major piece of legislation, rather than 51 votes. Also, our political divisions have become more venomous than ever.”

It is the same old drivel, refusing to point out that the Republicans have blocked anything in the Senate, and refused to compromise.  His failure to point a finger, like Jon Stewart’s, is a telling indicator of either blindness, or craven cowardliness to maintain access to both sides.  But either way, it is a gross disservice to the country.  Yes, both sides are controlled by money, but at least the Democrats try new things, which are blocked by the Republicans every time.  It wasn’t the Democrats who filibustered getting rid of the tax breaks to oil companies or passing the tax fairness bill.  It was the Republicans who passed the Blunt amendment to allow employers to deny health coverage based upon their private whims.  Get a grip here.  One side is totally out of whack.

Even a casual observer of politics will tell you that the country has not just moved to the right, it has lurched to the right.  Even moderate Republican positions are now seen as liberal, and by the way, those moderate Republican positions from back in the Reagan days are what is increasing our inequality in this country and is at the root of all our problems.  The middle is not the answer if middle solutions don’t change the fundamental distribution of wealth and power in this nation, and they don’t.

I listened to Up with Chris Hayes on Saturday and he was talking about global warming with a few moderate Republicans who get it.  Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA Chief under Bush, was lamenting the Republican failure to recognize this, but she was making excuses why the left left them openings, like calling it Global “Warming” and then when it snowed they could draw the wrong conclusion.  Only if you are brain dead, but here was the real denial:  She said that this rejection of science was only from the radical right, whereas Chris pointed out that surveys show that over half of Republicans don’t believe global warming is happening.  What there is left of moderate Republicans are in total denial about the state of their ideas and their party.

My point is simply this.  We are in gross denial if we think moderates or the middle will help us (or that compromise is even possible).  We have moved so far to the right that the country doesn’t even recognize moderate, and labels it liberal left.  But we are all ignoring that the policies over the last 30 years as income inequality grew, are what caused our collapse.  We have to get back to where we were after WWII, and that means major investments in our future (austerity does not work and confusing microeconomics with macroeconomics is a disaster:  See Europe or our own terribly slow recovery), we have to pay for our investments (delayed now, but once the economy grows stronger), we need a single payer health care system, and a fair tax code, much simplified.  This is not liberal babbling, it is what will work and what will work is what we are ignoring as we have Republicans blocking everything.

What I am proposing is simply that the right has become destructive, and whether it is the media or pundits who blame both sides, or wish for them to work together simply encourage more failed solutions.  What I have listed are all proven solutions if we could just learn from history or take a lesson from our neighbors.  Instead we have puritan Republicans demanding austerity, status quo, and more tax cuts for the wealthy.  The only thing more astounding than that, is that they appeal to over half the country, most who will suffer from these policies.  But we are a great country, right?

You know, every now and then a couple of events occur that kind of bring together and focus what you have been thinking or observing. That happened to me in the following two events:

Hilary Rosen and the Non-Argument

I am one of those sadly deluded individuals who believed that once the facts were on the table, minds could be changed. This is basis of the Enlightenment, that reasonable rational people, pushing prejudice, religion, and superstition out of the way, could arrive at truth through rational processes. The last 12 years or so have disavowed me of that belief. But I have, as all good engineers and scientists would, looked for the why. Why do people hang on to beliefs that are demonstratively wrong?

Of course I have read George Lakoff on framing, and Margaret Heffernan’s Willful Blindness, and these ideas/books show us how we can misperceive, but give us tools to reach truth and guard against blocking truth. But Chris Mooney’s asked the same questions I was asking, why obvious truth was not getting through, and in his new book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science, I believe he hit on a model that strikes home. It goes something like this: Our human brain evolved as two separate entities. Brain 1 was more primitive and were automatic responses like fight or flight (emotional reactions). The second part of our brain, Brain 2, evolved around intellect and was the more slow, but the reasoning part of our being. Our memories and neural patterns are not like a computer, but are built up around an emotion context. So when the brain processes an event, the memories and feelings around that event that are energized are a function of this neural pattern. That would be a rough approximation of George Lakoff’s framing.

The first thing about an idea or an event we feel is that emotional reaction of our more primitive brain, Brain 1, in many cases on a subconscious level. And those feelings, memories, and selected information about that event are flooded into our reasoning brain and in many case overwhelms it, long before Brain 2 kicks into action. He calls it motivated reasoning. From his book:

“We’ve inherited an Enlightenment tradition of thinking of beliefs as if they’re somehow disembodied, suspended above us in the ether, and all you have to do is float up the right bit of correct information and wrong beliefs will dispel, like bursting a soap bubble. Nothing could be further from the truth. Beliefs are physical. To attack them is like attacking one part of a person’s anatomy, almost like pricking his or her skin (or worse). And motivated reasoning might perhaps best be thought of as a defensive mechanism that is triggered by a direct attack upon a belief system, physically embodied in the brain.”

So with that model in mind, let’s examine the reaction to Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney not working a day in her life. When I heard that, saw the actual interview, and read the words, I found nothing in there about stay-at-home moms. Stay-at-home moms are just one subset of people who have not worked a day in their life. She was, in my mind, referring to not having been in the workplace and experienced the need to work or the challenges that brought, irrespective of why she wasn’t in the workplace. But most women, regardless of political persuasion, heard something entirely different, and that was a defamation of stay-at-home moms.

I think we are seeing what Chis Mooney was describing in action. I had no emotion connection here and so I dealt with it as a simple non-threatening fact. She had not been in the work place a day in her life. She had never faced a tough economic choice. Mother’s on the other hand, have a whole set of strong emotions about their choices, or lack thereof, around child raising. That statement probably activated many strong emotional states including guilt, anger, pride, second guessing, all around their role as a mother and the choices they made. They heard that statement as a derogatory description of stay-at-home Moms. Am I right about what Hilary was saying or are most women’s initial reaction? I guess that is not the point right now, the point is that emotion is a strong force that clouds an issue, and maybe negates my wished for state of rational human beings. By the way, I think I am right. See Keli Goff.

The 1% Or How Inequality (and Republican Defense of it) is Destroying our Economy

Tuesday in my blog I wrote about how the transfer of wealth to the 1% is destroying our economy at two levels. One, it is destroying the middle class and their ability to have disposable income to buy things and sustain existing and new businesses. Second, because the wealthy controlled all the political power, they are able to maintain the status quo, stifling innovation and change that would reinvigorate our economy with new emerging industries. One might rephrase this last item as is money in politics really the problem or is it a symptom of just only a few people having money to control our politicians?

At any rate, along comes an article about two French Economists who have been studying incomes and their distribution (For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule is Just a Start). As an aside, it was the Frenchman Alex de Tocquevilles’s Democracy in America in 1831, that originally put a finger on what was so different and great about America. What these two current day economists found was that the level of inequality in America is “as acute as it was before the Great Depression”, and that this has occurred over the last 30 years (the Reagan Revolution). As they said:

“The United States is getting accustomed to a completely crazy level of inequality. People say that reducing inequality is radical. I think that tolerating the level of inequality the United States tolerates is radical.”

“In a way, the United States is becoming like Old Europe, which is very strange in historical perspective. The United States used to be very egalitarian, not just in spirit but in actuality. Inequality of wealth and income used to be much larger in France. And very high taxes on the very rich – that was invented in the United States.”

Oh no, we are not becoming an oligarchy of the rich and stifling our economy, except people from the outside can see this phenomenon clearly. But hey, these are Frenchmen. What do they know? They had that WMD thing all wrong when they fought Bush on invading Iraq didn’t they? Do we still call them freedom fries?

Well a couple of weeks ago the Republicans defeated legislation to get rid of oil subsidies and today they voted down the “Buffet Rule” to tax the wealthy at the same level as the rest of us. And half of you people out there think these Republicans give flip about you or the deficit?

“As Congress was set to reconvene today House Republicans said Romney could go his own way on smaller issues that may help define him as separate from his congressional Republican counterparts.  But they said, he must understand that they are driving the policy agenda for the party now.

‘We’re not a cheer leading squad,’ said Rep Jeff Landry, an outspoken freshman from Louisiana.  ’We’re the conductor.  We’re suppose to drive the train.’” (NYT)

Doesn’t the Engineer drive the train?  I can’t wait to see these boys in action.

Hilary Rosin started a fire storm when she commented that Ann Romney had not “worked” a day in her life in response to Mitts claim that Ann was his adviser on women’s issues.  I got a taste of that when I commented on Facebook about that the other day.  What many women heard  was that a stay-at-home Mom was not work.  And there was a visceral reaction for many who had to work to support their family  and it was torture to leave their small children everyday.  It was perceived as stay-at-home was of lessor importance in the scheme of things than working mothers.  It was devaluing raising children and everybody got their dandruff up.  That is not what Hilary said or meant, but I will get to that later.  What I found so troubling is how what she was actually saying got completely lost in the stay-at-home Mom versus the working (has an employer) Mom false argument.   It shows how emotion overwhelms rational logic and displaces it and logic and reason become powerless.

This wasn’t lost on the White House which quickly  distanced themselves from Hilary’s comments.  Meanwhile the Republicans were delighted because  they could frame this argument around godless working Moms who devalue the family value issues of staying home to raise your kids.  ”What do you mean staying home and raising children isn’t real work?  It is some of the most important work a person can do.”   The visceral hook was set even though this is not what Hilary meant at all.  And based upon what I saw on Facebook comments, many fell for this false and alternate argument.  The fact is both sides agree with the above statement.  It is just that only one side shows their commitment through programs to help those mothers and kids, while the other side slashes them.

First of all being a stay-at-home Mom is not a choice many have.   From a Pew Research study back in 2007 (latest data I could find) “Among working mothers with minor children (Ages 17 and under)  just one in five (21%) say that full time work is the ideal situation for them,” (Pew Research Center).  Meantime the number of women with children under 6 has steadily grown in the workforce (Source PBS, 61% through 2000).  I love to have data after the financial collapse because my guess is the number is much higher now.   I think you can say  from those two statistics that economic forces are what is driving the majority of women with children to work, not choice.

My point is simply that there is no argument against stay-at-home Moms, but in today’s world, for many, especially where their husbands have lost their jobs and the wife’s job is the one with medical benefits, there is no option.  That brings me back to the real argument.  Mitt,  “Corporations are people too” Romney, is using his wife as his adviser on women’s issues.  Do we think Ann ever had to tear herself away from her children because they needed food on the table, or medical benefits?  Do you think Ann has ever experienced sexism in the workplace or unequal pay for equal work?  Do you think Ann ever worried about affording contraception if she could not afford another child?  And oh by the way, do you think her experience as a well-to-do mother who can afford all sorts of “help” can relate to what most mother’s must struggle with to raise their children and get them the proper education?

We have two people who have lived in gated communities all their lives telling the rest of us what our experience ought to be.  So when Hilary said, “She has never worked a day in her life,” she was referring to the same out of touch phenomenon that is so evident with Mitt.  She wasn’t attacking stay-at-home Moms or that staying home raising your kid was hard work.  She was questioning an adviser who has no real experience with the trauma of what less economically advantaged women face every day.  Sadly her choice of words was poor and the Republicans (and many women, Republican or not) rushed in to reinterpret them.

This is all about the Republican War on Women, and changing the topic of the debate was misdirection at its best.  Contraception is an economic choice that may make the difference between poverty, and financial security and the ability to provide for a family down the road.  Staying home with your children is not economically viable for most women.  It would be nice if we lived in a world where you could choose, but we don’t.  And even more important for those of you all up in a hot lather about the perceived degradation of stay-at-home Moms, the Republicans are all about killing the programs that will make that possible for many women.  And let’s not forget this is the same Mitt Romney and Republicans who want to see welfare mom’s get jobs.  The hypocrisy here is astounding.

Hilary had a right to criticize Mitt’s choice of advisers.  She just should have used a different approach to attack Ann’s lack of workplace experience, not her choice as a stay-at-home Mom (actually she didn’t, but that is what many heard based upon her choice of words).  Instead, she allowed the Republicans to cloud the debate with emotion and change the subject.  I am just amazed when I see intelligent people react emotionally to this argument and miss that the subject has completely changed.  It was never about whether raising family is not hard work, maybe the most important work you will ever do, it was about the lack of experience raising a family in an economically challenged environment.  But all that got lost in gut reactions to the words.  Kind of tells you something about how important your choice of words are these days and why reason may be losing out.

Vineyard pruned, rows sprayed, and debris chopped up in the morning rain

We seem to be facing insurmountable problems and we are deeply divided.  But As I sit here on a rainy day in the vineyard, I realize what frustrates me the most, is that the solutions aren’t hard.  They are right in front of us and are so easy to implement if we could just get everyone to sit down and actually listen.  Of course for Republicans this is going to sound out in left field, but since that is where they reside, who cares what they think.  What they have done has been a miserable failure so far.  Meanwhile Obama and the Democrats try to be a little bit pregnant with Republican ideas and the ship of state flounders.  So here are the solutions to all our problems and if we just had the political will to implement them, we could be on top of the world again:

• The deficit – No the deficit is not our number one problem, but that is the conventional wisdom so here is how we fix it:  Let the Bush Tax cuts expire for everyone;  throw out the tax code and implement a consumption tax (value added) of about 10%; re-evaluate the income tax and greatly reduced from what it is now to be a flat rate on all income (no loopholes) – Note that we pay less than almost every other industrialized nation as a percent of GDP in taxes and they have figured it out with the value added tax.
• Medical Insurance Reform – It is time to end the nonsense.  The rest of the world has gone to a single payer system and so should we.  Of course there is going to be rationing, there is rationing now but it is based on your ability to pay.  Then we need to end fee for service medical reimbursement and incentivize healthy outcomes (See Kaiser Permanente).  Once again it is what the rest of the world does, but we just can’t seem to get there.
• Global Warming – This is a no-brainer:  See California.  At the least we should be planning for the impact and attempting to ameliorate the damage.  Second, and this does not require a science degree, dumping all that CO2 in the air can’t be good so lets create industries that don’t do that, and this fits right into Energy Policy.  Continuing to deny it is the height of stupidity as its impacts are all around us (see melting polar cap).
• Energy Policy – Another no Duh moment.  We need one.  People complaining about $4 gas should count them selves lucky.  You can’t get it that cheap elsewhere in the industrialized world and it is going to get more expensive.  And it should.  Our problems are exacerbated by our addiction to oil and the sooner we go all out in alternate energy, the more strong we are as a nation.  The military are no dummies as they have seen the problem with long supply lines for oil and gas and are actively increasing their use of alternate sources.  But we have vested interests in the coal and oil business that fights rational policy every step of the way and they have of course bought both Democrats and Republicans.  So we add a $1 gas tax and fund major R&D on alternate energy.  Now where can I buy a hybrid truck.  I can’t.  That in itself is amazing.
• Environment – Of course we need to regulate CO2 and a carbon tax is a great way to use the market system to move to more efficient ways of creating energy for the rest of us.  Oh, and air and water?  Remember what they did to us when it wasn’t regulated?  Let’s just use science and its findings and quit screaming economic impact.  If it is your kid who ends of dying of cancer, no price is too high to pay.
• Jobs – There will be no jobs until the middle class gets out from under its debt and its income starts to increase.  This won’t come from more tax cuts.  It will come in this period of a liquidity trap from government spending.  Once again, this is a no Duh moment and one only has to look to our own Depression and the post WWII period.  We put everyone to work, and after WWII we turned all those war industries into peacetime endeavors and we GREW out of our deficit.  That is what we have to do again and as long as we continue this nonsense of tightening our belts as we defund education, healthcare, and improvements to our infrastructure (austerity), we will continue our decent into Republican Hell.
• Financial Reform – Here we have another no-brainer.  The answer is transparency and regulation.  The regulation is to make sure there is appropriate transparency.  The latest “JOBS” bill did just the opposite and sets up another great swindle because it allows businesses to hide things.  When people tell you that the last financial crisis couldn’t be  foreseen, remember some did, and they had a special view into the risks that were piling up.
• Afghanistan – The war is over and we have lost.  It wasn’t winnable and you can’t win a war for another country when they aren’t willing to fight the war themselves.  Our presence there is counter productive and maybe 50 years from now we could effect change, but we have bigger fish to fry.  I feel bad for what will happen to women’s rights as they float back to the 5th century, but it is their fight and sooner or later they have to fight it.
• Military Spending – No, we cannot be the policeman of the world.  We cannot continue spending more than the combined total of all other nations on earth on our military.  We need a rational defense strategy that recognizes we are not going to fight land wars anymore and don’t need a standing army to do it.  We have to stop listening to the John McCains of the world who think military action will solve all problems and don’t really have the ability to recognize the unintended consequences (can you say Syria or Iran?).
• Trayvon Martin – Another no-brainer.  Had the police arrested Mr. Zimmerman and then done a full public investigation, there would be no outrage.  Let’s face it, an unarmed kid walking home got harassed and then shot.  All the rest is really irrelevant.  If they had done that, and even if they decided that stand and defend applied, we would at least know how stupid the law was instead of what looks like the police looking the other way because the kid was black.  But by not charging and doing a full investigation, they simply created the outrage surrounding this tragic killing.  So arrest him and do a full and open investigation and let the cards fall where the known facts let them fall.

Okay, I have solve the problems of our country and it was quite simple.  We could be well on our way to healing and a strong economy.  But none of that is going to happen as long as we have money in politics, and conservatives who are brain dead.  Just another rainy day.

Let the shouting and whining begin.  The conservatives are not used to push back.  They expect Demos to fall over themselves retreating when faced with a fight.  But there it was, “You guys are Social Darwinists.”  How dare they.  Actually it perfectly caught the moment and the movement.  Now many are explaining that Social Darwinism is too wrapped up in racism or real survival of the fittest (i.e. The Hunger games) and they got it all wrong.  For some it is racism, for others, it is survival of the fittest, but it is mostly economic Social Darwinism.

The best way I can demonstrate this was a question Chris Mathews asked of his political pundits yesterday and it was, as all of Chris’s questions, loaded.  He wanted to know why the Republicans had got away with this lower tax cut for the wealthy and why the Democrats, up until now, have been unsuccessful and showing the unfairness of this.  One of his pundits was giving the Republican talking points that have sold in the past.  It goes like this:  Americans believe that each of us if we work hard can achieve new heights.  The lower tax rates for the wealthy is part of that mythology which says that if you are wealthy you earned it by working hard, and the lower tax rate then not only rewards you, but allows you to reinvest in America.

That is what they tell you, but what the real underlying belief is that if you are wealthy you earned, but if you are poor, you are lazy, inefficient, or just not very bright.  In other words if you are poor, you also earned it.  The money you earn is yours and using it to help the poor, who are lazy, inefficient, or just not bright is rewarding people who do not live by your superior moral and ethical standards and drags the whole society down.  So you are perfectly justified keeping every cent you earn.  That my friends is Social Darwinism.

The fallacy in this belief is that it is a level playing field and the reality is for most of us, we got what we got with luck, friends, and in many cases, who our parents were and how much money they had.  In the past this was not so evident.  Most Americans believed that they had an equal chance, and quite frankly in the past they did.  But as wealth has migrated to the wealthy, the cost of everything has put education out of reach for many, and the tax rate simply reinforces the system to become more unfair.  So the belief in Social Darwinism ignores these inequalities and justifies the wealthy and the conservatives selfish social policies.  For some it does include racism.  For some, actually most, it includes survival of the fittest.  Exhibit A is the shouting of yes in the Republican debate about whether a young person who has failed to buy medical insurance should be left in the ditch to die after a serious accident.  This also is a gross denial of reality where that young person very likely could not get a job and could afford health insurance.

So are Republicans Social Darwinists?  Of course they are and their belief is based upon a false assumption that the playing field is level.   They got theirs and they earned it.  You are needy because you are lazy.  They should not have to subsidize bad behavior.  The problem with all that is that it fails to recognize the reality we live in.    And this time I don’t think it is going to work.  Too many people are suffering under the heel of unfairness and they know it.  The more the conservatives move into their gated communities and ignore reality, the more irrelevant they start to sound to the rest of us.  I guess this next election will be a real test of that assertion of mine.

Oh, and speaking of irrelevant, or fat old white men out of touch with reality, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained to us yesterday that the “Republican attack on women” was much to do about nothing.  Really?  I think this kind of statement further inflames women who really know what is at stake.  It doesn’t make any difference if they are Republican or Democrat, as I have often learned in my marriage, hell hath no furry like a women ignored.  I think you guys are toast.

In response to President Obama’s signing of the JOBS bill which is just another way to let businesses screw us, Mr. Kuttner gave us this

“So this is what bipartisanship looks like. All Democrats have to do is embrace Republican ideology and — voila! — bipartisanship.”

“What else does bipartisanship look like? It looks like premature deficit reduction that will only retard the recovery further.”

“Given the Republican strategy of take-no-prisoners, the only bipartisanship is capitulation. It’s hard to tack back and forth between leadership and appeasement without looking like a captain who’s not sure where he’s taking the ship. More leadership, please.”

As it ever was.

The Republicans have been about packing the court with ideologues since Ronald Reagan while the Democrats slept.  Republicans have been playing hardball and the Democrats have been playing dodge ball.  Well the chickens have come home to roast and many Americans are becoming alarmed.  Citizen’s United allowing unlimited money into the political arena and saying a corporation is a person is about as far from what the Founders intended as you can get, yet strict constructionists, or so they claim, ruled 5-4 to let the money flow.  The full body search because now everyone is assumed guilty without due process is another oh my god moment if you are really a conservative and another 5-4 decision.  Then we saw the Supremes argue Tea Party talking points on the Affordable Care Act and there is no doubt they will over turn it based on partisan politics, not sound legal/Constitutional grounds, 5-4.

Women are waking up to find that their rights, whether it be contraception or the right to choose, will soon be decided by these same ideologues.  While the Democrats slept, or refused to standup and play hardball, all of this happened.  The Blunt Amendment should have woken everyone up to the extreme ideologues we have in the Republican Party.  Your boss gets to decide for you what he thinks your medical care should be comprised of based upon his moral values, not yours.  Whatever happen to your rights.  This was voted for by every Republican in the Senate except Olympia Snowe who is quitting. These are the people who claim they want to protect people from big government and then empower your boss to be big government.

Probably what is almost beyond even the most brazen of hypocrisy is the Right’s stand on judicial review.  Remember these are the guys who hated activist justices and have threatened to impeach or hurt judges who “go against the wishes of the majority.”  Now I will have to say that what President Obama said about overturning a law that a majority of Americans approved was about the stupidest thing that could come out of his mouth, because their job is to do just that if they find it unconstitutional, and as a former Constitutional Law Professor, should know that.  But to then listen to the Republicans who have been making the same argument for years then cry foul is to wonder if they stand for anything except winning, which might I add, they are.

But we are where we are and Americans are in for a shock in the coming years if this trend continues as we turn back the clock on voting rights, affirmative action, abortion, and it goes on and on.  Now I don’t blame the Republicans for this.  I blame Democrats who have refused to understand the fight they were in and have failed to step up to the plate and stand in on that inside fastball thrown by the Republicans (I have tried everything else so I am going with sports analogies).  And at the top of my list is President Obama, who after year two should have gotten the message.  He didn’t, the Democrats in Congress have proved spineless and we are where we are.  Now we are fighting for our lives and I hope they learned something from the other side.  If you want to save this country it is time to take no prisoners.

So it is showtime.  Forget all the nonsense about bipartisanship.  Forget all that nonsense about “my good friend from the other side of the isle.”  Forget all that nonsense about reasonable people can work together and that the solution is some sort of compromise.  They have eaten your lunch while you have been playing nice.  They have and never did intend to compromise on anything.  They are the enemy and they are destroying the nation.  It is time to throw the accommodaters out of the Party because you are accommodating yourself into oblivion.  It is time to fight fire with fire.  If you can’t do that, get the hell out of the way and let someone who can take your place.  Somebody please retire Milk Toast Harry Reid and as Shakespeare once said so eloquently, “Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”  (Marc Antony in Julius Caesar).  Otherwise, kiss your ass goodbye.