The GOP/T-Baggers have been crying about the “radical” agenda of the evil Obama/Pelosi Kommunist Kabal, and have been doing everything in their power to stop it, ie. filibustering everything in sight.

The Dems, for their part, have made their frustration with the obstructionist Repubican’ts palpable, yet at the same time boast how much they’ve accomplished.  Truly, by historic terms this current Congress and the first half of the first term of the Obama administration must qualify as “transformational.”  Although we’re still in trouble economically, blame for which has not (yet) stuck to this president, the new direction we are heading cements his place in history.

Health care.  That alone would do the trick.  But we also have a student loan overhaul and a boost to Pell Grants, a flawed but first in a generation restructuring of financial regulation, much needed infrastructure investment, shoring up of Medicare, and a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia that would have had Ronald Reagan fans swooning. 

And tax cuts!  Don’t forget tax cuts.  $288 Billion in tax cuts! For the middle class this time.  The Economic Recovery Act (fondly known in Blogtopistan as Stimzilla) really did have something for everyone – except 99% of the Republicans in Congress even though roughly half of the thing was right in line with their supply-side agenda.

So just what are the Republicans running against this year in the midterms?  (They have yet to articulate anything they are “for” in a coherent manner, but they’ve been bitching up a storm about both the status quo and the what the Dems want – what those commies are “for.”) 

Dems: “Can’t get nothing done cuz those damn Republicans won’t let us – but … but … but … Lookie all the crap we got done! Please send cash and reward our accomplishments even though we can’t get anything done cuz we did so much!”

Reps: “Those damn Democrats are screwing everything up and we can’t stop them – even though we’ve filibustered everything we are … FAIL. Please send cash to reward us for doing nothing except trying to stop the Obama/Pelosi agenda, which we can totally do and completely reverse if we gain more seats in the Senate than are up for grabs and get a supermajority to impeach the President which we totally can’t do!”

Progressives: “You guys totally sold us out!”

T-Baggers: “You guys are total sell-outs!”

Media: “If you look closely, you can totally see that the fuzz in my belly-button is more blue than gray, even though my shirt was mauve and …. Look! Shiny!”

Average voter: “Yawn.”

It’s really not that hard.  Paul and Brad and their assorted brethren try to dumb it down for the masses, but too often eyes glaze over at even the mention of marginal rates and unemployment extensions, austerity versus stimulus, deficits and debt, stocks, bonds, markets and credit-default-swaps.

The basics are always the same, whether you’re a Wall Street baron or contemplating a change in your IRA or 401k.  Buy low, sell high.  That goes for investments in real estate, a stamp collection or baseball cards.

My economics professors tried their damnest to confuse and befuddle me with their charts and graphs and technical jargon bordering on a foreign language, but even a child has an instinctive understanding of the basic principle that scarcity leads to an increase in price.  Sandy Koufax baseball jerseys are a rarity and thus you can expect to auction one off for a mint.  However, he only pitched one perfect game, and if you’re planning on bidding on that unique item – the very uniform he wore on September 9, 1965, plan on outbidding the Sultan of Dubai.

The converse is naturally true.  Surplus equals a lower price. It there’s a glut on the market, like what happens when you can poke a hole any old place in the ground and black gold gushers up to the surface (and you manage to collect it instead of just pouring it into the sea), the price goes down. 

A lot of factors go into deflating prices from surplus.  Competition among sellers tends to bid a price lower.  Cost savings from mass production permits an increase in profit, which can be cut without hurting owners/shareholders in order to gain greater market share. (Okay, this is starting to sound like the jargon I used to hate, but bear with me.) 

Economies of Scale also affect prices, where you can afford to buy in bulk at a reduced wholesale cost, divvy the goods up into smaller portions and sell them for more than it cost you per unit originally.  Wall Mart does this on a mammoth scale, but so does your local pot dealer who buys two pound bricks and sells you a couple of joints for the Bon Jovi concert.

In fact, economies of scale, as well as the notion that a surplus won’t last forever leading to price inflation in the market over time, compels an investor to buy items that can be had at surplus pricing before the market reacts.  Some deals won’t last forever.

Grumbling that that things just won’t stay the way they are, Alan Greenspan misses the point, not surpirsingly since from his pampered ivory tower his self-denial and whacked-out priorities always ignore the actual lives in the balance when he ticks off unemployment statistics.  He’s right, though.  Interest rates will not stay as low as they are, and credit capacity (Wall Street Speak for cash available to loan but sitting in a vault instead) will not be as great as it is forever.  But neither will there be a perpetual labor force glut with one in ten of your neighbors looking for work.  At least I hope not.

Right now we have a unique opportunity, a one of a kind, Sandy Koufax jersey moment when it comes to launching this nation into the future or flushing it all down the toilet — missing a once a generation opportunity.  Despite the massive debt rolled up over the post-Reagan era, our government still – miraculously – has excess money it can borrow cheap. 

We can invest in people.  We can invest in jobs.  We can invest in clean energy and infrastructure.  We have a beat up labor force willing and able to work for less, and we can borrow now to pay them knowing they’ll pay back the debt their employment creates with interests if we put them to work in things that will make this nation more efficient, more competitive, more self-sufficient in the future.

Build the Supertrains, the center lane for I-95 all the way from Maine to Miami, the giant windmill and solar farms, hell, even the nuke plants as long as we spend the gazzillion dollars needed to make ‘em safe.  They promised us flying cars, lets build ‘em, and places to park them too.  Tired of your smart phone cutting out as you travel through dead zones in the net?  We can wire the whole nation for high speed internet access, wirelessly.  It won’t be done unless AT&T can figure out how to do it at a profit, or We The People decide it’s worth the investment.  It’ll never be cheaper to do than right now.

Lincoln built the transcontinental railways during the Civil Frickin’ War people — so don’t talk to me about this not being the right time for thinking big.  It was downright bleak during World War I, but we emerged as an economic powerhouse after massive investments in mining and factories, bringing women and African Americans out of the kitchens and farms and creating a modern workforce. FDR pushed through the Alaska Highway during WWII.  Ike built the Interstate Highway system during the hottest part of the Cold War and we paid for it by borrowing and taxing millionaires 80%.

We made this country great through deficits that invested in infrastructure and people, not hand-outs to corporate moguls who we taxed, taxed, taxed instead.

We are, again, a sleeping giant that has been napping for decades.  We CAN do this.  We can if we get off our fat, pampered asses and get to work, insisting our leaders find something for us to do and pay us decently for doing it, ironically, with our own money.

See, economics is simple.  There’s a lot of people who can do a lot of stuff it would have cost too much to do before Bush wreaked the country and put so many workers on the streets.  Right now, you can be bought cheap, cuz there’s a lot of you who’ll do those jobs Americans didn’t want to do.  We need your government to invest in you while you’re cheap.

Bubba has certainly been in the news a bunch lately between his go-between role in the Sestak non-job offer nonsense and stumping for Blanche Lincoln, insulting her progressive opposition just for sport.

I was reminded of his excuse to the Netroots Nation crowd in Pittsburgh back in ‘09 when he was interrupted/heckled by a LGBT activist about DADT:

“You want to talk about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?” Clinton said. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military.”

I know I’m not alone, not by a long shot — but I have to tell you I’m more than a bit weary of Bill Clinton wagging his finger at me as he throws bullshit my way.  We’re trying to make Congress more progressive, just like he suggested.  So why is he working so hard to keep right wing Democrats in power?

As with all politicians, it’s what they do, not what the say that counts.  Here we have Bill working to get one the of most notorious obstacles to health care reform reelected, a woman whose opposition to the public option nearly sank the whole effort. 

That and the Sestak thing.  Admiral Sestak was running against a guy who was a Republican a year ago for Pete’s sake, and Bubba was trying to maneuver him out of the race.  At least Arlen Specter hasn’t decided to pull a Lieberman.

The mind reels thinking about what things would be like — and how far along impeachment proceedings would be by now — had Bill Clinton been living in the White House as First Dude (no matter how extremely competent Hillary was at managing the country).  Of course, if it was John McCain there with Evita Mooselini living down the street in the Naval Observatory I’ve no doubt we’d be in the middle of a full blown civil insurrection caused by a complete meltdown of what was left of the world’s economic systems, living in a diplomatically quarantined United States after officially being deemed a rogue nation by any decent governments left intact.  So fanciful concerns like who Slick Willie would be playing hide-the-cigar with in the Executive Mansion seem quaint by comparison.

The good news is the David Broder/Brooks bipartisan fetishists and some of the other original Clinton Derangement Syndrome victims are finally seeing Bill Clinton’s support among the Democratic base dissolve.  There will be fancy dress parties and celebratory feasts in The Village toasting his political downfall … again … just like the last six times they thought he was through.  What happens if we ever see a real liberal in charge instead of the homogenized centrist who get painted as commie-fascists anyway?

One more point. The disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991, already weakened by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact alliance, was inevitable once Russia followed the Baltic States lead and threatened to secede from the union.

Stick that in your teacup.

Krugman:  

[H]ere’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former
speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an
intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform,
“They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered
the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

While the Poorman went to Google to debunk Mitt RomneyCare’s greatest threat beyond the Wassilla Hillbilly, I took a gander at Wikipedia and noted the Democratic Party held on to it’s 60+ super-majority in the Senate well past the Johnson years, right up until 1979. They didn’t lose the majority until 1981, gaining it back in ‘87.  The House remained safely Democratic until 1995 when Clinton lost both Houses.  Bush (43) gave them both right back to the Democrats of course in 2007.

So yeah, if by saying, “Johnson shattered
the Democratic Party for 40 years” Gingrich meant the Republicans were able to stall progress and prevent the completion of the Great Society for 40 years by gaining the White House for all but 12 of those years and it taking 30 years after the Civil Rights Act before the GOP won control of both houses of Congress, completely failing to roll-back a single tenant of the Great Society or the New Deal even when they won the White House five years later — then sure Newt, LBJ shattered the Democratic Party. 

What. Ev. Er.

Another shrewd guy is General David Petraeus.  Whether or not you like the guy, ya gotta give him props.

Leaks from a recent top level briefing by General David Petraeus are causing quite a controversy. The general pointed out that, “Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region.” Mark Perry reported this on March 13 in Foreign Policy.

At Petraeus’s pay grade, you have to be politically savvy as well as diplomatically aware.  But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude one of the biggest obstacles accomplishing anything, anywhere in the middle east is our cozy relationship with Israel.  The real question is whether the Arab world will buy the kabuki theater where Israel makes such an obvious diplomatic blunder it would leave the US with no choice but to rebuke it’s greatest ally in the region.

And it plays.  It works here at home to allow our administration to show it’s backbone to Arab allies with the support of all but the most die-hard AIPAC and NeoCon malcontents at the Weekly Standard and the assorted Town Hall blogger.  The Village is eating this up.

Nicely done.  The only question left is what will the Obama administration do with its new found (Arab) street cred.  One also wonders how far the Israelis will play this.  The other shoe is due to drop in a couple of weeks at the AIPAC conference when Netahyahu pays a visit.

WALLACE: I know that three years is an eternity in politics. But how hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played — and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do.

Really Sarah?  Buchanan? War in Iran? Seriously? There are three distinct hooks we can hang our critical hat on in this one simple (for her) answer.

Note the cynical, almost casually callous way she invokes the notion of a war with a nation that has committed zero acts of aggression towards us, never in (modern) history started a war despite its bluster against the West and Israel, a sovereign nation of 74 million people, twice as many as California, and almost as large as Alaska. She thinks this is a political winner? Now?  In the middle of two wars on either side of Iran?  You and whose army Sarah?  Never forget, war is just a game to neocons.

And that brings me to the second point. She has no original ideas, no thoughts of her own.  Small wonder she is the darling of people like Bill Kristol. She’s an empty vessel, much like George W. Bush, so adverse to learning, to understanding how tings really work with no appreciation for history whatsoever that the warmongering cultists at the America Enterprise Institution can easily propagate her brain with tough sounding sloganeering containing little or no substance or foundation in reality.  Turning our foreign policy over to the whims of Israel’s militant wing is the thematic backbone of neocon dogma.  It’s like she’s the long lost third daughter of Dick Cheney.

Last … Pat Buchanan? Really? You’re admitting you crib notes from one of the most notorious xenophobes in American politics? A guy who ran for president more times than Jesse Jackson and lost in such spectacular fashion three cycles in a row?  That Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative Nixonite, culture warrior who, by the way, was one of the lonely few on the right who opposed the invasion of Iraq you incessantly cheer-lead for?  Good strategy that.

This all assumes that Palin herself would advocate a war on Iraq if she were running for office.  Or is she being almost too clever by half?  She ain’t, and never will be a serious candidate.  She’s a flirt, and will milk that to sell her brand, but that’s all.  I’ll take her at her word that she is offering advice to President Obama, advice from someone dedicated to his failure, hoping he’s as stupid as she is and do something guaranteed to cut his term in office short — just like she did to her own stint as a chief executive.

Bush still had a congressional majority when he tried, and failed, to fix immigration, which tore his party in two. I’ll give him education reform, something he put through with decent bi-partisan support (most importantly, with help from the late Ted Kennedy who was also expecting No Child Left Behind to be funded).  However,  President Obama plans a sweeping overhaul of education policy to fix the gaping holes and unmanageable metrics Bush’s plan left behind.

Bush also pushed through two huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (which are about to expire) on top of the unfunded Medicare Drug Plan (addressed in both the House and Senate bills), plus starting a couple of pathetically run wars (now hopefully being handled more responsibly with less cowboy “strategery”), the illegal one about to be wound down.

Bush’s stunning nose-dive in approval, from 90% to 22%, helped usher in Democratic majorities in Congress and all but assured that whoever won the Democratic Primary would become our next President.  But it was his foreign policy fiascoes that were primarily responsible for bring him down and contributed to thwarting his late term legislative initiatives.

There never was any sense that the Democrats ever wanted to take George W. Bush down they way they want to with Obama, and tried with Clinton.  Within hours of the 2006 “Thumpin’” that turned Congress over to the Democrats, Speaker Pelosi announced that impeachment was “off the table.”  These two parties simply operate with different rules.  One wants to actually govern, while the other doesn’t care if they accomplish anything as long as they can say they “won.”

When all is said and done, it doesn’t look like there will be any lasting effects from the Bush Administration’s agenda, save for the hundreds of thousands killed, millions forces from their homes and the dreams of a comfortable retirement for so many Americans shattered. 

The list of Obama’s legislative accomplishments is pretty impressive when you put it in perspective, a first year’s laundry list that trumps anything since the New Deal or the Great Society according to Norm Ornstein (via):

[T]his Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama already has the most legislative success of any modern president — and that includes Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. The deep dysfunction of our politics may have produced public disdain, but it has also delivered record accomplishment.

* * *

Most of this has been accomplished without any support from Republicans in either the House or the Senate — an especially striking fact, since many of the initiatives of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security and Medicare, attracted significant backing from the minority Republicans.

It’s a pretty striking wish (fulfillment) list, even if the gaping hole known as Health Care Reform languishes in perdition:

We stabilized the banks:

• The economy is now growing again, really growing,
• Passed a credit card holders’ bill of rights,
• Providing for stiff oversight of the TARP funds.

Saved 2 million jobs:

• 200,000 for work in construction and clean energy,
• 300,000 are teachers and other education workers,
• Tens of thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, first responders.
• Extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans,

Passed 25 different tax cuts covering 95 percent of working families:

• Cut taxes for small businesses,
• Cut taxes for first-time homebuyers,
• Cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children,
• Cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.

Made some health care reforms in advance of the sweeping changes that are closer than ever to becoming a reality:
Made COBRA 65 percent cheaper,

• Approved $19 billion for health-information technology,
• Passed $1 billion for research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments.
• Expanding children’s health insurance
• Allowed the FDA to regulate tobacco

Even passed some infrastructure modernizations with “massive investments” in:

• Green technologies,
• Clean water,
• The largest land conservation law in nearly two decades,
• A smart grid for electricity,
• $70 billion or more in energy and environmental programs,
• $7 billion was allotted to expand broadband and wireless Internet access.

Of course, neither the Pundiocracy, the public nor Greater Blogistan should let facts get in their way, especially when this Congress, which has accomplished so much in so little time, has a dismal approval rating.  Pile on, kick the dogs when they’re down. 

The nearly complete absence of cronies and lobbyists from administration positions, federal boards and commissions has only made it easier to count and point out the few that got exemptions.  Where was the snark when Bush let lobbyists write his budget or Cheney and his oil executive buddy’s took crayolas to the map of Iraq?  Watching the Health Care sausage get made has us sick to death of the debate, but that hasn’t stopped the carping because every discussion with everyone, everywhere wasn’t on CSPAN once actual legislation passed both houses of Congress.

Yep, unemployment sucks beyond belief, and that overshadows all things great and small.  But could it also be that our liberal media, the real liberals like Olbermann and Schuster, may have forsaken policy analysis for gotcha games with rival conservative pundits and the tweets of rat-F’er wannabees?

The rally cry for every incumbent Democrat this fall should be: “Have you SEEN the list of what we got done?”

UPDATE: DRAFT ED PETITION

Where would the Anti-Beck, Ed Schultz be more effective?  Should he run for the Senate as requested by retiring Senator Byron Dorgan and the party elders, that august body that deliberates the sweeping changes this nation so desparately needs at a glacial pace?  Or should he remain in broadcasting, fighting the culture war and acting as one of the few voices countering Beck’s lies, misinformation and hysterics while continuing to educate the public with, you know … facts.

I’m thinking Senator Dorgan should call a do-over and chalk up his decision to retire as a senior moment.  But if wishes were horses…

By the way, this all presupposes he’d win.  North Dakota is a fairly conservative state, as all prairie states tend to be.  But I’ve no doubt about Ed’s popularity, and witnessing his enthusiasm at the dozens and dozens of town halls he’s held from Alaska to North Carolina, frankly, I think he’s better “on the stump” than at 30 Rock.  He’s at his best with a live audience, better than the more free-form radio show that made him famous and without the constraints the slice-n-dice format requires for televised news shows.  He just never seems comfortable in the studio … or wearing a tie.  With his charisma and messaging ability, he’s got a helluva shot.

I honestly don’t know what I’d do if I were Ed, what he and his wife Wendy have to consider in such a big move.  There’s a brass ring there for the grasping, and Zarathustra knows we could use more true progressives in the Government.  There’s also the Peter Principle to consider.  But my question is more broad … and selfish.  Where does Ed do the most good for the nation, for the nation that we liberals want to see?

I wonder what Al Franken would advise him.  Is the broadcasting war more important, more effective by offering a much-needed and solid platform for progressive ideas nationally, or (if he wins) getting in there where policy is made and one vote matters so very much?  Okay, I know what Al would say because we all saw what Al did, and I love him for it.

There’s a reason Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh never ran for anything.  Their proffered sense of faux patriotism, in conformity with their notion of conservatism, doesn’t allow them to take a pay cut — because they love their country so much, Feh!

Go for it Big Guy.

I’ve mentioned before that the ratio of Churches to Bars in this town is out of whack. In fact a great deal of the churches look like they used to be bars, but this is just weird.

Imagine going to a new church for the very first time … especially if you haven’t been inside one for a bit. You start to look for a seat and everyone in the pews turns around and shouts, “Norm!”

Double the freak out if your name actually is Norm.