Sunday, November 7

email from activist.the pen... Read and pass on

The first shipment of beautiful embroidered caps for the full length feature movie we are producing on indicting Cheney for torture, entitled "The Last War Crime", are in the first class mail, and if you have already requested one it should arrive any day. Call it a fantasy film if you like, but sometimes life imitates art. If you would like to read the first part of the script, or request your own cap to support the production, here is the page for that. The Last War Crime movie caps: http://www.peaceteam.net/last_war_crime.php

And now, tonight's alert. Of all the commentary we have heard in the aftermath of this week's election debacle, we have heard not one pundit yet who actually has a clue about what is really going on. So you will have to hear it from us. Of course, if you have been on our list any length of time you already have, but maybe you did not believe us the first time. We must respectfully remind you that we told you that all this is exactly what would happen unless we took stronger action to demand a REAL health care reform bill in particular, instead of that groaning load of corporate special interest dictated and favoring rubbish we ended up with. And by the way, if we were official prophets you would owe us a new pair of sandals right about now. It was March of earlier this year and the title of our alert was "The Democratic Party's Plan To Throw The Next Couple Elections". Look it up, the text was published on OpEdNews.com and is still there. http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Democratic-Party-s-Pla-by-thepen-100307-583.html

For those with short attention spans (from corporate media conditioning) who think our alerts are too long, we suggest you knuckle down and actually read our words this time and see if they start to make sense to you. And please take particular note we said "The Next Couple Elections" PLURAL. Because this is just round one of the dynamic we foretold. As we predicted then, in round two the Republicans will use their electoral gains to push to repeal the almost universally despised health care bill, despised by the right because it does anything even cosmetically good, and despised by the left because it was fundamentally just a total sell out. If the Republicans fall short on repeal this time, they will campaign in 2012 on the platform that they need to take over the Senate and the White House so that the bill can be repealed, and they will win in ANOTHER landslide of historic proportions.

Alternatively, if the Democrats set a new Guiness world record in the publicly perceived as wet noodles department, they will all lose their seats anyway so the result will be the same. Either way, the Democratic party as a viable political power force is finished for at least the next election cycle. Stick a fork in it, it's done. We see no scenario of possible recovery from this. It's over. The only reason they did not lose back the Senate in round one is because only a third of the seats were in play. The rest they will lose the next time for sure. We are skeptical that primary challenges are even a productive option anymore.

The Democratic party has so totally betrayed the people who voted for them, who had faith in them, who believed in them, we must confront the real possibility that nobody will believe a word coming out of the mouth of anyone running AS a Democrat ever again. And the thing that really aggravates us the most about all this are people still whining that the Democrats need to get a spine. Democrats have plenty of spine when they are arresting people calling for single payer and dragging them out of hearing rooms. They have plenty of spine when they are refusing to allow a vote on even the most feeble of public options. They have plenty of spine when they are calling us bleepity-bleep retards. Rather, Democrats tolerate being PERCEIVED as cowards. Because if people thought for one nanosecond that they were not cowards, then people would have to confront the stark truth that the Democrats are IN ON IT.

They are in on the corporate corruption. They are nothing but enablers, all of them, from top to bottom, front to back, ESPECIALLY the so-called progressives, without exception. They are willingly and knowingly playing the role of Judy in this Punch and Judy show, and NOTHING is going to change about that for them, for ever and ever, end of story, period. We told you after the final health care vote what needed to be done about it. We told you that we needed to build a massive Independent Voters movement, with greater numbers than either the Democratic or Republican parties. We asked you to go to a Facebook page we created for this purpose and just become a fan, that's all, just become a fan. Here is that page. Independent Voters page: http://www.facebook.com/IndependentVoters Something shy of 7,000 of you did then.

Obviously it was not enough. So we ask you again. Go the page above and just become a fan. Talk among yourselves. When we see 100,000 over there we will know there is some chance for real change. Until then, we are fooling nobody but ourselves. And we close with an exact quote from an even earlier alert, from September of 2009, which again you can still reading in its entirety on OpEdNews.com, where we warned you that the whole health care reform debate was a total fraud and that no "public option" of any kind would survive in the final bill. http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Obama-s-New-Improved-Lee-by-thepen-090913-493.htmlHere is the quote from the conclusion of the alert documented on the page above.

"And THAT is Obama's REAL plan, the one he won't talk about in a public speech, to let the weakest possible 'public option' hang around for a little while as an illusory sop for the terminally gullible, only to bleed it to death before it can actually go into effect. Yes, THIS is Obama's new 'improved' leech therapy." Lord, the hate mail we got about that one. People yelling at us telling us we were full of it. Calling us racists. Read the words again. And now ask yourself in all candor, "Ain't it the truth?" Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

Wednesday, November 3

MIDTERM POST MORTEM

How can a man be so intelligent and educated and yet not get what a mook like me understands?

The sociopaths in the Right Wing regrouped after their 2008 thumping, stuck together (you gotta give them that!) and made their intentions plain. Jim DeMint(R-SC) announced early on that the GOP planned to make health care reform Obama’s “Waterloo.”

Mitch McConnell stated baldly before the election that their number one goal is to make Obama a one term president.

And newly minted Speaker Boehner pronounced their total rejection of any compromise whatsoever. The Republicans will play ball with Obama but only if they can make all the rules and Obama ties his hands behind his back.

Yesterday’s results were really rather predictable given the polls earlier in the year. The public option was wildly popular and many progressives fought very hard for its inclusion in the weak tea that the health reform bill became. When it was clear that the White House had sold reform down the river from the get-go by making a behind-closed-doors deal with the insurance cartel and Big Pharma, many in the base – like me – became very demoralized.

The Democrats had taken all their political capital and squandered it on a weak bill with some good things in it but which also contained the extremely disliked mandate. So the Federal Government was forcing people to buy health insurance from the bastards who were ripping the public off and dropping them from the rolls. A public option would have been the spoonful of sugar to make the mandate go down. But instead, the White House, perhaps in a misguided effort to court Republican support, sacrificed the base.

I was one of the dispirited many who felt very let down, betrayed even. Despite that, I contributed what I could to ActBlue and made phone calls for Harry Reid, Alan Grayson and Joe Sestak. And of course, I voted for Democrats. I would never not vote.

Last night was more than disappointing to me. I felt it was predictable given what a cup of weak tea we’ve been served by the administration. And it’s not just HCR. It’s their support of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the war in Afghanistan, the fact that Guantanamo is still open and Obama’s people are continuing some of the worst offenses of the Bush Regime.

So I guess the whupp-ass the Right Wing delivered yesterday shouldn’t have been shocking. And given how the White House continues to act as if the Republicans are normal people who can be negotiated with instead of the toxic sociopaths they are, I wasn’t surprised when President Obama was conciliatory again today. Which to me just looks like weakness.

I defended this man when Democrats said he was like President Carter – decent, smart but not an effective leader. “But look at his campaign! It’s brilliant!” I said. It was. But the pod people have taken over and turned him into Rodney King. “Can’t we all just get along?”

Well, no, you can’t get along with people whose stated objective is to reduce the Federal Government to a size that can be drowned in a bathtub. They hate the New Deal and are still trying to kill it. They don’t give a flying rat’s ass for the American people, for old people, for poor people, the unemployed. They have no empathy. Let me say it again: THEY ARE SOCIOPATHS. Their sole concern is themselves and their power.

So the President’s behavior, while laudatory in a perfect world, is utterly inadequate to the task. The Republicans have drawn knives and the President is wielding a feather.

If the President is not willing to listen to his base and grow the needed spine, then maybe it’s time to step aside and let us have someone willing to fight for little people like us. Especially in the face of the tsunami of corporate money and the world of hate radio and Fox with their lies and propaganda, drumming their destructive messages 24/7, we need a champion, a leader, someone with guts to stand up for us and against the bullies.

Maybe being a one-term president is the answer. Democrats need someone like Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown or Dennis Kucinich. A fighter. A leader. This isn’t a debate club. We are in the fight of our very lives.