Will it be another Halloween triumph?

Months ago my plan was for Macaroon to become one of his nicknames for Halloween. I call him “the Love Sponge” for his hobby of getting close to people not to love them but for people to love him. Great idea? I know I could make him look like a giant sponge. And then I parodied the “Love Boat” theme song which my nephew was going to produce for me. But yada yada yada. He didn’t.

So weeks later when I accepted that the Love Sponge theme was not going to happen, I had to think of something new. A sudden inspiration! I would turn Macaroon into a giant pin cushion! Perfect for a quilter like me!

I designed it and acquired the materials, always fun. The pins would be shish-kebob sticks painted silver with Styrofoam balls painted bright colors. I also bought red broadcloth, paint and fiberfil. I already had green yarn and my friend and fellow-dog-costumer Lynne kindly gave me green felt and a plastic cup with two holes punched for an elastic strap. Painted silver and embellished with Sharpie dots it will make a great thimble hat.

The hard part was engineering the pin cushion. I made a red jacket base and then experimented with a muslin prototype. Six orange-like sections of fabric sewn together created the basic shape but with fiberfil it was much too heavy. It’s bad enough I’m inflicting the costume on the dog. The least thing I can do is make it wearable. Hmmm....What else to use? Papier mache over a balloon form? Messy. Maybe heavy also. I know! Packing peanuts! They are made of polystyrene and are 98% air! Bulky but light! But I didn’t want to buy a huge bag of them. Instead I kept a sharp eye for polystyrene tossed to the curb. I found a lovely, neat, clean stack and then broke it up myself. It looked like it had snowed in my apartment, but I had the stuff!

With some experimentation I found that two muslin chambers loosely filled with my home made peanuts supplemented with a little fiberfil created the effect I sought.

Inside, under the felt and fabric I have a disc cut from the polystyrene which makes a nice, secure base for the pins.

I added a “strawberry," yarn and felt, then perfected the fit. I think this costume
is even better than last year’s stick of butter and 2009’s first-place prize winning taco!

Two dog costume contests this weekend!!

"Hi! I'm with We Are Wisconsin"

Phonebanking for “We Are Wisconsin” has proved to me why I am not and could never be a salesperson. Making cold calls is really tough. Especially when some people hang up on you. And some are clearly annoyed to be getting yet another call.

“At least I’m not a robot! I’m a real person!” I decided I am going to say next time, and there will be a next time. The cause is too important for there not to be. Even though calling strangers isn’t the most fun way to spend an afternoon.

I made dozens and dozens of calls for Jennifer Schilling who is running against Dan Kapanke to claim his Wisconsin State Senate Seat. The majority were planning to vote or had already voted absentee for Jennifer. One woman thanked me for reminding her, taking me by surprise, considering the amount of ads I imagine (from my flat in NY) are running in Wisconsin. That was very rewarding.

And despite the Midwest rep for niceness, I was hung up on a lot. Some before I could say a word. Others gave me a resounding click somewhere into my spiel. Some said “wrong number” which I mostly took as a lie. Some said the person wasn’t home, although I think a few of those were lying too.

One woman flatly but politely said she was voting for Kapanke. But she was the only one. I had some other singular voters and conversations.

One gentleman told me he was up in the air about Tuesday’s election. “Is that because you haven’t made up your mind?” I asked. Turns out he had voted for Kapanke last year. And it wasn’t that he was a big Kapanke fan. “Is it that you are not sold on the whole concept of a recall?” Yes, that was it! His feeling was that the election was the choice. And funny thing, his wife is a teacher who didn’t vote. So she and her friends who also didn’t vote are all voting for Schilling. “So she kinda balances you out,” I said.

And I remarked that Wisconsin law provided for a recall if enough voters petitioned for it. And if politicians campaign on jobs then reveal a very different agenda once they get into office, perhaps recall is a good option.

But his feeling was that only people who had bothered to vote in the election should be allowed to vote in the recall. An interesting idea. I didn’t argue.

Another voter I reached had just gotten home from her own phonebanking shift in LaCrosse. So we talked shop. She hoped people were being nicer to me than she experienced. A lot of electioneering fatigue is setting it. I hope all the people who ask to be removed from the list are not called again.

Maybe that’s the cause of the weirdest call I had. I greeted the man and launched into my short spiel which ends with a cheery “Can we count on you to vote for Jennifer Schilling on Tuesday?” Silence. We were still connected. I could hear kids in the background. “Hello?...Hello?...Mr Hickey?” No response. For several minutes. Had he set the receiver down? Was this passive aggression? And then without a word the phone was hung up with a loud click. Made me appreciate the ones who hung up right away.

I will be very shocked if Jennifer Schilling doesn’t beat Dan “Hanky” Kapanke on Tuesday.

QUILT SHOW in SOMERS, NY

If I have a home where my quilting roots go, it's Somers, New York, where my sister used to live and where I would visit. She had become a quilter and I took up counted cross-stitch which is a gateway drug to the full-blown addiction of quilting and fabric collecting. It wasn't long before I had spotted a wall hanging in one of her books and decided I wanted to make it, but in a bed size. That only took 18 months.

Years later, here I am in Manhattan, still a fabriholic, still quilting, buying fabric online. And every spring the Northern Star Quilters Guild show endures. Early on Saturday morning, my friends Lynne and I set out with our friend and nascent quilter Terri at the wheel north ready for a day of fabric and quilts.

We hit the vendors with the goal of finding certain fabrics, but always open to new ideas. I bought a pattern for a tote which I thought I could make in a larger size for myself. But when Lynne found the cutest New York-themed fabric for a tote for my niece who will be visiting me next month. So I bought the two cut yards and started looking for complementary fabrics that need to go with it. Suddenly I realized that I had to make a third bag but there was no more of the NYC fabric. Luckily my friends found another NYC fabric and so I bought that. Then I had the fun of finding the fabrics to go with it (see them above.) I'll be making three bags for the two sisters and the cousin, granddaughters of my sister. One visited New York last year, one comes this year and the third will visit next year.

After we visited every vendor, some twice, we went into the gym to see the quilts. Was it just us or was it smaller than last year's show? Some of them on display were truly beautiful. Some were interesting. Some remarkable for technique. Waiting to see them was smart as the crowds had subsided and we were free to gawk and take photos of the ones that caught my eye. Most amusing were the two security guards overheard discussing which quilts they liked.

Terri emailed me with a link to show in New Jersey later in the spring. We're going!

MAYBE THE SHELLACKING WAS A GOOD THING. A PERVERSE LOOK AT THE BAD NEWS.

I’ve been arguing with some otherwise like-minded people in the Twitterverse lately and find myself defending talkers like Ed Schultz and Norman Goldman who are, in my opinion, rightly critical of the White House and most Democrats in the Congress. These members of the so-called “Professional Left” are blamed by some for the shellacking endured by Democrats last November.

But I ask you. Who’s the blame for a box office bomb? The producers, director, writer and actors who created “Ishtar” or the reviewers who panned it?

I blame the demoralization of the base on the demoralizers, not the people – including me on twitter – who are the demoralized and who pointed it out. The responsibible parties are the White House which has taken the base for granted and the majority of weenie Democrats in the Congress who haven’t stood up to the Republicans. Democrats took a huge advantage and squandered it with bad moves that got a lot of notice and with good moves that they didn’t publicize.

And I have to contrast that with the sociopaths on the right who called being appointed by the radical right wingers on the Supreme Court “a mandate” and then just plowed ahead despite its lack. It’s beyond frustrating to have larger numbers and yet not having our good ideas and policies implemented while the Republicans shoved through their horrors with smaller majorities. How is that possible?

Polls told the Democrats that support was there for single-payer but it wasn’t even on the table! And the fall-back, the public option, was wildly popular but the Democrats stabbed it in the back. Still we’re expected to be as enthusiastic as we were in 2008? And if we are not, the fault is ours, not the people in power?

It’s not enough to be “better than Bush.” That’s such a low standard and not sufficient to inspire the kind of turnout we saw in 2008. I blame the Democrats in power for spending all their capital on a very flawed health care reform bill which the Right Wing was able to demonize with their oversized megaphone. It’s no wonder the weenies on the Left ran away from it.

But it’s really stupid. If you’re going to be called a “Socialist” or even “Communist” anyway, why not go for the most you can get and the hell with the bozos on the Right? They just make up crap anyway!

So who is to blame? The Democrats with their flawed laws or those who are publicly rooting for them to do better?

Look beyond the finger pointing (just a lot of navel gazing, and water over the damn, if you ask me). There’s an enormous silver lining to the shellacking. Look at the energy in the streets! It’s more than a galvanized base.

If November hadn’t happened as it did I don’t think the Republicans would have become emboldened to grab for power in such a naked and startling way. It’s perverse, but their overreach has done something remarkable and positive: it woke us up, in the way that the slow erosion of our democracy did not. The sudden, obvious, cynical handover of power to the corporations by the venal GOP was like a bucket of cold water in our passive faces.

And when I say “our” I shouldn’t really include myself. I was emailing, phoning, tweeting my tiny little heart out for months. No, when I say “our” I mean the American public. A group even larger and wider than the Democratic base.

What we saw in Egypt inspired the brave people in Wisconsin to stand up to their anti-democratic governor. And Madison has in turn inspired people in other states to stand up to their fascist dictator Republican governors.

I was out on the streets in Manhattan starting in February, one of a hundred at first, then a thousand, then many thousands. But I was also out there in 2009 in the fruitless campaign to get the Democrats to get us the public option at the very least. So the presence of a political junky like me is unremarkable. But the crowds these days contain those who are among the unlikely--- formerly apathetic and lots of converts from the right. A growing number who see that the corporate takeover of the GOP is a fact and the Tea Party a mere Astroturf fig leaf. They also see it partially true of the Democratic party, and that these Fascists are now consolidating their power for a complete overthrow of democracy. Government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. Corporations which are “persons” thanks to a clerical error and the Supreme Court which has lost all credibility and legitimacy thanks to Bush v. Gore and “Citizens United” (which has to be the most ironically named legal case ever. But that’s what the Right Wing has always been great at, like gutting environmental protection and calling it “The Clean Air Act” for just one example.)

At long, long last, the wider public may finally be clued in. These monsters on the right don’t give a shit about the country. They care only for themselves and profit and if they have to step on their grandmother to pick up a nickel, get the hell out of their way!

The only question’s is it too late? On their side, they have unlimited money to achieve their goal of totally unfettered corporate power.

All we have is an aroused populace motivated to save our democracy from a threat as great as any we have ever faced, including the Soviet empire and the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.

We can do it. We’ve done it before. But the irony is, had there been no November and no consequent Republican overrreach, the American public would still be quietly dozing.

I'M SORRY, YOUNG MAN.

I think I may owe an apology to one of the demonstrators at the Planned Parenthood rally in NYC.

Here’s what happened: Thousands of us assembled peaceably in Foley Square. Many, like me, came over from City Hall Park where we had rallied in support of workers’ rights, in particular in Wisconsin, but everywhere the GOP is assaulting the rights of Americans.

We were feeling great to be together, thousands of us liberals, progressives, Democrats, Socialists, whatever we call ourselves, battered by years of Right Wing lies and stratagems, angry and taking a stand against the corporate take-over of the country.

You came through the crowd carrying a sign. It had a drawing of two eggs and the line: THESE ARE NOT CHICKENS. What? What does that mean? So some people asked. And you said rather imperiously, “I’m not taking questions at this time.”

WTF? Are you kidding? I went berserk. How arrogant! I thought. And I was sure you were an agent provocateur from the right wing. I took your sign to be a “right-to-life” sign. I called you a coward. I got the crowd to chant, like the Wisconsin Democratic assembly members, “Shame! Shame! Shame!” And basically drove you away. There were no threats, there was no violence, just a lot of yelling and anger.

I got high-fives from some of the other rally-goers. It took several minutes for the adrenalin to subside. I’m sure my cheeks were flushed. A few young women standing behind me told me that the young sign-holder was, in fact, pro-choice. What? They got the distinct message that he had been misunderstood. Then why not answer our queries? Why the arrogance? I asked.

I don’t know the answer. But later, as I thought about it, it occurred to me that those young women were right. “THESE ARE NOT CHICKENS” one of the most abstruse and ridiculous signs ever, was a pro-choice sign. Given a lot of time to think about it: I got it. That’s not the best sort of sign for a rally where short, direct, punchy and clear are generally the way to go.

Had he appended some pro-choice sentence, logo, something, it wouldn’t have been misunderstood. Had he just not refused “to take questions,” had he said anything to show he was pro-choice, he wouldn’t have been verbally assaulted by me.

But as it was, he was. And I was the one who led the attack. And while I don’t feel entirely responsible, I do feel sorry. And I hope that the young man sees this and accepts my apology. But also learns a lesson: don’t create such an abstruse, hard-to-understand sign. But if you do, and people ask you about it, TELL THEM, for the love of God.

And if you recognize this young man, would you please see that he reads this? Thanks!

DESIGNING A MEDALLION

This medallion quilt top can be counted as a great success, if I do say so myself. It was created at the behest of a friend who started out years ago intending to make a very ambitious first quilt out of those octagons of Japanese prints. She got as far as adding borders of blue but there she faltered for years, not knowing what to do next. She had taken on more than she was able to do but she wanted to somehow make a quilt out of this jumble.

So she did white Sashiko stitching on nine of the octagons and I appliqued them onto pieces of the blue with white chrysanthemum print. But what then? She thought perhaps sewn together somehow they would work, and I thought that the nine in a square would make the start of an interesting medallion. Agreed. And then she gave me the rest of her octagons, some blue fabric and the bright cherry print plus a Japanese woven print she was eager to use and a little more of the chrysanthemum print to work with, and carte blanche to design a large quilt top.

I designed this as I went along, using graph paper and the limitation of the amount of available fabric which was a bit of a challenge and the reason I'm so proud of how this turned out.

The first thing I did was to trim the chrysanthemum fabric under the Sashiko octagons very carefully and then stitch them together to form my center square. I added a border of the bright cherry print and triangles of blue so that it could be set on point which always adds a lot of interest to medallions, I think. It also adds size which was important. A narrow border of chrysanthemum print was added using scraps I trimmed off. I wanted a repeat of that fabric and it's the sort of print that can be pieced and you can't tell, a quality that came in handy with this project!

My friend wanted me to use the extra octagons if possible and I found a way to use a dozen of them. First I added strips of the blue Japanese woven fabric and then triangles of chrysanthemum print. Many of the triangles had to be pieced and I was really glad that I had made the border out of the scraps because I needed every square inch! I set the octagons on point like mini medallions which echo the center.

Then I added strips of a blue print so that these octagons would appear to float in the blue. But I ran out of the one blue print and had to supplement with the blue print from the large triangles, which I had the most of. And then I alternated the mini-medallions with rectangles of blue, finishing with a final border of cherry print. Total size: 84" square.

My friend was surprised by what I chose to do with this assignment and definitely delighted.

QUILTS IN THE WORKS

Can I say that I have a really good excuse for not blogging much lately? I’ve actually been stitching. A lot. With a lot to show for it.

First, -- drum roll, please! – I finished the last of 274 black/white/red fan blocks needed for my niece’s quilt. Of course that meant that I had to be ready with new foundation squares to start appliquéing and accumulating more fan blocks for the second one.

After trimming and stitching the edges, I separated the white blocks from the black ones. And because I began with 6” squares, I was able to create consistently sized blocks—so important to piecing together.

Then I set up my felt easel. This is a device I created and am rather chuffed about. It’s just two really large pieces of cardboard rescued from the street after a treadmill was unpacked in my neighborhood (I’d been on the lookout for some big clean cardboard after I got the idea) and taped together. There’s a bit of sway to it and I wish it had less give, but it will do. I set it up across a chair (or I stand it up for a vertical look) and cover it with white felt. That gives me a wonderful surface on which to lay out quilt blocks. If they don’t stay up on their own, pins!

On paper I laid out the four sections of quilt to be assembled, giving me a road map. This quilt requires close attention to detail if you are as anal about it as I am. First, to have the blocks alternate black and white. And second, to be sewn in the proper order to create the desired pattern. To save time and ripping and resewing, my least favorite activities, I relied on the road map.

I also choose one special block to seed in each section. There are four special blocks: one with dog prints, one with polka dots, one with heart prints and the first one I made which has only four fan pieces and they don’t alternate. My plan is to tell my niece of their existence and hope she has fun finding them.

Assembling the second section was easier because I organized the blocks better. This time I sorted them by the red pieces and piled them up according to the number of times each print was used. They ranged from singletons to some used as many as seven times. The joy of randomness! But what I most wanted to avoid was to be left with a second half of blocks with too many duplicates. This organizational step made choosing much smoother.

I also made use of very clever plastic squares that can be marked and pinned to fabric to keep it all straight—up, down, left, right, trying to keep from sewing the wrong ones together. These are tremendously helpful and prevented mistakes.

Now that I have two sections stitched together, my next step is to sandwich layers of backing, white flannel and the top sections & machine quilt them before I then sew them together. My niece’s quilt is close to the half way mark and I can’t wait to see it done and gifted!

Meanwhile I’ve also been working on two other quilts that will be gifts. The green and tan boxing clever quilt will also be done in four sections and given to the daughter of my other sister. This one is 15 x 16 blocks, 240 total. Her taste is muted and more traditional, so I think she will like this quilt.

The third quilt in the works is for a dear friend who loves blue and white. I started collecting blue and white fabrics last spring with some fabrics purchased at the quilt show in Somers, NY.

All the other fabrics added to these quilts I am proud to say I bought on clearance. I really love these prints and I am sure that I will enjoy making more quilts from them--- I have plenty of fabric!

STARTING A NEW QUILT

Always so exciting, the planning of a new quilt, imagining how it will come together and look. Especially when it's a gift!

I've decided that the blue, white and yellow fabrics that I've been collecting will make a gorgeous quilt for my dear friend Ensley who loves, loves, loves blue. This quilt I've got in mind and on paper will look fantastic in her flat.

I found a wonderful pattern. I've worked it out--- 9" blocks with 1.5" yellow stripes and 3.75" squares and rectangles that are 3.75 x 5.25. I set these fabrics together in the pattern I've got in mind.


This pattern is striking and modern and lends itself to gang-cuts. I just have to work out how to cut them. But the idea is to cut long strips, sew them together and then slice them. I've done it before and it's a real work and time saver.

Merry Christmas, Ensley!

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.

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.