“Tell me what this election means,” she said. “You're the smartest man I know.”

[chaska]

Yep, pretty much on the nose. Cooper gets it.

This is not a must read article, but I thought you guys would enjoy the excerpts (don't miss the bottom paragraph).

It's time that we kicked some folk in our party up the backside. Let's stop tinkering about the edges. Let's be bold; that's what American is screaming for us to do.

William Greider recently referred to we progressives as "ankle biting enforcers", and that's all well and good, but this progressive is ready to go for some ass meat. Ankles are much too boney.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1117-30.htm

If All Men Count With You But None Too Much
by Christopher Cooper

(snip)

My friend Betty called me. “Tell me what this election means,” she said. “You're the smartest man I know.” Well, she probably doesn't know that many people, you think. But I took her point. Was it a great change? Is our long national nightmare over? Are we done electing unbelievably stupid, incompetent, semi-literate presidents? Has the fire of fundamental religion receded in the land? Will we again pass laws for the benefit of ordinary persons and families, rather than engineering society to the benefit primarily of rich persons and corporations? I told Betty I didn't think she needed to ask the smartest person she knows—she knows it already: we'll be getting a similar unsuitable gift in a better-wrapped box.

If we're lucky, there'll be a few more acres of national park or protected wetlands after two years of a Democratic Congress. The minimum wage will rise to the inadequate level (in real terms) it was before it was allowed to slide so low that even McDonald's restaurants wouldn't honor it. The idiotic Medicare drug program will be tinkered with, but no one will confront or curtail the dominance of the drug and insurance cartels. Some foolish manipulations of the “pollution credits” trading will stand in for the societal reorganization required to begin to deal with global warming. We'll back out of Iraq after a year or more of diddling during which thousands more Iraqis will be tortured, dismembered, buried or left to rot, and a few hundred more of our own men and women will be wasted so that we may declare our time in country a victory.

Some of the tax cuts given to the millionaires and billionaires will be vitiated, but not all. Big oil will get what it wants. We will build roads and bridges because every Congressman wants some in his district; we will build planes and warships even the military does not want. We will support Israel's warmongering without question, and we will ignore or sell out the Palestinians again and again. We will threaten Iran and North Korea. Africa can starve to death for all we will care and do.

I'm not saying Nancy Pelosi ain't cute for an older girl. And I'm not saying she's not a better human being than Dennis Hastert. (Who isn't? OK, yes, Saddam, of course, and Birdshot Cheney, and no doubt others one could think of.) But I do greatly fear she will be a ready compromiser and possible sell-out. The Democratic party has not for a long time been the party of FDR or even of Lyndon Johnson. Great triangulators such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and Independent Egotist Joe Lieberman test each breeze and are blown ever to the right. Barak Obama seems to me to be a soft-spoken suit full of platitudes and reassurances, unlikely to challenge authority or confront power or make common cause with the most abused among us.

(snip)

[whirlygigspin]

1. ...and the article ends with...

"But when all the big newspapers run the same headline, when you can switch from ABC to CNN to PBS and see the same old tired talking heads and pundits and pontificators dispensing the same soup, in complete agreement about what “the thumpin'” means, it may be a good idea to read the occasional odd-lot essayist, look to the Internet bloggers, ask your welder or woodcutter to suggest a different way of looking at it.

This business of bipartisanship may be as bad as the six years we've just endured. Or it may be worse, if we let a slick and shiny new veneer resurface the same devastating policies and prejudices. And don't forget that we got here by accepting lies, by believing the unbelievable, the unfortunate, the base and selfish instead of demanding truth and decency, however uncomfortable or costly. We've waved a lot of flags and prayed together and stayed together, and bought the gas and driven to Disneyland. Now it might be a good time to stay home and read up on reality and history and common sense."

[annabanana]

2. Only real Americans can save America from America. .

"Now it might be a good time to stay home and read up on reality and history and common sense."

ain't that the truth..