"It's time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation's future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge." -Paul Krugman, 2/6/09

I have a picture on my office wall pulled off of the web during the heyday of the Republican ascension, when they controlled Congress and the White House.  It shows a group of people holding up a hand-made banner about the size of half a bed sheet that reads:  "AMERICA, Nation of Sheep, Owned by Pigs, Ruled by Wolves".  The banner just about sums up American governance in the last eight to ten years.  It was a nation systematically raped by men and women with no better value system than that of greed, a nation taken out behind the woodshed and left to expire like a wounded animal.

We elected Barack Obama to put a stop to that sort of behavior, to reign in those only concerned with "getting theirs" and leaving a wasted world behind them, for their children or their grandchildren to clean up and try to heal.

With Obama's election, we want and expect an end to the politics of greed, complacency, and the status quo, once and forever.  The Republicans, however, remaining in Congress, like their brethren remaining in the boardrooms and at the helm of Corporate America, seem to want only one thing, a world in which those on top can stay there (with the help of the United States Treasury, if that is what it takes to keep them in power and allow them to continue to live like the oligarchs they have become) and change nothing.  America is supposed to bail out Wall Street, inept Bank Managers and Stock Holders while doing nothing to put American men and women back to work at a decent wage and with healthcare that enables them to live without the stress of paying astronomical fees for the healing medications and care they may need.   Main Street, where most Americans live, is to get nothing, even if that means astronomical numbers of citizens are unemployed and reduced to standing in line for charitable handouts of food, clothing, and shelter.  For Republicans, spending government funds to put the men and women living on and around Main Street back to work Is anathema (although it's okay to spend millions of dollars to prop up those who brought America to this pass).

Well, okay.  If that is what it takes, bring on anathema.  President Obama has reached across the aisle, as they say, looking for bipartisan support for a bill designed to stimulate the American economy at a time when no other tools are available to stimulate it.  Private investors are not investing, bankers are not lending, and our economy is starting to shrink like a slowly drying chamois.  If anathema is what the Republicans are going to have to live with, let them live with it.  Not one Republican voted in the House of Representatives to support the bailout of Main Street.  Not one.  President Obama need no longer try to govern with the help of those who always put their party first, their nation second.

Paul Krugman has written that conventional ways of doing and thinking about the economy no longer apply.  I believe he knows what he is talking about, and I trust him.  He worries it may already be too late to save this nation and its people from an economic meltdown not seen since the 1930's.  I'd make his worry my own and encourage President Obama, and the Democratic Party he leads, to forget about bi-partisan support and move forward as quickly as possible to try and save this nation from the pigs who own it and the wolves who rule it.  Their values are not mine, nor are they America's.

I live in Massachusetts.  Every day I read another story about state cuts in funding that hit the people in this state who need those cut funds the most.  We are talking about people who need help and the people who help them.  Those who need help are joined on the street by those who the state once paid to help them.  As the result of the state's solution to budget shortfalls, the problem of unemployment begins to grow exponentially.   At some point, the solution becomes the problem.  We seem to have reached that point in the nation.  Right now, cutting funds is about as useful an exercise as cutting taxes.  Without jobs, there are no taxes to be paid, no taxes to collect.  It is one sure way to destroy a nation once and for all.