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New Poll: Republicans Win 447 House Seats, 113 Senate Seats

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A new Washington Post/ABC News/Wall Street Journal/Opinion Dynamics/New York Times/CBS/Rasmussen/Gallup poll suggests Republicans are likely to win 435 House seats come November. Some models actually predict Republicans may pick up 447 to 450 House seats. When asked how that’s possible, since there are only 435 House seats, a rather cantankerous John Cranston of Rasmussen said, “I’m not an idiot, I know there are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. So what! Republicans are polling so well, they have a great chance of winning districts not even yet created.” Several of these districts created in the pollsters’ minds are now leaning solidly Republican. Cranston went on to add, “Right now, just as we’re talking, I created another House district in my head. It’s a really cool district, too. Lots of activity, nice bike paths…but anyway…a quick scan of the polls, and the Democrat is down 59.6 percent to 31.2 percent. Looks like the Democrats will get walloped in these dreamed-up districts!”

The new poll also put President Obama’s approval rating at -24 percent. The negative number reflects something of a statistical anomaly. When asked for an explanation, The Wall Street Journal‘s Meg Pike said, “Since we were unable to find any respondents who actually liked President Obama, we thought, ‘What the hell, we might as well go negative.’ It actually probably is accurate enough.”

When it comes to the Senate races this year, the numbers were equally devastating for Democrats. Though only 37 seats are up for election, according to Opinion Dynamics’ Mike Wallingford the Republicans are feeling confident that after they win all of them, they’ll be able to strong-arm the remaining Democrats. “Think about it,” he said. “If you’re a Democrat who isn’t up for reelection this cycle, are you really going to want to keep your job? All it’ll take for incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to grab those seats is to give those Democrats a thick envelope packed with free postage and a few gift certificates from Charlie Palmer steak house.”

GOP Senate Candidate Ron Johnson: Pure Plastic

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One word for you Ron: "Plastics."

In the seminal—and oft-quoted—scene from the 1967 film The Graduate, young Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) is approached by Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke) at Ben’s graduation party. “Ben, come with me for a minute. I want to talk to you,” says the burly McGuire. “I just want to say one word to you . . . just one word.” After a confused Ben insists he’s listening, McGuire spits it out. “Plastics. There’s a great future in plastics.”

No doubt it’s a scene in which the Wisconsin GOP shadow candidate for Senate, Ron Johnson, can relate to. In fact, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if that very scene played out at Johnson’s own graduation party—assuming he ever graduated from an institute of higher learning.

More on that later. As a political junkie and Milwaukee native, who’s been living in New York City for the past twenty years, I’ve been keenly following the Wisconsin Senate race between Democrat Russ Feingold and Republican Ron Johnson. To be honest I hadn’t really planned to give it much heed. After all, Feingold is perhaps the most moderate and ideologically free politician in Congress—occasionally to the consternation of progressives across the state. And personally his positions have frustrated my deeply held progressive (read: liberal) beliefs. Shockingly, he was the only Democrat to vote against a motion to dismiss the ludicrous impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton; he voted for the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft; and voted for conservative activist John Roberts to be the Chief Justice of the (now very hard-right) Supreme Court.

Feingold took office in 1993 after beating the right-wing and supremely ineffective Republican incumbent Bob Kasten—who only made headlines in Washington, D.C., when he was busted for DWI. Of course, Feingold really made a name for himself when he co-authored, with John McCain, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (a.k.a. “McCain/Feingold”), which ironically has now been completely upended by the the incredibly obtuse decision in the Citizens United case. (How’s that for a thank-you from Chief Justice Roberts?)

Politically speaking Wisconsin is a reliable “blue” state—it has voted for the Democratic nominee for President since 1984, has two Democratic senators, and five of its eight House members are Democrats (at least as this post goes to press). The Badger State has a long tradition of spawning progressive politicians, but the state also has a streak of independence. At the state level, the governorships change parties every dozen years, but by and large it’s a state made up of left-leaning moderates.

Though every once and a while the state gets rattled by a shadow candidate, or an outright nut job (or both). Sure, Wisconsin was home to such legendary progressives as William Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson, the man responsible for Earth Day. But it was also home to psychotic red-baiter Eugene McCarthy. Currently, the title of “Wisconsin nut job” in Congress now goes to long-serving GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner. In D.C.’s power corridors, he’s known as a simpleton, but in reality he’s much more dangerous. He’s a hard-right, heartless douchebag whose What-Would-Jesus-Do moment occurred in September 2005, when he voted against a bill providing $50 billion in emergency aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina; a class act through and through.

The current shadow candidate in Wisconsin this election season is Johnson, an Oshkosh businessman who’s sunk $4.4 million of his own cash into unseating Feingold. Just who is this guy with the plainest, most white-bread name in America? Scion of the Wisconsin-based S.C. Johnson Company? Nope? Owner of the Ron Jon Surf Shop? Nope. The little-known Wisconsin millionaire heads a company called PACUR (all caps, please), a plastics-manufacturing operation. The super-exciting company makes things like blister-packaging—you know, the stuff you swore at after it caused an emergency-room visit to treat a deep-puncture wound sustained after your nineteenth attempt to open your new package of headphones.

But Johnson didn’t just sense a need and decide to build a company on his own to satisfy that need. Not necessary. You see, PACUR was actually a subsidiary of another plastics company called Curwood—conveniently located in . . . Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Curwood started operation in 1958 by Howard Curler, and when it eventually became a behemoth in the plastics industry, it merged with the Bemis Company. Curler, wanting to keep a bigger slice of the company for himself—and his family—”founded” PACUR. Who’s PACUR’s only client? Well . . . Bemis of course? And whose daughter is married to Ron Johnson? Howard Curler’s, naturally. What better wedding present than a sham company?

Even Politco’s Jim VandeHei, the right-wing journalist who hails from the adopted hometown of Johnson, has questioned the shadow candidate’s bona fides. In a story in Politico, VandeHei said that Johnson’s “media diet consists mainly of The Wall Street Journal and talk radio” and that “he is very reluctant to engage in specifics on Social Security and Medicare.” He concludes that Johnson will be more of a message candidate; not one who actually attempts to get legislation passed.

I suppose if this crackpot wins the election, Wisconsin residents can only hope he abides by that principle, as Johnson’s positions on the issues are laughable if they weren’t so dangerous: Global warming is caused by sunspots; all government spending is bad (unless it benefits his plastics company); the only solution to immigration is “securing the borders”; Social Security is a “ponzi scheme“; BP was unfairly criticized; and the Federal Reserve should be abolished. These are just the appetizers.

If Johnson somehow manages to eke out a win—and recent polls suggest he just might—Wisconsin residents shouldn’t be surprised when he embarrasses the state and vies for the most ineffective member of Congress. At best he’ll be Sarah Palin in a cheap suit who lacks her oratorical gifts. (See Feingold wallop Johnson in the most recent debate here. Johnson slurs his words and races through his talking points like a drunk trying to pick up a floozy.) Like all the despicable tea-party candidates running for Congress, Johnson will spend his time on the Senate floor bloviating and grandstanding—making speeches espousing his homophobia, blocking every effort to dig us out of Bush’s recession, probably joining the birther movement. In essence, he’ll mimic his supreme leader, Sen. Jim DeMint, the deranged knuckle-dragger from South Carolina.

Democrats and liberals alike can take some comfort, however. Although I’ve argued that the midterm elections are going to be far more favorable to Democratic candidates than the “liberal” media has predicted, I may be wr . . . wr . . . wrong. If I am, President Obama and his Democratic colleagues needn’t cry in their collective beers. Once the electorate has a taste of the tea partiers—a Sen. Sharron Angle, a Sen. Rand Paul, or that insane Congressional candidate and tea partier who dresses up like a Nazi—they’ll be angry angry enough to correct their mistakes and hopefully vote back into office the political party that at least began to dig us out of Bush’s truculent economic crap storm. And that bitter tea taste will still linger in the mouths of voters come 2012, when President Obama trounces the Sarah Palin/Glenn Beck ticket, winning more than 500 electoral votes—a much-needed bright light at the end of an incredibly dark tunnel.

If Feingold does in fact manage to snag a victory in November—and there’s some glimmer of hope—the entire Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will need to rethink the tactics used by its Democratic candidates. As the right wingers are so eager to point out, Feingold is the only Senate candidate who’s actually running on his vote to pass the health care reform bill. Should he win, it’ll prove that Democrats should have run on their records instead of running away from them.

Why the Republican Party Should Be Abolished

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The Tea Party could give Rep. John Boehner a real reason to cry.

Leading up to the 2008 presidential election, the country—while tumbling down the hill into an economic swamp—was still dominated by the two political parties. Sure, the Democrats had run the table: They snatched the presidency from the jaws of the Republicans and also in 2008 solidified their hold on Congress, winning more seats in the House and Senate.

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, however, the two-party system has been upended. In just two year’s time, the Republican Party is on the path to oblivion and bordering on irrelevancy. Much of the blame (or credit, depending on whose camp you’re in) can be placed squarely with the Tea Party. Instead of looking at the Tea Party extremists as competitors, the Republican Party opted to coddle them; acted as enablers when the racist Tea Partiers shouted down members of Congress during the health care debate.

Tactically it will turn out to be a huge error by the Republican establishment. Sarah Palin and her loyal nutjobs are only too happy to toss overboard establishment Republican candidates. See especially the Tea Party support of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York’s 22nd Congressional election last year, throwing moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava to the wolves. Senate candidate and extremist Marco Rubio in Florida also benefited hugely from Tea Party support. The Tea Baggers forced Republican stalwart Charlie Crist to run as an independent. These two examples should have served as warning signs for Republicans. The Tea Party isn’t just out to topple the Obama administration: It’ll happily destroy Republicans too. And the Tea Party isn’t going away.

In fact, just this week the “unofficial” Tea Party Grand Dame Michele Bachmann got approval from the House to form a Tea Party caucus (though which House members other than Bachmann who will sign up remain a mystery.) Rightly the Democrats were only too happy to help Bachmann set up her little cabal. Anything to shine a light on what the Tea Party really stands for will only help the Democratic Party. Surely Harry Reid is thanking the Tea Party for helping give Sharron Angle—a extremist in the true sense of the word and undeniable idiot—the Republican nod in Nevada. Instead of Reid fighting to save his political life, he’s jumped to a huge lead. Hey Republicans: With friends like the Tea Party….

Clearly, many Republicans thought the Tea Party, spawned during the health care debate, would simply help topple the Democrats’ agenda. Let ‘em organize, so thought the Republican leadership, it’ll help sink the Obama agenda and help sweep us into power. The reality is that this November’s midterm elections may not turn out nearly as bad for the Democrats as the entire punditry has predicted. I’ve written about this here, but no matter what the outcome in November, one thing is certain: The Republican Party must be abolished.

Why? Am I simply espousing a liberal fantasy? Sure, the thought of John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the real lowlife, bottom feeders of the Republican Party—Sen. Jim DeMint, Rudy Giuliani, Marco Rubio, Arizona Rep. John Shadegg, and Texas Rep. Joe “Sorry, BP” Barton—scrambling to find a new political home is amusing, the real reason the Republican Party must be abolished is simple: It’s expendable.

If you’re a liberal/progressive, even one who doesn’t claim party affiliation, you vote for the Democratic candidate almost 100 percent of the time (if you vote). However, if you’re a conservative who believes in “small government” (code words for anarchy), why pull the lever for the Republican candidate when the Tea Party candidate will out-conservative the Republican? Those moderate Republicans who believe in things like the environment, health-care reform but also yearn for low taxes and less government might as well join the Sen. Ben Nelson wing of the Democratic Party. Hell, he even voted against extending unemployment benefits; he’s essentially a Republican. What distinguishes him from Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine? Very little.

The vote to extend unemployment benefits in the Senate is a classic example of why the Republican Party should fold up its “big tent” and remain only as an example of a failed political party in history text books. The GOP has not just become the Party of No, it’s become an example of how a party shouldn’t run the country. Republican leaders in the House and Senate have worked dubiously in the past two years to keep Americans unemployed and the economy stagnant. This isn’t pundit bloviating, simply a fact. They’ve voted time and time again to kill any and all bills and measures intended to reverse George W. Bush’s economic train of misery. Obama, in the eyes of Congressional Republicans, can do nothing right. The party is only too happy to see the U.S. get clobbered at home and abroad to score political points. That tactic alone should be a wake-up call to Americans to punish the party; it doesn’t deserve to lead. The GOP should implode, become a marginal party on the fringes of American society like the Libertarian Party or the LaRouche movement.

It’s not just liberal bloggers who believe Republicans aren’t governing. Look at Rep. Peter King of New York. He unwittingly (it seems) let slip a Republican tactic during an interview. Speaking about what Republicans stand for, he said:

I don’t think we have to lay out a complete agenda, from top to bottom, because then we would have the national mainstream media jumping on every point trying to make that a campaign issue.

Of course once the GOP establishment found out he’d spoken out of turn, they made him back track, but the damage was already done. The strategy employed by the Republicans since getting their asses handed to them in 2008 was out there for the entire world to see.

Another example of why the Republican Party should be abolished comes with their stance on the recently passed Wall Street reform bill. Naturally, the GOP sided with Wall Street from the get-go, with House Republican Leader Boehner likening the largest economic collapse in U.S. history to relevancy of a “ant.” Does Boehner really believe this kind of nonsensical statement is just what the American voting public is looking for its leaders to make? Vote in the Republicans, and we’ll bury our collective heads in the sand is apparently the GOP rallying cry.

And let’s not forget Republican Texas oil whore Joe Barton apologizing to BP when Obama mandated the company pay for the Gulf cleanup. How can anyone look at the Republican Party and deem it a necessary voice in governing? Well, not many if you look at the recent polls. Although the Democrats are looked on unfavorably by a majority of Americans, the Republicans are loathed even more for their tactics of obstruction and irresponsibility. A recent Gallup poll metes that out; Democrats have now jumped to a six-point lead in a 2010 generic poll.

I’m not advocating one-party rule but for people (voters) who’ve aligned themselves with the Republican Party, it’s time to make a choice. If you’re a moderate to moderately conservative Republican, side with the Blanche Lincoln–Ben Nelson–Mary Landrieu wing of the Democratic Party. If you’re a government-is-evil, regulation-is-bad, environment-hating Republican, side with the Tea Party.

Though the Reagan presidency is viewed on by many as a disaster, the years he governed were the last time the Republican Party had any relevance. The new player in governing just very well might be the Tea Party. Though Tea Party candidates, if elected, will give Americans nightmares and turn this country into a Fascist state, they can do some good: spark the implosion of the ineffectual, unnecessary Republican Party.

Democrats on Track to Increase Congressional Majority Come November: Sean Hannity on Suicide Watch

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner after a playdate.

Just about every major news outlet (as well as Fox News) have been gleefully positing that the Democrats are poised for massive losses in Congress after this year’s November midterm elections. All you need to do is watch about 20 minutes of news coverage—on cable or the networks—and you’ll soon conclude the 2010 midterm elections might as well be scrapped, called off. Game over already. The Democrats will lose the House and Senate. It’s a given. Why even vote? Nancy Pelosi might as well hand over her gavel to Rep. John “Man Tan” Boner Boehner.

While the party of the president in power almost always loses seat in midterm elections, the potential “storm brewing” for Democrats took on end-of-the-world, epic proportions. The Democrats, the media cried, weren’t just looking at losing both the House and Senate (the latter a complete impossibility) . . . no, the Democrats were on the road to extinction. Obama himself was declared road-kill. The unhinged even predicted impeachment. Shortly after health care reform was passed, a nutjob named Jeffrey T. Kuhner wrote an article in the Washington Times called “Impeach the President?” (Who is Kuhner? Ironically, a Canadian, who certainly benefited mightily from his country’s government-run health care system. But I digress.)

Although the nattering nabobs of negativity began the Democrats Death March right after Scott Brown’s insignificant Senate victory over a breathtakingly weak Democratic candidate in Massachusetts, it really sallied forth after health care reform was passed. Yes, according to the “liberal” media, expanding health care coverage for people in need and drastically overhauling a broken and corrupt insurance system would prove the Democrats’ nadir.

When referencing the health care bill, smug d-bags called it “ObamaCare,” said on-air as if it were “ObamaCare®.” Tee-hee . . . what was supposed to be health care reform, according to crack journos and deadbeat pundits, was simply a misguided brand: Medicare run by some Muslim guy who may not even be a God-fearing American, for chrissake!

But something funny is happening on the way to November 2010.

What was once looking to just about everyone as a certain Republican sweep of the midterms is now looking more like the Democrats will not only hold on to both houses of Congress, but they (may) actually increase their majority. OMFG! Yes, in the past I’ve been accused by those prone to violence of advocating violence, but what now? Bill “I Hate Myself More Than You Hate Me” O’Reilly might say that I’ve “drunken the Kool-Aid.” It’s actually tasty . . . but let’s look at what’s transpired on fronts political and economic since the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was signed into law on March 30.

  • Obama’s approval rating | Despite what the news media (and Fox News) hammer home day after day, Obama’s approval ratings are at a whopping 54 percent. The loathsome Dick Morris, who for months blathered endlessly about the coming GOP takeover, is now blogging about . . . Mother’s Day. WTF? (He and his wife are threatening to cook a Mother’s Day dinner for one unlucky t-bag d-bag who purchases Dick’s latest book Toe-Sucking Prostitutes: My Life With Hookers.) Bottom line: As Obama’s numbers rise, so too do Congress’.
  • GDP | In the first quarter of 2010, the economy grew by 3.2 percent. Sufficient to stem George W. Bush’s recession/depression? No, but the the GDP numbers are the highest in the three years. Sean Hannity, you there? Anyone at Fox News on this story?
  • Consumer spending | The gloomy consumer is no longer so. In March spending is up the most in five months.
  • Financial-reform legislation | The Republicans were not content simply to sit on their hands during the health care debate. When financial-reform legislation was scheduled to be tackled in Congress, the Republicans again filibustered (well, threatened to anyway). Apparently, according to Republicans, Wall Street is in fine shape and needs no regulation. Excellent. Hey Mitch McConnell: Make sure all your GOP Senate candidates run on that. Americans love big, bloated banks.
  • Health care | Say what? Aren’t 130 percent of Americans opposed to health care? Yes according to the humor website Fox News. No according to reality. Not content on losing the debate, the Republicans have actually set their sites on overturning the law . . . just when the bulk of the benefits kick in come fall. The GOP seem to think that voters actually support health insurance companies when they deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Nice one!
  • Sarah Palin | Nothing reminds voters more of the extremism, intolerance, and racism of the Republican Party more than Palin, who clearly cares far more about making money than governing. Keep lambasting Obama and the Democrats, Sarah, so the independents remember the GOP is chockablock with angry, do-nothing, white men.
  • Gallup | Oops. Breaking news, Gallup proves my argument.

Now, sure, there can be seismic shifts in the electorate come November. But if you read the copious right-wing number crunching of the impending election, you’d think that Sarah Palin is on track to be appointed President after the Republican Conquistadors plunder the country of liberals, gays, Democrats, minorities, and Keith Olbermann.

Yeah, anything can happen. But if the economy improves (which it is) and the unemployment rate drops (which it surely will by November), what do Republican Congressional candidates run on?

Elect us so we can . . . reverse the positive trend the economy is taking! We don’t want job growth. Let’s return back to the days of George W. Bush, um, when banks ran wild and stole tax payer money. That’s right voters: Cast your ballot for the Republican this year so we can all enjoy the Bush recession again.

About the only hope the GOP has of overtaking Congress is a terrorist attack. And one was just foiled in Times Square, surely to the consternation of Sean Hannity and everyone at Fox News.

Shutter Island: Martin Scorsese’s Eyes Wide Shut

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After seeing Martin Scorsese’s latest film Shutter Island over the weekend, I went back and read some reviews. (My rule of thumb: I don’t read reviews ahead of time for films I plan on seeing.)

As a longtime film writer, who’s covered the Cannes Film Festival since 1992—most recently for Movieline—I wasn’t particularly surprised to see  negative reviews coming from top-self critics. The often reliable A.O. “What Does My Kid Think?” Scott at the New York Times completely trashed the film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fifties-era federal marshal tasked to investigate a prisoner disappearance at an institution for the criminally insane.

Though his taste is questionable and at times puzzling, Scott is one of my favorite film critics and as a nuts-and-bolts writer, he’s one of the best at the Times. But his review of Shutter Island was peculiar and off base for many reasons. First, he deemed it relevant to use ALL CAPS in his review. He opens by saying:

“Shutter Island” takes place off the coast of Massachusetts in 1954. I’m sorry, that should be OFF THE COAST OF MASSACHUSETTS! IN 1954! since every detail and incident in the movie, however minor, is subjected to frantic, almost demented (and not always unenjoyable) amplification.

Amidst yuk-yuks about the actors and their (relatively believable) Boston accents—”Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo”—Scott goes on to say the film is chockablock with “narrative misdirection.” Note to Marty: Work on that, will you? Do you know anything about directing? Scott’s final shove of Scorsese off the ledge comes when he says, “[Scorsese] seems to have been unable to locate what it is in this movie he cares about.”

Scott seems to be have some behind-the-scenes loathing for Scorsese’s rather hefty payday for the unabashedly Hollywood movie. That’s where New York magazine critic David Edelstein steps in.

Edelstein’s review was far more vitriolic. He hinted that the only reason Scorsese made the film was, indeed, for a “fat studio paycheck.” He goes on to say the movie was simply . . . too movieish.

But even when the detective-story foundation begins to crumble and the gumshoe protagonist (Leonardo DiCaprio) becomes racked with visions of concentration camps and bloody children and babbles about Communist subversives and Nazi experiments, Shutter Island is still suffocatingly movieish.

When I read Scott’s and Edelstein’s reviews, I was reminded of another big-budget Hollywood studio film made by another legendary film director. In 1999, Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut was released, posthumously, and how the top critics howled. They couldn’t heap contempt upon Kubrick fast enough. Dinosaur Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer said:

What surprised me the most . . . was the sketchy and episodic structure of the narrative, the feeble attempts at melodramatic tension and suspense, and the clumsily corny and anticlimactic ending with its halfhearted four-letter-word mantra.

Others lesser-knowns said things like: Those scenes in New York City? What? That doesn’t look like the New York City I know. J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote:

At worst, Eyes Wide Shut is ponderously (up)dated—as though Kubrick had finally gotten around to responding to Michelangelo Antonioni’s druggy Blow-Up—if not weirdly anachronistic. (It’s difficult to make a movie about a city you last set foot in 35 years ago.)

Note the last dig: Criticizing Kubrick for not making New York look like New York. Does Hoberman really think Kubrick didn’t remember what New York City was like? So he simply faked the exterior shots? Yes, the city shots in Eyes Wide Shut do look dreamy and ethereal (the film is based on the Arthur Schnitzler novella Dream Story) but are critics in general—and Hoberman in particular—that jaded as to not give Kubrick (and Scorsese) the benefit of the doubt?

In reviews of both Shutter and Eyes critics also complained that the plots were near incomprehensible; an odd observation considering both were adapted from written works. And both directors were tsk-tsked for seemingly becoming sellouts, Hollywood whores.

In the end, I think many critics who initially hated Eyes Wide Shut probably now see the genius behind it. At the time of its release, it was the Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman Dog-and-Pony Show. The film’s importance and resonance got lost behind the nonsensical panoply of celebrity. If Kubrick deserves any fault it’s for casting a larger-than-life celeb couple who eventually eclipsed the film itself.

With Shutter Island as well I see the same critics who are blasting it today as the ones tomorrow who’ll rethink their initial scorn and see the film for what it is: An unconventional, intricate, spellbinding psychological thriller that perhaps overreaches, but it at least takes the suspense genre to new heights.

Right-Wing Blogosphere Tries to Break My Kneecaps

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On Sunday, February 14, I wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled “Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps.” You can read it here, but the premise of the piece was that the White House, and Obama in particular, must start playing hardball when it comes to dealing with the do-nothing Republican Party, a.k.a the Party of No. I was hardly the first one to suggest this. In a speech in upstate New York, Georgetown University professor Michael E. Dyson said this about Barack Obama:

Get on your job!…Stop trying to kiss the Republicans. I’m not mad, but you have to know who you are and what you stand for [if any significant change is to be made].

On Monday there was an article in the Washington Post saying the White House is in fact revamping its communication strategy. So what does all this have to do with the right-wing crazies? Well…nothing really, because many in the right-wing blogosphere failed to read my article (perhaps reading is a challenge to some of them). All they saw was my headline: “Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps” and the photo that accompanied it (more on that later).

The right sent out their attack dogs. Most prominent was some guy named Kristinn Taylor (at least I think that person is a guy) who shills for one of Andrew Breitbart’s ludicrous right-wing sites, Biggovernment.com—a site that would have been apt under George W. Bush’s administration.

Mr. Taylor zeroed in on me and CNN’s Roland Martin. He said:

CNN and Huffington Post have each published op-eds this past week by regular contributors with headlines that explicitly call for Obama to use violent gangland tactics against his political opponents.

Martin, a sharp-tongued CNN commentator, had written a piece titled “Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.” Like me, Martin was pressing the administration to take a tougher stand on the knuckle-dragging Republicans in Congress. Clearly he used the term “gangsta” tongue-in-cheek. Even those with Sarah Palin–level I.Q.s would be able to see that. Who would really think Martin meant that Obama should grab his gat and take out the Republican Party? Um…Mr. Taylor it seems.

For my post, Taylor highlighted my entreaty to the White House, where I said:

You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve tried numerous times to talk with the Republicans, to negotiate, to meet them halfway on every single matter before the American people. But they hate you for many reasons. It’s time you break kneecaps. It’s time to destroy the Republican Party. They don’t deserve a seat at the table when all they want to do is score political points by being the Party of No.

“In case the message wasn’t clear,” Taylor says, “Huffington Post illustrated the call to violence with a wooden baseball bat with Obama’s first name on it in large letters.” First off, Huffington had nothing to do with the baseball bat image. Give credit where credit is due. I, sir, made the photo myself. As a blogger for biggovernment.com, perhaps Mr. Breitbart gets you coffee and donuts and maybe he even writes the posts for you, but at Huffington, we writers are responsible for our own graphics. I e-mailed Taylor several times asking him to remove my awesome baseball bat photo but got no response.

Taylor’s post generated about 600 comments, mainly from Crazy Town, that were by and large incredibly incendiary. His post spread through the right-wing blogosphere like a cancer. It finally reached the Twitter page of Fox News neanderthal Glenn Beck, who even mentioned my baseball bat on his radio show—but didn’t give me attribution, which after an e-mail I received this morning proved merciful.

In my inbox this morning from a potential serial killer was this super-nice e-mail:

Want to try and bust my kneecaps?  WANT TO TRY?
A bullet to your head would stop you REAL quick.
We have a 2nd amendment for a reason.

It’s funny (or sad) how my original post, which had nothing to do with violence but had everything to do with strategy, was looked on as a call to violence. And the right wingers excoriated me, saying how awful I am to call for “gangland violence.” (?) So to make their point the right-wingers…called for actual violence against me.

Speaking of violence…the Hill reported that at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which begins Thursday February 18, attendees will be WHACKING (i.e., beating to death) a pinata of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They will also get a chance to beat to death a Harry Reid punching bag. Is there outrage on right? Of course not. An actual beating in effigy of a Democrat is okay, but using a metaphor about strategy is tantamount to calling for war.

Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps

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Barack's Baseball BatBy now most Americans would agree the ascendancy of Barack Obama to President was due in large part to his promise of obliterating the petty Washington-politics-as-usual mentality when it comes to governing.

In 2000 when running for president, George W. Bush trotted out a nifty campaign slogan: “compassionate conservatism.” He didn’t coin the term; it was first used in a speech given in 1979 by right-wing presidential adviser Doug Wead. But Bush owned it in the 2000 election in an effort to pander to moderate voters. Compassionate conservatism, he argued, would be his guiding principle should he win the presidency. (He probably didn’t realize when he used that term he was implying conservatism at its core is inherently uncompassionate. After all, if conservatism was truly compassionate he wouldn’t have needed a qualifier.) He also boasted that when he was governor of Texas he worked across party lines, though the state’s elected Democrats are often considerably more conservative than Northeastern Republicans.

For myriad reasons, the American people bought Bush’s blatant lies; even the most ardent Bush supporters now readily admit that he neither practiced compassionate conservatism nor did he ever have any intent of working “across party lines.” His presidential administration was perhaps the most partisan and blatantly conservative of any in American history.

So what does this have to do with President Obama?

Most Americans want at least some sort of harmony among government entities (especially within the intelligence communities). The only way America moves—forward or backward—is when legislation and agendas are advanced. Now historically speaking, the advancement of legislation and agendas can have detrimental effects on society (see particularly Ronald Reagan’s fuck-the-poor decade and Newt Gingrich’s Contract with on America). But nonetheless agendas were advanced, and many politicians followed the cliché: “Let the chips fall where they may.” Pass legislation that you believe in and fuck the voters come November. For all of Gingrich’s repulsiveness, he pushed through his agenda—the people’s will be damned. And yeah, the people didn’t forget; they loathed him, and he was eventually driven out of office.

President Obama, on the other hand, has spent an entire year desperately attempting to win over the hearts and minds of the Republican establishment. While Obama could have rammed his will down the throats of the American people by going overboard in issuing executive orders, he only passed 39 executive orders in his first year in office. By contrast George W. Bush passed 54 executive orders.

Obama’s entire first year in office can be summed up this way: Pandering, placating, and pussy-footing around the Republican Party. He offered his hand to the Republicans, and they gave him a firm backhand. Look at the health care reform bill. For God’s sake, it’s a giveaway to Republicans: It has no public option, it allows for interstate insurance shopping, and if passed will add millions of customers to the oligarchical insurance companies. How much more Republican-friendly could the bill be? If you ask the Republicans they’d say, “The only good health care reform bill is a dead health care reform bill.” (Poor choice of words deliberate.)

Clearly, Obama has a distaste for political hardball. By his actions, he doesn’t want to become simply a liberal version of George W. Bush, ramming liberal policies down the throats of Congress—much to my chagrin. He needs to rethink that.

Here’s what I’d say to Obama, and I believe many of his advisers are saying these sorts of things as well:

You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve tried numerous times to talk with the Republicans, to negotiate, to meet them halfway on every single matter before the American people. But they hate you for many reasons. It’s time you break kneecaps. It’s time to destroy the Republican Party. They don’t deserve a seat at the table when all they want to do is score political points by being the Party of No.

It’s looking like Obama may be getting the message. Just yesterday he threatened to bypass Republican foot-dragging on his stalled nominations by using the recess-appointment process—a procedure Bush 43 used on numerous occasions (with nefarious results—remember John Bolton).

As expected, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was shown weeping on the Senate floor he said the potential recess appointments would undermine the President’s efforts to reach out to Republicans. Seriously!? According to McConnell “reaching out to Republicans” means giving them everything they ask for, all the time.

Elections have consequences. After Bush’s narrow reelection in 2004, he had the temerity to address the press and say, “I earned political capital, and now I intend to spend it.” Why can’t Barack Obama, whose victory was far more impressive and more decisive, say the same thing?

Myths About the Massachusetts Senate Race

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By reading news accounts on Massachusetts voters electing Republican Scott Brown to the Senate, it appears as if the world has just experienced a tectonic shift. In fact, theday.com labeled the victory as such.

But even mainstream news outlets couldn’t resist the Level 11 News Alert. For them, Brown’s victory was a seminal news-making event: equal to the ending of World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Newspaper headlines were certainly grave: “GOP Victory Upends Senate,” screamed the Wall Street Journal. In the New York Post, Charles Hurt (we get it) wrote a column, “Bam, wake up & smell the disaster,” (really classy headline, Charles, considering what’s going on in Haiti).

CNN, MSNBC, and Fox (of course) were playing along as well. The morning shows treated the election as perhaps the biggest news story since… well… since Barack Obama won the presidency. No, sorry. For them, it was BIGGER.

Time for a rundown of myth versus reality.

Myth: The election of Scott Brown proves the power of the Tea Bag Movement. An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor blared “Scott Brown: the tea party’s first electoral victory.”
Reality: The tea baggers, who boast their movement is directionless and rudderless, had absolutely no effect in the Massachusetts Senate race. In fact, if anything, their antics likely turned off Republican voters and could have given Martha Coakley a few more votes than expected.

Myth: The Democratic Party has lost its way with voters.
Reality: Let’s see, by last count there are 57 Democratic Senators, one Reliable Independent (Bernie Sanders), one Total Asshole (Joe Lieberman), and now, with the election of Brown, 41 Republicans. Come November more Republicans, six, are stepping down or retiring than Democrats. No matter how hard Republicans try to spin it, they have zero chance of winning back the House or Senate (even loose cannon Michael Steel, RNC chairman, admits as much). The Democratic Party, while clearly in need of a shakeup, is still firmly in control of the legislative agenda.

Myth: Due to Brown’s victory, it’ll be almost impossible for Democrats to pass legislation in the Senate.
Reality: See “Total Asshole” above. Joe “I’m as Needy as Kim Jong-il” Lieberman has been veering hard right for the last few years, and as we all know campaigned vigorously against Obama. To assume Lieberman will vote lock step with Democrats is nonsense. He openly loathes the Democratic Party, and flirts with becoming a Republican. Thus, Brown’s victory doesn’t move the needle. The Democrats barely got 60 votes on the health care bill; even had the Democratic candidate won last night in Massachusetts, reaching 60 votes with Connecticut’s Senator Numnuts was pretty much impossible.

Myth: The stock market would rise on the election of Scott Brown. Investors would be cheering that the health care bill is dead!
Fact: The Dow, S&P, and the NASDAQ all dropped over 1 percent the day after Brown’s victory, their worst one-day decline in month. And the financial markets continue to tank.

Myth: Brown’s victory is proof that Democratic Party domination in Massachusetts is over.
Reality: Scott Brown is a conservative. He’s opposed to health care reform; he’s positively James Inhofe-like in his dismissal of man-made global warming. Let’s not forget that Brown is up for reelection in 2012. And assuming that Obama turns the economy around (which is likely), Brown is going to have an awfully hard time running as a Mitch McConnell conservative in a liberal state. Either Brown does a one-eighty and awakens his inner liberal or he loses.

Also, let’s not give Martha Coakley a pass. She was a dreadful candidate: Almost a Democratic, female version of John McCain, oozing boredom and status quo. She assumed the seat would be handed to her with little or no campaigning needed. In a “blue” state, shouldn’t it have been possible to come up with a dynamic Democratic candidate? Brown’s victory is due mostly in part to Coakley’s incompetence (see the Fells Acres Day Care Center case that she badly handled as a prosecutor).

Myth: The Republican Party is back (baby)!
Reality: Again, the Republicans nominated a candidate whose platform was “no, no, no.” Brown has no ideas and no serious plans for fixing the economy—other than tax cuts for the rich. (And we all remember how well that worked under George W. Bush.) His victory only further proves the Republican Party is shiftless and bereft of ideas.

Myth: The election is a referendum on President Obama and proves he’s unpopular.
Reality: Rasmussen has Obama’s favorable rate in Massachusetts at 57 percent. Nationally, Obama’s favorables hover north of 50 percent—amazing considering the flaming economic turd pie handed him by George W. Bush.

Are voters angry? Yes, that’s not in dispute. To whom should their anger be directed? Paul Krugman has it right when he argues the Obama administration has been far too timid in explaining how we got in this economic mess in the first place. Blame lays squarely at the feet of George W. Bush; Obama is simply trying to dig us out.

Apparently, the vast electorate demands instant action from Obama: By now, they argue, the economy should be humming along and the eight years of economic misery should be but a memory. People who think that shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Grow up, douchebags voters.

In 1980 when the country was facing a punishing economic climate, Ronald Reagan verbally pummeled Jimmy Carter. And guess what? The American people bought it. Why can’t Obama do them same and insulate himself and his administration from the brunt of the criticism? The Blame Game is one to be played, not shunned.

Yawn… So Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. Come November, when the Democrats retain control of Congress, I don’t suspect many people will give a hoot.