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Tuesday's Results: Some Thoughts

By Stephen Siciliano - May 19, 2010 3:44:08 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

In Pennsylvania, the Democrat beat the Republican in a congressional race, the Democrat beat the Democrat who was really a Republican in the Senate primary and, down in Arkansas, neither Democrat could beat the other Democrat in another Senate primary.

That makes the Democrats look almost…unbeatable.

highwayscribery lacks the time, funding, and staff to check up on such things, but MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow does, and she said the congressional pickup represents the seventh consecutive special election victory for the Democrats since 2008.

These results jibe exactly with what we’ve been saying over the past few days and months: that anti-incumbent sentiment cuts both ways and that the GOP isn’t ready to govern just because their opposite numbers have made some tough choices about the country's needs.

The “New York Times,” which doesn’t openly admit to reading this blog, was forced to finally soften its dyed-in-the-wool narrative of a coming Democratic debacle in November:

“For Republicans,” wrote Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny, “the failure to take an open seat that they made great efforts to capture was interpreted as a warning to curtail talk of how many seats they will win in November.”

The writers should have included themselves in the chastened grouping, but heck, it’s the “New York Times”!

The pundits are still talking about a scared, freaked-out electorate, because otherwise they’d have to admit how wrong their recent prognostications have been.

An occupational hazard.

But Tuesday’s elections remind us that local issues are more important to such contests than those trying to read the nation’s tea leaves in them dare admit.

Straining to divine national implications in Sen. Arlen Spector’s (D-Penn.) defeat at the hands of Joe Sestak (pictured), the media geniuses may be missing a simple reality: Sometimes you gotta go. Especially if you’ve held a seat for 30 years, beaten cancer twice, and are up against a younger, more energetic fellow who deserves a chance.

Just a thought.

In the Pennsylvania Congressional 12th contest, a working class, non-latte drinking crowd went with the last guy’s chief-of-staff, which makes the electorate seem not as angry, scared, or rabid about incumbents as we’re still being told it is.

Meanwhile, an Indiana Republican, Rep. Mark Souder, resigned his seat thanks to an affair with a married staffer.

We’ve never heard of him, but “The Times” assures us Souder is “known for his push for stronger drug penalties and abstinence-only sex education for teenagers…”

Which only goes to show that even the people who advocate such policies don’t truly believe in them.

Such paper-thin righteousness is hardly the stuff a party might expect to ride a national wave to power on.

And good riddance.

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Boilerplate Bunk

By Stephen Siciliano - May 18, 2010 4:33:48 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

Unsurprisingly, nobody listens to highwayscribery.

On May 14 the “New York Times,” once again, peddled the “death of the Democratic majority” narrative in a prominently placed piece.

This time, it was written by Katharine Seelye, and uncovered the strong “shift of ground” in a Massachusetts congressional district currently represented by Niki Tsongas, a Democrat.

With no poll numbers to boost its contention the incumbent is in trouble, the story sticks, after the Republican/conservative fashion, to the unscientific and anecdotal; mostly impressed with the fact Ms. Tsongas is watching eight Republicans of zero stature savage one another for the right to oppose her.

You’ve read this piece before and will continue to read it for months to come as the conventional wisdom slowly petrifies into the institutional kind nobody dares challenge.

(exceptin’ us!)

Particular to all these stories is what highwayscribery calls the “boilerplate” paragraph.

Seelye uses it, as all the reporters to do, to explain the over-ballyhooed “anti-incumbent fever” which, she claims, “is rooted in anger over the federal economic stimulus package, the new health care law, and the succession of bailouts, as well as a desire by voters to feel empowered.”

That last one is a phenomenon of her own invention and not part of the classic boilerplate paragraph.

The bailout was bipartisan and accrues to the debit side of every incumbent’s account, Republican or Democrat, although it is not often presented in those terms

The rest is pap about the stimulus package and health care reform being the stuff of Democratic debacles

We are told a majority thought the stimulus unnecessary. Like numbers feel health care reform is something that, as Republicans repeated ad nauseum in their ill-fated effort to Kill-The-Bill, “was shoved down the throats of the American people.”

Rarely, if ever, is there an article focused on the millions of folks, bit-players in the current governing coalition, who fought for health care reform.
Nobody wanted it you see. Representatives and senators did what they damn well pleased because they don’t listen to or need votes.

There is a dearth of articles interviewing happy teachers who kept their jobs, parents whose kids’ schools stayed open, or construction workers relieved to be laboring on infrastructure projects funded with stimulus money.

highwayscribery does not believe this is because such stories don’t exist.

Similarly, few are the stories about where, and on what, the stimulus package is being applied.

The overall impression is that health care reform will cost Americans much, but offer them nothing while the stimulus money was poured down some black hole of unaccountability when, actually, the opposite is true.

Certainly, a goodly portion of Americans opposed these measures, but the coverage we’re talking about here renders them a majority, which is to regurgitate a Republican talking report rather than practice sound journalism.

The oft-predicted Republican resurgence set for November occurs on the commentariat’s chessboard where all things remain equal and the opposition party holds its own in spite of a pathetic performance over the course of the Obama reign.

But there are telling exceptions.

In Sunday’s “New York Times,” an interview with the former chairman of Bear Stearns,
Alan C. Greenberg confessed that, “I was a Republican for years. After the way the Republican leadership acted when the health care bill was passed, I changed my affiliation to Democrat.”

Election-year coverage, to date, suggests he is utterly alone in these sentiments.

We doubt it.

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Reform This!

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 30, 2010 2:50:54 AM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

Three filibusters and out.

That was fast. The "New York Times," reported that the Republicans had "relented" in the face of considerable pressure the likes Goldman Sacks be brought to heel. This means the party is very NOT relentless and Mr. Peebles, otherwise knows as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, just the opposite.

You can't judge a nerd by his glasses.

The Republicans' was a great performance in legislative self-gratification and another example of the neutered Republicans' over-reliance on the filibuster.

As "Times" reporters David Herszenhorn and Edward Wyatt, or one of them anyway, pointed out, "While the Republicans can still filibuster, they are at a disadvantage during the floor debate given the Democrats' 59 to 41 majority. And the decision to allow floor debate appeared to be a significant retreat by the minority, reflecting a calculation that further delay was politically untenable."

You can say that again!

"And the decision to allow floor debate appeared to be a significant retreat by the minority, reflecting a calculation that further delay was politically untenable."

Hurts so good.

The Republicans don't want President Obama to succeed at anything regardless of what that thing means to the country. It's a clumsy posture forcing the GOP into uncomfortable, pretzel-like political positions:

"Among the challenges for Republicans, "The Times" writers write, "was explaining how they could participate in an oversight hearing on Tuesday criticizing Goldman Sachs executives and proclaiming the need to tighten regulation of Wall Street, but then go to the Senate chamber and vote to block debate of the financial regulatory bill."

"Salon" has a problem with some of the ensuing coverage, which grants the President's party a victory without being sure of what has been won. But it's "Salon's" self-appointed to be whine about Democrats in between election seasons and support them when the line outside the polling place starts taking shape.

Speaking of polling, that same outlet's Joe Conason parses an upturn in Democratic support out of a new sampling of voters from the "Washington Post."

It's a question of whether you believe in polls or not. highwayscribery does, like all of us, when they confirm his beliefs.

Conason quotes the survey which concluded, "The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health legislation."

There's more. President Obama's numbers are up and, despite all the "anti-incumbent" sentiment we are told is out there, the Republicans come off much worse in the poll.

Proof of highwayscribery's hard-earned lesson that you must be more than AGAINST something to win an election.

we told you so four months ago, and four days (or so) ago as well.

Same goes for our prediction that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist would leave the Republican Party and run as an independent, thereby increasing the Democrats' chances of taking that Senate seat.

Tea anyone?

Naturally you are wondering, "How can highwayscribery be getting it so right?" But we must confess that has not always been thus. In fact, back when the scribe's belief in the minimum wage left him "outside the mainstream of American politics," he confused his anger with that of everybody else's in the country, much the way Tea Party people do now.

But the presidential election of 2004 fixed THAT.

Now, the scribe is a piece of particulate matter in the same political class around which the President has built his core support, demographically, intellectually...by many measurements.

So much so, that he was offered to apply for a job with Organizing for America, the Obama crowd's grassroots storm-troop group.

the highway scribe declined.

Our support is contingent upon specific policies we are, for the most part, getting from Barack Obama. Plus, we don't do propaganda. If the Obama administration wants to subpoena a reporter over his resources, for example, we observe how the policy runs counter to the First Amendment and our hallowed free press traditions.

And besides, the job requires relocating to D.C., where there are no waves for surfing.

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Ahead of the Curve

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 24, 2010 5:43:52 PM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

You read it here first. Or at least before you read it on "Politico."

In his April 21 post, "Democrats Banking on Reform," the highway scribe called the Tea Party movement, "the biggest white elephant in American politics."

The post noted that you might be distracted from the divining the true tenor of our country's politics by "an endless barrage of mentions" about that particular group. This was followed-up there by a few details about how damaging the Tea Party might actually be to the efforts of those hoping to topple President Obama.

Well, the next day, while highwayscribery's entry was traversing the global system of flows, an infinitely more potent outfit, "Politico," published, "The Tea Party's Exaggerated Importance."

The online powerhouse concluded that nothing succeeds like excess and the media has succumbed to this formula in its Tea Party coverage, noting that, "In fact, there is a word for what poll after poll depicts as a group of largely white, middle-class, middle-aged voters who are aggrieved: 'Republicans'."

highwayscribery's riposte said: "Essentially Republican voters, the only thing that would make this 18 percent segment of the population newsworthy is if they actually turned on the GOP and helped consolidate Democratic control."

The point?

highwayscribery is special!

"Politico" noted that the Tea Party has "failed to make a dent so far in Republican primaries."

In "The WikiLeaks Massacre," this blogger observed that in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, he marched with "crowds much larger than anything the Tea Party ever cooked up. Unlike that self-centered bunch of hysterics, we were confronted by police sent out to bash heads, because of our opposition to exactly this kind of horror."

Or as "Politico" authors Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith put it: "And just a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to rally against the Iraq war. Now, veterans of those protests -- covered largely as spot news and spectacle -- wonder why they didn't get the weighty, anthropological treatment assigned to the tea parties."

(They forgot the part about police knocking the snot out of the anti-war crowd).

The "Politico" piece notes that the group's Tax Day crowds [promoted by Fox News as they were] "were not representative of a force that is purportedly shaping the country's politics. About a thousand people showed up in state capitals like Des Moines, Montgomery, and Baton Rouge, and even fewer in large cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Milwaukee."

Their reward? The article enumerates a blogger "The Washington Post" hired to cover the "movement," CNN crews that joined the Tea Party Express bus tours, polls in the "New York Times," addressing their importance, and "CNN" (again), and their own outfit.

Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism noted that the Tea Party competed for attention with the Iceland volcano and beat out health care in terms of coverage garnered.

The upshot, the reporters say, is that, like Sarah Palin, who couldn't wait to glom onto the Tea Party poopers, they are symbols "that outweigh their actual impact."

Exactly our point (again)

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Democrats Banking on Reform

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 21, 2010 6:11:49 PM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

Even as its business model is shredded to smithereens by the Internet, our mainstream media persists in propagating a wisdom utterly conventional.

Why the information industry's foot soldiers insist the Democratic Party is headed for doom in this year's elections, and bury an article headlined "Democrats Top GOP in Fund-Raising for Midterms" is anybody's guess.

Hee Haw!

Back on January 10, in "Dem Dead Dems," the highway scribe said the Democrats' problems were relative and the Republicans were in no position to take advantage of them.

Although highwayscribery hates repeating itself, the popes of American news do not, and so we are obligated in our gadfly's mission to follow suit, repeat, and refute this widespread fallacy.

We are not going to serve up a bunch of stuff you are supping on daily, just a few recent examples of the aforementioned popular pap.

The "San Francisco Chronicle," which ought to know better, put a California spin on things.

The state's Democrats just adjourned their convention and the reporter wonders how they're going to rev things up to 2008 levels of excitement, which, of course they can't.

This begs the question of whether a governing party needs to generate the energy of historic, watershed elections every time voters are convened to settle the polity's direction.

We would suggest there is margin for error and that, in the wake of the health care debate, the Democratic Party is holding its own, hardly imploding as the present-day narrative strains to assert.

At the national level, "Salon" throws in the towel on the mid-terms, too. Then it sugar-coats things for its liberal audience with some high-falutin', demographically based hoo-hah about how 2012 will be better for Democrats.

The article only affirms the highway scribe's hypothesis that journalists think way too much before arriving at like conclusions.

Our editorial board's take, honed over years in opposition, is that Republicans will not fare well just because folks are unhappy with the other guys.

It's a cyclical analysis of American politics that sees parties rise to power, expend themselves of ideas, crash on the shoals of a popular clamor for change, engage in internecine policy purges, and then start hatching ideas anew.

In today's speedy world, this takes less time than before, but it's still a process that requires some years unfold.

highwayscribery's prediction is that, as the premier and dominant figure on the American political landscape, Barack Obama remains the focus of our national narrative by holding serve in 2010, slowly wearing down the opposition, and imposing those programs he was elected to affect.

We predict he gets reelected in 2012 for lack of fresh Republican talent, coupled with a bruising 24-hour cable-news-ified primary season on the right, before getting his hat handed to him in 2014.

If that comes as cold dousing given what you've been reading and watching, witness the flailing Republicans push each other to the right, waffle over keeping or dumping their ineffectual party chairman Michael Steel, while slowly losing their ability to gum-up the legislative works.

Here, an article in the "New York Times," about the Democrats effectively moving on nominations held-up by the GOP for nine months.

It notes that, "Under the threat of late-night sessions, Republicans have agreed to allow votes on two federal judicial nominees, and Democrats hope to force votes on two others this week."

From which we can only surmise that Republican legislators are willing to surrender their ideological bona fides for an early ride home.

Here's another "Times" piece about follow-up health care legislation regulating insurance premium increases.

No GOPers are predicting the end of freedom as we know it this round. So either they've accepted socialist enslavement or don't think that line of reasoning worked too well for them.

The Republicans bet everything on the health care debate. It was a careless wager against something a lot of people have been clamoring decades for.

There was never a clear policy from the opposition.

We never knew if they were against the drug companies, who backed the measure, the insurance companies whom Obama had wisely co-opted early on in the process, the medical community, or the American people themselves.

What they were clearly against, was President Obama's achieving anything.

As Tom Friedman noted in "Everybody Loves a Winner," one needn't be Machiavelli "to believe that the leaders of Iran and Venezuela shared the barely disguised Republican hope that health care would fail and, therefore, Obama's whole political agenda would be stalled and, therefore, his presidency enfeebled."

Now, the highway scribe and countless leftists wanted and worked for much the same in the case of George W. Bush. But he stole an election.

As Frank Rich recently noted, the problem for Tea Partiers, who are otherwise "doing fine," is that Obama is black.

That is less an offense than rigging an election in your big brother's state. Except in the south, the regional rock to which Republicans cling for a modicum of relevance.

As Democrats continue their efforts to keep us healthy at a cheaper price, we'll see how the world did not come to an end and that their positive labors in this area will match their good deeds in the credit card business.

Have you seen your statement lately? It tells what you've forked over in fees and interest for the year to date, maps out your future expenses at current rates of payment, and details alternative sums that wipe out your debt sooner.

The changes are due to new laws, not some new predisposition on the part of big banks who want to be your friend.

They really don't.

And as the "New York Times," noted on April 19, the Democrats have seized a great combination of populist ire at banks and fancy pants investment houses, and their opponents' predilection for all things financial, to make hay at the GOP's expense.

You have to hand it to the Republicans. They know what they stand for and they don't back down when the political climate is searing their values on the grill.

They like banks. The lunch with banks. They want to help banks. They tell bankers not to worry about congressional staffer "punks" harassing them.

Obama was out here in Los Angeles raising money for Sen. Barbara Boxer; someone who is supposedly vulnerable in November, which is not likely.

The President informed his audience about where his opposite number, politically speaking, has been of late. That would be Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader whom, the president noted, recently convened a little confab including Wall Street Brahmin, himself, and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas.

"Now, the Senate Republican leader, he paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago," the president narrated for his partisans. "He took along the chairman of their campaign committee [that's Cornyn]. He met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don't know exactly what was discussed, all I can tell you is that, when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform. He would oppose it. Shocking. And once again he's threatening to tie up the Senate with a filibuster to block progress."

The health care debate turned McConnell's once obscure tools of obstruction into household words so that now "filibuster" is officially a dirty one, unless you're the kind who ties teabags to your NASCAR baseball cap.

The Senate minority leader explained that he was on Wall Street, "gathering information" regarding peoples' views on the proposed reform.

Which is fine, but highwayscribery is still waiting to talk with McConnell so he can air some views, too. He hasn't heard from Mitch yet.

Have you?

While the Obama crowd and their suddenly cohesive cohorts in Congress were working to get financial reform on the Senate floor within a week (the House has already passed a bill), the federal government sued Goldman Sachs for fraud.

The firm just posted another $zillion quarterly profit and word has it the government's case is a tough sell, but the timing's right, isn't it?

If you think it's a mistake an Obama Department of Justice filed the lawsuit around the same time the administration would like the Senate to take up financial regulatory reform, than you're one of those people who thinks the president is stupid.

You are invited by a supporter of the administration to keep doing that.

McConnell is backtracking, because his threat to kill legislation reining in predatory financial institutions, while railing against predatory financial institutions, is fooling nobody and he can't get the 41 votes he needs.

The strategy of gridlock is being affected by a law of diminishing returns and financial reform represents the second big loss in a month's time for Republicans.

And this time it wasn't even close.

By now you should see where things are heading, but might be distracted by flack from an endless barrage of mentions about the Tea Party. The biggest white elephant in American politics since Ross Perot.

Essentially Republican voters, the only thing that would make this 18 percent segment of the population newsworthy is if they actually turned on the GOP and helped consolidate Democratic control.

And it is happening.

They've made Florida's Marco Rubio a poster-boy for the new conservatism, and a dumping ground of Sunshine State Gov. Charlie Crist's political career.

The feckless Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), in a dog-fight with a newly, self-identified Tea Partier, J.D. Hayworth, just "distanced" himself from Crist.

Ham-handed and craven, the Republican establishment has treated one of its proven and successful moderates so roughly that Crist is threatening to run as an independent.

Can you say "split ticket?"

Michael Gerson, a right-leaning columnist with the "Washington Post," thinks McCain's in trouble. The operative phrase to his piece is, "in an environment where anything can happen to an incumbent."

Which is one of our points here. If the electorate is still in a foul mood seven months from now -- something that is open to dispute -- it won't be Republicans alone who pay the price.

With the pain equitably distributed, the Democrats can be expected to hold onto power.

Bank on it. Read More »

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The WikiLeaks Massacre

By Stephen Siciliano - Apr 7, 2010 7:08:41 PM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

The guys marked for momentary death documented in the now famous "WikiLeaks" video don't appear to be engaged in any kind of military activity so much as milling about.

But we're going to give the "fog of war" crowd their due. We are going to stay away from (for the most part) whether the killings of a journalist, his driver, and the wounding of two children were justified.

highwayscribery is going to talk about what this miserable episode says about the United States as a country.

And what it says, first, and most obviously, is that we are at war. And that such events leave us vulnerable to revenge attacks like that in Russia last week and to the spiritual perversions protracted, factory-style killing produces.

Exactly what invading Iraq had to do with terrorism in the United States has always been a matter of debate. But the next time we're hit, the reason why will be much clearer and the WikiLeaks video will stand as solid evidence.

Again, the need for engagement is not our issue here. But the aftermath is the aftermath, like it or not. And the aftermath would suggest a bunch of innocent people hanging out in the street were unsuspectingly mowed down, including two guys who worked for Reuters news service.

the highway scribe as been a journalist for 27 years now, and incidents of reporters being hacked to bits in the Philippines, tortured to death in Mexico, and obliterated in Iraq really get his goat, because his goat's really close.

It makes complete sense to him that the wife, or brother, or lover to one of these anonymous men we care not a wit about, will make their presence felt in your random subway station.

You have to expect it.

Secondly, as you mail your tax return off to the Internal Revenue Service, the WikiLeaks video should assure you the money is going toward the purchase of very fine weaponry.

A picture can be worth a thousand words, but this video caused the scribe to cough up just two:

"Holy shit!"

The Apache helicopter's firepower is shocking for the devastation it leaves behind. The bullet spray kicks up a full-on dust storm and we can only be grateful not to see the butcher's mess underneath it.

Keep watching -- if you can -- and witness what happens to the van picking up the unfortunate Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, who is crawling around, drawing his final breaths. It literally gets bounced upside down...

...with two children on board.

(Oops).

Third, for better or worse, we've got some tough hombres riding in those multi-million dollar helicopters. If the soldiers in Allah's Armies of Death seem particularly heartless, don't worry. This particular bunch need not envy their clinical, reaper-like mien.

It's clear the pilots are very pleased with the pile of bodies their finger-pushing exertions have gathered. There's humor in them thar massacres, children or not.

"Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," says one, forgetting whose neighborhood it is in the first place.

And it is hard to understand why the van's occupants, clearly unarmed, backs dangerously exposed to an aircraft that has just scattered corpses near and far, had to be sacrificed.

Really hard.

Fourth, and thankfully, the unfortunate occurrence says hopeful things about our country, too. For example, in the wake of this slaughter, Reuters wanted a copy of the video the military possessed so they could see what happened to their guys.

The agency filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law signed by a Democratic President, Jimmy Carter, which it is nice to have. However shopworn, abused, and ignored, the measure works on a lot of occasions.

And we need a Freedom of Information Act, because of stuff like the statement from Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Blechwehl, spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, who said, and we quote:

"There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force."

As promised, we're not going to say the pilots were bloodthirsty animals with no regard for civilian life, but we will say there is certainly "a question" of whether the whole thing was necessary.

It's not clear whether Reuters got what they wanted with the FOIA filing, but WikiLeaks did, from somebody inside the military with a conscience. Good for WikiLeaks, the whisteblowers, and the United States of America.

In his "New York Times Sunday Book Review," assessment of Karl Marlantes' "Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War" author Sebastian Junger:

"For a reporter who has covered the military in its current incarnation, the events recounted in this book are so brutal and costly that they seem to belong not just to another time, but to another country. Soldiers openly contemplate killing their commanders. They die by the dozen on useless missions designed primarily to help the careers of those above them. The wounded are unhooked from IV bags and left to die because others, required for battle, are growing woozy from dehydration and have been ordered to drink the precious fluid. Almost every page contains some example of military callousness or incompetence that would be virtually inconceivable today, and I found myself wondering whether the book was intended as an indictment of war in general or a demonstration of just how far this nation has come in the last 40 years."

Well that's a relief, sort of.

Whatever the guys in the Apache copters thought and did, which was plenty no matter how you want to spin it, you have to be heartened by the soldiers on the ground grabbing the wounded children in their arms en route to getting them help.

The "Collateral Murder" crew which edited the raw video for your consumption assert that dumping the kids in an Iraqi hospital was less desirable than taking them to a superior, U.S. military facility.

And that may be true, but at least they didn't leave them bleeding to death in the street.

It's kind of remarkable, watching the video, how many rules and procedures there are to the business of combat. These guys are getting clearance and asking permission yet, for all that, still shoot up a bunch of people, two of whom we can be sure were innocent men doing their day job.

Which brings us to the rant part of this post:

The video is shocking. Mostly because we are protected from the real horrors our bellicose actions, however justified, generate.

The footage is authentic and few things are more unnerving than watching live, threatened humans fleeing for their lives and not making it. The movies are no match. The gap between staged death and the real deal underscores the tragedy of all human slaughter.

Already six years ago, highwayscribery marched in crowds much larger than anything the Tea Party ever cooked up. Unlike that self-centered bunch of hysterics, we were confronted by police sent out to bash heads, because of our opposition to exactly this kind of horror.

"Saddam Hussein was a bad man"

In that idiotic phrase was all the misery and murder on every side - still going on mind you - finally justified once there were no chemical weapons or mushroom clouds to buttress the rolling charnel house that is Iraq.

The WikiLeaks video recalls so many senseless deaths of innocent children, aid workers, United Nations workers, and others. And it stirs up memories of the arrogant smirk owned by the ignoramus who governed us for eight long years.

It conjures all the lies men still running about in our land influencing policy committed in order to launch this little shop of horrors.

It recalls that dark time when the Bush administration had the whole country cowed and, on the eve of the war, walked our listless mainstream press through a color-by-numbers press conference at which they raised their hands and answered pre-approved questions.

The footage brings to mind the last presidential election during which a bunch of white guys battling for the Republican nomination wagged their fat fingers and promised to be "tough," much more so, than the last guy who had just promised the same thing.

This video is what's tough. Tough to watch and tough to live with. It stands, on its own, as marvelous portraiture of what the flag-waving and finger-wagging jerks who don't have to wage war are ultimately responsible for.

They may sleep well, but others don't.

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What Change Looks Like

By Stephen Siciliano - Mar 22, 2010 6:50:42 PM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

Two lessons from the great health care debate of 2009-2010: When you have the votes, you have the votes; and, there is nothing like winning.

For too long the horse race as presented to us by the media obscured the Democrats' large majorities in both houses.

Reporters and editors like legislative donnybrooks because they hold readers' attention and make their own jobs more interesting.

And so it is a familiar journalistic habit to focus on certain disgruntled back-benchers, the leftist-rightists of the rightist leftist faction, whose interests diverge from the larger party's.

And, in rare instances where a party is bent on driving over a cliff, you can expect the aforementioned to grab the steering wheel and finish the job in self-demolition.

But the Republican strategy of obstruction, with the sole purpose of provoking the president's failure on a signature initiative, ensured that would not happen.

The liberal elitist in highwayscribery thinks that's because this group of Republicans is not very bright.

While the "New York Times," cooed last week over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Kentucky) masterful melding of his caucus into a useless pile of obstinacy, highwayscribery was thinking that if, let's say, nine Republicans had voted with the Democrats, they might have killed the bill.

But by making it a strictly "party thing," the GOP put wavering Democrats in the position of either betraying their caucus, or squeezing its leadership for a treat.

As an old hand who observes legislative debates with the same intensity he does the World Series, highwayscribery can tell you these holdouts usually want something specific from party leadership... and usually get it.

Meanwhile, ignoring their significant disadvantage in numbers and enjoying their own positive press, Republicans mindlessly stuck to a do-nothing strategy and lost.

Lost ugly.

There was something truly paltry in the dilatory tactics of House Republicans on Sunday. Paltry and puerile. With passage secured, the White Guy Party worked the rules machinery in the chamber with the fury of that fake playing at Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

It was an unappealing exercise in futility to stave off final passage by what? Four or five hours?

Their link to the viscerally driven Tea Party is not shtick.

Outside the capitol building the rabble were calling black legislators "nigger" and gay legislators "fag." Inside the House chamber someone labeled the man who rallied the Democratic Party's pro-life faction a "baby killer."

Who can buy this bunch as a credible group of leaders?

On the other side of the political spectrum, the infighting over 'lo these many months was intense, but always characterized by the shared goal of keeping an eye on the prize.

While rivers of ink flowed on the Tea Party, the great unwritten story was how well the progressive types who brought Obama to the summit (or followed him, depending on your understanding of such things) held together.

If somebody in the caucus wavered, MoveOn, or Bold Progressive or whomever targeted them with a creditable primary challenge on their left flank in matter of days, raised a million bucks one week afterward, and beat them back in line.

The Tea Partiers make for great photo-ops because they're the ones in the street these days. And not by choice. The liberal left, on the other hand, currently keeps counsel in the halls of power; less theatrically, but more effectively.

NEWS FLASH: The winning 2008 election coalition endures and governs.

Choice words were traded over the public option, single-payer and other issues, but nobody was, in the end, willing to hand the FOX crowd a victory.

It has been so long since progressives won a significant legislative battle that there's hardly anybody alive who remembers how good it makes the team look.

Compare House minority leader John Boehner's red-faced, spittle-spewing condemnation of his "colleagues across the aisle," with Nancy Pelosi's measured, joyous, and forward-looking explanation of why Democrats were spending $900 billion on the American people.

Being constructive comes off much better than does being obstructive.

Now we must reconsider Pelosi's effectiveness as manager of the Democratic rank-and-file, while elevating her place in American political history.

President Obama's steely perseverance and infinite stores of patience will become new topics of analysis and admiration.

And rightfully so.

Republicans say they will base their 2010 campaign on the idea of repealing health care.

It's unlikely. They never really gave a hoot about health care reform. It was merely, as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said so early on the debate, an opportunity to stage-manage Obama's Waterloo.

But let's hope they run on repeal: an anti-idea that expresses perfectly their approach to governance.

There is no greater gift to the ruling party than an opposition looking backwards, asking voters to undo something they lacked the savvy to stop in the first place.

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My Left (-wing) Foot

By Stephen Siciliano - Mar 5, 2010 3:13:15 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

Was channel surfing last night when the phone rang and the cable-go-round ground to a halt at FOX.

Not that we never drop in behind enemy lines. It's good to check-in on that alternate universe to marvel at the sameness of the message and the ham-handed delivery.

It's like the soap opera you drop in on after 10 days to find out the whole sordid town of Westport is still suck in the same place.

It's not that highwayscribery doesn't hold conservative principles or drink with conservatives. Not at all. It's just that station is, frankly, beneath him, not good enough.

The mantra and cant are interchangeable, the anti-intellectual bent suffocating.

Conservatism, by its nature, reaches backward and into the past, so that it can't really offer novel ideas so much as old ones in new wrapping.

FOX is the land of the lowest common denominator, a dufus dystopia cluttered with tired buzzwords uttered so often that even "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" seems an acceptable emergency exit.

Anything to escape the simple land where things are true just because Simon says they are. Where Sarah Palin has an intellect, President Obama is stupid, the world is blessed with infinite natural resources, and liberals stole the wooden swing off rural America's front porch.

Now, highwayscribery doesn't typically groove on the ugly back and forth of American politics. FOX can walk alone to hell. But the scribe needed Wednesday night's "Hannity" show as launching point for a post on an obscure British politician who just died by the name of Michael Foot.

Hannity was simple-Simoning his way through another hour of color-by-numbers propaganda when he pulled out his shopworn charge that Obama has put the United States on the road to "SOCIALISM."

That's a big, nasty, dirty word that Fox refused to let die when the communist world did.

Now it is applied to ideas such as preventing banks that enjoy federal deposit insurance from investing in hedge funds and private equity funds, or increasing the minimum wage.

When Hannity slams a Democratic politician with "Socialism" it is expected that person run for cover or begin blubbering about the market, jobs, small-business entrepreneurs: all teflon terminologies in the American political lexicon.

Michael Foot, on the other hand, draped himself in the term. If you stuck a finger in this guy's chest and said "Socialist!" you got a smile and a thumbs up.

"The New York Times," obituary quotes him as saying, and we re-quote:

"We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is derived of their initiative, I would answer, 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do."

That is something more like socialism. You can hear more than intellect in it. Passion perhaps, or a chip on the shoulder Foot, apparently, carried with him an entire career.

When the highway scribe was loitering for years with the far left of Spain's politics learning for his novel Vedette: or Conversations with the Flamenco Shadows he once saw a stage speaker say some very distasteful things about Che Guevara.

When they were done, an acquaintance by the name of Antonio Saseta, an architectural professor actually, stood up in the audience and told the person who said such unkind things, "If you were a little closer, and we weren't in such fine company, I'd sock you right in the jaw." (In Spanish, of course)

The point being that if Hannity thinks Obama and the Democratic Party are socialists -- and we don't think Sean really does -- he'd have no jaw.

Upon reading the afore-linked obituary, highwayscribery remembered Foot vaguely from his disastrous campaign to unseat Margaret Thatcher in 1983.

At the time, for those who cared, there was hope at this end of the pond, fueled by a great English Beat song called "Stand Down Margaret." And if the band's singer "Rankin' Roger" had led the Labour ticket that year, he would have probably fared better than did our subject.

Foot, if memory serves, hurt his foot during the campaign and hobbled around on crutches for a while. Memory blurs whether it was the right foot or the left, but either way it ploughed ample fields for the sowing of metaphors mostly cruel.

A few years later, Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for his work in a movie entitled, "My Left Foot," which the highway scribe went to see, thinking it was about, well, Foot.

But we digress.

"The Times," quotes Labourite Gerald Kaufman calling the party's manifesto from the ill-fated 1983 effort as "the longest suicide note in history."

Hyperbole aside, that manifesto, drafted by trade and industrial union folks, and the party functionaries who did their bidding, was what you would call "Socialist."

Foot campaigned on a platform of -- and dig this -- higher taxes, a more interventionist industrial policy, unilateral disarmament, nationalization of the banking system, and scrapping the hoary House of Lords.

Does the highway scribe really believe in those things?

Why not? An adult lifetime both chronicling (as journalist) and enduring (as citizen) our world's experiment with the marvelous and unfettered market has yielded a nauseating cycle of irrational bubbles followed by disastrous bursts.

They seem to leave nothing behind but a few lucky slimeballs with giant sacks of money living behind gates communitied. As Foot said, "The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves."

We enter Goldman Sachs, its post-bailout bonuses and perpetual middle-finger directed at the rest of us, as Exhibit A.

It's all been downhill in the scribe's lifetime. From the early heady days of the "Reagan Revolution" when government got out of the business of caring through the recent weeks of relentless obstruction, less help, greater complexity, deeper insecurity, outdated infrastructure, invisible public engagement or assistance, homelessness, and illusory runs of prosperity have been the order of each day.

The "invisible hand" of the market has proven, again and again, to be a crooked one that mostly feeds the body its attached to.

The great money-making machine of Wall St. has never produced a single widget the common person might take home and use to improve their small lot. It does not embarrass highwayscribery to admit he does not know it is they do there.

Yet somehow Wall Streets unproductive white collars draw money upward until the bottom is emptied and the whole edifice tumbles down on innocents and rubes.

Yours truly included.

Finally, we honor Foot here, because he was also of a special breed prized by highwayscribery: The Politician Poet.

On top of doing the endless round of political luncheons, party meetings, factory walkabouts, backroom dealings, and parliamentary sessions, Foot wrote a number of books worthy of praise in "The London Times," for their "neat, economical, and muscular prose."

He wrote a two-volume biography of his own Labourite hero, Aneurin Bevan: 1897-1960, The Politics of Paradise: A Vindication of Byron, H. G.: The History of Mr Wells, and Uncollected Michael Foot: Essays Old and New 1953 -2003, among others.

And we must always honor men and women who make us wonder where they find the time to lead in two fields, when climbing the tall mountain in just one exhausts the rest of us.

Fare thee well, Mr. Foot, and may your politics, poetry and prose be missed somewhere.

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Those Not-So-Civil Congresses Past

By Stephen Siciliano - Feb 21, 2010 7:08:00 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

The present universal longing for collegial congresses past conjures Oscar Wilde's observation that, "Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened and couldn't possibly have happened."

Sen. Evan Bayh's (D-Ind.) decision to bail on all that Senate roughhousing implies that things have never been so bad and sparks nostalgia for a more civic group of players now gone from the national stage.

Oh for those civil congresses of the past!

Examination of a long-ago tete-a-tete involving Rep. Vito Marcantonio of New York (top) and Sen. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi provides a little perspective.

M

arcantonio's far-left politics and vanguard positions on civil rights often clashed with the "Pride of Poplarville's" views, but things came to a particularly nasty head in a 1945 letter exchange between the two elected officials.

It was then that Democrat Bilbo responded to an unpleasant missive from one Josephine Piccolo of 93 Garfield Place, Brooklyn, with letter of his own employing the salutation, "My Dear Dago."

Marcantonio, who represented East Harlem's 18th Congressional District, had, at different times, run on Democratic and Republican tickets, and sometimes both, in gaining his frequent, voter-stamped trips to Washington D.C.

But his political identity slowly merged with that of the American Labor Party, formed in 1936 by the needle trades unions in an effort at funneling New York's left-wing votes to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Along with his annual anti-lynching measure, persistent efforts on behalf of the Fair Employment Practices Commission, and feverish opposition to the Taft-Hartley labor reform bill, "Marc's" electoral success depended heavily on a unique, storefront, retail servicing of his Italian-American constituency.

Although Piccolo hailed from beyond Marcantonio's bailiwick, "dagos" anywhere could feel the sting of Bilbo's insensitivity. The radical congressman rose to her defense and wrote the Mississippian demanding an apology, "if you have any shred of decency left."

On July 24, Bilbo fired back. He confessed to being completely "astounded" at Marcantonio's "audacious, arrogant, and presumptious [sic] letter."

And he was only getting started.

Marcantonio's advice, wrote Bilbo in a fit senatorial decorum, would be "the last in the world to which I would give any consideration whatsoever."

He continued that, if Marcantonio's gang, --"and I dare say many of them are gangsters from the sin-soaked, communistic sections of the great metropolis of New York" -- had their way, "our great American dual scheme of government, with its freedoms and ways of life that have made this country great, would soon be a thing of the past."

And that was just the first page.

Marcantonio, a man House Speaker Sam Rayburn once called the third best parliamentarian he'd ever seen, kept his July 25 response short, but sharp.

He wrote that Bilbo had, "aided Hitler in the war by spewing out race hatred on the floor of the Senate." He called the southerner a "Nazi collaborationist" during the conflict, adding that since its termination, "you are Hitler's inconsolable political male widow."

And there was more. More than enough to make a present-day cable news anchor blush.

Marcantonio is something of a New York historical treasure awaiting an informed reconsideration. Bilbo, his white supremacist beliefs aside, did good things for his home state as both U.S. Senator and Governor.

But their hot Summer of '45 clash again recalls Wilde who noted that, "Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

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Special Election Rant

By Stephen Siciliano - Jan 20, 2010 3:16:57 AM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

In the wake of the Massachusetts special election debacle, Democrats will predictably veer to the right...and hit a wall.

The conventional wisdom, called that for its endless repetition and complete lack of novelty, is that Democrats overreached after the 2008 elections with too progressive an agenda.

The corrective, and ever has it been thus, should be to act more like Republicans.

The question is whether that's possible.

The loss in the Bay State was not due only to an energized Republican base hopped up on FOX-generated nonsense about "socialism" and a "government takeover" of health care (and every other thing highwayscribery wanted from President Obama and didn’t get).

It could also be attributed to a disillusioned liberal base that wanted a single-payer health care system (and didn't get it), and compromised for a public insurance option to compete with the public sector crooks raking us over the coals all these years.

Instead we got Tim Geithner, a bailout of criminal bankers, the public option’s junking, and a fire sale on what was left of health care reform to the highest bidders representing the lowest common denominator.

Early on special election day, "Salon" and "New York Times" were reporting low turnout in the Latino and African-American communities. It is highly likely they were too busy looking for jobs to engage in another play for redemption at the ballot box.

That was so last year, what with all the hope and change stuff.

Now independents are going for the Republicans. At least with the GOP you know what you get...nothing, which may seem like an improvement after so many shattered, short-lived illusions.

And while we're on the subject of independents, highwayscribery would like to mention how much he loathes them.

Although he has spent his life cutting an independent path, and paying the high price reserved for such behavior, highwayscribery has always managed to VOTE WITH THE PARTY.

He does not sit around with his finger in the air, sensing which way the wind is blowing, and then go out for a good 'ol voters' revolt against all these damn politicians with their fingers in the air trying to figure out which way the wind is blowing.

He knows what he stands for and is aware that, in fits and starts, the Democratic Party is kinder to middle-class, wage-earning, craftspeople of liberal profession such as himself. highwayscribery views voting as a civic responsibility, rather than a shopping quest for people to drink beer with.

highwayscribery did not witness the Massachusetts campaign, but he's pretty sure it would not have mattered a wit that Martha Coakley didn’t know what team Kurt Schilling pitched for, or whether the guy entering the text on a paid announcement spelled Massachusetts wrong.

It's hard to spell.

He would have voted for Martha Coakley, lackluster as she was reported to have been, for her service to the Democratic Party and its principals throughout most of her life. We call these “touchstones” here in the shrinking universe of people guided by a moral compass.

Coakley would have gained highwayscribery’s vote because of her proven allegiance to something other than herself.

Which is really what we're talking about when we go on about the growing class of independents so much in the news this political season. They are the apotheosis of this godawful baby boomer generation that has put self-accommodation ahead of any other consideration while blessing themselves with an appealing adjective in the process.

Independents.

Joe Lieberman is an independent: a man who stands for nothing. A man who supports an idea and a party one year and throws that party under the bus along with the idea he once so piously espoused.

He is, like most of our voters, an inveterate invertebrate, worthy of our deepest disdain. So here goes:

“highwayscribery disdains you Joe Lieberman, and all the jellyfish who voted for that Brown guy in Massachussecks, or whatever they call it.”

The American people have a right to be miffed, gelatinous though their collective political will may be. They gave the Democrats an almost-filibuster proof (Lieberman!) majority, a hefty margin in Pelosi’s realm, and a cool black guy to lead from the White House.

The Democrats and Obama then took a couple of weeks to bail out the banks and the rest of the year to NOT FINISH HEALTH CARE.

The Republicans, openly, shamelessly nasty, pledged themselves to obstruction and obstruct they have. But not without the help of hacks like Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat from Nebraska, Sen. Byron Dorgan, Democrat from North Dakota, and...LIEBERMAN!

Rather than move with celerity on the health care issue, senators like Sen. Max Baucus, Dorgan, Nelson, and you-know-who, dilly-dallied while wing-nuts jumped like monkeys for television cameras posted on the Washington Mall.

Progressives have been think-tanking health care to death (no pun intended) lo these many years while waiting for the great majority moment.

We'd have liked an approximately one-page bill saying something like: “Every American will make a contribution adjusted to their income, which the government will then pool according to generally accepted actuarial principles and insure every citizen’s health care.”

Instead we got 2,100 pages too terrifying to welcome with open arms.

There’s been a lot of talk about the decline of newspapers and good reporting, but when it came to covering an 18th century invention -- the U.S. Senate -- our Old Media machinery was up to the snail’s-paced job.

The upshot was great articles, for anyone with 50 cents to read, about how lobbyists from the insurance, drug, and medical establishments were eating away at reform like the greedy guppies they are.

The guys across the aisle were firm in their pledge to filibuster everything that came up and the Democrats let it happen.

In “Make ‘Em Pee, Harry,” highwayscribery suggested the Republicans be forced to actually man the Senate floor for their record-breaking suite of filibusters and then call in the troops if and when they abandoned the fort.

The “pee” reference related to an old yarn about Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C) strapping on a catheter before going to filibuster in defense of Dixie and against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He lost, the nation won, and it is painful to say, but Obama is no Lyndon Baines Johnson.

So highwayscribery thought that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid should call the Republicans out and oblige them to stand behind their verbal diarrhea. Make a spectacle of themselves before the American people, rather than allow their tactic to render Democrats passive and inept (which isn’t a difficult task in the first place).

The idea was being bounced around at the time and one of the MSNBC cable shows had the former Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott opine. He said it was implausible to require actual filibusters, because “NOTHING WOULD EVER GET DONE.”

Which is somewhat the point of obstruction. So if nothing’s going to get done, let’s have the blame rest squarely on the shoulders of those responsible, and not those hogtied by the undemocratic behavior.

If the scribe sounds a bit like a campy, angry, gay guy, that because he has been reading one by the name of Simon Doonan, who writes for the “New York Observer,” while watching the election results over the edge of the paper.

highwayscribery doesn’t live in New York, but he does inhabit a New York state of mind and truly enjoys how “The Observer” reduces the big city to a small town with solid street reportage and peppy writing.

Anyway, it turns out Doonan was at the heart of a December tempest-in-a-teapot over the way Christmas balls were decorated for placement on the White House tree.

That leggy Desiree Rogers woman enlisted his services in the name of style. Doonan came up with the idea of sending out 800 recycled silver Christmas balls in the White House’s possession for a dressing up by the schoolchildren and poor folk of America.

Somehow, (and god forbid) a Warhol image of Mao was pasted on one, and another of a transvestite named Hedda Lettuce to a second.

A right-wing commentator of the lower orders named Andrew Breitbart engineered a “blogsplosion” (Doonan’s expression) decrying creeping communism and an assault on family values in The People’s House.

But enough paraphrasing. Doonan can do this himself:

“The irony of Tinselgate is fairly breathtaking. A person donates his time and expertise -- for free! -- thereby saving taxpayer money. That same person then uses his ingenuity -- incorporating the creativity of kids and needy folks and reusing tchotchkes from previous administrations, thereby saving even more dosh -- and ends up on the receiving end of a torrent of threats and physical abuse from his fellow Americans.”

What’s happening at the top is often happening at every level of a society, which is why we mention Doonan’s nightmare here: It’s a good parable for the Obama presidency and a cautionary tale about the trash that is out there and the evil motivating those who would prevent someone come to do a little good for those who need it most.

You deserve your senator Mashochistetts. But we don’t.

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Dem Dead Dems

By Stephen Siciliano - Jan 11, 2010 1:59:46 AM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

That crazy rollercoaster ride known as the "24-hour news cycle" has the Democratic Party headed for a disastrous election...11 months away.

The announcements that sparked this most recent go-round of political calculation were those of Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who are exiting political life -- stage left.

Cable guys and gals have so much air-time to fill, while watching the glacial U.S. Senate parse the nation's future, that soon enough Republicans will again be doomed for extinction, only to see their fortunes bolstered anew by some Democrat's prostate surgery, which will then plunge that party into oblivion, only to be revived by another utterance from GOP National Chairman Michael Steele, who will then be fired, spiking the stock of Tea Partiers...

Posh.

Journalists view politics as played on a game board atop a table where the pieces are moved, knocked out, and returned to action with a roll of the dice.

But governing and vote-getting are tied as much to organization, controlling the levers of power, and the crafting of a saleable national message, as they are to the ebb and flow of "news" such as it is packaged these days.

As someone who spent 20 years of his life battling the Reagan and two Bush administrations, highwayscribery can attest to the fact you must be something other than "against" the gang in power to assume it yourself.

And to date, with its well-cemented obstruction to everything Obama, the Republican Party has little to recommend itself.

But don't ask highwayscribery. Query, let's say, the "Wall Street Journal," which recently opined that, while the Dems have their problems, "most polls don't show a significant turn in support toward the GOP."

Feet firmly on the ground, in spite of its ideological preferences, "The Journal" also noted that, "the [Republican] Party hasn't done well in special congressional elections to fill seats that have opened up in the past year."

Which means in the REAL WORLD where campaigns are run and votes are tabulated, the GOP hasn't left the woods it was lost in circa November 2008. Which makes perfect sense. National, governing coalitions take time and grooming to develop.

Steele recently got himself into trouble by admitting that, not only did the GOP have little chance of retaking the House of Representatives, but that it wasn't ready for the responsibility.

He got hammered very quickly because, in the Republican universe, the message is the medium, rather than the other way around.

The "Wall Street Journal" (which said a lot of things in a short article) also noted that, "In addition, though the intensity is up among grassroots conservative activists, much of the energy has poured into the 'tea party' movement, rather than the Republican Party."

The point is that all those loonies on the lawns with racist placards are somewhat different than the Republican Party itself. Probably a good thing, in the long run.

And we stress the "long-run" aspect of that last sentence.

highwayscribery has never been sure just what the significance of the Tea Party movement is. These were not Democrats to begin with, and the notion that because they're even angrier than usual (which is pretty angry), doesn't necessarily transform the political landscape.

A vote's value doesn't double with the emotional lunacy of the person that casts it.

It reminds the scribe of Solidarity Day in 1981, when a still-potent American labor movement paraded through the streets of Washington D.C. It was a massive affair peopled largely with Democratic Party loyalists. The Reagan Administration spokesman of that time (Larry Speaks?) responded to the phenomenon by noting, "If they're trying to tell us there are people out there who don't like Ronald Reagan, we already knew that."

Ditto President Obama.

"Salon's" Joe Conosan agrees. He doesn't let the Dems off the hook. They've got to fight for their votes and always have. But he turns to numbers in a Rasmussen poll, which tends to view the world through red (state)-colored glasses, and highlights these facts:

The Illinois Senate race is drifting toward the Democrats. Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich's seat is also competitive and could be a pick-up. That would erase the Dorgan loss. The Missouri Republican Senate seat being vacated by Republican Kit Bond's departure is also looking pretty good for Democrat Robin Carnahan.

Conason credits Republicans with effective control of the narrative, which is the only job they have given the fact Democrats are busy trying to solve the country's problems.

"What those Rasmussen numbers suggest," Conason wrote, "is a more nuanced reality. Republican advantages could quickly evaporate amid a volatile electorate -- and as with yesterday's retirements, the recent trends are not as dire as right-wing propaganda and mainstream prognostication claim."

His counterpart at "Salon," Mike Madden, noted that Dodd was a sitting duck in any case and that his successor enters the race with a 30-point lead in a solidly blue state.

Seat held.

As one of the public option's hangmen, highwayscribery thought Dorgan a pain in the ass in any case. In other words, 60 votes is nice when the 60 votes gets you something in line with your party's principles, rather than just any old thing you can call a "victory."

Since the unwritten 60-vote rule dominates national politics now, Madden's math here is worth considering, too.

"...[E]ven after the retirement announcements, there are more Republicans who won't run for their seats this year than Democrats. Already, 14 House Republicans have declared they won't see another term, compared to only ten Democrats. Six Senate Republicans, compared to only four Democrats are stepping down," and so on into the state races.

That said, there is something to be said, or admitted, about the essentially conservative nature of the American electorate.

highwayscribery always thought that was something of a media-elite chestnut, a conspiratorial canard with which we progressives were intended to be burdened.

Faced with a corrupt and spent Republican Party - its perennial mainstay - and presented with an elegant and eloquent option, the nation chose the Democrats and Barack Obama to keep them out of a second Great Depression.

Spending like drunken sailors, the Dems got the job done, and now everybody seems horrified at how much it cost to keep their over-leveraged asses afloat.

the scribe has been only moderately pleased with Obama's performance, wishing the secrecy policies of the Cheney administration, and that crappy war in Afghanistan were off the nation's to-do list.

But the rest of the country, outside of New York and the California coastal cities, has seen enough and are running back to their fiscally cautious bivouacs.

To wit: The "Los Angeles Times," just covered a poll which had the vast majority of the electorate proclaiming themselves "conservative."

So it's true. What we lefties view as moderate progress, most Americans view as beyond the pale and all of the above may be a lot of wishful thinking.

Obama should have let the floor drop on everybody. Deficit spending would have seemed a lot more palatable.

But he thinks more about the country than power itself.

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It Pains Me To Say

By Angela W. & Terry K. - Dec 22, 2009 6:17:33 PM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

It pains me to say that you are letting us down Mr. President. We had HOPE that you would lead the congress not follow it. We voluntered, publiclly promoted and praised you. We donated, fund-raised, organized locally and cybernetically and elected you to represent us. The current health care reform bill exiting the Senate appears to be another give-away to the insurance moguls, drug companies and others that profit from health care although they in no way provide patient or hospital services. Don't sign this flawed health care bill if it comes to you without a public option, or vulgar give-aways to the senior Democratic senator from Nebraska or any other seeking preferencial amendments; I mean what the heck is that all about ?!?! Tragically the current administration has failed to urgently deliver the message nor the funds to fuel a new "New Deal" style of recovery linking jobs and economic recovery with the rebuilding of the infrastructure including a smart grid, high speed-rail, & a multitude of regionally adept renewable energy programs. You are lettting your base down while trying to win points with those that seek to weaken you at every turn. When you beg for the oppositions compliance and input while bending to their defiant will you not only look but act weak and vulnerable. What happened to "Fired Up and Ready to Go"? When are you going to learn that they are just not that into you? Stick to the program that got you elected. Cut the multitude of government administrative waste and duplication of services. Cease the creation of a new czar and corresponding department for every new percieved concern, this stuff has to stop! Air Force One photo-ops over NYC and million dollar websites are examples of embarassing administration blunders that I expected out of the Bush White House. When are you going to start putting the screws to the wealthy that had breaks over the last eight years, like you said you were going to, this change won't fund itself you know. Stop the" Too Big to fail" mentality, be it a mega-bank, global insurance company or the automobile monopolies. Start creating tough regulations on the banking and insurance industries and enforce those laws with teeth. I don't even want to begin airing my concerns regarding the decision to further engage and embedd our troops in Afghanistan tribal lands and affairs while simultaneouslty having the audacity to accept a Noble Peace Prize. Get out of the bubble, you need to chill in the barber shop and hear what the people who elected you are saying. It can never be both ways, which side are you on? There is evil in the world and it sits in the seats in the boardrooms of Haliburton, Black Water and the other profiteers of war; Recognize! All that said, congrats and thank you for your service you continue to impress on many levels you have the most difficult job in the world, I support your intent if not for actions. I can't begin to imagine the weight of your responsabilities. That said you are going to NEED to be true to those who brought you to this place and return to your political roots and instincts if you expect to get my continued whole-hearted support.

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Princes and Paupers (Afghanistan)

By Stephen Siciliano - Dec 1, 2009 7:27:09 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

"When I look past the crazy name, I just see another guy from Harvard," highwayscribery's dad said of Barack Obama on the eve of the 2008 presidential election.

In doing so the old man might have presaged the scribe's content with President Obama as a traditional Democratic, but his disillusionment as an orthodox hippie.

The president has turned out to be utterly conventional where Democratic policies are concerned.

That's hurting him with independents who took his pledge to bring change as meaning something different than government spending to improve our collective lot.

They don't like stimulus plans, don't care much for infrastructure schemes, and hardly give a hoot about reforms in labor relations or health care.

They just wish their credit cards worked again.

That's fine. Democrats must sink or swim according to the appeal and impact of their policies.

But the staffing of the administration with familiar party hacks and Obama's retention of the Bush crowd's Defense Secretary has put us wild-eyed dreamers in the position of defending so much realpolitik from "our" president.

We have to tell ourselves that Obama's pragmatism keeps us in power and permits a slow sea change in American politics and culture as witnessed, let's say, in the largely quiet movement toward a liberalization of marijuana laws.

At highwayscribery we consider it a good thing that people be freer to partake in their stimulant of choice and that our jails not be busting with those busted for doing so. And we think the administration's simple decision not to harass medical marijuana outlets in states where they go in for that kind of thing has had a cataclysmic impact.

Hurray for the hippies! If only the Obama crowd was so influential elsewhere.

For example, Afghanistan, where we don't much like what we see.

It is just too familiar, what with Dick Cheney accusing the president of "weakness" for merely deliberating so important a matter.

Obama seems more worried about such criticism than a traditional Democrat might. His efforts are always designed to assure those who are convinced he is a black radical, that he is not a black radical.

And giving in on the war will gain him no grace in the "weakness" department. In fact, giving in at all will win no converts from their camp.

For we have seen plenty of what passes for a Republican Party these days and it's no surprise debate and thought are confused with "weakness" since the GOP is short on both, and long on bluster or "strength" (as they see it).

Anticipating the President's non decision to keep W.'s Afghan adventure alive, "New York Times" columnist Bob Herbert deemed the new/old policy "A Tragic Mistake."

"New York Times" columnist David Brooks went softer, suggesting in "Clear, Hold, and Duct Tape," that Obama is merely splitting the difference between peace and war through a half-hearted military effort focused on withdrawal.

highwayscribery's positions are normally aligned with Mr. Herbert, who can probably withstand the damaging association, and not so harmonious with Mr. Brooks's, who probably can't.

Caviling about our boys dying overseas has never achieved much. After all, folks like Cheney are always willing to sacrifice other people's children while their own enjoy life on the D.C. cocktail and conference circuit.

And America is hardly a place where moral and ethical ideas hold the same currency as, well, currency.

So we're going to do what the administration did and sit the hippie over in a corner (with his weed, of course). In his stead we'll forward the rank-and-file Democrat's economic arguments before going to pick the kid up from his overcrowded and under-funded public school.

And rather than stain Brooks through our usual trick of electronically linking and commingling our prose with columnist stars such as himself and Herbert, we're going to spin things in a literary way.

We will do this by excerpting a timely exchange between King Henry VIII, and a lesser-know historical entity by the name of Thomas Cromwell, beautifully presented in Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel, "Wolf Hall."

Sincerest apologies Ms. Mantel.

In this exchange (page 150), Cromwell has come for a chat with the King whom he hopes will let up on his own patron, the Cardinal of York, a fellow falling out of favor "at court" as they say in these English dramas.

Cheney, er, um Henry, apparently blessed with a long memory, quickly takes Cromwell to task for a speech in Parliament, made seven years prior, challenging the king's right to wage war in France:

"Listen to me, master -- you said I should not fight because the taxes would break the country. What is the country for, but to support its prince in his enterprise?"

"I believe I said -- saving your Majesty -- we didn't have the gold to see you through a year's campaign. All the bullion in the country would be swallowed by the war. I have read there was a time when people exchanged leather tokens, for want of metal coins. I said we could be back to those days."

"You said I was not to lead my troops. You said if I was taken, the country couldn't put up the ransom. So what do you want? You want a king who doesn't fight? You want me to huddle indoors like a sick girl?"

"That would be ideal, for fiscal purposes."

Everybody wonders if the Internet has made newspapers obsolete. A more important question might by why we need public discourse at all if the issues never change and neither do our responses?

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Book Report: "Working Class New York," by Joshua Freeman

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 25, 2009 3:59:57 PM ET

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The narrative in "Working Class New York," grows less interesting along with the declining labor movement it chronicles.

That's no criticism. After all, Joshua Freeman did not write a novel, rather penned an important nonfiction and academic effort that tells the story of New York through its workers.

"Working Class New York," is wonderfully done and demonstrative, at every turn, with the author's passion for his subject.

But, for labor enthusiasts, the end can't match the beginning for excitement.

In the early chapters, the poesy of labor reigns as the Hatters, Printers, Furriers, Elevator Operators, Milliners, Bakers and Tugboat workers, representing a rainbow of crafts and productive industries, bring the world's mightiest city to a halt through mass strikes driven by the underlining goal of reorganizing society itself.

Freeman's analysis of New York's economic structure, and how it created a textured union movement unequaled in the rest of the country, is fascinating and as much a love letter to the unions as to Gotham itself.

Indeed, the author frequently asserts that the city's best face was the lined countenance of the laborer or craftsperson enlightened by their recognition of a shared destiny, on the shop floor and front stoop, with similarly situated souls.

"Working Class New York," meticulously follows the labor movement's progress and retrenchments, starting with its halcyon days in the post-war 1940s.

It makes no bones about the powerful impetus communist politics played, and the subsequent loss of energy that coincided with the reds being chased out of American labor.

Freeman illustrates how the union movement reflected changes in the city as it lost manufacturing jobs and embraced the financial and service-based industries.

His mapping of municipal unionism's rise has less of a workerist flavor and more of what the departed Allan Bloom called the "Nitzscheanization of the left," as ethnicity and cultural issues consumed unions' internal power struggles and drove their industrial strategies.

And the book details how the decline of labor in New York reflected its nationwide losses as the country grew more individualistic and market-oriented in the 1970s and '80s.

Freeman's chapter on how financial types used The Big Apple's fiscal crisis in the late 1970s to undermine and rollback the unions' hard-earned, and unique urban social democracy, is must-read for anyone interested in those dynamics affecting the American workplace for nigh on a generation now.

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Jerry Brown Does Sunset Blvd.

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 23, 2009 5:14:32 AM ET

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California Attorney General Jerry Brown's Nov. 19 appearance at XIV on Sunset Blvd., was proof there is such a thing as being young at heart.

The former-governor-running-to-be-governor was in good form, voluble, humorous, and purposeful.

By way of confession, highwayscribery attended the event, sponsored by Generation for Change, with little enthusiasm for the budding Brown candidacy.

Covering the attorney general as a real-life reporter at press conferences, the highway scribe's alter-ego and rainmaker was left with an impression that, at 71-years-old, Brown had lost a step and gone mushy in his gray matter.

And besides, maybe it's time for some others to try. Politics these days, at least Democratic Party politics, have a transformational tinge that was reflected in the event itself.

Generation for Change, after all, grew out of Generation Obama Los Angeles following the president's triumph last November.

It is headed-up by two political operatives - Justyn Winner and Haroom "Boom" Saleem, still young enough to actually believe in all the Obama-inspired Hopela and energetic enough to convene a cabal of handsome, well-dressed, young professionals comfortable in venues like XIV (by Michael Mina) who, prior to last year' campaign were hardly worthy of political consideration.

And the kids are learning the hard way. Saleem noted that last year's ardor for change has given way to this years sen

se of disappointment.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

For his part, Brown has always been more of a visionary type. His turns as secretary of state, Oakland mayor, and attorney general, while positive contributions, do not bring out the quest-like qualities in him that running for president and governor do.

For Brown wants to lead in big, system-changing ways and Generation for Change, thinks he has the stuff, and has come out early for him.

The ambience of confident cool hardly intimidated Brown who grabbed the microphone, and persuaded the crowd to separate itself so that everyone could see him.

He did not, Brown said, work from prepared speeches, "because they're boring. If you have something to say you should be able to say it without looking at some notes."

Freed from the tyranny of text on paper, Brown rambled on in an organized fashion only someone of his unique cast can.

He pulled the crowd, separated from him by decades of life lived, closer, talking about the nonpolitical part of his personal journey: "I've lived in Mexico and different countries of South America, I took Linda Ronstadt to Africa. I went to Japan and meditated for six months; not on the achievements of my life, but on the essential emptiness of it. And you're not going to find a lot of politicians who will do that."

Working the crowd afterward, Brown may have learned how few knew who Linda Ronstadt is (was?), but he's just getting going at this point, a

nd that gap could link his living legend to a time when California was truly a Golden State.

The day's backdrop was a University of California Regents meeting two miles away at UCLA. There, student demonstrators clashed with police while inside "the board" jacked-up their tuition 32 percent.

The campus was crammed with so many police it begged the question of whether cutting the force's size might improve the tuition picture. The university's shock troops, with the help of California Highways Patrol(ers) handled the students' in a typically over-the-top fashion: rude, violent, disdainful of the fact universities exist for the kids.

It was tense, and unpleasant, and sad for those who remember the state's halcyon days.

Things clearly need fixing and if Brown's audience represented a generation of "change," he suggested they had much in common since he's been accused by political enemies of changing all his life.

"And it's true. But I'm not ashamed of that," he said, "because if you're alive, and your mind is open, than you have to change."

They ate it up without fully understanding how true the claims were. Brown's politics have always invited intense debate. However, the inherent truth of his commitment, his advocacy, and his willingness to go a new way are agreed upon by friend and foe alike.

Perhaps the crowd sensed it.

The quintessentially Irish-looking pol enumerated the many offices he has run for successfully and not so successfully.

"Many of the people I ran against are dead," said Brown, hinting of his hand in their demise, "because I'm a stressful person, and some of these other people in this campaign for governor are going to find out the same thing."

And them's fightin' words of which the impromptu address contained more; perhaps a tip-off to the approach Brown may take in the campaign, running on his experience rather than away from it.

Brown said the country had been, 30 or 40 years ago, a productive one that lost its edge and then continually borrowed to maintain privileges no longer earned the old-fashioned way.

He did not, of course, use the words "old" or "fashioned."

Brown conducted a brief analysis of the financial "leveraging" that brought the state and country to its knees, and referred to the resulting fiscal crisis as "the greatest case of grand larceny in American histor

y."

Applause again.

The country's political system is, Brown observed, "in an advanced state of decay." He lamented the "wall of resistance" President Obama has run into at the hands of Republicans in Washington D.C. and said it was a symptom of that decay.

The attorney general did not run away from Obama, rather suggested the president was a kindred spirit who could use some help with the heavy lifting out on the Left Coast.

He wove is merry way through about a 20-minute discourse, jumping from subject to subject, free-associating, joking, and holding the group's attention through the background chatter of the adjacent restaurant, and clatter of pots in the close-by kitchen.

California's budget deficit, large as it is, amounts to only 1 percent of its annual gross product and is fixable, said Brown.

He is, naturally, the person to do it. "These other people running don't know how tough it is to run the state. I've worked in it my whole life. I do."

For political junkies, the evening on Sunset offered a good sampling of what Brown is testing in the campaign's early phases.

His effort at tapping into the energy of a generation that knows little of him, but offers some of our best prospects, demonstrated the flexibility he claims to possess in real time.

More than anything, it was a tip of the hat to the hoary old notion that youth must be served...

...in very good restaurants.

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On Obstruction

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 21, 2009 3:30:52 AM ET

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Saturday's Senate debate has as much to do with Republican obstruction as it does with health care.

The Republican strategy of arresting any progress on the country's problems, of suppressing the will of voters who elected President Barack Obama and a attendant Democratic congressional majority, has begun to garner attention.

Which is why this post will be written more by other writers than the highway scribe, whose intention is to extend their reach and blow off a little steam at the same time.

Like Social Security, the weekend, paid vacations, and health care reform, the first volley came from the far left of the American spectrum in the form of a Nov. 11 "Washington Post," piece by Harold Meyerson.

In the "Do-nothing Senate" the one-time "L.A. Weekly" essayist referred to that body as "dithering heights."

That's pretty good and demonstrates how you need a sense of humor to make your ideology go down a little easier.

Meyerson noted that a few weeks ago, the Republicans thrice filibustered a measure to extend unemployment insurance. Once they relented, the measure passed 98-0.

"Just flexing their muscles, mind you," he wrote. "Establishing a new normal. If we have anything to do with it, nothing moves."

Indeed.

The filibuster, as we know only too well now, is an endless stream of B.S. meant to bury a bill under the Senate's terms of unlimited debate. It was not always thus. At the beginning, under rules drafted by none other than Thomas Jefferson, a senator was allowed to "move the previous question" and end floor discussion.

But Aaron Burr, the guy who shot Alexander Hamilton and came to personify American infamy (except for Gore Vidal), got that rule stricken and the filibuster was born. Its use was nil at first, but grew over the years.

During the Bush II debacle, Democrats used it with greater frequency, but typically infuriated their radicalized supporters with an urge to cooperate and get things done.

Under Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell (pictured), the thing has taken on a life of its own, since voters so reduced his caucus that filibusters are all he can use for leverage.

And use it McConnell has.

As Meyerson pointed out, "Unless you can get a 60-vote majority to end debate, all major bills (and some minor ones) are dead in the water."

He left out political and judicial choices, but on Nov 16, Michael Savage of the "Los Angeles Times," picked up on the meme, detailing a disparity in the judicial appointments made by his predecessor over the same time-period Obama has been in office.

"So far," Savage wrote, "only six of Obama's nominees to the lower federal courts have won approval. By comparison, President George W. Bush had 28 judges confirmed in his first year in office, even though Democrats held a narrow majority for much of the year."

The point being Democrats recognize the president's prerogatives, even when he garners less votes than his opponent and the Supreme Court shuts down a recount in a state governed by his brother (making him president).

On Nov. 17, one day later, the "New York Times" joined the chorus in an editorial generically entitled, "Obama's Judicial Nominations."

While noting the president has been tentative, the anonymous editorialist observed that Senate Republicans bear the blame on the confirmation side by, "doing their best to drag things out."

On Tuesday, a crack in the armor appeared over Obama's nomination of Judge David Hamilton to the U.S. Seventh District Court of Appeals.

The gentleman, who hails from a paternal line of Methodist ministers and enjoys the support of home-state Republican Senator Richard Lugar, apparently ran afoul of "conservative activists," because he worked for the American Civil Liberties Union before joining the bench.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) demurred in respecting the president's choice, saying "a common DNA" ran through Obama appointees in the form of an "ACLU chromosome."

And they say Republicans are "anti-science."

They tried to filibuster the nomination and, in the words of the "Washington Post's"Dana Milbank, got "Filibusted."

Which is pretty good, too.

His piece does a great job of detailing the suddenly changed views of Republicans who, just a few years ago, likened Democratic filibusters to obstruction.

By November 19, the big boys were taking a wider view of the filibuster phenomenon.

"The Washington Post's" E.J. Dionne came out with the "The GOP's no-exit strategy," which warned that it is "time to start paying attention to how Republicans, with Machievellian brilliance, have hit upon what might be called the Beltway-at-Rush-Hour Strategy, aimed at snarling legislative traffic to a standstill so Democrats have no hope of reaching the next exit."

On November 22, "The Post's" Fred Hiatt got into the act, further fleshing out the ramifications of what the "New York Times'" Charles Blow referred to as "the Republican's surprisingly effective obstructionist strategy."

Hiatt noted that, "more than a year after his electoral triumph, President Obama has filled only 55 percent of Senate-confirmed slots in his government. He has nominated few judges, won confirmation for fewer. The principal item on the agenda of the unions that went all in for him, labor law reform, is on hold. Almost everyone agrees that America's immigration laws are broken, yet no fix is in sight. Long after the collapse of our financial system, new systems of regulation have yet to emerge. There is no discernible trade policy."

Hiatt's point of departure was what all this looks like to friend and foe alike overseas. And what it looks like is that American democracy is in paralysis.

The Republicans, the party of flag-wrapped patriots, care a lot about America's image, but not so much as they do about regaining power. And they show no shame in their effort to do it.

For example, in "Help in Battling the Big Boys," highwayscribery lauded the efforts of Democrats, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut in particular, for proposed legislation that would prevent credit card companies from imposing the arbitrary interest rates and fee increases they're dumping on customers before the new law capping such things takes effect.

But in "A Gift to Credit Card Companies," the "New York Times" reported that Sen. Thad Cochran of (R-Miss.), blocked a vote on the bill, "in yet another act of obeisance by Senate Republicans to the banking and credit card industries."

Thanks Thad.

"The Times" editorial on the judicial nominations noted that, "In March, every Republican senator signed an outrageous letter to the White House warning that they would filibuster any nominee from their home states if they did not approve the choice in advance."

That the Republican caucus is "outrageous," is not the point here. It's that "every" Republican senator signed the piece of trash.

Democrats have never enjoyed such lock-step discipline and as Meyerson and Dionne pointed out, "Blue Dog" or "centrist" or "spineless" Democrats (whatever you want to call them) are playing an important role in all of this.

Dionne said Republican use of the filibuster is making the majority look "foolish, ineffectual and incompetent." Moderate Democrats, by making their own narrow interests paramount on crucial matters like health care reform and climate change, "will only make themselves complicit in this humiliation."

The balky Democratic senators are not only betraying their own party, Myerson wrote, but simultaneously making a mockery of majority rule.

If they are "comfortable with the idea that elections shouldn't have consequences, they should say so publicly. If not, they should let the debate begin."

The word is out. Spread it around. Let's see what happens.

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Letter to Lieberman: America is a Public Option

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 13, 2009 2:07:40 AM ET

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Nov. 13, 2009

Senator Joseph Lieberman
706 Hart Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Sir,

Recent news that you planned to support a Republican filibuster if the health care reform bill contained a "public option" was very disconcerting to me.

After all, as a life-long Democrat, I voted for yourself and Vice President Gore in the 2000 election. I remain convinced that it was an election of which you were robbed, setting in motion eight years of environmental degradation, preemptive war, and the abuse of our most cherished values and institutions.

All of which makes your choice of allies in this matter of the public option more perplexing. Their party filed the successful lawsuit to enjoin votes from being counted in Florida and deliver the presidential election to George W. Bush.

Your name was subsequently reduced to use in a trashy sobriquet on placards waved by rabble outside Mr. Gore's residence reading "Sore-Loserman."

I understand you've since endured some rough handling by Democrats over issues related to the Iraq war. All I can say is, you're entitled to your independence so long as you are willing to take the resulting heat.

Ours, since the debacle of Vietnam, has been the party of peace. When you decide upon hewing to a different path, the ensuing battle is of your making and not the Democratic Party's.

And for all that, you caucus with the Democrats through whom you reached your current status. They, in turn, were able to consolidate a filibuster-proof majority with your adherence.

The Republican Party is bent on defeating President Obama at any cost. Siding with them is no way to settle grievances most of us thought were smoothed over when you maintained your chairmanship of a Senate committee in spite of your support for Sen. John McCain in November 2008.

There is an amorality in your pledge to back a filibuster threatened by the party that denied you the vice presidency.

There is, senator, no two-thirds vote requirement for a measure's enactment by the Senate. Bills pass with the majority's blessing. Abuse of the filibuster has created an unfortunate state of affairs and gummed-up the nation's business, while giving a rump and regional party greater leverage than its reduced voting base warrants.

Your support of the filibuster on a matter of national importance, not parochial concern, diminishes the traditions of an institution to which you have dedicated a goodly portion of your efforts as public servant - the United States Senate.

As for the public option, the respected magazine "Miller-McCune" reports that only 10 percent of Americans could utilize the feature as presently constituted in the proposed legislation.

I'd be one of them, senator, and resent your single-handed efforts to deny me the opportunity to gain a modicum of health and economic security, through a parliamentary maneuver.

If you want to oppose reform through your vote in the Senate, that's your business, although I would disagree with that act. However, supporting a filibuster that prevents health care reform from reaching the Senate floor would be a move both anti-democratic and not unlike the lawsuit that kept Florida from doing a proper ballot count in 2000.

An issue such as reform deserves a full airing in the nation's representative bodies, not some cheap, short-circuit shutdown.

I understand that Connecticut, your home state, has a high concentration of insurance companies and your are bound, in part, to represent their interests. But as the same article noted, by 2019, 168 million Americans will likely receive coverage through their employer, "no differently than they do today."

By supporting the likes of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C), you're throwing in with their Tea Partiers' interpretation that the public option represents some government takeover of health care.

It's not, because I prefer such a takeover and know it cannot be found in the the legislation.

These insurance companies are not to my, or many other Americans', liking senator. They gouge their customers and then stick them with the burden of pursuing reimbursements for treatments duly paid for through their premiums. They are an important reason the clamor for reform has accumulated lo these many decades.

Nonetheless, your colleague Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has noted that, "The bottom line is that the public option can't really hold private insurers accountable if it is only competing for 10 percent of the insurance market because private insurance companies aren't going to change their business practices if 90 percent of their customers can't take their business elsewhere."

Finally, as a policy matter, I'm advocating for the option because over the years the public space in our country has diminished and with it, our sense of engagement with one another.

America cannot prosper as a country of infinite privacies where people cultivate "My Music" and "My Videos" folders on their personal computers while walking the streets with earphones cutting them off from any awareness of the "us" and "ours" all around them.

There must be a commons, a public place and space, a civic way of being through which Americans can venture out from their gated communities and locked doors to meet and share in the life of this country. Otherwise what is the country?

The idea of America itself is a public option.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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Help In Battling the Big Boys

By Stephen Siciliano - Nov 3, 2009 12:21:29 AM ET

Also listed in: 10 groups

Life's not easy when it is spent jousting with the Internal Revenue Service, Bank of America, and Anthem/Blue Cross.

As it is for many of you, it is thus for the highway scribe. The American struggle is a lonely one. It is a gauntlet run without the assistance of potent unions, affordable legal help, merciful tax rules, or simple health insurance policies.

For decades, policy has exalted the myth of our rugged individualism to the point where we have been left alone to tilt at behemoths against which we are no match.

Today, via the wonder of Web banking, Bank of America helped itself to $8.95 of the highway scribe's money for services that can only be guessed at. And that's because any time the scribe actually needs something from the bank, he gets nailed with a fee.

The relationship is simple wherein the bank serves as a brief holder and dispenser of the scribe's money while checks are deposited and quickly gobbled up by expenses associated with his humble existence. It's a pretty clean collaboration, which is why the free price originally offered for the account made sense.

One day, without any notice, the price went up to $5.95. highwayscribery called to find out what was up with that and got the stock response that such increases were included in the long, illegible text of a document he signed agreeing to a free checking account.

Which is not news to any of you.

Then, sometime after the Obama administration came into power, banks found themselves in the extremely rare position of having customer gripes funneled back at them through the White House.

In "Change New World," we expressed our initial shock at having the government do our bidding.

In "Credit Card Crookery" and "Credit Card Redux," this unique pleasure was extended, in particular, to the financial industry, which had it coming.

Of course, these companies didn't get richer than the rest of us by being stupider. Soon came their response to new rules reining in the parasitical abuses.

These involved arbitrary increases to most everyone's interest rates and general account fees. The companies also kept their promise on sticking it to credit cardholders who were on the up and up all these years.

That's around the time the aforementioned bump to $8.95 on the scribe's free checking account occurred. Bank of America stretched the terms of our original agreement by $107.40 per annum with nary a "howdy-do!"

Of course, on a sliding scale, a $107 heist is relatively small when compared with what happens when a bank does one the favor of paying a series of five $6 debit charges and then hits you for $35 on each.

Which is to say, the scribe absorbed it figuring nothing in life is truly free. Mired in a 1099 hourly wage reality, the effort in going over to the bank and getting the monthly fee reduced wasn't worth the time... financially speaking.

So it was with great pleasure that highwayscribery, in its ritual perusal of the "New York Times," on Tuesday, Oct. 2, ran into a charming slice of life on page B9 wherein Sen. Chris Dodd (D) of Connecticut was calling for an "interim freeze" on further fee increases of the type just detailed for your reading pleasure.

The author of the piece, Andrew Martin, by the way, does an excellent job on the myriad ways banks and credit card companies screw people. His pieces provide the consolation that you are not alone, and that someone with a decent megaphone is pointing out the abuses of usury to which we numbly submit.

But we digress with much territory to cover.

The article explains that Congress is only too aware of the run-up in fees and rates as banks interpret the interim between when the new law goes into effect, and now, as a window in which it’s okay to loot as many customers as possible.

A bill was recently reported out of the House Financial Services Committee that would close the window more quickly, on Dec. 1, instead of February 22 of next year.

Said Dodd: "At a time when families are struggling to make ends meet, jacked-up rates can quickly create crushing debt. People need to be responsible with their money, but they shouldn't be taken to the cleaners by outrageous fees."

What the Connecticut Yankee wants, in reality, is an old-time, 1970s-style price control. highwayscribery and others of his ilk love a good price control. They had fallen very much out of favor during the free market rage, but since that worked out about as well as it did in 1929, the price control may be making a comeback.

A fellow named Talbot from something called the Financial Service Roundtable said Dodd's desire is fired by the false notion that fees and interest rates are going up because of the new law to hold them down (if you follow).

Talbot added that the increases strem from the economy is so bad and people are having such a tough time paying their credit card bills.

But that's why taxpayers gave the big banks and brokerage houses those big bucks bailouts, so it won't wash. And thank heavens the Democrats are in power because we'd never have gotten this kind of love from the Tea Party Party.

Not to suggest the Dems are somehow holy and sacrosanct when it comes to protecting the naked consumer. They sat around for years bending to the will of marketeers and cultivated a lot of our current-day problems during the disappointing days of President Bill Clinton.

And that's because they're not as good as Republicans when it comes to loving their base.

GOPers can rush into a hotly contested New York congressional race and back the Conservative Party candidate (against their own!) without fear of...well, fear of anything.

National Democratic leaders jumping into a local race to back a socialist candidate, on principle, would result in their being sent straight to hell, or jail or worse. So they tend to take their left-wingers for granted because they have nowhere else to go.

Then they sit around waiting for independents and Olympia Snow (R-Maine) to give them cover.

Even as they have benefited from the change in our political landscape, Democrats have been slow to truly internalize it, which is why the public option was dead a month ago and now it’s not.

We've had 11 months of the Obama administration, but are into about the third year of the Obama era during which conventional wisepersons have seen their predictions upended again and again.

And so it goes with the public option. In his most recent column, David Broder wrote that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) finally decided upon the public option to satisfy the "labor-left" of his party. That's the highway scribe, who will avail himself of the benefit as soon as it becomes available.

But it's also a lot of other people, not necessarily for unions or anything else "left," but affordable health care.

Broder, like many in his field, think the Obama election happened in some weird vacuum that represented no shift in Americans' political thinking.

Reid thought that, too, and so did a lot of other people in Congress until the President did some decent explaining, the debate groaned on, and the public option concept grew clearer to the electorate.

The numbers don't lie. Reid can interpret them and feels safe in putting the idea forward.

But he needs some help, because oft-times, the peoples' will is thwarted.

Here's a petition asking Democratic leaders to strip any Senator supporting Republican filibuster efforts of their chairmanship.

highwayscribery calls it the "Lieberman Petition."

Here's Reid's petition asking you to help him out on the public option.

Here's former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich asking you, via video, to call your representatives on behalf of the public option.

Now, don't you feel better?

The "Times" ran an article on "Senate naysayer," John Cornyn (R-Okla.) who is hell-bent on stopping health care reform, because of the "financial ruin" it represents.

The article says he has a big "No," sign behind his desk in the Hart Senate Building of which he is very proud. The reason why is a secret of Cornyn's own keeping, but highwayscribery is willing to bet his tightwad ways don't extend to arms purchases and war packages.

And we're betting a yahoo like Cornyn, effective as he may be in gumming up the legislative works, won't be able to stop this thing coming down the pike.

Once achieved, health care reform is going to make life with or without Anthem/BlueCross a lot easier for a lot of people.

All of which, dare we way, represents something of a pending victory for President Obama whose Paul Krugman noted, "The seemingly impossible dream of fundamental health care reform is just a few steps away from becoming reality, and each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way."

Wow.

Which brings us to that final phantom, the IRS.

If you follow American politics very closely, you might come away with an impression that President Obama is not faring well. That people like him, but not his policies. That Republicans are poised for a comeback. You might have been caught off guard by news that he'd won the Nobel Peace Prize and swayed by those who say he has accomplished naught to deserve it.

In an Op-ed piece penned by U2's Bono in the "New York Times" a short while back, the singer attempted to explain why Obama is beloved in Europe, where they lack an entire network dedicated to the daily trashing of his reputation.

Among these virtues are Obama’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals of halving world poverty by 2015. Obama, Bono notes, was not around when the goals were set, “but he’s there now. Indeed he’s gone further -- all the way, in fact. Halve it, he says, then end it.”

Such policies, wrote Bono, “are why I believe Mr. Obama could well be a force for peace and prosperity, if the words signal action.”

This does not mean the specter of the Internal Revenue Service and the crushing penalties it has visited upon the scribe's family will suddenly evaporate. Even Obama can't do that.

But, we hope, it means that WHAT we give to the government will be spent less on institutionalized violence and more on the promotion of peace, human harmony, and the vision of our better angels abroad.

And that's change you can bank on.

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Congratulations Mr. President?

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 10, 2009 5:39:29 PM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

Remember, "Congratulations to my worthy opponent?"

Now, you lose the Olympics, you lose. You win the Nobel Prize for Peace, you lose.

Today's rarified, fast-paced news environment means you can wake up on the West Coast to commentary -- from Glenn Greenwald on the left to the choir of crass on the right -- insulting their own president for winning the Nobel before you can read that he actually won the Nobel.

The "fallout" from an issue for which there should be no fallout, overwhelms the original news itself.

Everybody from Joan Walsh to Joe Gergen get to weigh-in on whether the award was deserved, conveniently shunting aside the group which does painstaking, year-round work to make the designation and, mind you, pony-up the accompanying prize money.

They work in media, you see. Don't think until they interpret it for you.

If any proof were needed (and none was) that nothing President Barack Obama does will ever placate the conservative hate machine, this latest wrinkle (and our marvelous president delivers them quickly) ought to do the trick.

Obama had the chestnuts to speak on behalf of his hometown's bid for the Olympics and the fortitude to take the hit, such as it was. The choir was loud and sour in jeering those efforts.

It was disjointed coming from guys who wear American flag ties and whistle George M. Cohan tunes in the shower.

After all, Hannity and cohorts are always lamenting Obama's failure to highlight "American exceptionalism" in his forays abroad. But what could be more "exceptional" than winning the Nobel Prize for Peace?

In other, smaller, countries, when a native citizen wins such a prize, it is naturally an occasion for universal celebration.

As a matter of fact, in other smaller countries, Obama's winning seems to have ushered in just such an occasion.

Only in his own country, where a television network and millions of dollars in conservative funding have turned the president into a big-eared, socialist, Kenyan-born object of loathing, is the party dampened.

The Nobel gift became a really great chance to criticize.

Once the party of blue-haired dowagers and genteel country clubbers, the current GOPers can't summon up the simple gentleman's grace of wishing one of their own countryman a terse congratulations.

Tell you what, with the kind of noise heard yesterday, highwayscribery will have to reject the Nobel Prize for Literature, when it comes, for his family's sake.

But Obama is made of sterner stuff than highwayscribery. Despite what his detractors say, the President works hard and did not win his prize in a vacuum.

What really galls his enemies is that Obama is what we call "a winner" and no sooner was the grave soil on Chicago's Olympian disappointment settling, when the President had provoked them again by bringing honor to their country.

The brayers might say those of us closer to reality on the political spectrum would have done much the same had George W. Bush won the award.

But he did not, which is the greater message in all of this.

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Letter to the Honduran Ambassador

By Stephen Siciliano - Oct 7, 2009 12:33:28 AM ET

Also listed in: 9 groups

Roberto Flores Bermudez
Honduran Ambassador to the United States
3007 Tilden St., N.W. #4 M
Washington D.C. 20008

Mr. Ambassador,

I'm absolutely sickened by press notices regarding the treatment, not only of anti-government supporters but of those who just happened to be in the way of government troops.

As I just wrote to your counterpart from Guinea, military coups do not work. Either they further enrage popular sentiment, which is always on the side of democracy, or they smother it. The latter instance entails nothing more than a country being occupied by its own army.

Unleashing these ill-prepared, and unscrupulous soldiers on middle-aged women, academics, and any poor soul trying to get home from the market is speaks volumes as to Micheletti Government's ability to lead. This is not leading, this is repression.

Reports of tanks rolling through the poor parts of the country as a way of intimidating President Zelaya's supporters is unconscionable and hints of oligarchic forces seeking to forestall a true democratic process.

If people didn't want Zelaya to run for a third term, they would have voted down the referendum. "Fixing" things with an army that brutalizes them was probably a distant preference for Hondurans of both the left and right.

Shame on the ruling junta.

Regards,
the highway scribe

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