Maybe it was just me, but six years ago, the Left had no voice.  It seemed as though the Reich was dominating everything, including the news.  Then along came Air America and Keith Olbermann began building momentum.  As the one-voice nature of the media was challenged in the public square, the facade of the Reich slowly crumbled.  It was a good thing.  I think people learned from it.  It was from these programs, including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, that the courage originated that developed into the cloud of energy that was the Democratic primary. 

There was a movement in the masses for change and that change was begging for a leader to grab hold.  Several champions emerged and Obama won.  But the question historians always play with is whether the moment made the man, or did the man make the moment.  It's a false choice because it is neither one or the other, but that is just my opinion.  This post is to suggest that the moment was coming and the right man, this time a man, was Obama.  It was a moment prepared by the voices who responded to the trolls.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just all get along?  Give peace a chance?  Yes, absolutely!  I want peace with whomever will abide peacefully.  But peace, like war, is a two-way street.   Frankly, I feel a great sense of peace knowing TPM exists and we can express ourselves here.  That there are many people who share my views puts me at ease.  I can even suggest that for all my views there appear to be at least one person who shares it here.  Thank God[ess], whatever.

Then along come these agitators.  We know who they are.  Some of us eagerly jump at them when they arrive.  It seems that after getting no support, they leave.  Many have come and go.  Others would suggest if we ignored the agitators, they would leave.  I disagree.  I believe we took too many insults when the Reich was advancing their fascist agenda.  A permanent majority?  What had been done at the peak of their power was that the minority was rendered completely voiceless and ineffective.  Dissent could rarely be heard and when those opposing voices did emerge, they were trivialized or dismissed.  The country, IMHO, was in dire straits.

Now we have found our voice, here in the blogosphere.  This is the bastion of freedom of speech, for as long as we can keep it free.  This is where the Reich does not rule, nor does anyone.  It's fairly anarchistic.  This is where the voice of fascism is confronted and taken apart, with anger and with logic.  It is neither one nor the other.  It is a good thing.

Leaving messages of deceit alone on a thread allows those messages to gather an appearance of truth.  We should never let them stand alone.  What we should do, however, is be brief and direct in taking them apart, then leaving them to whither.  I am concerned that we not let the Reich get up again.  It's tiresome and frustrating to have to deal with them all the time, but not to respond only allows them to gather their strength again, and they have shown they can be strong, and that they can fool all of the people, some of the time. Their time has passed and we need to be vigilant so that it does not return again any time soon. 

Clinton had his war room.  He responded to any and every attack from the Reich.  Obama did pretty much the same.  Kerry left the Swift Boaters message stand too long.  Dukakis never found a response to his comical picture in the tank.  We need to respond, immediately, every time.  We just don't need to waste a whole thread on it.  Take it apart, then leave.  There is no blood spilled here.  We're just fighting with words, but this is where we win.  We need to win and stay on top.  We have seen the outcome if we do otherwise, and, frankly, the Reich knows they did not finish the job they set out to do.  Banner or not, their mission was not accomplished and they will try to return.  Let it never be so. 

[Note: This hit me yesterday and I wanted to see how far I could go with it.  Posts can add to the story as well.]

The stimulus package needs better marketing.  I hear people objecting to sound-bite politics, but if those bites have something underneath, they can co-exist.  The problem of the past eight years was that the bites were empty.  Speaking of bites, I can roll right into the tofu, i.e. vegan meat-substitute, of my post.

A while back I wrote a post about Wal-Mart as an invasive species.  I'm too wrapped up in plants I guess, but I think we could think of the country as a blueberry bush.  I like the idea we are blue.   We have flowers, then fruits, leaves, stems and roots.  We live a life dependent on the environment, the planet.  We can do all kinds of things to enhance our growth both naturally and chemically,  but what we are discovering is that the natural enhancements are really what we are best suited to receive. Chemicals seem to work for short term bursts, but over the long term actually degrade our ability to survive and provide a false sense of thriving.

With TARP, we were looking at the fruit of the plant.  Everyone likes the flowers and the berries, but attending only to this part of the plant, does nothing for the rest of it, and everything needs attention in order for the plant to survive and for the fruit to be nourishing.  When the regulatory changes were made to enable artificially-enhanced bad mortgages to poison the financial sector, it was pretty much one of those chemical additives.  We created a plant with larger fruit that was tasteless and lacking any nutrition.  If we were, say, a lettuce, it would be iceberg lettuce, all water and no flavor.

Having decided the fruit was lacking substance we have treated the fruit with TARP.  As this fruit demands all the energy of the plant, the plant suffers.  Sometimes, a dying plant will put out a flower in a final effort to preserve it's species.  Often making this effort hastens that death.  A wise gardener will sometimes cut off that bloom to redirect the plants efforts to fortifying the plant as a whole, and not the flower.

So here we are now, having just attended to the flower/fruit, to the neglect of the plant itself, root, stems and leaves.  We need to get to the root of the problem.  Watering the top of some plants leads to diseases on their leaves.  We need to water the roots.  We need to get the nutrients into the soil.  We need to work it into the soil to enable the whole plant to flourish and, as a result, the fruit will be better for it. 

This analogy is something that the rural people can understand.  It's time to work the soil to revive this withering plant of a country.  The rural people totally understand this.  If there is to be any trickle-down, then the soaker hose needs to be put into the soil to benefit the plant, not over the top across the flowers, fruit, and leaves.  The stimulus package is about watering the plant at the bottom.  Overhead sprayers were all the rage for a whle where we had abundant water.  Now we know there is not an endless supply of water and, even if there was, why should we waste it watering from above where it can blow away or evaporate.  Let's get at the root of the problem and we will flourish once again.  There ain't nothing like good, fresh blueberries!  Yes we can!

So to describe the stimlus package we should characterize it as attending to the roots of the country to nourish the plant.  We've saved the fruit from falling off the plant, but we need to feed the plant before it's worth eating.

Huffington post reported that several GOP lawmakers are opposed to limiting the compensation of CEOs at the banks receiving federal bailout money.  Why is anyone surprised?  Seriously?  This is their agenda.  It always has been.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool

Look, when we went to war in Iraq, the Republicans offered no-bid contracts to all their friends and associates.  No bids!  This Party that declares they advocate competition eviscrerated any pretense that there should be competition for federal contracts in Iraq.  While this might have made some sense with the urgency to get the war going ASAP, especially before the inspectors concluded there were no WMDs, we've been in Iraq more then seven years and never went back to see if anyone else could do it cheaper.  In fact, the bigger questions are, "What else can private contractors do?!?  How else can we dismantle the American military and create their dependency of private enterprises?"  Evidently, private companies can do anything, including offer armed support to the less defensive-minded private contractors. 

Another very similar example of the refusal of Republicans to spend the nations treasures responsibly is the refusal to negotiate any reduction in the costs of pharmaceuticals for Medicare and Medicaid.  Yeah, Republicans are the party demanding everyone accept competition is good, except when it involves their friends and associates in the drug trade.  They discourage the government from making any deals based on the incomparable volume of prescription medication Medicare and Medicaid recipients require paid for by the US taxpayers.

This is simply another case of Republicans creating images of being one thing and doing something completely the opposite. Republicans are their own party of opposition.  They oppose everything they declare that they represent.  They say the government is the problem and run it in a way to ensure that it is.  They say competition is good and evade competition completely when it comes to government contracts.  They say they support the troops while they have done everything they can to eliminate the jobs that the troops have been doing for themselves over the years.  Their goal, based on their performance must be to eliminate the military altogether so that the government is dependent on private contractors exclusively for defense.  At the end of the day, these people are not concerned with America, only profit in whatever currencies remain standing.  Right about now, I'm betting on the United Arab Emirates having the only money worth anything.  Of course, it's 12:16 a.m. and I need to get to bed.