Still Waiting For the Bounce

By now, there should have been a positive uplift effect from the new President. But all this "breath of fresh air" stuff is turning out to be just cosmetic and superficial. If it were not for those most evil villains the Republicans, there might have been some substance to the "new direction" promises. McConnell and Kyl and most of the entire Texas crowd have positioned themselves as the spoilers and are relishing their Limbaugh-fanned obstructionism. The sooner Obama goes public with some scathing name-calling and tar and feathering, the better chance he will have of success. All this cocktail partying and super bowl partying and reaching out in bipartisan fashion nonsense is a waste of time in the face of this mean-spirited grandstanding. The main reason we are in this fix is this sort of Rove-ian behavior; the sooner they are called on it out in the open the better. One tiny voice from the shadows can faintly be heard from some GOP governors. They are telling the right wing of the Congress to abandon this tactic and get on board. I applaud them even if their motives are less than honorable.
Now the other big question on my mind is the Blogojevich thing. How can there be no outcry when a federal prosecutor taps somebody's home phone then goes public with a lot of incendiary half-truths? This governor was booby-trapped, way-laid and blindsided by an ambitious and unscrupulous asshole whose naked power-grabbing and spotlight-hogging is positively McCarthy-esque. Not that the governor is any saint. But politics is a game of gamesmanship and he knows how to play or at least he thought he did. To be tripped up in this fashion with his due process rights out the window is cause for alarm. The Guantanamo effect is now spreading to domestic government operations where anything is fair and legal if it means nabbing a criminal.
Some politicos had wondered out loud last fall whether an Obama White House might give back some of the rights taken away by the previous junta. It would seem the answer is a quiet but resolute "no." The same people who had posed the then-rhetorical question mostly answered it speculatively by suggesting that no president will surrender power no matter how ill-gotten it might be. All the warm and fuzzy shirtsleeves and fist-bumping notwithstanding; this smooth-talking, wide-smiling master of the shrewd foul-drawing sneak-around covets his ability to wield great power silently, swiftly and coldly. The ex-governor of Illinois has been the sacrificial lamb whose blood is being splashed on the doorpost for all to see.
But back to my original point on the economic situation and its repair job. This systemic and chronic economic sickness is much bigger than a stimulus package can fix. Capitalism is bankrupt in every sense of the word. It cannot sustain itself as a system. I am fairly jubilant to hear the concept itself being brought into question for its lack of viability for the first time since Kruschev. It is high time and long overdue for serious self examination as we survey the wreckage around us. A full century ago, the other Roosevelt got on the correct side of history and yanked the choker chains on the mad dogs we now call the robber barons. A little skirmish called World War One and an inconveniently timed stroke inside Woodrow Wilson's brain served to undo much of that good work. The result was the Coolidge depression that the other Roosevelt pulled us out of by the skin of our teeth against a serious and earnest attempt to take the country Communist. I am not suggesting we revisit Marxism as alternative. . .or maybe I am. Strange how the far right branded Obama a Marxist last summer in a pre-emptive strike. They must have seen this coming and must have known in their black hearts how wrong all this has been. Rather than own up to it and get on the right side of history, they dig in trench-style to lob mortars and nerve-gas on the only politician with the guts to sort of vaguely suggest another FDR sea-change. If this country has to go Marxist, and it has to decimate the population in a civil war to do it, I say bring it on and the sooner the better. Death to the capitalists and robber barons and aristocratic upper class.