I think times have changed though. Local public opinion basically has been neutralized. Incumbents don't often lose their offices and it seems that are far more beholden to their financial backers than their constituents.

When you see some one hold up the entire business of government over earmarks you have to wonder if it's really about the earmarks or if the real goal is to... hold up the entire business of government.

And that's the real problem. One half of the government believes that making government dysfunctional is the whole point. If along the way a bridge to nowhere gets built or Alabama gets a germ warfare lab, that's just gravy.

What I don't agree with is the implication that I'm seeing more and more these days that there's something wrong with the American people -- that they are selfish and short-sighted and kind fo stupid. I don't think that's true.

Our institutions and representatives have been corrupted by massive amounts of money but the people are fine.

We need less Lippmann because in practice these days that will mean turning over power to unelected committees of wise men like billionaire Pete Peterson and our President want us to do with that budget commission. The implication is that only they, shielded from public scrutiny, opinion and retribution at the polls will have the guts to dismantle the social safety nets that the people have already paid for and that the people expect.

I say to heck with that. I won't turn any more power over to the unelected so that they can "do what must be done" which always somehow translates to "sacrifice for the masses but not so much for them."

We need more democracy. Let the people finally decide if they want Social Security of a bigger Pentagon. Just don't go around claiming that the people can't govern themselves and need help from their betters.

’Tis a pleasant silliness to set up the props and adjust the lighting so that Colonel Hamilton looks like a sensible progressive, and Mr. Lippman like the very model of an antidemocratic curmudgeon and elitist. This little e-parlour game is far better than sinking to the level of militant extremist Republicans, to whom Their Ford hath exclusively revealed that history is bunk.

This is no G.O.P. bunk, it is only one of M. de Voltaire’s "pack of tricks we play on the dead." And Franky V. was one of our guys, no doubt about it, just like Jimmy S. is one of us. Sigh.

Hence Mr. Poster looks pretty good when he starts with "I think that times have changed, though." Despite the consideration that his attitude hovers just this side of the confines of Bunkestán, for any Republicaniac dressed up as a human to deceive the inexperienced could say "but times have changed" about any allusion to events before last Thursday afternoon. Or draw the line at 11 September 2001: quite a number of Konservative Kiddies have solemnly pretended that we are livin’ in a whole brave new world since the Big Bang. [1]

One half of the government believes that making government dysfunctional is the whole point. If along the way a bridge to nowhere gets built or Alabama gets a germ warfare lab, that’s just gravy.

Well, sort of. But the Party of Grant & Hoover (& Goldwater & Atwater & Heath-Paling & ...) will not like bein’ called "one half of the government." Everybody knows that they think of themselves as paladins of the Secret Sector, and that only their third- and fourth-raters go into politics rather than into the Big Management of some business corporation or possibly nowadays a hedge fund.

One of the fascinating things about The Wreckin' Crew is how they have never got anybody who looks exactly like your stereotypical Republican ought to look to the top of the greasy pole. There has never been a President Scrooge or a President Warbucks or even a President Rockefeller; the closest the neocomrades ever came to it was probably their Dr. Hoover--not really all that close. For this and other reasons, Neocomrade Governor W. M. Romney of MA will probably not be makin’ it to the White House either, though naturally "past results do not guarantee future performance," so don’t gloat at me too heartily if I’m wrong.[2]

It will also bear some repeating, I think, that forty percent of the Senate is technically rather less than "one half of the government."

Anyhow, "just gravy" is a far more serious misunderstanding of the Big Management Party than is "one half of the government." Doin’ favors for their secret-sector buddies and betters is by no means just incidental in the behavior of Republican Party hacks. Whenever a Mr. Brown goes to Washin’ton from Wrentham MA 02093, it is chiefly to make the world safer for Scrooge ’n’ Warbucks that he makes the trip, though naturally one will not catch him sayin’ that out loud under anything but the most unusual conditions.

Assurin’ greater security for Scrooge ’n’ Warbucks is not the sole reason why the Party of Grant exists, I allow, but it comes in a long way ahead of whatever one takes the runner-up rationale to be.[3]

Healthy days.

___
[1] Like the more physical débris, most of that tripe and baloney settled out in the immediate or near vicinity of Ground Zero.

After the neocomrades lost control of the Executive, moreover, in January 2009, such residual value as their "Lo, all things made new!" Party line still posessed evaporated instantaneously. President Summers and Mr. Obama are not goin’ to be allowed to benefit from their neobetters’ patented snake oil if the neobetters can help it.

Thus the agitprop campaign du jour conducted by the Party ’n’ Ideology folks is, so to speak, gleichschaltet narrowly around "same old same old" -- same old Keynes, same old New Deal, same old Cook Country. Same old Fordian bunk all across the board!

[2] It has often been observed that America’s Otherparty are fond of nominatin’ former military persons for POTUS. Could they still be tryin’ to get back at General Jackson of Tennessee even after all these years? Anyhow, there is a long, long procession of (nominally or substatntively) Republicaniac violence pros that stretches at least from Tippecanoe in 1840 through the Fabulous Flyboy of AZ in 2008.

We may not have seen the end oif it yet, since a lot of kiddie selfservatives would be happy to watch Neocomrade Dr. Gen. D. H. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point follow in the footsteps of St. Ike. The hero himself, though, is either not macarthurin’ for the big prize at all, or else he is macarthurin’ for it very subtly indeed. So subtly as to merit a genius grant, even. We shall see.

[3] There may be a way around this, though, if one is willing to accept "But there has to be some kind of America’s Otherparty, doesn’t there?" as not just a background condition but a reason for the existence of the Grant-Hoover-Nixon-Gingrich racket specifically.

I don’t myself think there HAS to be anythin’ of the sort. On the other hand, if the POG did not exist, though it would not be absolutely mandatory to invent it, the alternative would be endless factionalism and divisiveness inside the American Democracy. We’re probably better off, on balance, with the Otherparty that we’ve inherited than we would be without it, though Father Zeus knows the neocomrades can be a real pain at times.

Thanks for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience!

Best regards, Mary, CEO of youtube video downloader