Vice President Biden noted yesterday that he hoped that the Tea Party might finally get Democratic and liberal votes out of their “lethargy.” The comment struck a nerve with me since various Democratic leaders have expressed surprise and mild criticism over the lack of enthusiasm by Democratic voters. What is striking is the fact that Biden and others continue to consider their own failure to give voters a reason to become active after years of broken campaign promises and outright betrayals of core values. The best that they can come up with (yet again) is that the other people are worse than we are.
It is unclear why Biden thinks, for example, civil libertarians should be energized after the Obama Administration embraced and expanded Bush-era policies in the war on terror. President Obama has shielded Bush officials from any investigation, let alone prosecution, for torture and has fought to block any cases that would hold companies or agencies responsible for violations of human rights or privacy.
It is unclear why Biden thinks environmentalists should be energized after the Administration opened up pristine areas of the East Coast for oil exploration and, even after the BP disaster, downplayed the spill damage to lift the moratorium.
It is unclear why Biden thinks that peace advocates should be energized after the Administration continued both wars and the gushing of both American blood and treasure.
It is unclear why Biden thinks gay and lesbian activists should be energized after the Obama Administration fought in court to preserve Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and then appealed to limit the major victory enjoining DADT.
For over a decade, the Democratic Party has based its demands for political support not on its own performance but on the “lesser of two evils” argument. They simply cannot understand why voters would be less than enthusiastic in fighting for them to retain power. Indeed, from the very start of this Administration, the clear message to liberals has been “you have no where else to go.” What the Administration and congressional democrats did not consider is that liberals, civil libertarians, and environmentalists could decide to simply go no where and stay at home.
Biden was speaking(at a fundraiser in Chevy Chase, Md. when he noted that “[m[aybe the best thing to happen to us lately is the Tea Party wins. Maybe it’ll shake some of our constituency out of their lethargy.” Biden seems to welcome that there is finally a compelling reason for voters to take to the streets: even worse people are running for office.
How about another option? The Democratic leaders could actually fight on principle over things like torture and give voters a positive reason to care about their future. If you want voters to care, you can start by giving them something to care about — other than the job security of Democratic officeholders. If the Obama Administration did not actually jettison these issues for political convenience, it might not have been more popular, but it would have been more respected and it would have garnered far more enthusiasm from Democratic and liberal voters. Instead, the Democratic leadership has repeatedly conveyed that they are concerned only about retaining their offices and power at any cost — hardly a motivating message for votes.
So here is my suggestion for a new campaign motto: “Fighting Lethargy With Leadership.”
Source: The Hill
It’s not just campaign contributions. Politicians and judges get personal expenses paid for including hookers. Look at Minerals Management in Colorado. How much money flowed from those leases?
http://doi.bluewatermedia.com/pdf/2003i0023.pdf
Everyone arguing for the fast road to hell,
Due to lack of time (and the comments of Mike S. which, as usual, are intelligent, thoughtful, and I agree with completely), I’m going to keep this short. For the reason that I and others have stated here, I believe that failing to fight against the Republicans and teabaggers in this election is tantamount to shooting yourselves in the head – only if we elect to take the slow road will we give ourselves enough time to try to find a path that leads out of the darkness. As to how to find that path, I think that the one truly necessary part of it is campaign finance reform. As long as the billionaires like the Koch brothers can make fantastic profits on the millions of dollars they spend on politicians there will never be enough politicians that can win without kowtowing to corporate (and other monied) interests to institute real change for the better. Conversely, if millions of dollars in contributions were irrelevant for re-election then most pols (R or D or other) would tend to vote with their conscience rather than their sugar daddies. I think that a possible way to work towards this would be the creation of a single-issue meta-party. A party that would support candidates of any ideology provided they pledged to work for CFR and not take special interest money (and backed up their promises with action once elected). It is axiomatic that as long as large amounts of money are necessary for politicians to be elected they will continue to do what is required to obtain that money. In the wake of the Citizens United decision and the (disappointing but unsurprising) failure of Congress to even attempt to limit the damage of that ruling, it seems clear that the only path to fixing this problem is for the people to collectively do it themselves.
Don’t all these parties and party coalitions change over time? Wasn’t it the Republicans who originally championed the end of slavery?
What about the old saying that the Republicans are the party of business and the Democrats are the party of big business? In my case, the Obama administration knows that Underwriters at Lloyds London sold insurance to a prosecutor in Colorado without the State Division of Insurance approving them for sale of insurance to lawyers in Colorado. The administration knows that Lloyds paid a bill for discussion of case assignment issues and that after that my lawsuit was reassigned directly to former judge Nottingham (a Republican appointed by Bush) without a random reassignment procedure and that Lloyds paid for calls between their attorney David Brougham and the court for “confer with court regarding status of pending motions and timing of ruling”. They know that Nottingham was already hanging out in strip clubs and having weekly or more frequent appointments for prostitution services when my federal civil lawsuit was reassigned to him. They know that Lloyds paid to “research vexatious litigant cases” and came up with the idea of calling me a vexatious litigant without even finding even a sentence in which I lied or made illegal threats and of imprisoning me without a criminal charge as part of an extortionist scheme. Furthermore it has already been two years since DOJ served a search warrant on Microsoft for the emails and credit card transactions of the Denver Players brothel which was patronized by former judge Nottingham and many lawyers and DOJ has done nothing at all. Why should I cover that up? I think that Lloyds has a national system in which it pays off judges, court clerks, and attorney regulators. I’ve given DOJ at least enough information to get a search warrant on Lloyds but DOJ just wants to hurt me and the only plausible explanation I know is that Lloyds or their insured are paying off U.S. government officials.
This all happened in Colorado under Governor Bill Ritter, a Democrat, and with Democrats John Suthers and Ken Salazar as Colorado Attorney Generals. Furthermore, my case was later reassigned to Christine M. Arguello, a judge that President Obama reportedly considered for Supreme Court. Judge Arguello ordered:
09/28/2009 1119 ORDER striking 1118 Plaintiffs Motion for Order to Take Judicial Notice. Upon future receipt of any, pleading, motion or any other filing presented by Ms. Sieverding, pro se, the Clerk of the U.S. District
Court for the District of Colorado is instructed to immediately return the document to Ms. Sieverding. This includes any such documents containing Ms. Sieverdings signature, whether submitted by Ms. Sieverding, herself, or by Plaintiff David Sieverding. By Judge Christine M. Arguello on 09/28/2009.(sah, ) (Entered: 09/28/2009)
How can that be legal and how can such a judge even be considered for the Supreme Court?
Kay,
The Repubublicans won’t lift a finger to help people in need until the “barbarians” have already broken down their gates.
Dear Mike
I am telling you that I never ever voted Republican before but I am thinking about it now. If people who are moral always support the Democrats even when they are immoral, then there is no motivation for the Democrats to be moral. The Democrats know what happened to me but just refused to help at all in any way. And it wasn’t the system which bludgeoned me. It was a criminal conspiracy knowingly directed at me in particular and I think their goal was to make me so miserable that I would commit suicide. The person who started it all, Kevin Bennett, former president of the City Council of Steamboat Springs CO, was a registered democrat. I know that because I lived next door to him and I was such a good Democrat that I held a Democratic precinct meeting in my home. Bennett claimed to be anti developers at the same time that he was a developer, was a real estate speculator, reportedly (according to rumors that I can’t prove) accepted ownership shares in developments that he did not invest in while he was in public office, and he built extra buildings reportedly for a planned bring your horse bed and breakfast tourist facility, that still 10 years later aren’t even on the Routt County property tax rolls. Routt County Democrats including Diane Mitsch Bush and Douglas B. Monger have protected him.
As far as Republicans, they’ll come around to respecting the needs of all people if starving people start breaking into their mansions. In Brazil apparently it is impractical to even have a single family home unless you have enough money to keep an armed guard there at all times. I don’t believe that the rich Republicans in the U.S. want to give up their option to live in single family homes but that is what will happen if they don’t provide a safety net.
You know, one would think that all the money behind powerful liberal thinkers and all these bloody rock bands singing to change the world and the people would suffice to change something, somewhere… let alone get a third party started.
How many Bono’s could we need for how much longer ffs?
“Are elected leadership positions a natural draw for sociopathic types? Having a lot of experience with “local” politicians, those who rub elbows with their neighbors/constituents on a daily basis,”
I agree Blouise, but as your further expounded in your post, as one sees farther up the food chains sociopathy appears more common. My contention is that most “leaders” are sociopaths, which is what gets them to be leaders.
“if this observation is true, are there ways, means, or methods to keep the number of sociopathic types to a minimum or is it simply a bane that will always be with us due to the nature of our system, our culture, or our … human nature?”
The only way I see is human evolution which would get us beyond the need to organize hierarchically and include the general recognition that we’re all connected. I agree this is not a likely process, but homo sapiens has evolved in the past
successfully and it can in the future. Our hierarchical view of reality is an illusion and a genetic compulsion that I hope we can get past at some future date. Until then, and we’ll all be long gone, the most viable position for us to take in my opinion is to minimize the harm done by the powerful to the rest of us. This is of course a highly optimistic view, but it helps keeps despair away.
“If I am going to be miserable because of what Democrats do, then I want the Democrats who did it to suffer too. If President Obama’s men are unwilling to help me, why should I help them?”
Kay,
In a system run by money and corporations there is little suffering meted out to incumbents who lose. They get positions that reward them more financially. The suffering comes from people, like yourself, who are bludgeoned by the system. My contention is not that Democrasts are appreciably better than Republicans, but their “bludgeoning” of those not part of the plutocracy is to a lesser degree. The corporate/monied classes want to turn most of us into serfs and that is apparent in the positions taken by most Republican candidates. In short I urge the support of what I deem is the lesser of two evils.
Elaine,
Thank you … Maher paid his dues big time … after a minute or so one got used to the hat!
However, I could still see him … my younger grandchildren’s hats make one invisible!
Public design of court computer systems should ensure a transparent court procedure consistent with written law and that would help a lot. For instance, before DOJ imprisons people it should use computer system matching to make sure that there was a bail hearing with a finding of danger to the public or an actual trial of a criminal charge and a sentence.
The Justice for All Act of 2004 is supposed to allow for court hearings for complaints based on criminal acts by government employees.
Since most government crooks are lawyers, if attorney regulators were elected and therefore there was a public discussion about complaints that attorney regulators choose not to process, that would help too I think.
Blouise,
This one’s for you. Please check out Bill Maher’s hat. I doubt it’s made of tinfoil.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if88PgI-vfU&fs=1&hl=en_US]
“This is because the real issue of humanity has always been that sociopathic types gain leadership roles. Alpha Males preach whatever philosophy they fancy will get them power, but the philosophy is only a means to power and never really the point for them.” (Mike S.)
I find the first sentence in the above quote to be most intriguing. (I kept the other sentences in for context)
Are elected leadership positions a natural draw for sociopathic types? Having a lot of experience with “local” politicians, those who rub elbows with their neighbors/constituents on a daily basis, I can state with confidence that the majority are not sociopathic types. However, the higher I go up the food chain, where daily contact with constituents lessen as the bubble of protective aides, advisors, and managers increases, the ratio of “normal” to sociopathic types changes and the sociopathic behaviors increase.
Is this a built in downside of a democratic system in general … a point going to human nature that can not be avoided … or is it just our particular system? In other words, if this observation is true, are there ways, means, or methods to keep the number of sociopathic types to a minimum or is it simply a bane that will always be with us due to the nature of our system, our culture, or our … human nature?
Dear Mike
I have been a Registered Democrat since 1980, I financially supported Obama, and I blogged for Obama but I am really having problems with the party now. The Republicans imprisoned me for 5 months without a criminal charge in order to force me to withdraw a third party civil lawsuit. The Democrats affirmed that and said it is informal government policy. The imprisonments ruined me financially and damaged my reputation. Therefore my life is no better under the Democrats than under the Republicans. If I am going to be miserable because of what Democrats do, then I want the Democrats who did it to suffer too. If President Obama’s men are unwilling to help me, why should I help them?
I liked a speech I found by John B. Anderson. Maybe the Republicans will find a candidate similar to him. I see that John B. Anderson endorsed Obama in the last election but I don’t see any recent endorsements from him even though he is still working as a law professor.
http://nsulaw.nova.edu/faculty/profiles/index.cfm?ID=3
Is Jim DeMint’s rising star helping or hurting Republicans?
By James Rosen | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/19/100772/with-primary-victories-demint.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — A tea party upstart’s shocking election win in Delaware accelerated Sen. Jim DeMint’s ascent, left him as the nation’s most powerful hard-line conservative politician outside of Sarah Palin — but exposed the South Carolina Republican to attacks that he’d helped destroy his party’s chances of regaining Senate control.
Charles Krauthammer, an influential syndicated conservative commentator, spared no punches in criticizing DeMint and Palin for having helped political neophyte Christine O’Donnell defeat nine-term Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Senate GOP primary Tuesday.
Krauthammer branded as “reckless and irresponsible” the endorsement of O’Donnell by Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee, and DeMint, and its galvanizing effect on tea party stalwarts.
“The very people who have most alerted the country to the perils of President Obama’s social democratic agency may have just made it impossible for Republicans to retake the Senate and definitively stop that agenda,” Krauthammer wrote.
Castle, endorsed by South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, was the handpicked choice of Texas Sen. John Cornyn, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to win the prize Delaware seat that had been long held by Vice President Joe Biden.
“Senate Republicans are now even more embroiled in an intraparty civil war in which DeMint has been the lead rebel,” reported Politico, a widely read Capital Hill newspaper and blog.
**********
Here’s a verse I wrote in March of 2009–so it’s a bit dated. Maybe I should consider rewriting it with some new names–including Sharron Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, and Jim DeMint–for 2010.
And Who Will Lead the GOP?
Little Boy Blue,
Come blow your horn.
Mitt’s in the Meadow.
Mike Steele’s in the corn.
Rush is out riding
His hippo this morn.
Boehner’s in Congress—
He’s bitchin’ and moanin’.
And Newt’s out of town—
So, I guess, he’ll just phone in.
Governor Jindal’s
Gone into seclusion.
He’s getting a needed
Rhetorical transfusion.
Mitch M. is refining
His partisan skills.
McCain is out hunting
For earmarks in bills.
And where’s Sarah Palin,
The gal with the glasses?
Did she fall into
One of Alaska’s crevasses?
Oh dear! My oh my!
What’s the party to do?
Hey, are you busy now,
Mister Magoo?
I come not to praise Obama and the Democrats, but to explain them.
Money runs the system. Money controls the media. Every bit of news we get is distorted through corporate lenses that are guaranteed to disperse confusion and misinformation. The military/industrial complex is so intertwined that we really can’t tell who is running this show, the Constitution or the gun. Given all this which almost every poster on the thread understands as well as I do, what di you expect the Dems to do?
One could make the argument that they have performed over reasonable expectation, given the above, but I won’t bother with that faced with the even dimmer prospect of this Country’s future. BIL is correct the choice of lesser evils does mean either the long, or short road to hell. However, the long road gives us the opportunity of developing strategies that might ultimate allow us (those truly interested in freedom despite political predilection) to find a way to prevail.
Revolutions are ultimately doomed to failure despite the rhetoric of the leaders. This is because the real issue of humanity has always been that sociopathic types gain leadership roles. Alpha Males preach whatever philosophy they fancy will get them power, but the philosophy is only a means to power and never really the point for them.
Given all this I’ll choose the “slow road to hell” and hope that some of us are smart enough to find a way out of this conundrum.
In my mind and in my emotions I can’t look at individual human suffering as a microcosm, to be pushed aside by macro-cosmic necessity. If the Republicans gain legislative power in this vote, many more of the forgotten “little people” will be harmed or destroyed. I’ve seen and experienced far too much pain in my life knowing others, or personally.
To change the game and results one you have to bring your already comprehensive understanding of its’ nature (true of most posters on this thread)an with that understanding know the limits of what can really be accomplished quickly.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/jon-stewarts-takedown-of-gops-pledge-to-america-same-sht-we-heard-before-video.php?ref=fpb
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/23/we-d-be-worse-off-if-obama-had-not-acted.html Howard Fineman is leaving Newsweek to write for the Huffington Post.
safe not save.
Elaine He will be the energy committee chair when the republicans win. He is in a safe district. DeLay made sure the powerful republicans have very save districts in Texas.
Swarthmoremom,
You talkin’ ’bout Joe “I apologize to BP” Barton? You mean you wouldn’t want him in charge of the Energy & Commerce Committee?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj1lrvNDkCE&fs=1&hl=en_US]