Michael Moore and Lawrence O'Donnell: Man, those Republicans! They get it!

Oooh, that hurts. The two Democrats who still admit they're Democrats sittin' and jawin' about how Obama got it wrong and the Republicans got it right. 

Okay, we know the message the Republicans have honed to perfection is this:  Cut the budget and the taxes and keep Big Money happy and the government will fall and life will be good.  It's a downright nutty message, considering the state of our economy and the pain that's been inflicted on the working class by the people who keep spreading it, but they get away with it because while we, the lousy, lonely hoi polloi, keep complaining about their cheating and their lying and their back-stabbing, Obama and the Dems in congress keep stroking them and feeding them in hopes that they'll lie down and sleep awhile. 

They're animals, for chrissake.  They're not going to do it!

Moore:  "This is what I love about Republicans.  I honestly secretly  really admire them because, man, they have guts.  They come in with both guns blazing; they take no prisoners. . . There's 420 bills that the house has already passed that the senate could pass right now because we have enough votes to do that.  Yet they won't do it, I know they won't do it.  Even the simple child nutrition bill. They won't do it.  but I'll tell you what--if this was--the shoe was on the other foot--if this was the Republicans in a lame duck session, dammit, they'd be passing as much as they could because that's how they are.  Because they believe in something.  And that's why Americans love the Republicans.  Because they just believe in something."

O'Donnell: "And their guts come from a very simple minded position:  cut taxes.  Which is their answer to everything, including job creation.  I've asked Republicans, 'tell me how you would create jobs'.  The answer is the same every time:  'I would extend the low tax brackets we currently have for everyone, especially and including the top tax brackets, because low tax brackets miraculously create jobs'.  Though there is no evidence for that."

Moore:  "There is absolutely no impirical evidence to support that position. . ."

O'Donnell:  "But who cares?  The Republicans hang in there."



In that video clip Michael Moore talked about a new website that lists Obama's achievements in a really clever way.  I forgot to go to the website that night, but this morning I had an email from that very bunch.  I've been getting a lot of emails with achievement lists lately, but this one is fun.  (There are two versions, one using WTF and one using WTH.  So you just know, don't you, that I'm going to use the "heck" version.  But when you get there you can switch to the WTF version. It's exactly the same, but one is for me and one is for you.):

http://whattheheckhasobamadonesofar.com/

But we still haven't answered the question of how we light a fire under Obama and the Dems in congress.  They're feeling dismal after the mid-terms when they should be feeling stupid.  It's not like we haven't been trying to tell them.

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Amid the Sturm und Drang, a Moment Sublime

This was a week of dizzying visuals--Christine O'Donnell flubbing a radio interview and then threatening to sue the station if they air it. A reporter being strong-armed and handcuffed for questioning a candidate. A woman being thrown to the ground and head-clamped by a jack-booted patriot who now wants an apology from her.  A Democrat thrown to the ground and body-slammed at an Eric Cantor rally.

And just when I thought things were getting about as disturbing as they could get, up pops Charlie Sheen in another installment of his Hey wait!  Watch this! crash and burn melodrama.


Add to all of that the incessant news that the Republicans (now an arm of the Tea Party) are likely going to take over the house and possibly the senate, and I had every good reason to hate this week. I didn't realize, when I kept going back again and again to immerse myself in the few magnificent moments from an earlier "Last Word"where Lawrence O'Donnell apologized to RNC chairman Michael Steele for comments he had made the night before, that this was my therapy, my solace, my way of establishing that there are, in fact, some remnants of humanity still struggling to grab hold. 

I missed the original program, but I heard about it the next day, when the blogosphere was abuzz with the news that Lawrence, just days into his new MSNBC show, had made what looked a whole lot like  racial slurs toward Michael Steele in a pre-recorded intro.  This is what Lawrence said:

 As the first congressional election during his party chairmanship approaches, Michael Steele is dancing as fast as he can trying to charm independent voters and Tea Partiers while never losing sight of his real master and paycheck provider, the Republican National Committee.

Okay, that wasn't good.  I'm a huge Lawrence fan, going back to his days with The West Wing, my favorite TV series of all time, but this--coming so soon after his icky, un-Lawrence-like interview with Alvin Greene, where O'Donnell's main concern seemed to be the origin of Alvin's nick-name, Turtle, and whether or not the poor man was a witch.

I look at the hapless Alvin Greene, the unlikely and astonishingly inarticulate and unprepared  Democratic senate candidate from South Carolina, and see someone who needs protecting.  Alvin Greene needs a mom out there.  Whatever his original reasons for running for high office, he's finding himself the laughing stock of an entire nation, and yet he plugs on.  Time and time again his handlers set him up for the worst kinds of abuses, and he obediently goes out there and does the job as well as he's able.  That he can't now and probably never will be anything other than poor Alvin doesn't seem to phase either his handlers or the members of the media who see his fumblings as great sport.

I sincerely expected better of Lawrence O'Donnell.  And just when I was ready to concede that even someone with Lawrence's integrity can sell out to popularity-grab and celebrity-lust, he makes a dazzling come-back with his apology to Michael Steele:


 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 I'm not a huge fan of Michael Steele, truth be told, but that was about as classy an act as I've seen from a Republican in a long time.  I want to believe, after watching that clip over and over again, that we have a chance.

If, on Wednesday, November 3, we wake up to a whole new world of the same old crap, I'll somehow manage to get through the day by remembering that fleeting moment of political man's humanity to political man.
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Shut your damned Enthusiasm Gap and get out there and DO something

We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor - who even attack labor as unpatriotic - they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune- every four years- just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends.
 
I got quite a laugh, for example - and I am sure that you did - when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their National Convention in Chicago last July: "The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws."
 
You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that Convention Hall would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight. Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy - and much money - in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, and in the press, and in the courts, ever since this Administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation. That is a fair example of their insincerity and of their inconsistency. 

The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.

Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery - but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.

FDR, September 23, 1944

Okay, I feel like the mother hen here--the dotty old mother hen who keeps repeating herself, even when it's clear that nobody wants to listen.  We mother hens do this, not because we're so keen on being royal pains-in-the-ass, but because we're keen on looking at the big picture and keeping it real. 

So, yes, I've said this before and I'll say it again:  We Dems/Libs/Progs need to do everything we can to keep the Democrats in control.  If we don't, the Republicans win and their gloating will take the form of locking us in towers and throwing away the keys.  They haven't even won yet, but on the strength of polls and pundits telling them they will, they're already planning ways to kill the few puny safety nets we've been able to jimmy into place.

So along with the satisfaction you get from gunning for the Democrats who in your view are either clueless or cowardly or in bed with the corporates, you might want to give a thought to how all that griping is fueling the other side.  They're loving these little internecine battles, because while all that spitting and hissing is going on, they can move on down that low road with nary a care in the world. 

I'm not going to rehash the horrors that will be unleashed if the Republicans take over congress, because there are others who have done it much more thoroughly already.  It will be bad.  You know that.  It will be so bad, we'll wonder how we could have let it happen again.  We'll pretend we didn't have anything to do with it--that the Big Money/Tea Party juggernaut was just too much for us.  But we'll be lying to ourselves, won't we?  All of this energy going toward attacking our own should be going toward attacking them. They are the enemy of the people, the destroyers of the universe (given half a chance), and we have an obligation to heal the wounds, not make them deeper.

The One Nation rally should be enough to convince us that we have the power if we'll only just use it.  It's a lie that we are a right-leaning country.  We couldn't have accomplished as much as we did if we had historically followed the dictates of the right.  We would never have had a healthy labor movement, a vibrant middle class, a claim to the title of greatest power on earth, without liberal pressure and sweat.  We built this country; they tore it down.  Now we're trying to rebuild and they're on the fast-track to tearing it down again. 

 The press is profiting from the looniness of the Right Wing and spends almost all of their time mooning over them.  Meanwhile, the good folks with mountains of practical, beneficent ideas but no talent for hawking them sit around and wait their turn.  Still, I'm seeing encouraging signs of a momentum building.  The Huffington Post, for example, has a new page called "Third World America", where real people talk about real problems and real solutions.  Elizabeth Warren finally has the president's ear, and someone is actually quoting the irrepressibly sensible Bernie Sanders.   Al Franken's heart is a hit on the senate floor.  Rachel Maddow has become an unlikely and refreshingly brilliant star.  Lawrence O'Donnell--smart guy in his own right--has his own show.  Michael Moore gives the Dems five steps to a win and in his follow-up he sees some progress.  And President Obama is beginning to sound like his old self.

It's a start.

So what's it going to be?  The Republicans taking over congress and making sure none of our programs ever see the light of day?  Or the Democrats winning a clear majority, sending a message to the entire country about where our priorities must lie? 

I'm declaring a moratorium on Democrat-bashing until the elections are over.  If you're not willing to get on board, I'm blaming you for everything that happens from here on out.

Have a nice day.

Ramona