Looks like Obama's finally starting to play realpolitik.

Since the Republicans seem to be feeling frisky about taking on the president over health care, I guess Obama's got no choice but to go forward with the DOJ's torture investigation.

I mean, the evidence is piling up that the Bush administration broke the law and is guilty of war crimes. Obama didn't want to investigate...he wanted to look forward, not backward...but, well, what can he do? His hands are tied. This is Holder's call. The man's a professional. He can't look the other way when there's this much evidence of wrong-doing.

God knows, he'd really like to help the outgoing administration, but, you know, even Bush had to throw Scooter Libby overboard to keep the sharks at bay.

I don't know.

The thing is, we've got some legislation we'd really like to get passed. Getting entangled in a long, drawn-out investigation of the Bush administration isn't in anybody's best interest.

I don't know.

Maybe if you guys could call off your goons on this healthcare thing, I don't know, maybe the president could see what he can do to, you know, slow down the investigation. Or keep the focus off the higher-ups who put the torture regime into place. Draw the thing out, obfuscate the issues a little bit, you know, bore people to death with legal higglety-piggley. Throw a little dirt in the umpire's face.

You know what I mean.

And you could still do your bread and butter stuff, with the birth certificate and the socialism and the waving-your-guns-around.

I don't know. I mean, I don't know how much suction you Bush guys even have with the Republican Party anymore. I mean, with Michael Steele running the show, whew; who can control that brilliant son of a bitch? Maybe you can't stop Limbaugh and Beck and Hatch and Boehner, either. To say nothing of Sarah the Barracuda. They might all want to throw you under the bus even more than we do.

But look. Reach out to your people. See if there might be somebody over there who might like to talk. We know you're planning to squeeze the Blue Dogs - and God knows there's nothing those boys like better than gnawing on steak bones from the money table.

But we've got a way of dealing with the Blue Dogs, too. They want to vote like Republicans, well, let 'em see how they like running as Republicans in '10. Cuz it's like your boy said: You're either for us or against us. And if they f*ck us on this, believe me: we're gonna f*ck them so hard their grandmothers will feel it.

But, like I said, nobody wants to go nuclear over this thing. There might still be some wiggle room. Nobody wants to see an ex-president and vice president of the United States of America being frog-marched off to some war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Where the hell is The Hague, anyway? In Europe someplace? Jeez. Nobody wants that.

And getting healthcare for everybody, getting rid of pre-existing conditions, setting up a government-run plan to compete with the insurance companies...that really would be nice. For everybody. I mean, what the hell do you care? You'll still have more money than God. And Obama's put his ass on the line for this stuff.

So maybe we can work something out.

I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, to think that Republicans might listen to reason, at this late date.

But you know Obama and Hope. With him, that shit springs eternal.

With me, not so much. But now that we've got Bush and Cheney's balls in a vice, do I think maybe we can reach a, what do the lawyers call it? A mutually beneficial compromise?

Yes we can.

When John Kerry's patriotism was attacked, we said, "Oh, nobody's gonna believe that."

When they said Obama isn't an American citizen, we said, "Oh, nobody's gonna believe that."

Well, in a rational world, that may have been true.

But what some Democrats are missing is the extent to which people are under stress and believe themselves to be oppressed by a mysterious "They."

Progressive people seem to make a distinction between the public and private sector. Regular people, not so much. It's not the government who routinely sneaks false charges onto our phone bills. But the corporation who owns the phone company does. It's not the government that seduces us into buying credit cards and then jacks up the interest rates. But the politically-connected credit card companies sure do. We are surrounded by corrupt institutions, constantly preying on us. And whatever "reform" the government enacts always seems bought and paid for by all these other powerful institutions. This is the environment in which we live. The "government" just seems like a corrupt extension of the real power structure. So it's easy to believe that there's a death panel that is going to deny us care when we are old. They deny us care now, when we are not old. So why wouldn't they cut us off for good when we are old? 

Life has been getting harder in the United States of America. Yes, you and I know it is because of a war on the middle class, started in the Reagan administration.

But we, the people who are under attack don't see the government as a knight in shining armor that is going to save us. One of the biggest burdens people have, especially people who are self-employed, is the huge, unfair amount we pay in taxes. The government doesn't seem to give a shit when a person who makes $33,000 a year cannot cough up the $10,000 the government claims is its cut. In an environment like this, when people are besieged on all sides, it is easy to believe that They are out to get us.  And They is all those insiders who seem to know how to make the system work for them - and against us. They are the bankers who are given trillions when they screw up on Wall Street. They are owners of giant corporations who manipulate the laws to enrich themselves. They are the corporations themselves, who put us on hold for hours at a time when we call to complain about how we are treated. They are the insurance companies that turn us down for coverage because of some pre-existing condition. And They are the government bureaucrats who have sold out to these money interests.

This is why the Democrats cannot seem to mount a populist movement. The Party of the People is out of touch with the people. Democrats understand that the government is a well-meaning check on corporate greed - the billions of dollars in campaign contributions that fund the system not withstanding. Democrats understand that the government is trying its best in difficult times, under severe financial restraints. Democrats understand that the government was hijacked by the Republicans and turned into an arm of corporate America.

But us poor dumbfucks out here, all we understand is that there seems to be one giant conspiracy afoot to impoverish and enslave us. Government, corporations, institutions, the news media - they all seem to be in on it.

So when we hear that there are going to be death panels that will refuse us medical treatment at the end of our lives and dress it up in a fancy word like euthanasia, that sounds all-too plausible. The fact that it is false does not matter. They said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. That was false, but it didn't stop them from going ahead with their trillion dollar war. If They're not gonna screw us one way, They're sure as hell gonna screw us some other way. That's the world we live in.

Is it irony or tragedy that Republicans seem to understand - and manipulate - this feeling better than Democrats? I don't know. You tell me.

But it would be nice if Democrats weren't always dumbfounded when they hear that people don't trust the government. There are some very, very good reasons why we don't see the government as being on our side.

I see that president Obama is doing another Town Hall meeting on health care reform, today in North Carolina. While I admire the president's dedication to bringing the case for reform to the public, I worry that he is making the mistake of assuming a level playing field, on which a good faith effort on behalf of legislation that makes rational sense is all that is required to win.

African-American President Barack Obama was arrested today in Washington, DC, in his attempt to break into the White Power structure. Though Mr. Obama has the keys to the White House and the official title of President of the United States of America, he was rebuffed in his attempt to change the way things are done in the inner sanctums of power by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who announced there would be no vote on health care reform before Congress' summer recess.

"Just because a black man gets elected president doesn't mean things automatically change," Senator Reid said at an impromptu press conference in the Capitol Building. "The same rich white guys are running things behind the scenes, even if the president is black. We are committed to working with the president to maintain the illusion of democracy, but you've got to be nuts to think that we're ever going to let go of the levers of power just because some slick-talking, nice-looking black man manages to get himself elected to the highest office in the land."

It has been the conventional wisdom that health care reform must be enacted early in Mr. Obama's term, to take advantage of the new president's unprecedented popularity and mandate for change, before the powers-that-be have a chance to whittle him down to size. The announcement by Mr. Reid, putatively an "ally" of the president, effectively puts Mr. Obama in "his place" and lets him know who really calls the shots in Washington, DC.

Mr. Obama, known for his dazzling political prowess and soaring rhetorical skills, reportedly became upset upon hearing of his arrest, turning away from a group of reporters to bite his knuckle before regaining his composure and vowing to fight on in his attempt to bring change to Washington. "A brother can't even break into his own house without getting arrested," said the president. "That's how it is for a black man in America."

Mr. Obama went on to demand an apology from Mr. Reid, who, in an interview with The Fox News Channel, merely chuckled and said none would be forthcoming.