Of course, Republicans hope the election results will make it harder for moderate Democrats to go along with the party's leaders, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, as they try to get things done.

And that is exactly the wrong lesson to take from this. The Democratic base and those sympathetic with their goals can hardly be excited by yet more inaction by "moderate" Democrats in the face of a national emergency. The way to get the base fired up is by strong words and deeds, not more timidity! Get me excited, Democrats!!!

But No. The Blue Dogs will start whining about deficits, even as they vote more funds for Afghanistan and Iraq and Wall Street. Obama, ill-advised by Mr. Blue Dog himself, Rahm Emmanuel, will think that his ticket to re-election is to trash his base even more. Christie and McDonnell won because turnout was low. Democrats aren't going to increase turnout by being timid and maligning "the left." That will play right into the hands of Republicans, a party who's salient characteristic is know-nothingness.

So much is obvious. So why did the Democratic Strategist feel the need to remain anonymous so that he could be more candid? That is my tip-off that Democrats just don't get it.

This article makes two major assumptions:

• That we will continue to tolerate a non-democratic economy
• That we will go on forever in a growth based consumption economy.

Mechanization and automation has served one primary goal: to cut costs. What this means is that wealth is concentrated at the top, as "costs" really entail revenue sharing with the community a business resides in. The biggest cause of our unstable and dangerous financial situation is the huge wealth gap. There is too much wealth and power concentrated in Wall Street, while the average American worker has seen his/her wages stagnate, even as productivity has gone up. So who is going to buy these services? How are they going to afford all this health care, if their jobs are constantly being eliminated to make the wealthy wealthier? Economics have a profound effect on society. At some point people will decide that society has a legitimate say in how these "free market" economic decisions are made, sound-cannons notwithstanding.

The second point is just as important and related to the first. A growth-based consumption economy is unsustainable. We simply cannot grow forever without choking our environment with green house gases, landfills, pollutants and other ills (not to mention balance-of-trade issues). We will have to transition to steady-state economic models. And those will need to be democratic, not "free market" (i.e. greed) driven.

You wanted Roosevelt.

You're gonna get Roosevelt. Complete with a war.

Uh, we didn't get Roosevelt. We got Milquetoast, complete with wars.

Obama is afraid to stand up to Wall Street. He's afraid to stand up to the health care lobby. He's afraid to stand up to the military-industrial complex. Someone pointed out that he missed his chance to pass a real stimulus, not the band-aid he ran by President Nelson for approval; again for fear of the deficit. (Funny how not one deficit hawk bitched about the trillion(s) handed to Wall Street, no questions asked? Made the stimulus look puny.)

So he stands up to us, the folks he elected. Makes him look tough and "serious" when he trashes the left.

I did want Roosevelt (sans war, of course). But it's abundantly clear that we got no such thing.

What's the big deal, Republicans? Just vote for the thing without reading it. That's what you did with the USA Patriot Act. And it was "only" 300 pages.

Yup, it's a right wing fringe radio show. But maybe Grayson is crazy like a fox. Here is what Matt Taibbi has said about how the American public acts when screwed by the rich (click sig):

[W]hen the excesses of business interests and their political proteges in Washington leave the regular guy broke and screwed, the response is always for the lower and middle classes to split down the middle and find reasons to get pissed off not at their greedy bosses but at each other.

Maybe it's high time we stopped being pissed at each other and started getting pissed at the real culprits. Maybe this is what Grayson had in mind.

Really, the whole of Congress is in bed with Wall Street. This is of course to the great detriment of the American people, who are losing jobs, savings and homes left, right and center. And we're worried that Alan Grayson called this person a whore? He's right! She is, and so are the legions of other lobbyists swarming over Capitol Hill. They are doing untold damage to the American fabric and now is not the time to worry about their feelings.

This is the same faux outrage expressed over Grayson's "Don't get sick" comments. 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of healcare, and the outrage was...that the Republicans had had their poor widdle feelers hurt?

Matt Rothchild interviewed Jim Hightower a while back, and he had some interesting things to say on this and related topic:

http://www.progressive.org/radio/hightower09.html

(or click sig)

The entire interview is well worth listening to.

Any honest observer can see that Obama hasn't delivered on any of his major promises to the American electorate. Transparency, EFCA, health care, Guantanamo, civil liberties, you name it. Nearly a year in, even the lame "he hasn't had time" excuse is wearing thin (in fact, the time to strike was when the iron was hot: the first 100 days).

Obama is like Lucy with her football, and current Obama apologists are like Charlie Brown. Suckers. But most of us have soured on this game long ago.