Obama's War

The Afghan War has become increasingly unpopular as its grinding cost ($2B a week) receives belated scrutiny. Obama sticking to the promised troop reduction timetable, despite little in the way of tangible results from 'the surge', will make few happy. It will be seen as a trickle not a flow. The Army wants more time at maximum troop strength. And the public is bored shitless with the whole costly affair especially since the US is now perceived to be “broke”, overextended militarily and in headlong decline.

Obama in the heat of the 08 campaign let his hubris get out hand. Along with promising to leave Iraq, he also promised to prevail in Afghanistan and track down Osama Bin Laden - two different and only partially related objectives. To Obama’s credit Osama Bin Laden is now history and his terrorist organization with its holy war ideology seems to have been eclipsed by the "Arab Spring" which is anything but Jihadist.

But promising to succeed in Afghanistan was a big mistake. Apparently Democratic Presidents (and candidates for such) have to appear strong on military matters to avoid being called out as wimps and ‘out hawked’ by Repubs (especially ex war hero John McCain.) Yet by honoring his campaign promise (at least this one) and doubling down in Afghanistan, Obama's commitment has only made things worse not better - the classic tar baby effect (as Lyndon Johnson learned in another war in another time.)

Furthermore, the US military officers corps (who are mostly Republican-leaning and don't much trust Democratic Presidents) do not want to be a part of another war that 'was lost.' That's not exactly career building. Besides not offending the military establishment, Obama did not want to oppose the popular Gen. David Petraeus, whose 'surge' in Iraq allowed that war to be perceived as a sort of victory or at least not an abject defeat, as big a disaster as it was and still is. Also to make matters worse, Afghanistan and Pakistan are totally interlocked geopolitically (remember the Pakistan ISI originally established the Afghan Taliban.) This regional relationship wouldn't matter except Pakistan has deliverable nuclear warheads (and has been known to proliferate said technology.) Furthermore the ‘incubated virus’ of the Afghan Taliban has now come back and infected Pakistan further destabilizing an already dysfunctional country.

The original sin here was that after our war of vengeance against the Taliban for not coughing up Al Queda after the 9/11 attack actually succeeded, Bush and Co., idiots that they were, turned away and started a second even bigger war. This as we know allowed the Taliban to regroup, regain territory and support, and define the US presence as an evil occupation army not as benevolent 'nation builders' as we liket to see ourselves.

Obama should have run as a total anti-war candidate and offered to redirect all or part of the money being spent there on military operations instead on making Afghanistan a showcase example of what can be done with a failed Muslim state. And if it was too late for that, then cut our losses and get the hell out– after all it was Bush’s war, not Obama's yet. He still would have beat McCain. Remember in those days the Repubs were still being blamed for the economy then in a full nosedive.

Now he’s stuck. If he pulls out too fast and Afghanistan and/or Pakistan plunges into chaos and/or the Taliban take over again after ten years heavy fighting, many lives lost and something approaching half a trillion dollars pissed away, it will certainly be a post-mortal victory for Osama Bin Laden. Yet with all attention now fixed on “the Deficit” and how to reduce it, how can he afford to stay? Plus the original reason for invading them has been 'deep sixed' and the remnants of his organization run out of the country. The Graveyard of Empires indeed…

Is there any consequence to always being wrong?

There is seems to be no consequence to being dead wrong if you’re a Republican. The Bush II years were an unmitigated disaster any way you look at it: two brutally expensive still unpaid for and still both ongoing wars; failing to ‘apprehend’ Osama Bin Laden); running the federal debt through roof (in which the Debt Ceiling was routinely raised with no comment); the rerun of an already discredited idea -“supply side” economics (lowering tax rates does not lead to more aggregate tax revenues from increased investment); a deregulatory landscape free-for-all especially in the financial sector resulting in a world wide financial credit paralysis which in turn triggered a deep recession nearly as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s (which we are still wallowing in.)

Yet somehow through a mix of right wing radio and Fox media blitzes, a gullible and easily distracted public, and a fat passel of lies and world class dissembling by seasoned Repub pols, all this has allowed the Republican Party to somehow miraculously survive to fight another day.

Blown out big time in the 2008 election at all levels, the Repubs regrouped especially in the Senate, and cornered they bared their long knives. They misused and abused the old boy Senate rules especially the veritable old filibuster rule to paralyze legislation and political appointments. Result: legislation that did survive was so watered down and gutless that many Obama supporters lost faith. One important example was the critical stimulus package intended to pump some air back into the deflated economy which was nearly a flat tire by early 2009. Tried and proven Keynesian counter-cyclical policy had worked for decades. Consequently most mainstream economists urged a robust and targeted stimulus package but all we got was a diffuse and poorly aimed one badly undermined by Republicanesque tax cuts.

Obama is no FDR. At that pivotal point he did not sense the need to rally the nation. Instead he tried to deal with the devil, the devil being the Repubs collectively. The stimulus package of 2009 after lots of fanfare did not have the bite nor the scale it needed (and it did escape notice that far more was done to save the broken banks which through their own greed and irresponsibility had reluctantly and humiliatingly required a bailout.) In any case we are now all paying for that the inadequate first stimulus package. We still have nearly 9% official unemployment a year and half later, and the American people are totally demoralized. The aftermath of the real estate bubble, which drove the entire economy for most of 2000s, is a ravaged landscape of foreclosure-riddled ghost towns, lost dreams and personal bankruptcies. Yet in DC all attention is now suddenly turned from the continuing effects of the biggest downturn since the 1930s to the perennial problem of the national deficit.

But what is forgotten in all the posturing over the ‘unsustainability of the entitlements’ and the 'over extension of the welfare state' is that the recession itself causes the deficit it to increase ever faster. Out of work people pay less taxes, buy less and thus feed negative energy into the recessionary cycle. Repubs lied about the effectiveness of the first stimulus insisting it was flop. It was a flop in terms of theater but not in terms of actually producing a reversal in the downturn and mild positive numbers in the economic indicators. But most Americans saw little tangible evidence in their daily lives as the economy only very slowly came back to life.

And into that breach wades the hypocritical, intellectually dishonest, demagogic (while using the word on the Demos), opportunistic bastards known as the GOP especially their young guns such as House member Paul Ryan. Now with hotheads and airheads of the so-called Tea Party faction behind them, the GOP is threatening to blow up the entire global economy by refusing to legally raise the debt ceiling on money already legally allocated if they don't get their way. These fuckers are incredible! These teabagging assholes think that the worse case is simply some Ayn Randian/Grover Norquest wet dream: a shrinking and then drowning of what’s left of the US's rather limited "welfare state" in the proverbial bathtub.

The problems is, like the gangsters that they are, the Repubs have discovered extortion works! Having gotten away with it twice before, they believe the third time's in the bag. First, in late 2008 they refused to vote for retaining the middle class tax rate (which if eliminated would have kicked the already weak recovery into reverse) unless they kept their Bush II engineered budget busting lowered tax rate for the very rich (which Obama eventually caved in on.) Then they held up the badly overdue 2011 budget until lots of painful (and recession exacerbating) cuts in the 12% slice of discretionary spending was reduced (which did zilch to fix the overall deficit problem.) Now they want to use that same perverse leverage on the routine (and unpleasant) raising of the debt ceiling.

Everyone including the dimmest Repub House backbencher knows that all hell will break loose if the US defaults (or seems like might default) on its long running debt. For starters the interest on Federal Treasury bonds will rise and counter productively increase the national debt itself, not to mention the dislocation and chaos if checks to pensioners, contractors and government workers stopped flowing. And of course the stock and bond market could weird out big time as well as the already unstable commodity markets. And if the US sneezes the hold world economy catches a cold or worse. Of course it’s a game of chicken and no one (except the Pee Party nuts) wants to actually drive the car off the cliff or be blamed for said car landing on said rocks.

Remember the one thing about the Repubs that always appeals to the average overextended American is the Repubs (irresponsible and demagogic) anti-tax policy. It is their ace-in-the-hole, their tactic for all seasons, their ever-popular standby carrot ‘n stick. But will this continue to work forever? The old bait 'n switch - offer to lower everyone's taxes but then mainly reduce taxes on the already shamelessly financially porcine.

But they unlike the Demos the Repubs also do service their base, a base that consists of hodgepodge of disparate subcultures. You have the anti-abortion zealots, the 2^nd Amendment gun rights fanatics and now the stronger than ever Ayn Ryan worshiping teabagger/Libertarian ideologues. Plus there is their real base: the Fortune 500 corporations with their army of lobbyists and of course those of the very rich, the sociopathic crime families who are completely free of any debilitating social or environmental conscience.

But the Repub base is not enough to carry them over the line electorally in many important areas of the country. They must appeal to the called “independents” - the perpetually undecided, the distracted, the apolitical, the apathetic (who often hide behind a facade of cool cynicism.) The tired old refrain “taxes are too high” and “the Democratic Party led government wastes your money and will raise taxes”, "tax and spend liberals' are the real problem, etc, These have become tried and proven means to get these sometime voters and right leaning 'independents' off their asses and voting for Repubs. But will it work forever?

The Democrats must hold the line in this latest effort of budgetary extortion. Reasonable plans do exist, “centrist” in any reasonable political spectrum. But again Obama seems to be conceding too much in his opening position. He should be starting from as far “left” as possible in terms of our crazy right-shifted spectrum and work toward a moderate, real centrist position. And such a position already exists in the (unfortunately named) Peoples Budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It contains reasonable adjustment of tax policy so as to reinstate what worked in the past along with a healthy trimming of the bloated budget military, and it would balance the budget by 2021. And it accomplice all this without butchering the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s Medicare/Medicaid programs.

The only antidote for Republican poison is a robust counter proposal that solves real problems and takes on the crushing corporatist state institutions that are bleeding us dry and dragging us into the Third World, ‘banana republic’ status. Here's hoping we will see a new more combative Obama. The American people, that is those who are not already lost to tin-hatted delusion, would respond to forceful leadership at this crucial junction in US history.

Connecting the Dots

We seem to be watching some kind of horrific three-ring circus in which all the acts are interconnected but not acknowledged to be so…

Ring 1: Geological/Nuclear Disaster in Japan

On March 11^th a slippage of continental plates off the coast of Japan slammed that country with a massive 9.0 earthquake and a huge tsunami. As routine as quakes are in Japan and well prepared as the Japanese were for such, the scale of this one has totally overwhelmed them. The scenes of devastation and the total leveling that resulted from the a 30 foot wall water that washed in from the Pacific Ocean ironically reminds one of the 1945 photos of Hiroshima after being hit by an atom bomb. Twisted broken rubble stretches almost to the horizon with only a few stubborn hollowed-out concrete structures left standing, with dazed survivors wandering heartbroken hopelessly searching for lost relatives and friends. Cars upside down and crumpled share space with fishing boats washed into houses. The scale of loss and tragedy is immeasurable. And to add insult to injury the latest photos show a dusting of cold unwelcome snow hiding the rusty nails and laceration producing knife-sharp metallic edges under endless piles of once life sustaining property. All that remains are horizons of hideous trash still containing the remains of loved ones. Many thousands are unaccounted in for a country that leads the world in utilizing state-of-the-art electronics with almost a German-esque reputation for keeping track of things. But as dreadful as all this is, this is only the least of it. No, something potentially worse also has weighed in - a nuclear disaster.

Japan, like most of the industrialized world, fell for the siren song of the “Peaceful Nuke” even as they suffered horrendously as the only country to ever have had nuclear weapons used against them. Now the Japanese are experiencing the downside of a reliance on peaceful nuclear energy as their Fukashima Dassii nuclear power threatens to totally meltdown. Already there has a partial meltdown of at least two reactors, and even worse the exposure of 125 tons of fuel rods from a holding pond that is reported to now be totally dry.

The hubris of the nuclear power industry and the energy industry in general in assuming that they could design out all probable dire geologic events brings to mind our own tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But it also brings to mind the 'boys of Wall Street' who believed they had designed out all probable dire financial events with their fancy oblique tranched mortgage bonds, collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps resulting in a global credit meltdown and a nasty deep recession that we have still not recovered from.

Ring 2: Middle East in Turmoil

This geological news from Japan rightly has pushed the geopolitical news from the Middle East rudely aside. The Middle East is experiencing an earthquake of another kind. Suddenly starting in the backwater North African country of Tunisia and spreading like a string of Chinese firecrackers, rebellion and potential revolution has erupted in one despot-ridden Arab nation after another. The Egyptians inspired by Tunisia have successfully jettisoned their dictator through a brave, relentless and essentially peaceful struggle. Their success has emboldened people all across the region to join resistance movements and wage protests.

Brutal repression and now a full civil war has erupted in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’ 's private fiefdom, Libya. The US and its European allies have now militarily intervened on the side of the rebels essentially declaring war on the Libyan government in what may become another expensive, protracted quagmire. 'The Qaddafi approach' already has triggered similar harsh and desperate reactions from what goes governments in Yemen, Bahrain and now Syria. Where does intervention end? Most of these “republics” were considered stable “friendly” dictatorships and were not exactly on the US State Department's shit list with the exception of the dried up hellhole (and Al Qaeda stronghold) known as Yemen. Where and how this will all end is anybody's guess. One of thing is clear the Uncle Sam needs to be stuck in another war like he needs another hole in his head.

Ring 3: Demos and Repubs Locking Horns

With Japan on the ropes with an unimaginably bad triple whammy set of disasters and the oil rich Middle East unraveling in unprecedented ways, the US also finds itself in another kind of crisis, one of a classic political nature. The US recovering from a deep recession is also saddles with a record national debt. Yet care needs to be taken not to suffocate the baby of economic recovery in its proverbial crib. Continued if not increased government deficit spending seems counter-intuitive in the midst of a period of deep red ink. But that is is exactly what is prescribed by most economists. Yet suddenly the Dreaded Deficit is front and center (which must be remembered was run up by mainly the Reagan and Bush II administrations.) The right is using The Deficit and their control of the purse strings to 'go postal.' An unholy alliance of shady billionaires, crazed libertarian anti-tax hardliners, reactionary poorly educated evangelical Christians, left wing conspiracy believing gun freaks and bought-and-paid-for Republican Party hacks are lined up against a young inexperience president (prone to preemptive surrender on key negotiating points) supported by a divided Democratic Party that has long since lost its moorings with its real base – the middle, working and under classes.

With the US oil addiction as the linchpin for supporting unpopular, despotic and kleptocratic regimes in the Middle East coupled with the oil industry's untoward influence on US energy policy, it's possible to see the connections between these three events as interlocking. The ultra energy industry-friendly Republican Party is tactically and strategically angling for a re-accession to power through whatever means necessary. So oil dependency and nuclear industry rehabilitation (despite Japan's plight) will continue irrespective of the consequences if the Repubs have their way. The nuclear industry, long since a basket case without government support, is also solidly supported by laissez-faire Republicans. Oil as a major CO2 producing and climate damaging fossil fuel, and nuclear energy both are associated with long-term deleterious effects to the environment (with Japan now getting a first hand experience.) The most obstreperous and deluded defenders or oil and nuclear power can be found in the Republican Party. And these very same deniers of the deleterious long term harm of oil and nukes are the very ones threatening to paralyze the entire US government (and economy?) if they don't get their way on a whole host of stupid, ill advised budget cuts/social agenda initiatives that will have zip effect on the looming deficit (that they have suddenly rediscovered.)

The annual US budget negotiation process is always ugly. This is where the Democrats Party and the Republican Party perennially wrangle over their supposed ideological differences. A lot of it is show. Most of the budget is locked in, and only a small sliver (12%) is ever in play. Neither side can really touch the big chunks without major legislation – commitments to the elderly and incapacitated (Medicare and Social Security entitlements) and the sacrosanct military side. And increasing taxes even in good times is always off the table thanks to 30 years of relentless right wing propaganda. This time it is really bad. Due to nearly a decade of breathtakingly irresponsible policy from a Republican president (off-budget wars, taxes cuts and refusal to reform Medicare) and now a kings hell of a recession (which wipes out revenues,) the deficit is indeed looming large in both absolute and relative terms.

To make matters worse the Repubs have interpreted their victory in the mid term election as carte blance to take declare war on all fronts: environmental regulation, public sector unions, teachers, abortion rights, publicly supported media, you name it all in the name balancing the budget. At both the state and federal level they are on the move with draconian agenda that would even make their saint, the late Ronald Reagan, queasy. The American population is just waking up to the true dimensions of their agenda. These madmen have no real idea of the implications of their actions. But if they stall the recovery and make the joblessness worse ( the number one concern in polls), all the better. It can be blamed on the Obama presidency. The GOP just wants to crush the opposition and enact their half-baked ideas and the fully-baked bidding of their corporate overlords. This has all happened because the American voters are easily bamboozled and often vote for tin-hatted charlatans, or else are they become easily discouraged and don't vote at all. So a veritable fleet of of ships of fools have commandeered the US House Representatives and many statehouses and governorships. This is a serious state of affairs to say the least. Let's just hope people wake up pretty fucking soon!

A Perverse Symmetry

I wrote this last week. It appears the tide has turned and just maybe the reactionary right has over played its hand. See the recent NY Times poll.

Anyone following the standoff in Wisconsin will see a certain perverse symmetry. A Republican dominated Supreme Court first radically alters campaigning financing rules with the Citizens United decision to allow corporations and their primary adversaries, trade unions, to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections under the rubric of “free speech” Of course the good justices knew full well this is like pitting a the NFL against some high school football league in terms of available cash to spend on elections. In the US union membership has been steadily falling from over a 1/3 of the workforce in 1945 to only 7.9% by 2004. Private-sector union membership has shrunk the most, to a mere 6.9% of the private sector workforce as of 2010, while public-sector union membership is still running at over 36% . So is there any mystery as to what is going on in Wisconsin? It is plain and simple. The Republicans Party and the oligarchy (read: a cabal of the ultra rich) that it represents is using the recession and the concurrent problems with state budgets to destroy the last surviving remnant of the union movement - public-sector unions.

So with private-sector unions on the rocks due to union busting and race-to-the-bottom global economics, Republicans and their minions in the media have of late been concentrating on undermining the support with the American public for the surviving public-sector unions. And this super recession is a perfect opportunity. The five Supreme Court (presumably opposed to “judicial activism”) who voted in favor of giving First Amendment rights to corporations and unions were obviously aware that private-sector unions in the US are in serious decline. So it was easy to allow money equals free speech for corporations and for their polar opposites, unions. Private sector unions are becoming a paper tiger, especially with the US economy seemingly permanently unable to create enough jobs. Yet public sector unions are still strong. So prior to the upcoming watershed of an election in 2012, Republicans have their long knives out for the last bastion of American organized labor - public sector unions.

And feeding into this is the perpetual dissatisfaction of Americans with our education system. This dissatisfaction is being used to undermine faith in a unionized part of the public-sector union movement - the American schoolteacher. School teaching always been an underpaid and under-appreciated profession. Teachers are constantly being pilloried and blamed in the media for all the myriad ills of the American education system. Bad teachers that can't be fired ' because of their unions' and 'their awful tenure system' is a constant refrain by the right. The underfunding and neglect of the very school districts that need support the most, those that serve the inner city poor is conveniently ignored, as is the the societal feedback loop of social decay and despair in the underclass families that serves up students with horrendous disadvantages. Instead it is all blamed on the hapless teachers who work in these drug and gang infested war zones. Perennial underfunding of education at the state level was caused by the so-called taxpayers revolt mania which started in California in the 1980s with Jarvis Gann and which spread like wildfire across the country. And, of course, there it is always easy to generate animosity and jealousy against 'government workers' by creating the perception that people with cushy 'government jobs' have it made and that the state budget crisis is the fault of their greedy, obstreperous unions.

When this stubborn kings hell of a recession hit, many states suddenly found themselves seriously in the red, and it was time to find a scapegoat. So it was easy to blame it on the defined benefit pensions and solid health plans that state, county and city workers have been able to achieve usually by trading off cost-of-living wage increases. The perpetual underfunding of governments at all levels due to tax cut madness especially for upper tiers of income is conveniently ignored. But with Wisconsin, it was only different. Compared with other states their budget deficit was only shallow hole. But one which the Republican libertarian ideologue of a governor made deeper with irresponsible tax cuts. Make no mistake this is a test case. If a manufactured budget crisis can be used to destroy public-sector unions in Wisconsin, all of the states with real budget problems will be pushovers for attacking the concept of public-sector unions and collective bargaining in general. Make no mistake this is class warfare!

Strange Days

It is strange time we live in. In what is supposed to be a democracy, a coalition of rich greedy cold-hearted bastards (i.e. the Koch brothers) aligned with an interlocking network of bureaucratic money machines known as corporations have now commandeered the legislative and executive branches of many States and a 1/2 of the Federal legislative branch. And, of course, have significant influence on the judicial branch at both the State and Federal levels.

In short Americans through a mix of ignorance, fear, cynicism and apathy have allowed a batch of charlatans and fools to be elected all across the country, most recently to the US House of Representatives. These are craven pols who have not a clue as to how to get the engine of US capitalism fired back up again - if it is indeed possible. These are people who believe only what is convenient to believe. This is well beyond mere intellectual chicanery, which implies one knows the truth but is using one’s wits to refashion it, such as the legal machinations of a mob lawyer or the verbal maneuvers of a clever college rhetorician. This not just a convenient tweaking of the truth being injected into an argument, but whole new realities being conjured up and fervently believed in. For instance now the GOP appears to believe the modest under whelming but necessary health care reforms enacted by the Democrats last year will actually increase unemployment.

Remember this mauling of reality has been going on for awhile now, having been pioneered and refined during the George W. Bush presidency. In the Bush years claims that were overwhelming proved to be false, and somehow retained legitimacy in the minds of the ultra-right. These ‘zombie facts’ supported the horribly unnecessary, budget-busting invasion of Iraq. Some of these include:

• Sadam Hussien had weapons of mass destruction but were just never found.
• Sadam Hussien was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist act against the US.
• The US invasion of Iraq actually benefited the people of Iraq.
• Waterboarding is not torture.

This is the realm of what once called the Big Lie and was once associated with totalitarian governments likes those of the Nazis and the Stalinists. Repeat something that is false, a big fat lie, with enough volume and frequency (read: right wing radio and Fox “news”) and it becomes believable at least to some (and unfortunately enough to swing elections.)

Difference of opinion is usually based on difference of interpretation of the same data. But what if each side uses it's own data? What if the established arbiter of the legitimacy of the data is accused of being in league with one of the sides? Then you have no touchstone of fact-based objective reality. That is what we have come to. The party now taking control of one half of one the three branches of government has arbitrarily decided to eliminate the referee, the independent bi-partisan body, the Congressional Budget Office, from involvement in projecting results of proposed budgetary bills. Apparently they make up their own numbers and any CBOs analysis will be castigated as simply biased in support of their opponents. This is very wrong and will create another fictitious reality, another boldfaced pack of lies in the guise of objective truth. It’s sick. It’s duplicity. It’s the GOP in action!

The American Middle Class are Chumps

How does the Republican Party so effectively bamboozle the middle class? As a political party they are not their friend. The Republicans do everything possible to reduce the numbers of their own supporters. But the chumps keep coming back for more. Republicans hate unions which bring middle class wages to blue-collar workers. They despise safety nets such as unemployment insurance or especially European-type income floors that keeps people falling into the abyss of full homelessness. They are fully supportive of off-shoring jobs ( as well as corporate profits to avoid taxes.) First it was manufacturing and now we see technical/clerical jobs going to low wage countries. Yet millions every election buy the same bogus line of bullshit hook line and sinker - to whit everything that is wrong with the US is somehow the fault of “The Liberals” and “Big Government.” In fact some of the more militant members of the hard core Republican loyalist middle class recently went on the war path bringing their guns and wearing silly colonial outfit to town hall meetings, some even threatening invocation of “Second Amendment rights”, armed insurrection, when a the Democrats were merely trying to repair a badly broken, budget busting health care system. What in the hell is going on? Is it in the water?

We are at a strange juncture. The so-call “free market” economy, that many of us especially the Republicans hold so dear, is not delivering. Instead we are entangled in a king’s hell of a perpetual recession. Even though technically “it is over” (small GDP growth is occurring), millions are still out of work. The initial crash was so severe it verged on becoming another 1930s scale Great Depression. And it happened under again a Republican administration. Yet again the hapless Democrats inherited it and are now being blamed for it. So it now behooves the Republicans to keep it going as long as it takes to retake Congress and the White House. The fall guy Democrats were voted back in en mass in a wave of messiah-desiring fervor. The knee-deep-in-shit situation that the new administration stepped into almost guaranteed disappointment from the left and malicious second-guessing from the right, then the growing realization by the right that is was to their advantage to make things worse.

The Demos under Obama inherited quite a mess - not one but two ongoing wars, a financial system in paralysis, housings prices in free fall leading to a wave of foreclosures not seen since the 1930s, and unemployment nearing 10%. And to make matters supremely worse due to the abject failure of Republican driven “supply side” econ theory, government debt was already before the recession at astronomical levels. Recall the notion behind Reaganian ‘SS Economics’ is that if we lower taxes, there will be adequate new investment and thus new tax revenues generated that it will actually compensate for the lost revenue from the lowered taxes. This especially presumably applied if the taxes are lowered for the investor class: the upper income tiers, millionaires and billionaires. The cake and eat, too plan didn’t fucking work! Ask David Stockman, Reagan’s head of OMB. The deficit skyrocketed in the Reagan years. The other net result was a massive retribution of wealth upwards.

So as we know the Democrats under Bill Clinton, ever embattled by fake scandals like Whitewater and Troopergate and finally nearly impeached, managed like a good 1950s’ moderate Republican get the budget in order, and we had few good years relative to the national debt. After particularly close election and with the help of the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, enter one George W. Bush. This is the same person whose own father, George H.W. Bush, as a presidential candidate and one time moderate Republican accurately coined the term “Voodoo Economics” for this bogus and dangerous idea of cutting taxes to the wealthy to create jobs. Well “W” being his own man returned again to voodoo economics full force engaging and not one two wars (both off-budget,) a poorly designed increase in Medicare benefits and another very generous irresponsible but popular time limited tax cut for all but especially for the so called job creating upper income tiers. Supply Side was back! Result: another huge spike in the Deficit. All this is widely known.

Now here are in 2010 and Bush tax cuts are due to expire automatically. But we are still in the toilet relative to a real recovery. So expiration of the Bush tax cuts would amount to a sudden tax increase. But suddenly also again The Deficit now at is front and center, with a august presidential commissions and pundits right and left agonizing over “under funded entitlements” and other future shortfalls. Draconian changes are being proposed like cuts in middle class tax deductions, Social Security and Medicare eligibility. All aimed at the middle class. And this unbelievably still with 9.8% of the population are officially unemployed (with more not counted or working only part time.) Astonishingly the right wing of the Democratic Party and the Republicans in mass are suddenly simultaneously concerned with the dreaded Deficit but are also all or retaining a budget busting, deficit exploding, irresponsible retention of a "temporarily " lowered income taxe for all including inexplicably the very wealthy who have shown they don't fucking invest it US jobs. How do they get away with it?

In this context we have another sad spectacle of the Obama caving in on another core principle. He promised to let the budget busting counter-cyclical dysfunctional upper income tax cuts expire. But the Repubs naturally want it to all stay intact so they and their rich friends will continue to wallow in money. And they will filibuster any proposed change to the end. If the thing expires as designed everybody’s taxes go up come the come Jan 1. In the middle of a recession it would be another kick in the balls to the economy. But only for middle classes who will spend most of it, the wealthy really don’t need the money and will only speculate with it. If they were going to use it fruitfully in as trickle down supply side investment way, they would have already done it. This is class war - blatant, redistribution of income upwards. They were already rich when the tax cut hit under Bush. They had managed to accrue great wealth under the old tax code. Bush just made his friends richer! These people are motherfuckers of the first magnitude. They have driven the country into penury and then have the audacity to call Obama a “socialist” when he tries to enact minor but necessary minor rational reforms.

Obama could hold out and let the damn thing expire and take it to the people exposing on prime time the supreme hypocrisy of the Repubs. But, alas, also the federal extension on unemployment is also due to run out. And the Repubs will filibuster this one too. Both would have to be ought in the trenches with Obama using his bully pulpit to rally the masses. He would need to be a fighter not a conciliator. Even the Repubs would respect him. On both of these issues he has the majority on his side. It would be a two front war and real political gamble to let two both of these hits occur in the same time frame. But it would it could turn things around like a game-changing pass that was caught but not a “Hail Mary.” He would have reenergized the same masses that came out in 2008 and voted him in and other Demos in a near landslide. But that is not the Obama we have. We have a different guy.

The Wreckage of a Crashed Opportunity

As we pick through the post mid term election wreckage the recriminations and blame spews forth from all points of the political spectrum. While the gloating and back patting on the right commences. 'Overreach' and 'under reach' are oft used terms. Also the accusation of a ‘lack of focus’ is often thrown out (see Paul Krugman’s 11/5/10 NY Times column.) It is certainly ironic that Barack Obama would write a book titled The Audacity of Hope and would arrive on the political scene with such a resounding message of hope, and yet would show so pathetically little audacity. Month after month we watched in dismay as Obama tried to curry favor and offer humiliating compromises to his political enemies who responded by consistently moving the goal posts ever further away. It was obvious to the even the least politically astute among us that his opponents had only one thing in mind - his complete political destruction. Why someone as intelligent and politically successful would believe compromise and bipartisanship would work in this poisoned milieu will surely be hashed over by future historians.

If one side stops playing by the rules and begins misusing traditional Senatorial prerogatives such as the filibuster or the right for a single senator to hold up legislation or routinely blocking all executive appointments or refusing to even pretend to negotiate, why would the other side not counter with similar ‘creative’ maneuvers? It is like one side is playing big league baseball dirty, firing 92mph spitballs, why would the other side responds by playing elementary school softball by the rules?

Is it simply not in Obama’s DNA to match their guile and ruthlessness? Progressives had such a rare opportunity with big Democratic party majorities in both houses of Congress, a young fresh face in the White House and the America public ready to see some fur fly. Now all that is history. An ugly backlash was spawned and was allowed to reproduce itself into a dangerous virulent reactionary surge. We watched at first in bemusement and then increasingly in alarm as his enemies used his reluctance to press his advantage against him. The whole Tea Party thing could have been nipped in the bud had the President early on, with his wit and oratorical gifts, taken these crazies to task over their absurd allegations and laughable stupidity like “death panels” and “getting the government out of my Medicare” and the mismatch between lowering taxes and (a sudden belated) concern over a soaring deficit. It would have been so easy to show the absurdity of this crap on prime time. But for whatever reason they (Obama and his advisors) left it to the left and right wing pundits, editorial writers and bloggers to fight it out. And the corporate media loved it, since the function of the corporate news media is to entertain not inform. Provocations pseudo controversies and spectacles, like the early yell-fest tea bagger/party town hall meeting confrontations, were grist for their ‘infortainment’ mills. And the GOP biggies egged em on, some even joining in. When something is a boldface lie it should be the media’s job to expose not let it fester and evolve into a legitimate “point of view.” This is wrong and it is undermining are whole system.

Repubs have become a shrill but appealing one trick pony with a simple syllogism: taxes = bad, taxes = government, therefore government = bad. As political formation they have mutated into something far worse than simply the old GOP of the past, a party representing the American haut bourgeoisie and it’s small town wannabes. They now have become of party of the proudly ignorant, the staunchly anti-intellectual and the covertly racist, demanding we follow a path that will drive our country even faster downhill toward second tier world economic status. And the resulting public reaction to increased impoverishment could well trigger some very grim times indeed. Remember what happened to the democratic German Weimar Republic of the 1920’s.

The most ill informed and ideologically blinded now have the wind at their backs. Yet they are so full of shit on so many levels it is difficult to keep track. Some of the absurdities they believe are breathtakingly stark such as:

• Darwin’s theory of evolution can be easily called into question by religious theology.
• Global warming is a world-historical hoax and research on it is a scam mainly driven by the “liberal” scientific community seeking cushy government grants.
• Environmental protections should always and at all times be resisted.
• Capitalism works best without any restraints whatsoever.
• Lowering taxes especially for the very rich always results in aggregate economic expansion.
• The US military budget is sacrosanct.
• The deficit only matters with regard to entitlements.
• Unpaid-for wars and lowering government revenues through tax cuts can be ignored as a cause for a growing deficit.
• Our health care system was fine before “Obamacare” was enacted and needed only minor tinkering.
• Proposed ‘end of life counseling’ paid for by Medicare = Death Panels.
• The 2009 stimulus package failed to produce any jobs.
• The bank bailout of 2008 was the Obama Administration’s idea.
• Barack Omama is a socialist and/or Muslim and/or a Marxist and not a US citizen.

What do you do when your debating opponents who have their own bogus belief structure unfounded on reality? You can only debate something if certain rational ground rules are agreed upon, one of them being neither side is entitled to his or her own facts.

We can only hope that the Obama does not fall prey to the idea that further capitulation will help win him a second term. Somehow a popular counterweight of concern, anger and practical aggressiveness has to take hold or we are all destined for a collective slide into some new, awful reality.