John Boehner's face is such a gift...

... to his opponents!

And we thought senior politicians were chosen for their smooth, reassuring looks?

Business (Now) Hates The Tea Party

Bloomberg News, of all people, today have an amusing column by Margaret Carlson, entitled "Boehner to Tea Party: Shut Yourself Down" - 

“Somebody had to take on the Tea Party that has turned Boehner’s tenure as House speaker into a living hell.

Too bad for Republicans, that someone was a Democrat rather than one of their own, which would have signaled that the party is fit to govern. By calling the bluff of a tiny band of burn-the-place-down Tea Party activists leading their colleagues over domestic (the government shutdown) and global (the debt ceiling) cliffs, Barack Obama exposed the fact that they didn’t come to Washington to fix anything, only to tear everything but air-traffic control down.”

Margaret Carlson weighs up Boehner's chances

I leave you to ponder what it means when a business pundit says:

“The meltdown on Capitol Hill doesn’t mean the end of the Tea Party. In fact, most of those lawmakers accurately point out that they are doing what the constituents in their painfully drawn, one-sided, overwhelmingly white, aging, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, science-denying districts want. Still, there are emerging signs -- from declining poll numbers to the breach with the Republican Party’s traditional business allies -- that the act is getting old. Mess with Democratic totems such as Social Security and nutritional programs for pregnant mothers, send Sarah Palin to Washington periodically to pour salt on open wounds, but don’t mess with Treasury bills and the markets.”

The article is here. It's a juicy one. Heh, heh!

 

Want More On The Koch Brothers?

If you're really that keen - and as a responsible member of a Functioning Democracy (Harr!) maybe you should be....

There's a good summary of the Political activities of the Koch brothers at Wikipedia.

You should also know about A.L.E.C. - the American Legislative Exchange Council

 - on Wiki here

and "exposed" here.

Oh, and Daily Kos's analysis of their lies about the Shut-Down, "Koch Brothers Abandon Tea PartyGovernment Shutdown Strategy".

I Want to Meet a Tea Party-er!

One of the strange things about Blogging, is that one has almost no idea who is (or might be) reading what one writes.  The few people who have told me they read "The War On The 60s", tell me they love it.

That's great - but....

One of the biggest problems we have in our current discourse - take a look at Congress right now - is that we tend to talk only to those who agree with us.

Last week I had the pleasure of car-pooling to Santa Barbara with a lovely group of Liberals, led by a local activist named Bill Haff, to watch Robert Reich's new Documentary "Inequality For All".

Bill is pursuing a project which I think is wonderful: he wants to set up meetings with Tea Party members, to discuss how we all view the world, our beliefs and principles (I'm putting words in Bill's mouth), and whether we might be able to find common ground for the good of us all.

I would love for that to succeed, and I'd love to take part.

So, here's the nub:  Is there one, or many, Tea Party supporters in the Ventura/Santa Barbara/Ojai area, who would like to have a friendly chat with some of us crazy Progressives, to try to understand each other's points of view?

If you are reading this, and your world-view is Conservative, Republican, Tea Party, Libertarian, or.... you tell me - and you are interested in such a discussion, please e-mail me at thewaronthe60s@gmail.com.

Thankyou!

Richard.

Whatever Happened To HMO's?

I was lying awake last night, thinking about how the wheels of progress run so slowly, and there is probably already a generation of young adults who don't remember Michael Moore's brilliant dissection of the American Medical Industry, "Sicko", made in 2007.

And then I thought about HMO's.  For those young adults we're thinking about - and I met one recently who didn't see why she should be asked to contribute to the care of those who didn't bother to get Insurance - HMO stands for "Health Maintenance Organization".

In "Sicko", the invalid referred to is America and its Health Care system. In that film , Moore examines how HMO's work, and how they came to exist.

Here's the clip - don't miss Nixon's eyelids as he assures us how he wants every American to have good healthcare!

As we watch the Tea Party's Government Shut Down in action, refusing to countenance the notion of Health Care for All - it's good to be reminded of what the issue is.  And have you noticed how, since "Sicko" came out, we don't hear the phrase "HMO" any more?

For an overview of this brilliant wake-up call Documentary, here's the Trailer -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BJyyyRYbSk&list=TLOqXVWxyGsfxMsDyaBks9sVDr0V39bKMr

Good News for Texas - But Will the Dimmocrats Pay Attention?

Wendy Davis, Texas's glamorous, pink-sneakered, Olympic Filibusterer has announced that she will run for Governor of Texas, following in the admirable footsteps of Ann Richards....

Ann Richards ran well, but did the Harley?

The Daily Kos this morning brought us the

"... huge news from Texas—Wendy Davis just announced her campaign for governor.

Can you chip in $3 to help elect a pro-choice Democrat the next governor of Texas?

Over 76,000 Daily Kos community members signed the petition to draft Wendy Davis for governor. This afternoon, she finally announced that yes, she is taking the plunge.

Let's be clear from the very start: This won't be an easy battle. This is Texas, after all. The state has the lowest voter participation in the country, and you know who those non-voters are: young voters, Latinos, Asians, African Americans, single women—the very people that Democrats depend on to win. As I'm fond of saying, if our voters turn out, we win.

Wendy Davis could be the person to activate our core voters, accelerating the demographic trends that will eventually make Texas purple, and then blue, whether Republicans like it or not.

But that won’t happen without the grassroots.

Turn Texas Blue: Chip in $3 now.

Keep fighting,
Markos MoulitsasFounder and Publisher, Daily Kos"

Now the Daily Kos is a good source, and I often enjoy what they have to say, but I'm not advocating giving your hard-earned cash to the Dimmocrats - that's for you to decide, bearing in mind that John Stone-Face Kerry is at this very moment visiting Asia to sell a Corporate "Trade Deal" that has been described as "NAFTA on steroids", and Obama today achieves the landmark moment of having presided over the deportation of more illegal immigrants than his unspeakable predecessor G.W. Bush.

(Figure given on "Democracy Now".)

The "Washington Post" immediately commented that Wendy Davis will not win.  Why the hell they say that I don't know, bearing in mind that, first, Davis is charismatic, good-looking and a heroine to women for her stand (literally) on Reproductive Freedom in the benighted State. Second, Texas had a very popular and successful woman Governor in Ann Richards, who was defeated in 1994 by W., (probably after a "recount", I don't know.)

Ann Richards QUOTE:  "I get a lot of cracks about my hair, mostly from men who don't have any."

But the main reason I think Davis might have a good chance is that elections in this democracy are decided by who turns out.  With her face-recognition, feminist street-cred, and probable appeal to the young and ethnic minorities, she might do very well indeed.

And that's the lesson for the Dimms.  The reason that they got their asses handed to them in 2010, and possibly the reason we have this Tea Party nightmare in the House right now, is that President Backbone has failed, over and over and over, to live up to the promises he made in his campaigns, to bring us "Hope and Change".

What the students, the women, the progressives, and the ethnic minorities meant by Change, and what they thought Obama meant, was breaking the chains that tie our Government to Big Business, serving the People not the Bankers, the 99% not the 1%, taking care of "Us" not "Them".

If the Dimms would just find the guts to make that their guiding principle, they could be in power for a century.  Maybe standing up for Obamacare, and taking a first timid step towards a basic service that Britain (to name but one) has had since 1949, will prove to be a turning-point.

But I don't suggest you hold your breath....

Words From A Great Texan (For once, I'm Not Being Sarcastic)

Since the hilariously irreverent Molly Ivens passed on to the Great Joking Ground in the Sky, the position of Best Texan falls on the sturdy shoulders of commentator and rabble-rouser Jim Hightower.

Here's how he describes himself:  "National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks."

If you haven't read the man before, here's a sample of his style:  "Here's some useful advice from an old country saying: Never try to teach table manners to a pig — it doesn't work, it'll wear you out, and it just annoys the pig."

In this case, the pigs in question are the Tea Party-dominated Republican majority in the House of Dis-Reputables. In a pithy article on the Nation of Change site, he tries to discuss the GOP's Health Care plan. Problem: they don't have one -

"During the debate on their latest attempt to repeal the [Obamacare] law, a Democratic lawmaker asked for a copy of the GOP's health care plan so he could read it aloud to other members. Silence in the chamber."

Read the whole, biting, story here.

McCarthy and his "Ism"

Last week when I wrote about the idiot Michele Bachmann, who would be just a sad joke if she didn't influence significant numbers of voters (not to mention occupying a seat in our hallowed House of Representatives), I said I would post something about McCarthyism. 

The other day, the wondrous Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" showed Bachmann pronouncing to the world, on fair-and-balanced Fox News of course, “Literally, the decisions of our life and death, may very well be in the hands of the IRS.”

What can one say, except "WTF?"?  "Literally", Michele, the IRS doesn't have hands!  As for "our life and death", I'd be far more concerned about the Tea Party's Congress-Members endangering us, than I would the IRS.

So - back to McCarthyism....

Here's what I wrote in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s" about a man who is an eternal stain on the honor of the United States:

"The justifiable fear of the nuclear Bomb provided an opening for one of the world's great charlatans. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy, a little-known Senator from Wisconsin, gave a speech to a Republican Women's Club. He produced a piece of paper which he claimed was a list of 205 known Communists working for the State Department. He never proved the guilt of these “spies”, indeed he never made the list public. But before he was done he had ruined hundreds of lives and careers.

His House Un-American Activities Committee (“Hewack”) with its blackmailing inquisitors, rampaged through industry, Universities, even Hollywood, trampling on the Constitution and terrorising people, mainly innocent, into choosing between “naming” their friends or going to jail for Contempt of Congress. A favorite “crime” invented by the McCarthy-ites was being “prematurely anti-Fascist”, that is having opposed Hitler before the Government did! McCarthy's antics goaded playwright Arthur Miller to write “The Crucible”, about the Puritan witch trials in 17th-century Massachusetts – and the name “Witch-Hunt” is still synonymous with McCarthyism."

House INTELLIGENCE Committee?

I wasn't going to bother posting this Petition about Representative Michele Bachmann, "the Tea Party’s queen of crazy" - but then they reminded me about her ranting claims about the Ha-Ha Socialist, not to mention this corker: 

“The influence today of the Muslim Brotherhood at the highest levels, from the White House, to the Pentagon, to the FBI, even to our United States military, truly is breathless and people have to know about it.”

Yes, folks, they're "breathless" - can't you hear them panting as they come down your street, ready to steal your first-born, and defile your daughters, yelling to their evil God as they seize all the levers of power with cunning, ruthless help from their shadowy accomplices, from B.H. Obama on down?

CREDO is concerned enough about Bachmann to say, "what kind of a signal does it send that she's on the House Intelligence Committee where she has access to sensitive national security information?

"Bachmann has actually said that gay marriage is the biggest problem facing the nation, financial reform efforts equate with Mussolini-style fascism, and that President Obama is "anti-American" and "turning our country into a nation of slaves".

"Her loose association with the facts and her willingness to believe in all sorts of completely baseless conspiracy theories makes her one of the last people in Congress who should be entrusted with our nation’s secrets."

Personally, I'm not too concerned about the House Intelligence Committee and its "secrets".  We know most of the "secrets" are complete BS.  The only reason they're secret is to prevent the American people from knowing what is being done in their name.  But having an idiot like Bachmann anywhere near the decision-making process is enough to get my signature on a Petition, and CREDO make a persuasive case for their Petition, here.

Where I think the Mad Minnesotan Mama is really dangerous is in her McCarthyism.  This country has already seen what hysteria and paranoia can do to our democratic society.  At the LA Times Festival of Books I attended a panel on McCarthyism, with very cool, highly-informed speakers including KPFK and UC Irvine's Prof. Jon Wiener.  I asked the question which has always frustrated me about that ghastly time in America's shameful past:  why was there not a popular uprising against McCarthy's brazen theft of our due process and our Constitutional Rights?  The answer came back, "It was a time of fear".

Fear is the weapon of choice of the Bachmanns of the world, and it damn well works.

I'll blog soon about McCarthyism, as discussed in my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s".