I haven’t been writing much lately, I believe I’ve reached a point of being so turned off by what’s happening in “my” country that I’m tired of feeling like a complainer.  Yet, the more I read, the more I realize that every little voice in the wilderness out there trying to get the republican party and people like Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, David and Charles Koch, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and I could go on, silenced the better.  And, it’s not that I want the republican party to be a “thing of the past,” it’s that I want what the republican party has morphed into in the past 30 plus years to be a “thing of the past.”  I realize that the “wing” of the republican party which is calling the shots these days has been out there for a long, long time.  What is demoralizing to me is that these people, the above mentioned, who along with people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others who are willing to be the “mouthpiece” for this right wing takeover of our government (for money) were a “fringe” element of our society in my youth.  People representing their point of view had been pretty much marginalized following the “Great Depression” of the 30’s.  Apparently, there are enough Americans willing to relive history to bring this greedy, mean spirited, racist element of our society back toward the “mainstream” of thinking.

Now, I’ve been saying since well before Barrack Obama won the 2008 election, that the issue of racism was rearing its ugly head in America once again.  While this became readily apparent once Obama had won the election, I could see it in the primary process on the democratic side – the issue wasn’t significant enough in democratic circles to prevent Obama’s nomination, and the election was a great victory for all Americans (including myself) who thought they’d never live long enough to see a person of color in the “White House.”  What wasn’t apparent, at least to me, was the intensity of the backlash coming from those who sincerely believe “White House” to be a literal term (and this feeling isn’t unique to the republican party, unfortunately).  It didn’t take long for the republican party – and their paid shills like Limbaugh, Hannity, Michael Savage, Lars Larsen, etc. – to unabashedly claim that their number one goal was for President Obama to fail (and, they’re doing everything they can to insure that he does).  This has been an “open secret” since the first day Obama took the oath of office.  Certainly, an untenable position for any other president in my lifetime.  Even with George W Bush, a president who did fail – one who nearly destroyed America’s standing in the world, who nearly led the destruction of America’s economy, who damaged America’s military for who knows how many years to come, a president who was overtly leading an assault on the very government he swore an oath to protect – despite my severe disagreement with him, I didn’t want him to fail.  I sincerely wanted Bush to succeed – as did most Americans who were “with him” when he ordered the retaliation in Afghanistan for the 9-11 assault on this nation.  I didn’t know anyone who blamed Bush/Cheney et al of being “asleep at the switch” after 9/11 (even though we discovered they were) – American’s pulled together expecting a focused retaliation against the perpetrators – not, a war of choice in Iraq.

What didn’t happen when President Obama took office was a united nation trying to “fix” the ills that Obama “inherited” from the Bush/Cheney cartel – ills which went beyond the aforementioned “fiasco’s,” but included a middle class which was reeling from the effects of the housing crisis and an economy which was shedding close to one million jobs per month.  Instead of lining up behind Obama in an attempt to “stop the bleeding” our president was forced to face these problems with one party (in our two party system) opposing EVERY initiative simply on the basis that if Obama was for it, they were going to be against it.  The republicans adopted the same strategy Newt Gingrich used about 20 years before this crisis when he was planning the republican takeover of the US House of Representatives in the early 90’s.  If they could cause the government to be ineffective in the face of the present crisis they were counting on the American people blaming President Obama (of course, with a lot of help from them and their “mouthpieces” who sincerely believe “the end justifies the means” and were/are willing to say anything to sway public opinion in their direction) – this all despite  the “root” of almost all our present day problems resting in decisions imposed on the American people by this right wing cabal – Bush/Cheney et al. (Seriously, republicans in 2012 are still calling for MORE tax cuts for the wealthy in America!  When is enough going to be enough???)

One of the few people who have ever responded to this “blog” was Lars Larsen (2nd string right wing radio “talker;” now, how did he find it?) who accused me of being a “democrat elitist” for referring to America’s low information voters.  Well, the republican party depends on “low information voters.”  For example, the number of republican voters who still believe Obama was born in Kenya is staggering to me (something in the neighborhood of 30 or more percent).  This shows how republicans and their shills will take any issue they can find and “run with it” if there is a result which furthers their NUMBER ONE goal, which is that President Obama fails.  The truth matters not to them or that if our president fails, our nation fails with him.  It’s further evidence of their lack of faith in the American public.  As opposed to allowing Obama to initiate his own policies and letting the American people (who overwhelmingly elected him) decide at the polls if they have been successful, the republicans have chosen to prevent Obama from passing legislation designed to address the – in some cases – desperate needs of “we” the American people.  The damage done to this nation which began in the 80’s under Reagan and has been growing since is enormous – the other thing republicans seem to hate, almost as much as they hate Obama, is the New Deal – and, for the leaders of the movement (the Kochs, Norquist, Rove, etc.) this is like a “kill two birds with one stone” moment.  The question which will be answered come November is whether the American public really is as stupid as the republicans are counting on?

We are going to be assaulted with an unbelievable amount of negative, blasphemous, disingenuous,  dishonest political advertising in the next 6 months that will turn many people away from their TV’s, radios, and who knows what else.  For example, in the republican PRIMARIES there were some BILLIONAIRES more than willing to dump MILLIONS into negative adds as Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich blasted each other.  If I remember right a “Las Vegas Mogul” put $10 MILLION dollars into a “Super PAC” intended to help Gingrich; that in its own right made a mockery of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.  Don’t you have to wonder if John Roberts and Samuel Alito are really that naive or were they intending to enable their BILLIONAIRE friends to have a HUGE impact on the future of America’s democracy when they “saddled” the American people with this disastrous “legislation from the bench?”  (Have you thought about where much of this money could be coming from?  Do you like the idea that foreign shareholders/corporatists among America’s corporate elite could be influencing our presidential elections?)  It was reported last week that a member of the Ricketts family (Thomas Ricketts) who partially owns the Chicago Cubs baseball team and founded TD Ameritrade offered to spend $10 MILLION to “Swift Boat” President Obama by rehashing the Jeremiah Wright saga of the 2008 election.  Of course, republican mouthpieces are scrambling to come to Ricketts’ defense and blame the New York Times (which published the story “outing” Ricketts’ Super PAC’s “plan”) for attacking wealthy “conservatives” who might abuse the intent of Citizens United, thereby intimidating others from doing so (if only that were true).  These people really do think “we the people” are stupid.  The appropriate response to Ricketts’ plan to spend $10 MILLION to influence the next election through the so-called “independent” Super PAC, in my view, would be for anyone who has accounts with TD Ameritrade to move them.

The other day I read an interesting Op Ed in the NY Times written by Frank Bruni mentioning the effect the money of these wealthy Americans who are willing to spend MILLIONS to finance the so-called Super PAC’s such as the aforementioned one funded by Ricketts are having on our political process.  In the course of his article he somewhat compared a recent commercial that came out from the Obama campaign regarding Mitt Romney’s connection to Bain  Capital with the negative attacks emanating from the Super PAC’s.  I’m not sure where Bruni’s coming from, but that was where I had to disagree with him (I totally agreed with his view as to how the Super PAC’s are going to pollute – my take – the coming election).  I’m OK with whatever the candidates want to say about each other.  That allows me to make a somewhat informed decision prior to voting.  If Obama makes an incorrect claim about Romney and Bain, I believe Romney can easily defend himself through his own adds (can’t you just see him putting out adds telling the voters how Bain buying and then closing down businesses after pillaging their assets was good for America? or created jobs?) or subsequently through the debates the two should have in the fall.  I’ve already listened to many references from Romney regarding Obama that were far less than flattering.  The difference from their give and take is that we know where the information is coming from, we know the “bent” of both candidates, and we know what each is trying to accomplish.  With the Super PAC’s we have no idea where the money is coming from – it’s like stealth attacks on the very foundation of our political process.  Honestly, if I was in President Obama’s shoes, I’d use the words of Romney’s republican opponents to describe his tenure with Bain.  If I remember right it was Rick Perry who called Romney a “Vulture Capitalist.”  Gingrich and Santorum weren’t as complimentary.  As I stated back then, despite how much the “right wing” of the party hates Romney, they hate Obama more and they’ll “fall in line behind a man that has proven OVER and OVER to be willing to say whatever “works” for that particular moment in time.  There’s no doubt that Romney and the republicans will come after Obama with “no shame,” and it’s funny to listen to them when the “stuff” comes flying back in their faces.  I’m guessing we’re going to see a lot of democratic adds highlighting Romney speeches which will fully cover both sides of many issues (cause he’s been on both sides many times!).

The American political process has a long history of candidates bludgeoning each other and it’s up to the American public to decide who is the best candidate for the office.  However, the republicans have been pushing the “envelope” since the days of Lee Atwater and they’ve  become experts at manipulating the media and political “dirty tricks.”  The incoming assault from all the Super PAC’s (Yes, I know that Obama will have something along these lines too – one thing I’ll give him credit for is that he’s apparently going to “fight back”) should allow the American public to see another part of the “success” of the Bush/Cheney cabal.  Most people who think like me consider GW Bush one of the worst presidents EVER.  However, those who think like Ricketts and the other wealthy Americans who are willing to spend multi-millions to defeat President Obama will ultimately consider him a success – unless the American public comes to their senses and begins the process of “cleansing” our nation of these right wing autocrats in the next election.  Bush did a great job of undermining our government and our middle class.   The reality is that the disparity between rich and poor in America has grown almost exponentially in the past 30 + years, with the divide accelerating exponentially under GW.  America’s health is down, but the top 1%’s wealth is WAY UP!  That’s what these people (republicans) care about.  That’s the reality, and the longer “we the people” allow them to control the political process in this nation, the harder it will be to get rid of them.