CRIST FOR THE MILL

Good old Charlie Crist. If you watch political developments, you may already be tired of Florida's governor because of all the media attention his plans have gotten; he is now an independent candidate for U.S. senator, having thrown over the GOP after it threw him over. Still, he is worth discussing:

"Crist" is a shortened version of something Greek. He is 53, slim, silver-haired, photogenic. He is likeable. He projects sincerity. Floridian Ron Gunzberger, who runs the Politics1 website, says he's a nice guy, and that's how he comes across.

(Only three people of Greek ancestry have made a splash in our national politics till now: Spiro Agnew, Michael Dukakis, and Paul Tsongas. They were nothing like one another, and Crist is nothing like any of them; so Greek pols aren't readily stereotyped.)

Charlie has taken conservative positions over the years but seems moderate at heart. That, of course, is what did him in with the Repubs. As governor he was popular from the beginning with the electorate, but more so with Dems than with Repubs. A lot of Dems are behind him for senator now, too.

Gunzberger, who is gay and gossipy, has published reports that Crist is gay. There are people who say they know he is. When he was on John McCain's shortlist for a runningmate, Crist quickly married a socialite, a very timely move. If you're a male in American politics, it pays to have a wife - as long as it's a woman.

Is Crist gay? Who cares? For all we actually know, he may be as hetero as Bill Clinton; but look at the situation impersonally for a moment. Think about having to marry a woman in order to be politically viable, particularly if what you actually want is to live with or marry a man.

And look at the hypocrisy of the right-wing pols, the "wide stance" types, who denounce homosexuality as immoral and loudly oppose same-sex marriage while having sex with men. There has been a lot of that.

Conservatism mandates hypocrisy. If you aren't in the favored group, it makes you pretend you are and denounce those who are actually like yourself. It has you voting against your own interests. Liberals accept people as who they are and don't require them to pretend to be something they aren't. This is a difference between the two worldviews, and it is a moral difference.

Whether Charlie Crist is gay or straight or bi or asexual, he has to worry about which of those he seems. Thank the righties for injecting that kind of thing into our politics.

Opportunistic positioning aside, Crist now has the opportunity to stand wherever he really wants to stand on the issues, which appears to be in the middle. He has shown that he can get people, except right-wingers, with him.

If centrist political independents choose to band together and strengthen one another by forming a new party, his experience and attractiveness would be a gift to that effort.

Throw in a Tom Ridge and a Colin Powell and a Lincoln Chafee and an Arnold Schwarzenegger and an Olympia Snowe and a Susan Collins and a Jon Huntsman, all appealing refugees from the GOP, and the movement would have a number of instantly credible top leaders and advisors as well as a potential presidential candidate or two. Something to keep thinking about - as I keep saying.

A Jon Huntsman-Charlie Crist ticket, by the way, could make that new party a winner or a near winner its first time out and could leave the GOP in the dust. (I'm saying I find Huntsman more impressive than Crist. You may disagree.)

THE GREAT RINO HUNT

Tea Party Express Chairman Mark Williams says the teabaggers are "on a RINO hunt," out to drive to extinction the Republicans In Name Only who are holding public offices. This is from a CNN story of April 12, 2010.

Williams: this guy has to be a real sweetheart. He says, "The Democrats at least stand there and tell me they hate me, and tell me that they hate America. These Republicans smile at me, shake my hand and then stab me in the back."

We all know damn well Democrats never told Williams that they hate America. And it's unlikely any have told him that they hate him, though it's easy to see how they could. I have never heard lies and slander in such quantities as are oozing from the "tea party movement."

Man, I'd like to see some Republicans fight back against these bullying conformity-freaks! Just once, some moderate Republican should tell them where to go. Better still, Williams and his ilk should have to face a charging RINO every time they pull this crap!

You have heard it speculated that there would have been no Holocaust if the Jews had had guns in their hands whenever there was a knock on the door and had gone down fighting, taking a few Nazis with them each time. I am skeptical about that; but something like that principle might apply here. The teabaggers are used to putting the hurt on people with impunity. Cancel the impunity and see what happens.

There are also DINOs, as you know: Blue Dog Democrats who vote with the Republicans a lot of the time. And there was talk by some angry activists about primarying some DINO members of Congress. But those challenges largely haven't materialized, and everything is copacetic now that healthcare has passed.

Anyway, the Dems don't have a taste for fascism. They believe diversity of views is a strength, not something to be punished. So there will be no great DINO hunt, no mindless quest for ideological purity on the left. And the Republicans, by being so intolerant and uniformity-minded, have hogtied their ability to win over moderate-to-conservative Dems.

Let the RINOs take note of Williams's words and the teabaggers' purgation agenda. You sensible and well-intentioned people who are still in the GOP: you don't want to share a party with people like that, especially when they're the ones calling the shots in it.

Time to start yourselves a party, therefore. Time to jump from the Republicult to a new, moderate party, as the best of the Whigs did when the Republican party was new and still American.

WHAT ABOUT SARAH?

The National Enquirer, a rag omnipresent at supermarket checkout lines, is now reportedly a possibility for a Pulitzer prize in journalism.

The Enquirer has been sued now and again; but when it announces something, you have to figure it's at least a maybe.

Among other things, the Enquirer played a role in bringing down presidential candidates Gary Hart and John Edwards, in both cases over their escapades with females. Where Edwards was concerned, you'll recall that the mainstream media didn't follow the Enquirer's lead and lived to regret it.

And that brings up a curious topic. Seems that some months back the Enquirer had a page-one story about rightist glamourpuss Sarah Palin, very much a married lady, having herself a boyfriend. It showed the guy's picture - he looked a fair bit like her hubby - and gave his name. He is or was a family friend.

Now again, even after the example of Edwards, the respectable media ignored this. How come, you may be asking yourself? I don't know, but one could suspect that Queen Sarah is just too fanatically popular with a wealthy segment of our society for the newsies to feel safe in writing about her peccadillos.

Now, Hart and Edwards are intelligent people and could have been president. They would have been better than some we've had in recent years. Hart is a national defense expert whose advice is sought by those high up. Edwards ran a serious campaign on good and somewhat different issues, as I may one day discuss in this blog. Palin, once a beauty queen and now queen of the old (tea) bags, is a remarkably ignorant airhead who should never have been on a national ticket. Yet Palin survived the Enquirer treatment while the other two went under.

Since the Enquirer wrote about her love life, The Malign Sarah has chucked her governorship and become a professional political celebrity. She's showing up everywhere these days, commenting on everything and raking in the long green from sales of her book and speaking fees and her Fox News salary.

I don't think she's running for president, however. I'd bet she isn't. She has a kind of native shrewdness that has served her well, and she has to figure that the Enquirer and others will be sifting her life and her dealings.

(And maybe she fears that one of those healthcare death panels she believes in will take her out as a public mental health measure?)

What I think she's doing is accumulating all the wealth she can, while there's still a market for her.

Yes, I have a definite feeling that the end of the Palin phenomenon is not far off, and that she knows that Enquirer headline was the dead canary in her political gold mine.

READING THE TEA LEAVES

I think it will soon be time for the great all-wet national teabag to come out of the cup and go into the garbage.


The craze will persist for a time, but it can't withstand the inevitable discouragement that is in store for it. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country." Or rather of their inflated egos.


We have witnessed some teabag candidacies already in this election year, where they have injected their absolutism and sourness into primary races and have lost. There was Debra Medina running for governor of Texas, for example; for a little while she looked like a real threat to get into a GOP runoff. But she said some screwy things and lost ground. Other baggers down the Texas ballot lost out, as well.


A little more losing - and it will occur - and the baggers will realize that starting a revolution is no tea party after all and that most people don't find them inspiring or noble or even palatable. Then it's over and they revert to their accustomed nonpolitical living and their impotent bitching about their moderate taxation and our nonexistent socialism.


These phony rebels are the rightist counterpart of the leftist ones I remember from my youth: the student militants who soared beyond the healthy democratic-radical Port Huron Statement to form wild groups like the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society and the Symbionese Liberation Army, or to occupy buildings on campuses and riot in the streets.


Their revolution imploded because of a government crackdown plus Nixon's Vietnamization policy which saved many young men from the prospect of fighting in a war they didn't believe in, a prospect that had radicalized them and made them feel they had nothing to lose by going for broke. (I wonder how many of them have become teabaggers?)


Likewise, the teabag contingent doesn't have what it takes to persist. They are not made of the stern stuff of real revolutionaries and, like the kids of the '60s and '70s, are selfish and adolescent and given to acting out. Right now they have intoxicated themselves with the notion that they and their cause are invincible. But you watch.


A friend cautions me that people thought the Black Panthers would fade quickly, too. Not that the Panthers were around for all that long, but they had real grievances and were reminded of them whenever they looked around. No teabagger has to live in ghetto conditions or is denied a job or a business loan because of race.

Also, the Black Panthers were young and were living in a moment when everything seemed possible, while the teabaggers are old and are living in a moment when nothing seems possible.

They're play patriots and unserious revolutionaries who are after angry fun; they can afford to go home and sulk in their mcmansions with their goals unmet.

I predict they will.

WHY LIBERALISM AIN'T SOCIALISM

A man I don't know asked me on Facebook what the difference is between liberalism and socialism. Chalk up his not knowing to decades of disinformation from the right, poorly replied to by the left.

While quoting oneself can be odious, I note that Lincoln did it; I guess that excuses the rest of us. Anyway, here's the text of the reply I gave, which I think serves as a summing up:

"Socialism is an ideology that would end the marketplace in favor of an entirely planned egalitarian economy. Liberalism or progressivism is entirely pragmatic: non-ideological, open-minded as to means. It would curb injustices, alleviate social problems, and keep the powerful from dominating or crushing everyone else without altering the basics of the existing system. Whether either of works can of course be disputed, but to equate them is a longtime staple of dishonest right-wing propaganda.

"In practice socialism is government ownership of the means of production. In practice liberalism entails some amount of wealth distribution to prevent the kind of oligarchy we have gotten ourselves into here, so we can preserve democracy. Conservatism is an ideology that says some of us are worth much more than the rest of us; the fruits of conservatism in America have included slavery, racial segregation, the rule of the robber barons, and opposition to whatever 'socialism' (such as Social Security and healthcare) gives everyday people a fighting chance. So we can choose among those three.

"Our economy is in the tank because of conservatism: because of the deliberate upward channeling of the society's wealth and the deliberate sabotaging of government economic regulation."

In a related note: In a store recently I glanced at the right-wing mag The Spectator which has an article that seeks to define conservatism. It says conservatism is not an ideology but a disposition to love freedom. Sorry, but that's incomplete: A viewpoint that has predictably opposed civil liberties and civil rights does not represent love of freedom; it represents love of one's own freedom at the expense of the freedom of others.


And it is an ideology, because it refuses to recognize things as they are and instead dresses up unrestrained self-interest in the guise of idealism. May it go under, without taking the country with it!

DON'TCHA DON'TCHA DO IT, NO NO NO NO

An Oregon middle school teacher named Jason Levin has gleaned notoriety from his professed agenda. It is one that we should oppose firmly.


Levin heads an organization called Crash the Tea Party, and he wants its members to infiltrate teabagger rallies and make them look even more toxic and lunatic than they already do. He says that when a bagger tells the media that Obama wasn't born in this country, he wants one of his plants to add that the president is from Mars. It's plain that he means to "crash the party" in the sense of causing it to crash.


I can understand how someone would be tempted to take such measures. But they emphatically should not, for three weighty reasons:


(1) While the right has made it clear that it has no intention of being fair in the fight it is waging, liberals have always been for fairness. This is no time to repudiate that. And it is never good to let the opposition's behavior dictate your tactics. Let's leave the dirty tricks to the neo-Nixonians in our midst. And we on the left should want always to set an example that will cause people to turn to us when they want plain dealing and plain decency.


(2) From now on, whenever some teabagger displays racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, paranoia, or some other unAmerican characteristic, the other baggers will be able to claim that that was one of Jason Levin's crew out to embarrass them and that their own hands (or mouths) are clean. Levin is actually whitewashing them while trying to tar them. That's self-defeating.


(3) Teabaggers have not distinguished themselves by restraint and nobility. If you set them an evil example, some of them will take it up. Look for pseudo-liberals to emerge now and endorse legalized rape, the triumph of terrorism, armed ghetto invasions of the suburbs, etc. Thanks a heap, Mr. Levin!


As a teacher of young people, what kind of example is Levin setting for his students? If they are encouraged to act out, and if masquerading and sabotage become what American politics is about, what kind of a future are we going to have? Leave the destructiveness to the right. Someone has to build, not tear down.

Levin and his fellow conspirators should renounce their enterprise, disband their organization, and disavow all impersonation. They should do so at once and without equivocation.


Speaking of the teabaggers, here is a headline from a Fox News story of April 15, 2010: "Tea Party Supporters Richer, More Educated Than Most, Poll Finds." That was for sure my impression. In other words, they are the very people who should know better than to do what they are doing to this country.


That NYT/CBS poll also says that 57% of the tea party members polled are for same-sex marriage or civil unions. This is consistent with being anti-government. It seems to portend a clash with the other major Republicult component, the Religious Right.


The poll also shows that teabaggers aren't against broad-based assistance programs like Social Security and Medicare - and that they think too much is being done for the poor. In other words, they are for whatever "socialism" directly benefits them but want to leave the less prosperous in the gutter.

They and Jason Levin should get together and have a symposium on social ethics!

ROB MILLER, CANDIDATE

The other day I got an unexpected phone call. The voice on the line was a pleasant tenor that I didn't recognize. Turned out it belonged to a youngish man named Rob Miller who is running for Congress in South Carolina against the infamous Joe Wilson.

Wilson, you'll recall, is the cretin who disgraced himself and the Congress by shouting "You lie!" at President Obama during the president's State of the Union address. I'm quite sure that that was a tactic worked out by leaders of the Republican caucus and not something spontaneous on Wilson's part, which makes it all the worse.

Miller was just touching base with his far-flung campaign contributors. I had sent him twenty dollars several times, because it can help a little and as a gesture of solidarity. I don't like what Joe Wilson stands for, including his unprecedented affront to the presidency. It's too much of a piece with what's happening on the right these days.

Miller sounds adult, confident, friendly, on top of things. He was a Marine for 13 years and served two tours of duty in Iraq. Not exactly a pinko hippie. He ran against Wilson the last time and got 46.4% of the vote, which made it the closest race in that district in 20 years. He is running now with much more money than before, thanks to Wilson's outburst. Teabaggers and such have donated great sums to Wilson because he's their kind of office-holder: the kind who makes office-holding seem like a job for buffoons and dirty-tricksters. But, angered at Wilson, people from all around the country have put $2 million into Rob Miller's coffers, making him very competitive.

He told me during our brief chat that Wilson is getting primaried. The opponent is a small businessman named Phil Black, who Miller identified as a moderate Republican. It seems they have some of those in that district. He said Black's preference for healthcare is "Medicare on steroids." Black isn't young and I don't know how much of a politician he is. From his website, I suspect he's a nice man. He probably won't win, but, as Miller said, he's making Wilson spend some of that big financial pile now. That's good. And Miller is unopposed for the Dem nomination.

A way to check these candidates out, if you've a mind to, is to go to http://politics1.com/ and choose the link at the top of the webpage that's about state and federal candidates. And if you should have the urge to send a few bucks to Rob Miller, who might make a fine Congressman, I hope you'll yield to it. He is an example of the kind of person who should be in Congress, just as Wilson is an example of the kind of person who shouldn't be.

When a Congressman hollers "Yew lah!" at the president of the United States when he's addressing the Congress, the answer by Americans who are real patriots is going to be "Yew dah!" - not biologically, which is what some teabaggers have threatened Congressmen with, but electorally. That's the way we do it here, by golly.

J.P. RICHIE INTERVIEW, PART II

To Hell With Conservatism's interview with J.P. Richie, multi-billionaire investor and self-indulgence entrepreneur, concludes.

JPR: What is it you want, anyway?

THWC: You remember Vito Marcantonio, the New York Congressman in the old days who voted the Communist party line? When he was asked what he wanted, he said, "Capitalism with small profits." That's what I say, too.

JPR: Completely unrealistic. There has to be money for research.

THWC: Big enough profits for research, but not big enough to maintain a class of superrich who warp the whole society. I want a people's capitalist system, where everybody has enough and there are no multi-millionaires or billionaires. The economy works best when the Golden Rule is observed.

JPR: Don't you think people have a right to get rich?

THWC: To an extent. But that's a luxury. Money should be a by-product, not the aim. Where life is about getting rich, life becomes hell for those who aren't rich.

JPR: Get this straight, you. What's mine is mine. It's mine absolutely! When the government takes any of it away, that's theft.

THWC: That would be true only if you made your money in a vacuum, with no assistance from society's attitudes or the government's policies. What's yours became yours because of laws and regulations that favor people like you. Society was your partner every step of the way. We gave you tax breaks and let you do things that may not be in the general interest at all. So society should get its share - a large one. It should also change the rules so those who invest have to do so in products and activities that are actually good for people rather than bad for them and addictive.

JPR: Who gets to decide what's good for people, wise guy?

THWC: Human nature decides that. The advertising industry, on behalf of people like you, has made us into a materialistic, unaware society with a lot of very false values. If something worthless like that can be done for the self-interest of corporations, why can't something worthwhile be done for the self-interest of the United States of America?

JPR: You're a dreamer. This is the real world we're living in. It's dog eat dog.

THWC: Only because people with money and power make it that way. Time to give everybody a chance to be better, more intelligent, happier people. That's called freedom.

JPR: Now you're advocating outright socialism.

THWC: If I were advocating socialism, I'd have only the government doing the investing. What I'm advocating is a change in public ethics and public health policies.

JPR: I do this society a lot of good, buddy. I give plenty to charities...

THWC: ...And deduct it from your taxes while getting credited with being a philanthropist. You're benefiting from what the public ends up paying for, which is typical of how people like you operate and how your influence on policy causes things to work.

JPR: What would the charities do if not for me and people like me? We're the ones who help the needy.

THWC: Why the hell should the needy be dependent on you? Why should whether people live or die be up to whether you happen to feel like helping them out? We have a government to look out for the well-being of the disadvantaged. While people can, they work and support the government. When they can't, the government should support them. And it should give you a nice tax hike to help it do that.

JPR: Taking care of people ain't a core function of government!

THWC: Who decides what a core function is? And why can't the people use their government to look out for the people, instead of having to subsidize and further enrich freebooters like you?

JPR: People like me are the backbone of this society. You don't realize the kinds of contributions I can make because of my background and my savvy. For example, I'm chairman of the board of trustees of Bigbux University. That's a kind of public service that only those who know their way around can perform. You'd keep us from gaining that experience of the world and applying it to practical public ends like that.

THWC: We've seen how you use that experience. Bigbux University has bought up most of the open land in the rural county in which it's located - not because it wants to expand that much, but to keep new businesses from being able to open there. [Editor's note: This kind of thing has been known to happen.] That way the school has no competition for the county labor force, so it can go on paying its employees low wages and giving them poor benefits. The experience and worldly wisdom you boast of are enriching your university by impoverishing the people.

JPR: The successful have to look out for themselves and each other.

THWC: No they don't. It's the people who have to start looking out for themselves and each another. Otherwise they get taken advantage of by the successful.

JPR: If the riffraff take over, civilization will collapse.

THWC: What does civilization have to do with you, anyway? Not to worry, though. The real problem is that when 99% of the wealth is in the pockets of 1% of the population, the way you want it, the society's values are set and the policies are decided by those who are good at raking in money, with no test of whether they're wise or disinterested. Oligarchy is a formula for feudalism; it means death to the independence and viability of democratic institutions.

JPR: Why, you dirty Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist traitor! I'm going to get the Congress to do something about that subversive blog of yours. The Founders didn't put free speech in the Constitution so it could be used by commies against real Americans!

THWC: Your kind of appreciation of our American heritage only underscores what can happen when the wrong people control most of the money.

JPR: Watch your back, pal. The American people are with me, not with you.

THWC: Most Americans still want America to be America, even after two generations of escalating anti-democratic propaganda. Thanks for your time and have a nice day, turkey, preferably on some other planet.

J.P. RICHIE INTERVIEW, PART I

Mr. J.P. Richie has 42 billion dollars. While he invests widely, much of it was gleaned from the cigarette, whiskey, and pornography industries. He has transferred most of his companies' jobs to Pakistan. He contributes heavily to the Republican party and conservative causes. He is a major donor to the tea party and Religious Right movements and is on record as stating, "If there's one thing I like better than Jesus it's a huge tax cut." He has agreed to sit down with To Hell With Conservatism (THWC) for a free-wheeling discussion.

J.P. Richie: I'm a fervent patriot, a model of industriousness, and a big public benefactor. Why do you have it in for me?

THWC: Mr. Richie, what you are is an obscenely rich parasite, and your taxes should be raised enormously to cut down on your discretionary influence in the name of democracy and to provide the government with revenue for addressing serious social problems.

JPR: Why, that's outrageous. That's punishing success, I tell you!

THWC: You don't represent success. You represent fat income, whether or not it is derived from activities that have social value. Real success is where everybody wins. Excess is where you win and everybody else loses.

JPR: This is a free country, and when I make money I should be allowed to keep it!

THWC: People don't make money these days. Money makes money. That's what capitalism is about. All you did is raise capital and invest in growth industries using other people's wealth, then pocket the profits.

JPR: It's people like me, who can spot the winners and put early money into them, who make progress happen!

THWC: What precisely are we rewarding you for? For putting money in companies that are ahead of the curve and can win with or without you as an individual?

JPR: Without investors like me, how would they grow? I make things happen!

THWC: You don't have to do a thing, while your profits get larger and larger. So just what are you succeeding at? You've parlayed opportunism into unlimited automatic wealth. Where is the merit in not taxing what you're doing nothing to earn?

JPR: My corporations have introduced important technological innovations!

THWC: Your employees came up with those innovations. They got thousands in bonuses while you got millions from what they achieved. Where's the justice in that?

JPR: Damn it all, I worked hard for what I own, starting up those businesses! The government can't just take it away from me!

THWC: The wage slaves in your Third World sweat shops work as hard as you ever did and have next to nothing to show for it. If effort is what justifies wealth, how come you have so much of it and they have so little? And why are you satisfied with that arrangement?

JPR: Listen, you commie, this society needs smart people like me to guide its decision-making. My input helps government focus on what's important, and my personal and corporate income are part of what enables that.

THWC: You mean you send out troupes of lobbyists and make heavy political contributions to make sure the Congress and state legislatures represent your interests and not the people's interest. You're not a public asset, because all you do in the public square is look out for number one. When the people let you keep most of your money, they're involuntarily financing someone who's in competition with them. Why should they have to do that?

JPR: But when I invest or start a business, it means jobs. I create wealth!

THWC: Your businesses mostly do things that alienate people from one another and tend to dissolve society. Why should you be given tax breaks for that? And as for the paychecks you provide, most of them don't even go to Americans anymore.

JPR: Americans are greedy. They want too much pay for what they do!

THWC: My point exactly.

To be continued.

THEM GAH DAM LIBBERULS

Back in the 1940s, between his two Republican nominations for president, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey warned his party in a speech that if the Democrats always ran as liberals while the Republicans always ran as conservatives, the Republicans would always lose and the Democrats would always win.

Shows you how drastically the nation's outlook has altered. Try to imagine any Republican offering that assessment now.

Then, liberals were the nation's heroes: the ones who had tackled the fierce economic problems and the chronic injustices on behalf of a stricken and anxious people and had given it vital aid and hope and means of helping itself. The liberals are still the ones who do those things, but they no longer get credit for it because most Americans identify with those who have more than themselves rather than with those who have less. By doing so they make oligarchy possible and democracy harder to sustain.

Soon our economic heft began shifting to the Sunbelt, the most reactionary part of the country. And the conservatives used their infusion of new wealth to do what they do best: destroy things. In this case they launched an historic propaganda offensive that over time succeeded in turning "liberal" into a four-letter word. It succeeded so well that for decades the righties required no other term of opprobrium while often liberals denied being liberal.

But in the 2008 election it became evident that "the L word" had lost its punch. People would no longer automatically vote no when "liberal, liberal, liberal" was chanted. The Republicult had been in power for 8 years and had wrecked the economy, started two wars, and generally made a mess of things while spending all kinds of money. Even conservatives were disgusted. So it was time for the Dems, liberal or not.

"Socialist" or "communist" has to be used on a regular basis these days, upping the ante. These labels formerly were reserved for partisan events where being over the top would add a little something. But styles change fast nowadays; through repetition, these labels, too, are ceasing to mean anything.

What can the Republicult turn to for a term that will really get folks going? Let's help them out, shall we? How about Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist? "Barack HOOSAIN Obama is a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist president and is a-tryin' to enslave us all."

Sounds pretty lame, I'm afraid. Looks like they're just out of luck. Tragic.

But I, for one, won't be satisfied till "conservative" is understood rightly, and is more unpopular than "liberal" ever was. And that day must come, because reality cannot be denied forever!

"TOO TEABAG FOR ME"

Here's to putting it all to music. Note inclusion of the odd fact that teabaggers think Obama is stupid:


TOO TEABAG FOR ME


I said I loved her and it's what I meant
She said she hates the government
I said, "Can't you spend your life with me?"
She said, "Can't we blow up Washington, D.C.?"

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She said she won't accept my ring
'Cause love and sharing are a Commie thing,
And those who marry or have a fling
Have got soft-headed and gone left-wing

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She said we're losing our freedoms every day
And revolution is the only way;
I asked what freedoms she had ever lost?
She'd only say she won't be bossed

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She says the Founders were for anarchy
And cornering the market and swilling tea
And keeping the poor more dead than free,
And that that's what they meant by liberty

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

I said I get along with everyone
She said all she needs is some ammo and a gun;
She said she's only for the folks who are rich
I said I'm for the folks in the ditch

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She mailed out anonymous threats to kill
Whoever voted for the healthcare bill;
She said, "There's no democracy
Till Congress is afraid of me"

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She said Obama is dumb as a brick
That's when I realized she's pretty thick;
'Cause he has more brainpower in his behind
Than she has in her entire mind

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

She likes to ride on a corporate bus
To town hall meetings and raise a fuss;
Now she says she's training with the Hutaree
And I say she's nutty as can be

She's just too teabag for me (hey hey hey)
Way too teabag for me

WHY HEALTHCARE

Today the proponents of fearfulness are pretending they're for direct democracy where healthcare is concerned: "How dare the Democrats ignore the polls and defy the will of the people?" But you'll recall that Obama campaigned and won on a pledge to make healthcare happen. The proponents of fearfulness are in fact not for direct democracy at all, but only against representative democracy that works.

Nobody seriously denies that we must have a healthcare system that is no longer haphazard. Without one, 32 million of us won't qualify for health insurance and most of us can be bled dry by an insurance industry that's out for itself alone. And during its 10-year control of the Congress, the Republicult did nothing about the situation.

Then why must we have such an imperfect bill, generated under such far-from-ideal conditions? Because there has to be a beginning. What has been done can be modified as much as necessary. And a better bill, passed under optimal conditions, was never possible. That anything was is all but miraculous.

Without something breaking the logjam formed by special interest lobbying and gutless members of Congress, we would have been stuck with nothing at all for no-telling how many more years.

Right-anarchists say this is a government takeover of the health industry, which it is not. Left-anarchists say this winks at the insurance industry; yes, it was necessary to neutralize that industry's opposition to some extent or the bill could not have been enacted. Again, amendment is the prescription.

Remember Harry and Louise from those anti-healthcare ads under Clinton? This time the scare tactics weren't enough. "Liberal" no longer stirs fear in most Americans, now that we've been through 8 years of the opposite of liberal under Dubya. And similarly, "socialist" has lost its magic because those who scream bloody murder about it are not trusted. The latter are by now not only a minority but a stunningly irrational one that seems hellbent on self-destruction.

The Republicult is promising to repeal this bill. Let it keep up that talk, because nothing so dramatizes its own negativity and its contempt for the well-being of the generality of us. I can only say again that we must get ourselves a new, moderate, representative opposition party. This crowd must never rule us again.

As for how healthcare will be affordable: look for the economy to grow thanks to further immigration. That has been how we've made it happen - that and Great Society-type measures that lift the poor out of poverty and into participation in the economy. Call that "socialism" if you like, but it's the sole alternative to the real socialism that none of us wants.

THE REAL MAVERICK

Running for re-election in Arizona, 2008 Republicult presidential nominee John McCain is having a hard time of it. He's being challenged in the primary by a former Congressman named J.D. Hayworth, who is physically though not mentally a giant and who is bent on portraying McCain as a dirty, stinking, unAmerican moderate.

Think what it means to live in a country where one of the two major parties considers "moderate" to be morally equivalent to"child molester." Over the centuries, from the ancient Greeks onward, moderation was honored as evidence of wisdom, good will, and self-control.

McCain is desperate to prove himself innocent of the charge of moderation. So the other day he did something desperate and desperately dumb. He told us he's no maverick! This after a presidential campaign in which he and his runningmate assured us they were mavericks, and that that was something real swell.

"Maverick" seemed to function at the time as a hint that McCain wouldn't be confined to the Republicult's hidebound and extremist ways. And after all, he had evolved from a typical Goldwaterite into an interesting and very independent reform-minded senator.

Now, however, with his orthodoxy being questioned, admitting to maverick ways would be equivalent to confessing to moderation. He would be doomed.

But in denying that he's a maverick, he has opened the door to Hayworth broadcasting all those '08 clips in which he boasted of being mavericky. He would have done better to keep the maverick label but explain that it means he won't go along with anything moderate or intelligent that his fellow Repubs might come up with.

For now, he seems to have repudiated himself, which is a hard thing to respect.

At one time America had a great man who was not only a maverick but was born with Maverick as his surname. He was Maury Maverick, for several terms a New Deal Congressman from Texas and later mayor of San Antonio. In his time he was one of the most valuable and most conspicuous members of Congress. Unfortunately, his state was too conservative to keep sending him back.

Though he didn't mind going it alone, as a Congressman Maury Maverick was practical and could get along with others and get things done. As a personality he was an original: fearless, independent, bold, funny, smart, ornery, imaginative, integritous. And he would rather have lost than put on a show of phoniness like McCain.

He had a sense of humor that punctured nonsense and pretense. He gave us the term "gobbledygook" for impenetrable bureaucratic prose. When someone was looking for a more American word for hors d'oeuvres, he suggested "dingledoos."

This country doesn't need public officials who fear moderation and refuse to be seen as who they are. God grant us more Mavericks. We can really use them now!

HEY, BIG SPENDER

These are the times that try men's souls, all right. The new "patriots," ready for revolution, have put on their three-cornered hats and mounted up,

Ready to ride and spread the alarm/Through every Middlesex village and farm/For the country folk to be up and to arm.

They can't fathom or tolerate all this spending! So they repeat the hand-wringing cry of New Deal days: "Our children will be saddled with a crushing burden of debt that they will never get free of!" (The skittish are coming! The skittish are coming!)

Well, look. All the spending is occurring because nothing else is going to get us out of the depression - yes, 10% unemployment is what we call a depression - that the Bush administration got us into with its incontinent policies.

The righties say FDR's spending didn't cure the Great Depression. But if not for it, we'd have sunk to the bottom. Then you would have seen socialism. (It amuses me how the presidents who have done the most to avert socialism - FDR and Obama - are the ones accused of being socialists!)

What happened is that, as the economy righted itself, the New Dealers decided they had done the trick, and the government proceeded to cut back on the expenditures. The economy then sagged again. Much more spending was requisite but could no longer be undertaken.

Almost certainly the stimulus effort of the Obama administration has prevented a worsening economy with absolutely disastrous consequences. It has also addressed infrastructure and other long-term problems that required investment. It had to happen.

And all of us know that there is only one way we are going to bring down the staggering national debt. That is for the economy to ROAR as it did after WWII.

We must also take stringent reform measures to prevent a recurrence of what just happened.

I view the new economic upsurge with mixed feelings. This society is already so commercialized and so in thrall to the advertising industry that I hate to see that grow.

But it is not too soon to begin thinking about how to lay the groundwork for a healthier, less materialistic kind of society for the longer term. We, the people of the United States of America should be on that job now.

OUT THERE IN THE WOODS

Yep, they're out there, all right. Out there in the woods. Right now. Marching. Funny-looking men who may not be too good at holding a job but are very good at holding a high-powered weapon.


They wear camouflage, probably over a lot of tattoos. They talk about how the Constitution has been overthrowed, how this-here ain't a white man's country anymore, how the police are the enemy because they work for the Antichrist.


Recently we've read about the Hutaree Militia in Michigan, which was busted. Nine guys. In pictures they look ordinary except for their merciless eyes. It's charged that they were going to kill a cop, then use a bomb to kill a lot of people at his funeral so as to precipitate a civil war in America.


They haven't been tried, and we have to assume them innocent. Still, we can gather that what they are alleged to be is not unrepresentative of what's out there.


This business of murdering a bunch of people to touch something off: does it sound familiar? That's what Charles Manson was planning. He was trying for a race war.


It's always the same. Jailhouse racism, cop-hating, firearms, secrecy. They're nothing unfamiliar, just good old-fashioned flag-waving, cross-burning Amerikans. Sometimes they throw in a little Jesus, sometimes a little Hitler, and it doesn't make much difference.


How come there are no progressive militias? I guess it's because liberals have a more limited tolerance for absurdity and for threatening or assaulting the American people.


Some parts of this country are into ominous stuff in a big way. But settle in a progressive area and you're not likely to be bothered by odd folk trampling through the brush with howitzers. Not yet, anyway.