"Where were the Republicans...?" A Reader's Rant

By GottaLaff

Commenter Walt has graciously allowed me to share a comment he left under this post.

I wanted to put it up because he has made these points before under a number of different posts, but finally expressed them all in one Big Special Comment.

Anyone with this much feeling who consistently represents so many other TPC readers finally deserves to be heard right out loud.

Walt said...

The problem I have with these repubs that come in here spouting off about what is wrong with our government and they know how to fix it is, where were they during the Bush years?

How come it took the election of a Democratic president to unleash their anger? I mean what do you call Cheney's secret meetings with the fossil fuel companies early on before 9/11 and the wars they started?

Where were they when Bush was giving tax cuts to the rich without ever paying for the wars?

Where were the Repubs when the Republicans in power were turning our tax pay into an ATM machine for big corporations and private contractors?

Where were the Repubs when Bush was getting warned about an attack by terrorists and wouldn't even see his terrorist czar? 9/11 happened on his watch. Where was the anger then?

Where were the Repubs while the Bush administration was compiling the greatest debt this country has ever seen? They were listening to FAUX Noise playing the fear card daily or they were listening to Limbaugh, or Hannity, or Savage, or Levin, etc. demonize the liberals.

And now they want to say they are the independents and the wise ones when all I see is a bunch of marionettes still being controlled by their puppet masters who will lead them down the wrong road, yet again.

Yeah, our government is a mess and the Democrats are part of the blame.

But one year in power and they are to blame for this mess? That is hypocrisy on the highest level.

Government is not the problem. It is the money controlling the government that is the problem. And the ruling the other day by the Republican appointed Supreme Court Justices will only allow big corporate (including foreign) and the big Banks to control our government even more.

As Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator said, “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power”

So anytime you Repubs come in here trying to defend yourself you won't get any respect here until you atone for your sins. Only then can we come together and fight the real enemy.

And there you have it, all in one passionate, power-packed package.

Thank you, Walt.

LAFFY NOTE: Any time you want to have your opinions heard, please consider sending me a video for BLUNT. It's easy, and your voice does count.

Republican Death Trip: "What’s still missing...is a sense of passion and outrage" by Obama

By GottaLaff

Paul Krugman:

“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.

BUT... well, you all know the "but". We've seen it all over the Tee Vee Machine for weeks. We've seen it at town hall meetings, in speeches, on FaceBook, and nasty, vile gatherings of corporate astroturfy TeaDeathers.

So much, then, for Mr. Obama’s dream of moving beyond divisive politics. The truth is that the factors that made politics so ugly in the Clinton years — the paranoia of a significant minority of Americans and the cynical willingness of leading Republicans to cater to that paranoia — are as strong as ever. In fact, the situation may be even worse than it was in the 1990s because the collapse of the Bush administration has left the G.O.P. with no real leaders other than Rush Limbaugh.

The question now is how Mr. Obama will deal with the death of his postpartisan dream.

So far, at least, the Obama administration’s response to the outpouring of hate on the right has had a deer-in-the-headlights quality. It’s as if officials still can’t wrap their minds around the fact that things like this can happen to people who aren’t named Clinton, as if they keep expecting the nonsense to just go away.

[...] It would certainly help if he gave clearer and more concise explanations of his health care plan. To be fair, he’s gotten much better at that over the past couple of weeks.

What’s still missing, however, is a sense of passion and outrage — passion for the goal of ensuring that every American gets the health care he or she needs, outrage at the lies and fear-mongering that are being used to block that goal.

So can Mr. Obama, who can be so eloquent when delivering a message of uplift, rise to the challenge of unreasoning, unappeasable opposition?

GObama... right now. Please. We can't afford to wait a minute longer.

H/t: David Shuster

538 on Rev. Rick Warren: The left is learning to focus and take action

By GottaLaff

Nate the Great at Five Thirty Eight makes an observation about Rev. Rick:

One reason that cultural issues like abortion have been successful rallying points for Republicans is because such issues tend to beget an asymmetry of passion. [...]

[W]hat I think the Warren dust-up reveals is that the left is now willing to raise at least as much ruckus about the issue as the right. The left, of course, has always had its own moral compass, but it's now beginning to convert that into more focused, overtly political action. If John Kerry had won four years ago, and invited Warren or some analogous pastor to give his invocation, would there have been this much debate about it? It's hard to say for sure, but I don't think we would have heard very much about it at all. This all feels very recent, stemming from a renewed self-confidence on the part of the left, coupled in this particular instance with the aftermath of Proposition 8.

I say this as someone, by the way, who buys into the "Can't we all just get along?" side of the argument. There's a difference between feeling as though you have superior morals and feeling morally superior, and some of the discussion has veered toward the wrong side of that equation. Nevertheless, I think the passion aroused among the left on the issue has been fairly impressive, and is potentially fairly consequential.

We lefties have always raised ruckuses (protests, sit-ins, etc.), but per Nate, difficulty in focusing as a party, plus a lack of confidence, have often impeded us from accomplishing our goals. I might add, so has infighting.

Maybe it took eight years of unrelenting Republican oppression and injustice to jump start a more unified, much delayed response. BushCo's extremes begat passions that had been either hibernating and/or percolating for way too long.

That said, Obama's exquisite message of hope and unity was inspiring, but it also raised unrealistic expectations. So ironically, it was Obama's (overzealous) overture to Rev. Rick, as well as Bush's maltreatment of America, that served as the catalyst for the transformation to which Nate refers.

IMHO, Bush lit the fire (more like TNT), but our president-elect's good intentions may have just given us the other stimulus package we needed.