On February 16th, a group of 80 conservative movement leaders gathered on a part of the original Mount Vernon estate of George Washington to sign "The Mount Vernon Statement". They described it as "a defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles penned by a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives."

This isn't Newt's "Contract With America", there are no legislative agendas, no promises of tax cuts or term limits. It is simply a call to return to the original Constitution.

"We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government."

"Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead -- forward or backward, up or down? Isn't this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?"

"The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."

But it says nothing about equality and nothing about the Amendments including the Bill of Rights. The notion that they want to return to the Three-Fifths compromise could be dismissed as race-baiting snark. But let's look at the particulars;

Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3:
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one representative...."

And then let us consider that the blue states have less representation in our government because of the small state bias in the Senate. So the routine use of the filibuster now gives the red states, less than two fifths of the population, effective veto power over all legislation.

And consider that red states receive a disproportionate share of federal tax money per capita effectively redistributing income from cities to rural areas.

Is the Mount Vernon Statement a declaration of protest or is it a statement of victory? The recent CNN poll describes the Tea Party demographic as predominantly male, white, rural and wealthy. Their Senators have effectively blocked almost all legislation that our Representatives have passed. Why are they portrayed and oppressed and angry?

Our broadcast media struggles to survive so it caters to advertisers that focus on the demographic that has expendable income in the midst of a recession. Which would be mostly male, white and wealthy. So our broadcast media reflects the desires of an elite minority and manipulates the fears of those that might challenge them.

Is the Tea Party really angry, or are they just are afraid that they will lose the privileges of disproportionate power?

I do not think this is simply a matter of racism. Republicans have tried to de-legitimize every Democratic President or Congressional majority and recent history proves that. But recent history also shows that many in the Republican Party will use any wedge issue including race to further their goal of maintaining wealth and power.

Politics can be mapped with two interconnected variables - wealth and tolerance of uncertainty. When an individual accumulates a certain amount of wealth their orientation shifts from seeking change in their community to benefit themselves and their family to seeking security from the community to protect what they have accumulated. That point varies from person to person depending on their individual tolerance for uncertainty, the more tolerance for uncertainty you have the less you seek security from your fellow citizens.

Republicans appeal to the desire of the wealthy to protect what they have accumulated and the insecurity of those who seek protection from the fellow citizens that they fear.

The routine use of the filibuster has given a republican minority the leverage to impose their will on the majority. The filibuster means they can protect businesses and the wealthy from the uncertainty of competition, redistribute taxes to the own communities and block the will of the people as it is expressed democratically. It is time to end the tyranny of this minority

I have never been more angry at the Democratic Party than I am at this moment and I have been a proud Democrat and Liberal for over 40 years.

It doesn't matter what Democratic politicians stand for if they won't fight for their constituents when the chips are down, they are compounding defeat with retreat.  They are teaching millions of young voters who came out and stood up for Obama that Democrats cannot be trusted to fight for those who fought for them.  They are in danger of losing an entire generation to cynicism and mistrust of anybody who calls themselves a Democrat or progressive or liberal.

I am mad as hell and I am not going away.  If Democratic politicians won't fight for the people that elected them then they should get the hell out of the way and make room for a new generation of Democrats that will.

Who is angry now?

Does it strike anyone else how strange it is that at the end of every day this site and every other progressive site is grousing about the same thing.

"Can you believe that with all we have to deal with that the media is obsessed with Obama's race and birthers". The subtext is "We don't buy that crap but some stupid people might."

Obama would not be President if most people bought that crap. In fact most people haven't been buying that crap since they tried to railroad Clinton. In between elections it is too easy to forget that and that is what that media is counting on.

That hierarchical media is the message. That media will always protect "the villagers" of Washington and the Masters of Wall Street from outsiders and any threat to the status quo. That media is dying. It is a feeble old lion, striking out and lying with every last breath to deny its inevitable demise. Journalism will survive on the web but it is our job to make sure it doesn't survive in its present corrupt form.

This interactive media is the message. This media is the people. The people are the message.

When will this media stop obsessing with that media and focus on putting pressure directly on our representatives?

When will this media, TPM, Huffpo, Salon etc, produce its own evening interactive summation of the days news instead of letting that media set the narratives and the priorities for us.

Everywhere you look this morning in the MSM the headlines are the same; the time for final negotiations is now and reform is stalling.

Do I wish Democrats would have started with single payer as their default negotiating position? Yes, and I would bet that if that ABC/Post poll that says that Obama has lost support for reform is accurate, and I doubt it is, it is because Obama hasn't gone far enough to push for real reform.

But remember, the stories we are seeing this morning are just like HUNDREDS of other stories in all forms of media written in the last couple of months that all say the same thing; Obama is losing momentum in the push for health care reform. Meanwhile the ball has been pushed down the field closer to the goal.

For the last ten years media narratives have had very little effect or relation to actual public opinion. You can make the case that the corporate media chorus was able to stop reform in '92 because without interactive web pushback they were able to create the perception that reform was dead in the water. They are trying to do the same thing now, story after story for months on end says that reform is stalling.

But ever since the media tried to railroad Clinton when Republicans were impeaching him for a blow job, the public has been using the web to push back and find the real story of what has been going on. If the corporate media really had much effect on public opinion now then Obama would never had been nominated much less elected. Those days are over but they still try to convince us that media blowback is equivalent to public blowback.

Don't buy the hype. Turn off the cable blather and help move the ball down the court. Fax your Senator and remind them who is the real boss.

I live in Iowa City, a university town that is supposed to be the most liberal community in the state of Iowa. The comment boards in the local paper are dominated by hard right Palin-loving Republicans that live in town and surrounding communities. They manage to have considerable sway in county and city politics far beyond their numbers. They are representative of Palin's support, they are not going away and they are getting more radical and angry by the day. I don't think national politicians or pundits have a real understanding of where this base is coming from but if you look at your local community closely, for example at the building trades, you may get a clue.

When I dig into the background of those folks I find that they either own established small businesses or they aspire to owning a business like Joe the Plumber. What they have in common is a single minded focus on self-enrichment and a tendency to scapegoat anyone else for keeping them from achieving some imagined level of wealth.

As someone who built a small business from scratch I can understand to some extent how they get to that point. When you spend 10-12 hours a day building a business and everything city hall does seems to slow you down it is too easy to get into the frame of mind that everyone else is trying to leach off your hard work and initiative. I had enough perspective to understand that my success depended to a large degree on the greater success of the community.

But if your ONLY priority is self-interest then that attitude becomes viscous and usually racist.

Understand that percentage-wise, rural communities depend upon self-employment more than urban communities. And understand that established small businesses in rural communities are often de-facto monopolies and that is accelerating with the recession and the increase in energy prices.

These folks have alot of resources to push their priorities in local and regional politics and also as consumers for media advertisers. They are not used to actual competition in the marketplace, they are used to getting their way.  And whether they own a business or imagine themselves to be a business like Joe, they identify with raw corporate power. It is called corporatism.

I am a financial layman with no comprehension of the particularities of the derivative markets but I have maintained attention to the global context of this financial meltdown. So tell me where I have this wrong. The conversations we are having now about AIG, bailouts, Cramer vrs Stewart and the G-20 summit are all circling around one subject; who is going to be taking the final big losses when we hit bottom? Bondholders? Stockholders? Taxpayers? In which country? In what proportion? Are the recent global market rallies in anticipation of a verdict for bondholders and stockholders and against taxpayers? Is this all coming to a head at the G-20?

To that possibly volitile mix I will add one other point of context.

We are in a transition from an era of cheap energy to an era of expensive energy. One way to understand current market volatility is the revaluation of all global assets in light of the changing variables of energy inputs. Our infrastructure is based on cheap energy and the length of the recession may depend on the effective use of stimulus globally to build new infrastructure based on expensive energy.

The changing costs of energy and the internalizing of formerly external costs of energy usage also changes the calculation of possible future economic growth. Or, to put it another way, we need the market to redefine growth as efficiency. We need real competitive functioning markets in order to squeeze every possible efficiency out of all the energy we can produce. Not to produce economic growth but to survive.

I will give him credit for cooling the rhetoric but at the same rally he repeated the BS about Fannie and Freddie being the reason for the financial crisis and the BS about ACORN being a means for Democratic vote fraud.

In other words he told them to cool the hate speech but they could blame Democrats for the financial collapse because they gave blacks mortgages they couldn't afford. And he told them that Obama was fixing the election via vote fraud making him illigitimate in their eyes. Fox and CNN have been laying the foundation for this all day.

Only the real wingnuts buy it but it does insure that militias will thrive after the election and the Secret Service will have its hands full. 

If he can't win then he will be content to tear the country apart. When he says "Country First" you eventually learn that he is a country unto himself.

On one side of the ridge they see a bottomless chasm of low paying jobs, high energy costs and endless debt. On the other side they see a black man in the White House forever challenging their identity as the ruling white majority.

They could join the local militia and live out the survivalist fantasy; a subsistence rebellion, a civil war over land, food and water, rebels holed up in their exurban forts, armed to the teeth, guarding their ranchette against the urban hoards.

Or they could hole up after secretly voting for a less dramatic vision of the future where their kids would have a better chance of surviving. They need an excuse to betray their friends who may also be secretly looking for a way beyond the racist bluster and the bleak, bloody slog that waits for them after the movie ends.

I don’t think there is anyone who can predict how this bailout plan will affect the credit markets on Wall Street or on

I don’t think there is anyone who can predict how this bailout plan will affect the credit markets on Wall Street or on

In his speech announcing the suspension of his campaign McCain mentioned the lodestar of Republican Hegemony: 9-11.

Following September 11th our national leaders came together at a time of crisis. We must show that kind of patriotism now. Americans across our country lament the fact that partisan divisions in Washington have prevented us from addressing our national challenges. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to gauge the difference between the true danger to our nation’s economy, the economic panic on Wall Street and the political panic in the Republican Party. But it has become clear that the real lesson that Americans learned from 9-11 was that Republicans are perfectly willing to ruthlessly exploit chaos of any variety to their own political benefit.

This is a preview of what we will see this Friday when McCain will try to make the debate all about the Surge.

I would argue that this is where McCain won the Republican nomination.  Up to this point Romney was the favorite of the base and he began to fade after this debate.  There was alot of commentary that Romney was right about the facts but that is not what the Republican base is interested in.  They identified with McCain's stubborn, snarling but strangly calm refusal to accept any other version of reality except his own.  That is exactly the political style that attracted the base to Bush.  And that is exactly what we will see from McCain when he brings up the surge.

In today's foreign policy speech Biden is trying to frame the debate and get under McCain's skin and piss him off.  That may work to an extent but when you watch him against Romney it becomes clear that he will not be thrown off track when it comes to the surge.  He will hammer Obama over and over again, badgering him to admit he was wrong, interupt him, talk over him and generally be an asshole about it.

The Republican base will love it, for them it is all style over substance, he could be talking in tougues for all they care as long as McCain is aggressive and stubborn.

I am sure that Obama is prepping for just this kind of grilling but it is not going to be a pretty sight.  The question is; will his reaction turn off those on the left that are marginal voters.  Will it turn off marginal women voters?  Will it turn off independants or Reagan democrats? 

This is the essense of Rovian politics; snarling sarcastic attacks unify the Republican base while dividing the Democratic coalition.  The anti-war left is turned of by an agressive response and the Reagan Democrats are turned off by a weak response.  How will Obama bridge that divide?

Remember what Palin is now implying in response to Biden; paying taxes is not a patriotic duty.  Somebody needs to ask her and the potential First Dude; is it your patriotic duty to NOT pay taxes? Where are your tax returns?  If Obama wins do you advocate a tax revolt?