There were many on the conservative side who berated President Obama when he refused to make public his long form birth certificate from Hawaii. Obama, from the beginning, had made his short form Hawaiian birth certificate public for all to see. But Obama is black and has a funny name for a U.S. politician…and he calls himself a Democrat….so the short form birth certificate was not enough for those on the right who really, really didn't want Obama elected president.

The short form birth certificate is all the state of Hawaii requires for legal transactions, etc….but not enough for those in America who are not particularly fond of minorities and who really, really, dislike the Democratic Party. Many on the right claimed that they didn't actually believe Obama was an illegal immigrant…a total imposter. But they argued that it was up to Obama to "clear the air"….even though no other president has ever had to produce a birth certificate, and even though newspaper announcements of Obama's Hawaiian birth were available to all who doubted his citizenship.

That totally bogus "debate" went on for just slightly over two full years. And then earlier this year Donald Trump became the revivalist for far right haters of minorities and Democrats…..by disgustingly claiming repeatedly that Obama was, in fact, not a U.S. citizen.

President Obama, ever the conciliator, then released his long form certificate of live birth in the hopes that that would quell the birth certificate hysteria. Indeed, some on the right consequently dropped their smarmy, disingenuous complaints over Obama's birth certificate and concluded the issue settled.

But haters are haters. And so up in New Hampshire today, we have this…..

In a mostly overlooked episode earlier this month, the so-called “Birther Queen” Orly Taitz appeared before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission to call for the removal of President Obama from the state’s presidential ballot. Taitz, the Soviet-born lawyer-dentist-real estate agent, has been on a multi-year mission to prove Obama is secretly Kenyan, and no amount of evidence will dissuade her. But she’s not alone – nine members of the NH state house signed on to her complaint.

Taitz is a total nut. But that's not the point here. "…nine members of the NH state house signed on to her complaint.." That's the point. Why would nine, apparently sane, New Hampshire state representatives sign on to a complaint which states that Obama is not a U.S. citizen?

I think the answer has already been produced by Senate Minority Leader, Republican Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell has famously stated that making Obama a one term president is the Republican Party's number one goal. If New Hampshire elected Republicans can keep Obama off the ballot in the state, then they will be one step closer to accomplishing McConnell's number one priority for the GOP.

When the complaint was unanimously dismissed, audience members shouted “traitors” and Rep. Accornero went ballistic and stormed out while calling out to the commission: “Why don’t you rip up the Constitution and throw it out?” “You all should be accused of treason, and we’ll get people to do that,” he jeered.

These Republican representatives talked, and even acted at times, like the nutty, hysterical TownHall Buster-Uppers from the 2009 Conservative Clown Circus.

Go here to see the videos and find out more information.

In the 90's, empirical evidence, factual information and eyewitness testimony didn't deter Republican operatives from endlessly smearing Bill Clinton. Hillary committed murder and Bill ran drugs while he was president, according to the Orly Taitzs and Donald Trumps of the 90's. In President Obama, Republican operatives have a Democratic target to smear and discredit who is not only a Democrat, but also black and with an odd sounding name.

From shameless people like Taitz and Trump, I expect wild and crazy nonsense like the Birther stupidity. Publicity whores are publicity whores, they can't help themselves. But tell me, why would apparently normal, non-celebrity Republicans in New Hampshire jump on the insane train? What sense does any of that make?

But then…what sense does it make that the GOP frontrunner is now a guy who claimed that an author's notion that Obama followed a "Kenyan anti-colonial" worldview….was a "stunning insight."

I watched about 20 minutes of the Freakathon known as the Google-Fox GOP presidential candidates "debate" last night. All I could stand to watch was 20 minutes.

The Reverend's take after 3 GOP debates…..

It appears as if the GOP now has a two person race. Mitt Romney versus Rick Perry. The RealClearPolitics.com site has Rick Perry up an average of 7 points over Romney….an average of 28.4% to 20.6%.

Those favoring the also-rans, Ron Paul (8.9%), Michele Bachmann (7.7%), Newton Gingrich (6.6%), Herman Cain (5.6%), Rick Santorum (2%), and Jon Huntsman (1.4%),…..will wind up telling the tale in the actual GOP primaries next year. For my money, I'm guessing that support for Paul, Bachmann, Santorum and, perhaps, Gingrich…..will be thrown to Rick Perry. Call it the Crazed Tea Party Effect….but if a Republican primary were held today with only Perry and Romney on the ticket…..I believe Perry would win.

So, will Governor Rick Perry be representing the Republican Party in next year's matchup against President Obama?

Not likely.

Although Perry is loved by the self-radicalized Tea Party bunch…and Romney not so much (once was pro-choice, he's a Mormon, the Massachusetts Romneycare thing)…..Perry, with his likeness to W., his authoritarian ways, his view of Social Security, his glibness about secession and the Constitution….is unelectable.

The only way Rick Perry could be elected to the presidency is if our national economy falls into depression between now and next November. In a perfect storm….purposely caused by congressional Republicans….where unemployment spiked to over 10% and the markets fell further…..I suppose it would be possible for Perry to be elected by a worn down and disgusted electorate.

But not likely.

That leaves the "electable" Mitt Romney. If you've been paying attention, you know that Republican establishment figures like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and MSNBC's resident establishment Republican, Rick Scarborough……favor Romney over Perry because of the electability factor. If you also remember the 2008 GOP primary race, you'll know that Mike Huckabee offered pretty strong competition to John McCain in the early primaries, deadlocked with Johnny Mac as late as June 2008. Yet, McCain was ultimately determined to be the most electable 2008 GOP candidate.

Something similar will most likely play out this cycle.

Which, I think, will leave self-radicalized malcontents in the Tea Party….unimpressed. Despite the unity of purpose within the insurrectionist, Know Nothings to remove Barack Obama from the presidency, Mitt Romney is simply not going to excite the excitables. Also, too….there's the Mormon thing.

Evangelical Christians vote Republican. In the 2010 midterms, 78% of evangelical voters voted for Republicans. Evangelical Christians, no matter what Village assh*les on teevee tell you, consider Mormonism to be a cult….unChristian. It's a matter of faith. And if anything is true today about the Republican Party…it is that the Fox-imbibers who turn out to vote for Republicans are faith based.

What's a wingnut political party to do?

Romney is the only candidate who may be electable. But his potential voters would have to ask Jesus for forgiveness if they voted for a Mormon. And that leads me to what I suggest will be a very big story after the 2012 GOP primaries. The GOP's vice-presidential pick.

Johnny Mac, foolishly and embarrassingly, chose the empty-headed, opportunist, Sarah Palin to be his running mate. The reason then was obvious. After Bush, Republican establishment characters, like McCain, did not really enthuse the grassroots faith-basers. McCain's political advisers knew that without a bit of catnip for wingnuts on the ticket, Republican voters might just stay home. With a true winger on the ticket, the establishment McCain at least had a chance.

The same dynamic, I suggest, will be at work this coming election cycle. With a Mormon at the top of the ticket….which seems to me to be inevitable….Romney's vice presidential choice will actually be more important this time around than McCain's choice of the Quitter was in 2008.

The perfect vice presidential candidate will be a bonafide Winger who makes evangelical voters forget about the bad Mormon taste in their mouths from voting for Romney. The GOP vice presidential candidate cannot be another establishment Republican, like, say, Rob Portman (R-OH), who is often mentioned in lists of potential GOP vp candidates. It could be young Marco Rubio from Florida, but I think young Marco is waiting for 2016, when he will dash onto the scene as the face of the "new and improved" GOP.

I'm looking at Governor Nikki Haley from South Carolina. Attractive, young, and a true evangelical winger. Like Palin, but with some self-discipline…and not so silly or ignorant. In today's teevee-dominated culture a Romney-Haley ticket would bring forth all of the worst from our corporate overlords in media. The posing and the gushing, and the unbearable, tedious bullsh*t from the Village will, most likely, be enough to gag a maggot…..but inevitable from a corrupt, inside-the-Beltway bunch who are wired to favor (tax-cutting) Republicans.

I still think Obama will be re-elected. But if the Perfect Storm being brewed up right now by congressional Republicans to damage our national economy further hits us head on leading up to next November…..Mitt Romney could be our next president. But the only way for that to happen is if a full-throated, faith baser with telegenic skills, like Governor Nikki Haley, is chosen as Romney's running mate.

What say ye?

Howard Fineman on Hardball last evening….

What's going on here, as I see it, is kind of a slow motion secession. This is an ending of the social compact. This is 3 generations worth of agreement about Social Security, about Medicare, about the role of the federal government. The Tea Party people are saying: we want to secede from that society….and the way to do it is to draw the line on spending and taxes to starve the federal government so that it loses power, so that we aren't part of the social compact anymore. And that's the real argument that's going on.

The Congress as an institution is incapable of dealing with that kind of fundamental argument….given the entitlement age and the welfare state age…which is why you have these Super Committees and these Super Duper Committees. And the smaller and smaller ring of people attempting to decide something.

Fineman is not my favorite…by a long shot….but on occasion, like last night, he gets it right.

"slow motion secession"

That's an appropriate description for what we've been witnessing….especially, but not exclusively, since Barack Obama became president.

From those whose life's work is shilling for the interests of the rich few, like Grover Norquist and Dick Armey, we've been hearing this "starving the beast" rhetoric for over 25 years. What's new now in this "slow motion secession" is the Tea Party movement. Those who are veterans of shilling for the cause of the rich few, I must admit, have done a masterful job of exploiting the "poor loser" emotions of the Palinistas following the 2008 election.

Make no mistake…the Tea Party know-nothings who rallied around their distaste for our new black, Democratic president less than a month after he was inaugurated,….and are currently holding the national and international economies hostage…. again….are the same know-nothings who repeatedly claimed during the 2008 campaign that Obama was not an American citizen, but instead, a Manchurian candidate Muslim, communist-socialist whose only objective in trying to get elected was to destroy the United States of America. "Taking our country back" derives it's meaning from that contrived ethos.

From "pallin' around with terrorists" to "Obama hates white people, or white culture", to "let's see the birth certificate" to "he SAYS he's a Christian"….down through "death panels" and "Obama's pulling the plug on grandma"…to the inexplicable state celebrations of the Confederacy, the Arizona "papers please" law, 26 states suing to overturn a law passed with 60 Senate votes….down to the "2nd amendment remedies", the brazen effort to crush unions and the numerous calls by far-right wingers to rescind several constitutional amendments…all the way to Congressional Republicans voting to abolish Medicare…..all of it….validates the Fineman "slow motion secession" assertion.

Approximately 40% of our population is actually telling the rest of us that they've given up on the basic social contract which has bound us together as a United States at least since the days of Franklin Roosevelt.

Whether both sides are fighting over health care, or the rights of Muslim Americans, or unemployment insurance, or climate change, or election rights, or gay rights, or, as they are now….debt, deficits and taxes…..not one of those issues is really the authentic argument. The argument behind the argument, as it were….is that far right conservatives no longer accept the basic American social contract. Today's Tea Party Republicans are rewriting American history in their own image for a reason. They are in the midst of a "slow motion secession" from America's social contract, they are backing slowly away from the once-given principle that Americans are all in this thing together. Common good is no longer regarded as common, or good.

Which brings us back to the impending financial default of the United States of America. To far right wingers, purposely causing a default….which would trigger a massive rise in unemployment, foreclosures and misery….is an offensive measure better understood as a declaration of war against the United States. Creating a financial disaster is simply the means by which the secessionists think they can "take back their country."

If somehow Obama can avert an economic meltdown by giving the hostage takers everything they want….no revenues, no loophole closings, no elimination of subsidies to Big Corps,….only deep and crippling spending cuts which surely will turn our fragile economy southward….EVEN THAT will not be enough for those extremists who have already seceded in their minds from the American experiment. Because settling the debt ceiling crisis is not really the issue.

If a compromise is reached before next Tuesday to avert a crisis….we will only move on to the "new" crisis over the 2012 budget, due before October. After that will begin the 2012 election cycle, undoubtedly to disgustingly feature the faux-fiscal responsibility of craven secessionists who have already turned their backs on the American social contract. None of it will be pretty and everyone will be sick to death about it….but no one will be able to do anything about it.

The truth is….despite what Obama has said; that we are not blue states and red states, we are the United States….America is divided, and perhaps irreparably. The secession may be in slow motion, as Fineman suggested, but it's still a secession.

According to TPM reports last night, President Obama is getting sick and tired of the Republican intransigence over raising the debt ceiling. Obama walked out of tense talks Wednesday evening particularly perturbed with Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

"I have reached the point where I say enough," Obama told the leaders, according to the account. "Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I've reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this."

Now that Republicans have wound the economic doomsday clock down to about 2 weeks….with more and nuttier suggestions each day that if the U.S. defaults it won't be THAT bad….I think it's time to place the blame for this crisis-to-come where it belongs.

The very reason why GOP Speaker Boehner cannot reach a compromise with the President is the Tea Party. Boehner has told Obama repeatedly that a compromise,….virtually any compromise,…..can't get enough GOP votes in the House to pass. The 80-something Tea Party Caucus members will not accept any compromise.

Without compromise, I think it follows that there is no true democratic process…..but Tea Partiers don't want a democratic process anyway. They want what they want….even if it's senseless, ahistorical, unilateral,…even if it throws 308 million Americans, needlessly, into a full blown 21st century depression.

These uncompromisers, in my not-so-humble opinion, have become the number one enemy to the United States today. Emboldened and radicalized in 2008 by the know-nothing jihadist from Alaska who insisted that America is made up of "real Americans" who live in "real America" and, I guess, the rest of us….the SnowBilly converts went on to join the astroturf "tea party" movement whose opening protest act was to march around aimlessly carrying Taxed Enough Already signs. This, after President Obama had just reduced payroll taxes on 95% of American workers. The incoherent nuttiness had begun. Nuttiness which maniacal opportunists like Glenn Beck and Chatty Cathy pull string dolls like Sister Sarah simply couldn't resist.

Corrupt corporate media, reduced to doing little more than pimping for a handful of very rich and powerful Americans, enthusiastically encouraged the nuttiness, the total craziness of the incoherent Tea Party. I firmly believe that it was the corrupt corporate media's almost non-stop coverage of this know-nothing, conservative-whacko, "movement"….which gave the uncompromising "real Americans" the edge they needed to win the 2010 midterm elections.

If corporate media would have been doing their job instead of playing up the contrived "controversy" created from whole cloth by the know-nothings…..the Tea Party nonsense would have long ago been relegated to the historical dumpster of American fanaticism, American kookiness. But no….corrupt media saw the Tea Party, with it's hateful, yet contrived, accusations directed daily at Obama, as the return of the media-glory years of the Clinton administration when advertiser rates increased in tandem with every new report of a blowjob inside the White House.

Now the nuttiness that began with the "palling around with terrorists" feistiness of a know-nothing, ex beauty queen, 1/2 term governor of the socialized oil state of Alaska…..has morphed into a full IED-setting, anarchist, congressional mafia of mass destruction….hellbent on punishing every American for the sin of electing a black Democratic president.

Remember….those who are refusing to compromise, choosing instead a worldwide economic calamity rather than compromise….are the same people who sang "cut it or shut it" and "shut it down"…just a couple of months ago. These people are nuts. Extremists. And they are now on the threshold of, perhaps, destroying any hopes we might have had that America could rebound from it's recent severe recession.

But then….hasn't that been the plan all along? If Tea Party anarchists can help to further deteriorate our national economy….then chances improve for Obama becoming a one term president. And that would bring us full circle back to where it all began…..with the bitterness by the Palinistas over Barack Obama being elected to the presidency.

What we are witnessing in the debt ceiling standoff today is a direct result of what began when John McCain decided to choose a powder-puff, know nothing opportunist with a smartassed mouth to be his vice-president.

It's been all downhill since then.

For over 2 years I have been asking myself why it is that Barack Obama hasn't used his excellent oratory skills to inform and educate Americans about the massive failure of conservative economics and how that failure brought the nation to the threshold of a new Great Depression. 30 years of supply side economics imposed by radicalized Republicans and many corporate Democrats, decades of deregulating paper and money shuffling non-producer industries, and a sustained period when corporate lawyers have been writing our national laws after bribing elected officials with truckloads of campaign cash…..have all resulted in the current dysfunction of our economy and our federal government.

Obama swept the political nation by storm in 2008. He did so by flexing his communication skills muscles. Whatever you think of the guy, most everyone agrees that the President is one of the finest public speech makers America has ever had. The question The Reverend wrestled with in the first 18 months of Obama's presidency was why, given the timing and nature of our great recession, didn't Obama take the opportunity of our national economic collapse to educate Americans over how such a collapse could have happened and who was most responsible for it.

Early on, I thought that Obama wasn't using his "bully pulpit" to explain the Great Recession because he was a black man. We've witnessed the hysterical and embarrassing knee-jerk reaction by many conservatives to the election of America's first black president….which crystallized in the WTF movement we've come to know as the Tea Party….and there is no doubt that had Obama thundered down a few bully pulpit admonishments to the banksters and crooks who created our economic downfall or the Republican policies which set the stage for our economic downfall….then Barack Obama would have been instantly labeled an "angry black man."

So, early on I thought that was why Obama was refraining from calling out the conservatives and the crooked capitalists for what they have done to the nation. But I don't think that anymore.

Obama hasn't used his bully pulpit, his oratorical skills, to explain how and why our economy has imploded…..because Obama actually sides with those who have blown our economy up. Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, is simply a corporatist leader.

Franklin Roosevelt, a true Democrat, welcomed the hatred of the bankster class and the Republicans who serviced them back in the 1930's. Obama, on the other hand, is so worried about his one-time slip of the tongue calling banksters "fat cats"…that he had to meet recently with a group of banksters to dab their heartbroken tears away with the assurance that he didn't really mean any if it. And he didn't. Obama hasn't even pushed for implementation of the weak Dodd-Frank re-regulation-of-banksters legislation. Those crony capitalist banksters are still selling credit default bets on unknowable-valued mortgage derivatives while handing each other even bigger bonus checks than ever….nothing, really…has changed.

Yes, Obama has had fierce and stubborn GOP resistance at every turn. Republicans have obstructed just about everything. But that doesn't explain Obama's failure to use his bully pulpit…..over and over again….to reinforce the mighty failure of modern conservative economics. No one is holding President Obama back from welcoming opposition hatred over the truth of the utter and irresponsible failures of supply side economics. Obama has held himself back.

Now, with President Obama's positioning in the so-called debt and deficit discussions…..all doubt about his corporatism has vanished.

"Just like every family in America, the federal government has to do two things at once. It has to live within its means while still investing in the future." the President said.

The federal government is NOT "just like every family in America." That is a phony Republican, corporatist meme which is subtly misleading. The average American family can't just sell T-bonds to raise money. No, the federal government and the "average family" are not the same when it comes to economic matters. The federal government must become the demand-supplier of last resort during a recession…or the entire national family will suffer.

Instead of Obama calling for MORE federal spending in light of our high and stubborn unemployment numbers, he has instead sided with Republicans in calling for up to $2.4 trillion in government spending cuts over the next 10 years. There is no doubt that cutting ANY government spending right now will only add to the nation's recessionary woes….yet, Obama is moving full speed ahead with Republicans to do just that.

This is what Obama wanted all along. Obama agrees with the make-believe GOP argument that cutting spending will create jobs somehow. It won't…create jobs. Cutting spending will eliminate jobs, just as we've witnessed in the shedding of 500,000 state jobs in Tea Party-led states where spending has been drastically slashed. More unemployment won't stimulate the economy, it will depress it further.

Republicans have acknowledged repeatedly that the debt ceiling MUST be raised before August 2nd. In that acknowledgement they have already conceded to raising the ceiling. Instead of Obama taking advantage of that GOP concession and using his bully pulpit to drive the point home to the American people…..he has opted to join Republicans in their phony argument over cutting spending as a pre-requisite to raising the debt ceiling.

Obama hasn't been FORCED into doing any of what I've mentioned here. He's doing so because this is what he has been planning on doing all along.

It has been laughable over the last couple of years to watch the wingnut landscape morph into total lunacy over the alleged socialistic leadership of our new Dark Knight President. Talk about your basic overkill.

A timid government stimulus plan in 2009…..amounting to approximately $800 billion in market demand being added to the recessed market…..was described by dishonest partisans as the end of America as we've known it.

Fox-guided "reality makers" set about to propagandize as many Americans as possible that Obama's stimulus plan was evidence of his far-far-far leftist, socialist, pinko, commie intentions to turn America into a Cuban hellhole during his first term……that is, if pulling the plug on all U.S. grandmas didn't take up all of his time.

The truth of Obama's stimulus….as well as any liberal leanings Obama has been contentiously accused of…..is another matter entirely. I have set forward the proposition, as many other progressives have also done, that Barack Obama is a non-ideological president. He doesn't really stand for anything in particular….he looks for what he calls "pragmatic" solutions to problems, not partisan ones.

We now have information from former chief economist to Joe Biden, Jared Bernstein, which supports my suggestion that Obama is no liberal.

In responding to Paul Krugman's latest column suggesting that the government should, and could, actually do something about our unacceptable unemployment situation…..Bernstein blogged this….

There will be no WPA-type programs in our near future. There was no appetite for them in the Obama admin in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression and there’s a lot less now. The reasons for that are interesting and I’ll speak to them another day. But it ain’t happening.

Now think about what Bernstein said. Obama comes into office, the economy is hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs per month and the banksters have just been re-capitalized with trillions of federally guarantee tax dollars and loans. It didn't look good at the beginning of 2009. Something big….some might say, transformational….would be required in order for the U.S. economy to come back from such a greed-fueled economic catastrophe.

Barack Obama said he wanted to be a "transformational" president….not like Bush 2 or even Clinton….but like Reagan, or….liberals hoped…..FDR. But something happened to all that transformational talk as Obama pragmatically began his pre-emptive bipartisanship style of leadership in 2009. Transformational quickly came to mean…the same old sh*t.

In his bipartisanship wisdom, Barack Obama pre-caved to Village and Republican objections to government spending by offering a smallish $700+ billion stimulus package, one third for non-stimulative tax cuts, more than one third to states facing massive layoffs, and less than a third to infrastructure projects. Projected GDP shortfalls caused by the bankster recession were in the $1.5 trillion range…..Obama proposed half a loaf, divided up into three convenient sops to his bipartisan enemies friends.

What we learn from Jared Bernstein is that when all this was going down…the bipartisan pre-caving by Obama……our new president had "no appetite" for "WPA-type programs" which would have put unemployed Americans directly to work.

Here's what true progressive leadership looked like in 1935….

Works Progress Administration….later called Work Projects Administration….

U.S. work program for the unemployed. Created in 1935 under the New Deal, it aimed to stimulate the economy during the Great Depression and preserve the skills and self-respect of unemployed persons by providing them useful work. During its existence, it employed 8.5 million people in the construction of 650,000 mi (1,046,000 km) of roads, 125,000 public buildings, 75,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 800 airports.

FDR was a bold, transformative liberal president. He recognized what the nation needed…..and didn't just talk boldly….he acted boldly. Longings for bipartisanship didn't dictate that boldness.

President Obama has no "appetite" for bold, progressive leadership like that. Oh, no. No WPA-type jobs programs for this pragmatic president. He has no stomach for it. Instead, he would show all Americans how he could bring all sides together to accomplish mighty pragmatic things….he offered a new kind of politics.

And so it came to pass that Obama presented his watered-down, timid stimulus plan without much, if any, direct job creation embedded within……in the hopes, perhaps, that some bipartisan Kumbaya afterglow would melt all partisan divides and miraculously produce millions of new bipartisan-offspring jobs.

And what did Pragmatic President Obama get in return for his bipartisan, pre-caving pragmatism and timid audacity? Two GOP senate votes plus Specter's vote…..little to no direct job creation, an 8.8% national unemployment number two years later…..and an even more crazy bunch of Republican haters looking to destroy his presidency by blaming him for the nation's indebtedness.

I would still vote for Barack Obama today, and will again next November…..quite frankly, because voting for any GOP candidate at this juncture would be akin to an act of treason. But at least now I know what to really expect…..timid, smallball, bipartisan, pragmatic, incrementalism.

For now, it's the best we can hope for.

My liberal comrades will not like what I have to say today. Hell, I don't like it either…..but I must tell the truth as I see it…so here goes.

President Obama gave his deficit speech (transcript) in the middle of the afternoon yesterday so that people like you and I, who are politically engaged, could discuss it and compare it to Ryan's Republican Roadmap To Ruin. He didn't present his speech to the American people in prime time because he knows that he will lose the battle he laid out in what I am today calling his "wasted words of wisdom."

There's no question that the words Obama spoke yesterday were true. With only a few minor exceptions, I agreed with everything he had to say. Republicans, as expected, rejected the entirety of Obama's vision out of hand.

Obama clearly explained, as a professor should, the facts of how we have arrived at our huge deficit and debt situation…..

….after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program – but we didn't pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts – tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

Republican defenders will argue that tax cuts don't have to be paid for because they are not government spending and that Bush cut taxes for everyone, not just for the rich. What I call wasted words of ignorance. Over 40% of the tax cuts went to the wealthiest Americans and borrowing $500 billion per year to hand those cuts out is….I'm sorry…..spending.

Again, Obama was spot-the-hell-on when he derided and mocked Paul Ryan's phony Roadmap…..

Worst of all, this (Ryan's Raodmap) is a vision that says even though America can't afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy.

There is no doubt that Paul Ryan's Roadmap To Ruin is a total third world disaster plan. Ending Medicare and Medicaid while simultaneously handing out trillions more to the obscenely wealthy….is by design….a cruel and unacceptable joke. Even Ryan doesn't take it seriously…..as seen in the fact that his plan doesn't bring budget deficits down for 40 years or so…..and other prime time Republicans haven't been falling all over themselves to embrace the POS.

On substance, Obama, as he often has presented in speeches in the past, can't be faulted. His vision is the correct vision…..a collective, progressive vision….a vision of an America which respects fairness and leaves no vulnerable demographic behind.

The first reason that I know Obama is wasting his words of wisdom is the timing and the framing of his speech.

Our nation is still reeling from 8.8% unemployment. While it is true that our economy is slowly improving, at least 15 million Americans cannot find jobs today. For every single available job there are 5 unemployed people trying to get it. Jobs are our nations most pressing problem.

Furthermore, to be cutting government spending in a time of high unemployment, in both state and federal venues, will only make the jobs situation worse. If unemployment stays high or increases, our weak economy will weaken even further.

And yet, President Obama has accepted the totally bogus deficit hysteria framing by his Republican enemies. He's playing on the Republican playground, as it were. For Obama to give a major speech agreeing with his enemies framing that deficits are our nation's top priority…is capitulating to his enemy's strategy.

Huge mistake. Just because wealthy, pearl clutching Knee Pad Media members and the Republican corporate-whores whom they celebrate talk non-stop about the oh-so-terrible deficits boogeyman…..doesn't make it so. What Americans want are jobs….not more bullsh*t.

Secondly….and here I think even Obama does not believe his own speechifying…..the President cannot backup what he's saying. He simply can't.

The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code. In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.

Sorry Barack…..those words are ridiculous. 3 1/2 months ago we couldn't afford that same $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and back then Obama had 58 Democrats in the Senate and Democrats controlled the House by a wide margin. Now Obama has 53 Democrats in the Senate and Democrats are in the minority in the House….where all legislation begins.

Moreover, campaign-2008 Obama promised he would end the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250K per year. How did that work out? That's right…it didn't.

So what's going to happen then?

Ryan's Roadmap To Ruin has become the framing point. Obama has accepted that frame and has offered a semi-progressive rebuttal and counteroffer somewhere in the reasonable center. What we will end up with is a Partial Roadmap To Ruin which will take us further to the right. Deep cuts to government programs which help the little people, probably a rollback of benefits in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, a chipping away at average American's interest-from-mortgages tax deductions and making the Bush era tax cuts permanent.

Obama either agrees to those things or Republicans blow the whole place up.

Hope I'm mistaken.

What if Osama Bin Laden's jihadist group had their own flag? And what if many Americans proudly raised that jihadist flag in celebratory fashion each year around September? What's more…..what if tens of thousands of southern-state Americans pasted a decal of that jihadist flag onto their pick-em-up truck bumpers or framed their license plates with a "Jihadists Forever" plate holder? Anticipate your emotions if you saw huge banners with the words…."Bin Laden Will Rise Again"….displayed prominently.

Then, consider how you would feel if a Virginia Governor announced a 9-11 Bin Laden 10 year commemoration for the entire month of September this year. Furthermore, what would you think of another southern governor who recalled his fond memories of 9-11 and explained how he didn't remember the event being all that bad?

But go further…..what if every so often, thousands of Americans got together, dressed in sterotypical Muslim garb, and re-enacted the events of 9-11 and other similar terrorist events?

Would any of that give you pause? Would it make you angry, hurt, distraught, confused, or reeling from the shock of it all? Would you think that the people leading out and those participating in such things hated America and relished the idea of it's destruction?

Further still…..what if the educated defenders of such things explained that reenacting great terrorist events, flying jihadist Bin Laden flags, and commemmorative celebrations, say, like, Jihadist Month….were, in reality, only reminders, history lessons or a form of educational entertainment, or even worse, innocent pastimes, harmless hobbies?

The United States is remembering the Civil War this year, the 150 year anniversary of the War's beginning was remembered yesterday. A war that went on from 1861-1865 and killed some 600,000 Americans. Our most bloody war ever…..and we fought it amongst ourselves. It was a war brought on by traitorous state actions in defiant nullification of, and secession from, the U.S. federal government.

Last night, Rachel Maddow had a very impressive segment on the Civil War of the 19th century…..and the lingering divisions still with us at the start of the 21st century. Well worth a review if you missed it.

I also highly recommend the mockumentary, "CSA: The Confederate States of America",…"a fictional "tongue-in-cheek" account of an alternate history, in which the Confederates won the American Civil War, establishing the new Confederate States of America."

Oddly, or perhaps not, ever since the U.S. elected it's first black president, Barack Obama, there seems to be a renewed interest and strange nostalgia for all things Confederate. All of it could be simply coincidental, I suppose….but for some reason it doesn't feel that way.

Melissa Harris-Perry explained it this way…..

"….the symbol of the black president and the first family is a very powerful one. He literally embodies the American state now in a black body. And so, for the sort of residual Confederate mindset, which exists, by the way, not just in the South, as you said, but the Confederate mindset that infiltrates throughout the U.S., that is a very anxiety-producing moment that brings up all of these unresolved sort of political, cultural issues."

But "anxiety producing" does not mean that Americans will soon be taking sides and shooting at each other. What I think is happening is that this "anxiety" that many Americans are experiencing with the demographic changes rapidly moving America's white population into a position of minority around the year 2050…..is being exploited by cynical and power hungry politicians.

I think that's what we have witnessed with Sarah Palin. I don't think Palin is a racist….I don't…..but rather a shrewd opportunist willing to divide Americans for her own financial advancement. She took her opportunity as candidate for VP to exploit the anxieties of white, Christian Americans by characterizing Barack Obama as an "other". An "other" to be feared.

Palin's eagerness to go down this opportunistic, yet divisive, road has now led to many other Republican opportunistic politicians to follow suit. Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann,…..and now, today, we find the repulsive vomiting from the narcississtic-whore, Donald Trump, again re-vitalizing the fairy tale conspiracy theory known as Birtherism. CNN's latest poll had Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump tied for the GOP's top presidential billing next fall.

These opportunists do not believe in their own bullsh*t…..they don't. But they know that other anxiety filled Americans will,….and that means more money and/or fame for the opportunists. That's the way America works today.

The problem comes when the bullsh*t becomes institutionalized. The threat to the nation comes when the spoutings of opportunistic bullsh*t artists becomes the common knowledge of a population. With the help of the disgusting Limbaugh's, Levin's and Murdoch's in the country…….a good 30% of the nation has now been led to believe that another civil war is not only necessary, but imminent.

That hysteria, then, leads to numerous nullification threats, as we've witnessed in Arizona, Missouri, Idaho, Kansas and the latest from Maine…..

Yesterday, the Maine House voted to send a message to President Obama asking him to please pay attention to the 10th Amendment and avoid federal overreach. "We, your Memorialists, respectfully claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the Federal Government by the United States Constitution," the resolution reads. It passed the House by 79-67.

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"United we stand….divided we fall"……Canned Heat.

President Obama met late last night with Harry Reid and John Boehner in yet another attempt to stave off a federal government shutdown. No agreement was forthcoming.

Just as a drunk-on-power group of Republicans shut down the government in 1995, so too the looming shutdown of 2011.

What I hear from every Republican who can grab a microphone, is the false-notion that the midterm election of 2010 was a mandate from the voters for all elected government officials to do what the Tea Party contingent of the GOP wants done. That is a false notion.

Because of the radical nature of many Tea Party candidates, the GOP was unable to recapture the Senate last November. Extremist Republicans have also completely forgotten about Democrat Barack Obama's big 7% electoral win in the 2008 presidential election. Democrats, though by listening to the corporate media you would never know it, still have the upper hand in dictating legislation. That is simply a fact…..like it or not.

However, House Republicans are pretending as if they have been given all power in one off year election. Even though exit polling at the midterms found that voters were mostly concerned about jobs and the overall economy, House Republicans and Republican governors and legislatures have continued to misconstrue those findings as a mandate to cut federal spending to the quick, bust Democratic Party-supporting unions, severely limit abortion rights for women, crush Planned Parenthood and NPR, abolish the EPA, and, of course, provide even bigger tax breaks and cuts to wealthier Americans and already-flush corporations.

Don't look to corporate media for a clear explanation of those undeniable facts. Media is only interested in the "controversy", the they-said, they-said squabble. Rather than offend one or the other political-leaning viewer group by explaining the truth as it is…..corporate media, with rare exception, relies on the political fight, wallows in it, in fact, like swine wallow in slop.

Once again, yesterday, the insurgents from the Tea Party "rallied" their motley few in D.C. Even though their current spokesperson, Michele Bachmann, went in front of cameras to state that she thought a deal could be worked out to avert a government shutdown…..the Tea Party ralliers were heard shouting in unison "shut 'er down."

The Tea Party contingent is the only obstacle preventing Speaker John Boehner from accepting the compromise being offered by House Democrats and the President. The truth of it is that Democrats have agreed to the original House Republican leaders proposal to cut $32 billion from the remaining 2011 budget. A proposal, by the way, which will put another couple hundred thousand Americans out of work.

But the Tea Party insurgents will not accept compromise….they wrongfully think Americans handed them some dictatorial mandate to force their radical view upon all Americans. And so in their nihilistic frenzied state, they sing songs of "Cut it or Shut it", and chant "Shut 'Er Down."

When Speaker Boehner reported to his caucus yesterday that it didn't look like a deal would be reached in time to avert a shutdown….House Republicans members responded with a rousing round of applause.

Many elected Republicans WANT a federal government shutdown. To Tea Party members holding the axe of a primary challenge over the heads of these elected GOP officials……shutting down the government will be yet another symbol of victory, evidence that they are "taking their country back." Their biggest scalp to date.

To hundreds of thousands of government employees, shutting down the federal government means something altogether different. To a national economy barely pulling itself up onto it's feet, a government shutdown will mean yet another setback.

I've said all of the above….to get to this: If today's Tea Party driven Republican Party is performing this unreasonably….this insanely….this destructively, after simply taking back the majority in the House of Representatives. If the word "compromise" has been stricken out of the GOP dictionary and categorized as an obscenity by Republicans when they only control one chamber of Congress. If "yes" from Democrats who are willing to compromise won't be taken as an answer right now…..then what can Americans expect if Republicans ever regain the Senate and the Presidency?

I think that prospect is more frightening than ever.

As I searched, and searched, this past Saturday for teevee coverage of the multi-state, MoveOn organized, protests over Tea Party governors scrapping collective bargaining rights….I caught a portion of CNN's late afternoon programming. CNN devoted approximately 60 seconds to Wisconsin…..no coverage at all of any other state protests (New York had 10,000 protesting)….and then immediately moved on to devote several minutes to the Tea Party's second anniversary.

Yeah, they did.

As many here know, I have been exposing the Tea Party movement for what it truly is for the last 2 years. So, while CNN, an alleged news network, lights the candles on the Tea Party birthday cake and sings exuberant praises to the incoherent Armey-and-Koch-Brother-funded movement….let me once again set the record straight.

Regardless of what you have been told…the Tea Party is simply made up of the more extreme members of the Republican voting block. Made up of primarily white, middle-aged, Republican voters from the middle and upper middle class demographic…..the Tea Party has been, instead, characterized by supporters and Village media as the party of the average American. That characterization has never been accurate.

Launched by an ex-bond trader, now bond analyst on CNBC, Rick Santelli, the Tea Party was sired by an incoherent "rant" of faux-outrage over Cramdown. Cramdown is the utterly-failed program put in place by the Obama administration to attempt to save some homeowners from being foreclosed upon. Santelli was simply oh-so-worked-the-f*ck-up over the prospect of a few homeowners receiving government assistance of any kind to keep them in their homes. The wealthy teevee talker suggested, for the first time, organizing Boston Tea Party-type protests, perhaps starting in Chicago.

While admitting that Cramdown has failed, mainly because of the Obama administration's inability to get banks to cooperate,….it's worth noting that at the conception of the Tea Party, what was in dispute was government attempting to attenuate the mortgage crisis.

We have since learned, of course, that mortgage brokers, appraisers, real estate personnel, banksters and others actually orchestrated a massive fraud against mortgage applicants….a fraud which stretched from the criminal activity of Countrywide's CEO to the insider trading of Goldman Sachs traders.

Then came the incoherence. A few short weeks after Santelli's choregraphed stunt, Tea Party groups began holding their first "protests" against the Obama administration…..an Obama administration which had not yet finished it's second month. Gone were any indications of outrage over Cramdown.

Now it was all about TAXES.

It was then that we saw the Taxed Enough Already signs. Get it? T.E.A. The incoherent part was the fact that neither Obama nor Democrats had raised taxes in the first 2 months of their new majority. Just the opposite was true. Obama had actually lowered the payroll tax for 95% of American workers….saving the average worker about $400 per year.

But, regardless of the facts, the Taxed Enough Already signs kept coming. More incoherent hilarity ensued. "Taking our country back" along with "Don't tread on me" flags cropped up…..muddled talk about liberty…..references to the Bush-originated TARP bailout….more references to the now-successful automaker bailout…..and then finally, after wandering aimilessly and incoherently in the protest-wilderness they had carved for themselves…..the Tea Party arrived at an issue all their members could hate.

Obama's fulfillment of a primary campaign promise to reform the nation's broken health care insurance system. That was more than these mad-as-hell folks could stand. Death panels, guntoting, townhall bustups and talk of 2nd amendment remedies followed. All over expanding the number of Americans who had access to health care insurance.

Last November, aided by wall to wall coverage warmly extended to Tea Party types by our corrupt corporate media, Republicans regained the U.S House and bolstered their state legislature and governship majorities. Tea Partiers were promised by GOP candidates that they would, if elected, rescind ObamaCare, unravel new bankster regulations, and….cut spending.

No longer was the Tea Party all about Cramdown….or taxes….or even health care…..it was now all about government spending and deficits.

Republicans, who watched silently from the sidelines while Obama's predecessor doubled the national debt in 8 years funding wars of choice, Medicare Plan D and the lowest tax rates in modern history with a Platinum Charge Card…..were….suddenly….outraged over government spending and budget deficits.

Now we know what the Tea Party is really all about. In the first two months of Tea Party Republicanism we have witnessed attempts to radically limit a woman's access to reproductive care….inserting government in between a woman and her doctor. We have witnessed a concerted effort….some say conspiracy….to damage the Democratic Party through eliminating collective bargaining rights for union workers. We have witnessed a Neo-Confederacy nullification attempt by 26 red state attorneys general….hellbent on finding a judge, any judge, who will say for the record that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. It isn't.

Deficit-hawking Tea Partiers, oh-so-distraught over deficits and debt, cheered for two more years of government borrowing to extend tax cuts primarily helping the top 3%.

Tea Partiers claiming unwaverable allegiance to the Constitution have proposed eliminating several amendments OF the Constitution. A few of the new Tea Party-elected U.S. senators are openly challenging minimum wage laws, child labor laws, civil rights laws, unemployment laws, Medicare and Social Security……claiming that all of those laws and programs are unconstitutional.

Which brings me full circle to today's title.

The Tea Party movement is a shrewdly camoflauged stunt movement made up of radical-right Republican voters. Their incoherent flitting about in search of a cause to protest has resulted in their own full exposure. They don't care one damn about Cramdown, deficits, the Constitution, or liberty. What they care about is taking back "their" country from being ruled by elected Democrats.

Now we know what taking back their country, Buddha forbid, will look like. Now we know what the TEA in Tea Party means.

T.ogether E.nding A.merica……as we have known it.