First, what Mr. A swears made him finally understand what in the unholy blue hell is going on in the economy and why what looks to outsiders like a bunch of banker schmoes losing their shirts has become a problem for everybody. My opinion remains that action at any point in the past two decades to unfuck this country of ours might have averted the current crisis, and thus I have little patience for the present sense of urgency, ie, welcome to the partywhere the HELL have you been? As I said in comments to another post a few days ago, I am willing to believe that something should be done to repair our economy. I am not willing to believe that the current crop of fascists and fools in Congress has any idea what it is, or can carry it off successfully. Reassure me on the latter, and you’ll have me on the former, but good luck with that, really.
Digby offers something else that makes me profoundly tired:
The congress is going back to the drawing board. And maybe they’ll hammer out another plan. But the political question is who is in the driver’s seat this time. Clearly, the country is operating without a president right now — he has absolutely no juice to get anything done and his administration is so discredited that they can’t rally the public. Leadership on this is left to the Democrats. ( Republicans are going to go on strike just like the bankers and leave the whole thing in their hands.) If that’s the case, then the Democrats should set forth a real progressive plan — a New Deal for the 21st century.
Because I’m sorry, but we have seen this before. We have seen world event after world event after domestic horror after domestic horror offer the party the opportunity to stand up and say, “Not this time. Just this far, and no farther, and it stops right now.” We saw it in 2004 with Kerry and we saw it in 2005 with Katrina and we saw it in 2006 with the new majority and we saw it this year with FISA, the turning point at which no one turned. The place to make a stand, at which everyone remained sitting right where they were. I mean, I’m sorry, I know he’s a wacky little elf and all, butDennis Kucinich has been screaming this shit since 2003, when I first became aware of him:
Yet the most impassioned applause of the day was reserved for Kucinich. Introduced by Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America, as “the only vegan in Congress,” Kucinich took the stage to John Lennon’s “Imagine” and proceeded to conjure the heyday of American progressivism by promising a new version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. “We’re gonna rebuild America’s cities, and we’re gonna do it with America’s steel,” he roared, his voice far larger than his elfin frame. In his spellbinding speech, Kucinich laid out a lefty’s dream platform: Medicare for all, money pulled out of the Pentagon budget to pay for schools and other domestic programs, and “total nuclear disarmament.” He spoke to the crowd’s fury over the war in Iraq, getting a screaming standing ovation when he cried, “This war was wrong! This war was fraudulent! We must expose this administration!”
And you couldn’t pay the Bush Dogs and the other ten-a-penny hacks to listen, much less care.
I wrote thisback in 2005:
I think we run by saying we are going to physically, with our hands and with hammers and nails, put right what went so wrong. I think we start right now, today, by calling for a comprehensive reconstruction program, with deadlines, goals, benchmarks to be met, with a built in Truman Commission to prevent no-bid contracting to companies like Halliburton. I think we start calling for that, as one, with one voice. I think in the face of terror and tragedy we become the people who say, you can overcome this, we will help you, have courage, have hope. Have hope.
The room for action has been there over and over and over again. For years now. Years. We are arguing with ourselves about something so completely self-evident that it should be classified a sin, that we can’t recognize it by now.
That I am supporting Obama, is in the hope that with a White House in their control, they’ll be less cowed. That with the example of what someone can do to inspire Americans to move, they might realize we’re all here, we’re all ready, we’re all hungry for it. We’re listening. All they have to do is speak. That I am supporting Obama, it’s in the belief that the simple “whoa, holy, shit, look at all those people who arefucking pissed off at stuff” will finally sink in.
Let’s not kid ourselves, though. This isn’t exactly the first big opening they’ve had to do something. This isn’t their first chance to fail. They’ve had chance after chance, and they’ve never missed a single one yet.
A.