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Oh Fa Chrissake...
 (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: John Steven Fernandez, cleanzor, clickykbd) Here There Be Monsters By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed Monday 08 February 2010 They say everything can be replaced, Yet every distance is not near. So I remember every face Of every man who put me here. - Bob Dylan, "I Shall Be Released" I have a livid scar in the center of the back of my right hand. It is clearly visible, so I see it every day, and every time I see it, I am reminded of how I got it. One day, several boys in my junior high school class grabbed me and pinned me to the floor. They extended my right arm and held my hand flat to the floor. One of them took out a pencil and began violently rubbing it against the skin of that hand, until the skin broke, until little balls of my flesh stuck to the eraser, until the blood poured. I did not cry, I did not scream, and with four larger boys crushing down on me, I could not fight back. See, that was the thing. They wanted to see how long I could go before I wept or cried out. These boys, and several of their friends, had been attacking me on a daily basis for more than two years at this point, and I had stopped giving them the satisfaction of my tears. They didn't like that, so the eraser was meant to elicit the response they desired. They never got it, so they finally stopped ripping my hand open with the eraser, and the four of them settled for beating me up again. For five long years, this was my life. It began toward the end of grammar school, when the first stirrings of puberty began to manifest itself within my classmates and me. To this day, I don't know exactly what the catalyst was; one day, I was just another kid in the group, and the next day I was the outcast, the butt of the joke, the loser. I changed schools after sixth grade, opting for a small private boy's school instead of continuing in public school with the same group that had made the last two years of my life a living hell. Within two months at the new school, however, the same pattern of harassment and rejection emerged once again, but with a far harsher edge. You see, the leader of my group of tormentors was the son of the dean of students, and because none of the teachers or administrators wanted to get on his bad side, those boys were able to act out with little fear of censure or punishment. I was beaten up in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and especially during gym class. The beatings in the locker room became so severe that I took to sneaking into a teacher-only bathroom so I could change clothes. Once, I was shoved into the goal during gym class without helmet or pads while several boys fired rock-hard lacrosse balls at me while the teacher looked on. Another time, a boy ran up behind me during a gym-class basketball game and delivered a flying kick to my kidneys. I was on the floor for ten minutes, and there was blood in my urine that night. Incidents like these were a daily occurrence until I changed schools again, this time to a large public school where anonymity was the best refuge. For whatever reasons, the torment ceased, and I became just another face in the halls. Behind that face, however, was a soul covered in scars. I had been the different one, socially awkward and unsure, sensitive, shy. Something in me had brought out the savage side of my schoolmates, and something in them had changed me forever. It took me years, decades, to come to grips with what I had been put through. To live in such a situation is to be in complete darkness. It is toxic to the mind, body and soul, and all too often ends in tragedy. There is a kid like me in every classroom in America, a fact underscored by a recent story out of my home state of Massachusetts. A 15-year-old girl named Phoebe Prince was mercilessly bullied and tormented by her classmates, until she finally snapped and took her own life. In the aftermath, the local papers have taken to reporting on the reality of bullying in our society. A recent Boston Herald story reported: Hundreds of angry parents, worried teachers and even terrorized kids are reporting ugly episodes of brutal bullying at schools across Massachusetts as the heartwrenching case of Phoebe Prince continues to expose a painful nerve. The abuse - detailed in e-mails and phone calls to the Herald - is emotionally jarring, often physical and spreading like a merciless virus in cyberspace. Kids tell of being forced to drink toilet water, getting pummeled on the bus and seeing themselves ridiculed for all to see on Facebook. It's a toxic cauldron of abuse that callers fear could land their children in the same no-win corner as Prince, the South Hadley 15-year-old who apparently took her own life after being bullied. And, in a constant refrain, they all say nobody in power cares. "Nobody listens. It seems like you're talking to the wall unless you have $1 million," said a Cohasset dad who said his boy is picked on constantly. "Put that on the front page." In one of the more touching exchanges, a 10-year-old Malden boy called this week to say the bullying is becoming too much. "Go ahead. Tell him," his dad coaxed him on the phone. "They won't leave me alone. They bully me," the shy youngster said. A Boston Latin High School parent said the bullying was so bad her son had to leave the elite school. A teacher on the South Shore said she's sick over special-needs girls being photographed in the bathroom - only to learn it was all posted on Facebook. "The principal just glossed it over," the disgusted teacher added. "Mommy help me," a Boston elementary schooler told his mom over the phone, she said, while he was being beaten up this week. "I have bus video of my kid being attacked," added a weary suburban mom. "I'm trying to help my daughter from feeling helpless." The story of the suicide of Phoebe Prince struck a deep nerve within me. I know exactly how she felt, and very nearly took the same path. When I was 13, the daily violence I endured had reached a terrible peak. My grades were failing, I was withdrawing even further from the world, and my school's response to the ongoing harassment was to give the students a lecture about chickens and the "pecking order." To wit, when one chicken develops a bloody spot from an injury, the other chickens swarm the wounded one and peck that bloody spot until the wounded bird is killed. The principal admonished the student body to not be like those chickens. The end result of the lecture was that my tormentors would punch me as hard as they could whenever they saw me and yell, "Peck!" It finally became too much after one exceptionally savage day. I went home after school and gobbled a full bottle of pills. I lost my nerve a few minutes later, made myself throw up, and drank as much water as my stomach could hold, but the drugs had already entered my system. For the next two days, I laid in a semi-delirious stupor which my mother believed was a bad flu. I did not tell her about what really happened that day until many years later, and have told very few others about it until now. It is a national epidemic, and has been for a very long time. Search Google News under the word "bullying" and nearly six thousand stories appear. One such story, out of Tennessee, underscores the horrific consequences that can come from such unrelenting torment: A lawsuit has been filed against Murray County Schools by a family who says bullying led to their son's suicide. Tyler Long committed suicide in October. The 17-year-old suffered from Asberger's Syndrome, a social anxiety disorder. His family, and their attorneys, say it was unbearable bullying at school that forced him to take his life. The lawsuit says the boy's parents made "countless efforts" to meet with school officials to discuss their son's safety at school due to the constant bullying. The lawsuit says the school system violated the boys rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act, and that school officials exhibited "deliberate indifference" towards the bullying. In a Murray County school board meeting last year numerous families made similar complaints. Veronica Gearhart says her child is bullied as well. "My baby is missing school because a gang of boys is waiting for him and it was reported to everyone and no one did nothing," she said. Others like Carleen Mcatie worry about what might happen next. "It'll be like Columbine because it will have festered so long," said Mcatie. "Something needs to be done about it now, before something major happens in our school." It is impossible to quantify the insidious effect the phenomenon of bullying has on our society. Those who bully can and do become monsters in adulthood, but all too often, those who are bullied can become equally monstrous. The mother in the story above said the magic word: Columbine. The Columbine killers were bullied, and lashed out against that bullying in a frenzy of violence that beggars imagination. One of the ugliest aspects of my experience with being bullied is the fact that, nauseating as it sounds, I know exactly how Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold felt; on many occasions, after I had been pummeled in the locker room before gym class, taunted by a Greek chorus of tormentors in the cafeteria, or been set upon in the bathroom, I would sit at my desk and fantasize about raking the room with machine gun fire to settle the score with those who found their fun through torturing me. For a time, I carried a large knife to school because I needed some sort of equalizer in a world where violence waited around every corner and nobody in authority seemed to give a damn. I never found the courage to use that knife, thank God. But I could have. I remember wanting to, but I never did. Had I used it, I could very well have killed someone. Just brandishing it would have had dire consequences. I escaped my personal hell without lashing out violently. Harris and Klebold did not, and the simple truth is that bullying will eventually create more kids like them. In the end, the perpetrators of bullying become indistinguishable from the victims. It is equally damaging to all involved. Take, for example, Dick Cheney, the most repellent public figure in modern American politics. It is easy to assume that he was a bully during his school days, given the manner in which he conducted himself in public office. But who is to say he was not the victim of bullying? It takes no great leap of logic to imagine how a person subjected to constant brutality can be transformed into a sadist by it, someone who reflexively needs to inflict the same pain they themselves endured. In the end, the bully and the bullied can, and all too often do, become the same noxious breed of monster. What is the cause of bullying? Was it my fault that I became the object of so much terrible treatment? Was it the fault of those bullies, and the parents who so completely failed to raise them properly? Were the teachers and administrators to blame for allowing such unconscionable behavior to flourish under their noses? Perhaps, I could have dressed better, been more socially adapted, but in the end, blaming the victim of bullying for getting bullied smacks of blaming a rape victim for getting raped. Responsibility for this phenomenon falls upon parents, who must raise their children to understand early in life that such behavior is abhorrent and forbidden. Furthermore, teachers and school administrators are duty bound to root out such behavior whenever it appears and deal with it seriously and severely. Any teacher or administrator who claim ignorance or an inability to address this problem are lying through their teeth. I spent several years as a high school teacher and a dean, and know for a fact that it is nonsense to claim this problem is difficult to locate in a school environment. On my first day, I was able to spot which students were "in" and which were "out," and was immediately able to take steps to thwart bullying whenever it appeared within my sight or knowledge. One of my proudest accomplishments as a teacher and administrator, in fact, came during my second year in the classroom. Like any group of students, my crew was divided between the "in" kids and the "out" kids. The "in" kids wore the right clothes, had the right looks and knew how to play the high school social game. The "out" kids were not as fashionable, not as physically developed and tended to get the best grades. Through slow and steady pressures, counseling conversations and meetings with parents, I was able to transform the social dynamic that separated "in" from "out." By the end of the year, my "out" kids were the most popular ones in class, and my "in" kids thought hitting the books and getting good grades were the keys to the coolness kingdom. This pattern held until the day those kids graduated. Disrupting the patterns and social constructs that lead to bullying can be done. I know. I did it. "The world breaks everyone," said Ernest Hemingway, "and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." I was broken, and deliberately so, day after day, week after week, year after year for five long years, until I could take no more and tried to break myself, finally and forever, to be free of it. I am stronger now in those broken places; in the process of making peace with that past, I finally came to the conclusion that all those years of wretchedness were the most important of my life. I came through that crucible a better person, sensitive to injustice and ever on the side of the underdog and the victim. But that, in the end, is a rationalization. In truth, there was nothing good about what I was forced to endure, and the echo of it resonates within me to this day. Sometimes, I have nightmares. Sometimes, I react irrationally to seeming slights, especially if one of my many internal scars gets tweaked. For years, I was prone to depression, which led to self-medication through alcohol. Ancient maps of the world once marked unknown regions of ocean with the words, "Here There Be Monsters." The phenomenon of bullying remains an unknown and unexplored region of our society, and this must change. Here, indeed, be monsters. I am still not fully recovered from my experiences, and may never be. I remember all the faces, and all the names, of those who tormented me during that time of unutterable darkness. I can never forget. You see, I have this scar on my hand. http://www.truthout.org/here-there-be-mons...  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Compares Job Losses Under Presidents Obama and Bush http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/documents...  (Photo: phxpma; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t) Bush, Cheney and the Great Escape By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed Friday 05 February 2010 With each passing day, it becomes more and more astonishing to encompass the fact that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their henchmen from the prior administration have managed thus far to escape any accounting whatsoever for the massive battery of criminal activity committed during their time in office. More than a year has passed since these men had their hands on the levers of power, and evidence of their myriad crimes and frauds is laying all over the countryside, yet nothing has come of it. The British government has been running a wide-ranging inquiry into the manner in which the UK and United States were led to war in Iraq by then-President Bush and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. An astonishing amount of damning evidence and information has been uncovered and publicly aired, including the following statements delivered by a senior member of Parliament (MP) on Tuesday: A senior Welsh MP said last night he knew "for certain" Tony Blair and George Bush struck a deal to invade Iraq at their notorious Crawford Ranch meeting in 2002 - a year before war was declared. Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid Cymru's parliamentary leader, said he had seen a confidential memo to that effect, although he would not divulge its exact contents. Critics of the military action in Iraq have long suspected Mr Blair and President Bush came to an agreement at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas in April 2002, a claim Mr Blair denied in evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry last week. Mr Llwyd said he had offered to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry himself, in private if necessary. The Meirionnydd Nant Conwy MP said: "I think other things should have been pursued MP Llwyd refers here to the infamous Downing Street Memos, a collection of British government documents that lay out George W. Bush's intent to invade and occupy Iraq whether or not there was any WMD/terrorism evidence to support the action, documents that further demonstrate Prime Minister Tony Blair's willing acquiescence to the plan. Most damning of all is the secret memo dated 23 July 2002, explaining that war in Iraq was coming, and if the facts did not support the action, those facts would be twisted and buried. "There was a perceptible shift in attitude," read the memo (emphasis added). "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." These documents, along with testimony from the likes of MP Llwyd, offer a vivid portrait of a Bush administration far gone in the pursuit of its own militant plans, and more than willing to break laws and deceive the public to achieve the ends they sought. It was a nest of criminals that occupied the White House for those eight long years, proof of this continues to pile up in vast drifts, and nothing comes of it. Quite the contrary, in fact. A recent report from the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility slapped a big fat "Not Guilty" stamp on the jackets of John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the two central authors of the notorious "torture memos" that argued the legal justifications for the use of torture by the Bush administration. Worse, it appears Obama's DOJ went out of the way to make sure Bybee and Yoo escaped free and clear from any censure for their despicable activities. According to a recent Newsweek report: An upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the "torture" memos of professional-misconduct allegations. While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors - Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor - violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed "poor judgment," say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action - which, in Bybee's case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry. The truth of the matter is plain enough. Yoo and Bybee are not going to turn themselves in. Neither are any of the other actors in this gruesome play. If any measure of justice is going to be achieved, it will fall upon Congress, President Obama and his Department of Justice to get it done. Subpoenas must be issued, evidence gathered and testimony heard for the truth to be brought forth and for punishment to be meted out. But this DOJ cannot even accept the judgment of its own OPR on two comparatively minor foot soldiers of the Bush administration without sanding down the conclusions enough to spare Yoo and Bybee the punishment they so richly deserve. Is there any hope at all that the larger players in the Bush-era criminal activities - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith and Wolfowitz most prominently - will be brought to justice when those two lesser lights are allowed to return to a law school classroom and a seat on the federal bench? Disgraceful as it is to say, don't hold your breath. Speaking of evidence, there is this: a bomb in Karbala exploded on Wednesday, killing and wounding dozens of Shiite pilgrims. Another bomb in Karbala was attached to a military vehicle and killed and wounded dozens on Wednesday. Another bomb killed and wounded several other pilgrims outside Baghdad on Wednesday. Gunmen shot and killed a police officer in Kirkuk on Wednesday. The day before, a suicide bomber killed 54 and wounded dozens more in the outskirts of Baghdad. As of Wednesday, almost 5,000 US soldiers had been killed in Iraq, and nearly 50,000 more have been wounded. More than a million Iraqi civilians have likewise been killed and wounded. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Rice, and a dozen other members of the Bush administration, including Yoo and Bybee, are directly responsible for this carnage. They lied through their teeth and broke any number of laws to see it done. They are guilty of much more than the war crimes they committed in both Iraq and the United States. They are guilty of bankrupting this nation with two wars begun on false pretenses and perpetuated to enrich the few, while further cementing the stranglehold "defense spending" has on our growth as a civilized nation. Thanks in no small part to the Iraq debacle, there is no political impetus to lay a finger on the wildly bloated "defense" budget, even as the fabric of our society shreds and shatters under the economic yoke placed upon our necks by the previous administration. Ours is a government staffed from stem to stern with political cowards who refuse to heal these wounds, and with those who are just as culpable as those members of the Bush administration (read: members of Congress who voted to support each and every criminal act that led us to this place). Justice? When it comes to the Bush administration, the word has no meaning. They have escaped that justice, and we are all less free because of it. http://www.truthout.org/the-great-escape56... An audio version of this can be found here: http://www.truthout.org/schooled56578
 (Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: matt.ohara, t. magnum) Schooled By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed Monday 01 February 2010 In my last article, I made the following observation regarding the challenges President Obama faced on the eve of his Wednesday evening State of the Union address: "The American people, well-trained in the art of short-term memory loss, have come to the conclusion that everything happening now is Obama's fault, and the polls reflect this without dispute. One speech on Wednesday night won't fix all that ails us, but if Mr. Obama doesn't hit precisely the right notes in the delivery, his second year could come to make his first year seem like a Cape Cod clambake by comparison." Well, let's see. On Wednesday night, Mr. Obama delivered that address in fine style, openly excoriating the GOP and the justices of the Supreme Court for their recent bad behavior, and concluded with a populist clarion call that very nearly lifted the dome off the Capitol building. On Thursday, he traveled to Florida and announced the inception of a high-speed rail program that would provide new jobs along the entire length of the eastern seaboard. On Friday, Mr. Obama presented himself before a collection of some 140 Republican members of Congress and, not to put too fine a point on it, bounced them individually and collectively off all four walls in the room. How wide a swath did the president cut through the Republicans at that Friday meeting? On Saturday afternoon, MSNBC canceled a scheduled afternoon showing of something titled "Death in the Hollywood Hills" to rebroadcast the Obama-GOP collision. For a major cable network to drop a show about gossipy Hollywood homicides in favor of - gasp! - actual substantive news programming means something truly incredible took place in that room. It did indeed. As the event unfolded, it was impossible to avoid comparisons to the British custom known as Prime Minister's Questions. Every Wednesday in the United Kingdom, the British prime minister sits in the House of Commons and answers any and all questions from members of Parliament for 30 minutes. Several other countries - Canada, Ireland, Scotland, India, Australia and New Zealand most prominently - carry on a similar tradition, but the United States has never enjoyed such an enlightening institution. The press can question a president at press conferences and on the Sunday shows, but members of Congress, especially members of the opposition party, have never been given an opportunity to do so. Until now. One by one, Republican members of Congress stood before Mr. Obama and took their best shots. One by one, he sent them packing with a smile on his face and the facts on his side. One of the most revealing exchanges took place when GOP Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana) tried to take the president to task for refusing to support an across-the-board tax cut, and for the massive cascade of job losses that hit the nation last winter. Mr. Obama reminded Pence that the job losses he spoke of took place before he took office, and before any of his programs had been implemented. He excoriated Pence and a number of his Republican brethren for attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies celebrating programs created by the stimulus package they had voted against. He concluded by telling Pence, "I'm going to want to take a look at your math," because Pence's support for massive tax cuts, a spending freeze and a balanced budget all at the same time basically makes no sense whatsoever. Perhaps, the most revealing aspect of this event came after the deal had gone down. The Republicans in that room were made to look so foolish in the face of this president that a number of them later stated bluntly that it was a mistake to have allowed cameras into the room. Fox News saw how badly those GOP Congress people were being thrashed and cut away from their broadcast of the event a full 20 minutes before it was over, choosing instead to flood their studio with critics of Obama to try and mitigate the damage. And that, in a nutshell, is the present reality of this Republican Party. When allowed to freely bloviate into the yawning void of modern political journalism, the GOP can score points easily. They are the undisputed world heavyweight champions of the sound bite stab below the fifth rib, and their talents in this regard are fortified by their uncanny ability to have no fealty to the truth whatsoever. When confronted by someone armed to the teeth with the facts, someone who can articulate those facts clearly and completely in front of a battery of cameras broadcasting his words to a national audience on every network, they folded like wet napkins. In the aftermath of last Friday's presidential deconstruction of his political opposition, a number of commentators offered the same observation: so much for this president's alleged addiction to the teleprompter. Forget about prepared speeches, opined Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Have this president deliver a few minutes of prepared remarks, and then say, "Any questions?" and let the chips fall where they may. The president's State of the Union address was finely crafted and perfectly delivered, his remarks in Florida the following day equally so, but neither could hold a candle to the off-the-cuff display of verbal pyrotechnics that so singed the follicles of 140 Republicans in that room on Friday. Mr. Obama's three-day verbal tour-de-force was, to no small degree, exactly what a great portion of the American people had been waiting to see and hear from this president. Nowhere in evidence was the seeming vacillator, the craven seeker of nonexistent bipartisanship, the hat-in-hand beggar or the quiet punching bag we have seen all too much of during the last year. Since his inauguration, Mr. Obama has mostly been sitting back while wild-eyed GOP agitators rained blows upon him, his Democratic Congressional allies and every single one of his proposed programs. He's not an American citizen; he wants to kill grandma; he's a socialist, a terrorist, a despot - it went on and on, and became so effective that it pretty much shattered Obama's signature health care reform initiative. The American people became savagely frustrated with his seeming complacency, so much so that the accusations made by the GOP began to take hold, no matter how perfectly stupid they were, until an administration elected with a massive plurality and with significant majorities in both houses of Congress found itself playing defense on virtually every front and losing ground everywhere. That guy got stuffed in a bottle and sent out with the tide, apparently, replaced at the end of last week by an Obama who was throwing haymakers and laying people out as he smiled, and smiled and smiled. And so what, right? We all had an opportunity to enjoy what was in the end nothing more than a refreshing, yet ultimately hollow, piece of American political theater. Nobody can dispute the oratorical and rhetorical prowess of President Obama, and those who forgot this and sought to roll him on Friday found this out to their very public woe. But it was all just words, and nothing more. The president finally pushed back, and did so with ruthless and highly entertaining efficiency, but if he does not follow up on this bravura performance with actual deeds and effective action, that Cape Cod clambake will be over before it started. We shall see. http://www.truthout.org/schooled56578 http://www.buffalobeast.com/?p=1645#more-1...
I report, you decide.  I think we can all agree on their choice for #1. Audio version of this essay can be found here: http://www.truthout.org/feelin-alright5642...
 (Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: labguest, lepiaf.geo) Feelin' Alright By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed Wednesday 27 January 2010 Seems I've got to have a change of scene 'Cause every night I have the strangest dream Imprisoned by the way it could've been Left here on my own So it seems I've got to leave before I start to scream But someone locked the door and took the key ... - Traffic Calling the second half of January a catastrophe for the president, the Democrats and the country at large sells the word "catastrophe" short. A health care "reform" process that was already trailing smoke suddenly lost cabin pressure and spiraled into the sea when the single most unpoachable Senate seat in the history of the universe, held for 46 years by the late Ted Kennedy, flipped into Republican hands because Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley thought she could win without actually running a campaign. Before the screaming had a chance to die down after that debacle, the Supreme Court came swooping in and dropped a gigantic dung bomb on the entire body politic, delivering our democratic processes into the hands of corporations which already exert far too much influence over every facet of our lives. President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress emerged from the smoke and ash of this twin-bill disaster with little more than a perplexed look on their faces, further cementing the emerging public consensus that the 2008 elections put into power a group of well-meaning incompetents who, despite having the virtually unfettered ability to accomplish just about whatever they want, cannot seem to get out of their own way. A 41-seat minority in the Senate somehow translated into total power and complete victory for the GOP, and every pundit with the ability to draw breath began predicting an imminent Democratic bloodbath in the upcoming 2010 Congressional midterm elections. Boy you sure took me for one big ride Even now I sit and I wonder why When I think of you I stop myself from crying I just can't waste my time I must get by Got to stop believing in all your lies 'Cause there's too much to do before I die ... On Wednesday night, President Obama will have the unenviable task of explaining to the American people that he, his administration and his Democratic allies in Congress are not, in fact, worthless. The American people overwhelmingly elected him because he promised to change the nature of politics, promised to right the ship after eight years of Bushian mayhem, promised to fix health care, create jobs, save the environment, rebuild the economy, bring the troops home from Iraq and defend the nation from terrorism, but after what may have been the fastest year on record, the glass remains definitively less than half full. (snip) Of course, it has only been a year. The mess left behind by the previous administration - indeed, by the last ten administrations - has translated into a series of seemingly insurmountable dilemmas that would challenge the wits and will of King Solomon himself. Combine that with a Republican Party far removed from its Linconian roots and in the thrall of a base whose hatred and desire to simply destroy rather than create is all consuming, and the task before Obama and his people becomes even more daunting. But he wanted the job. He wanted it so badly, in fact, that he spent nearly a thousand days trying to get it. Now it's his, warts and all. The American people, well-trained in the art of short-term memory loss, have come to the conclusion that everything happening now is Obama's fault, and the polls reflect this without dispute. One speech on Wednesday night won't fix all that ails us, but if Mr. Obama doesn't hit precisely the right notes in the delivery, his second year could come to make his first year seem like a Cape Cod clambake by comparison. Is he up to it? Are we? Feelin' alright I'm not feeling too good myself ... The rest: http://www.truthout.org/feelin-alright5642... As I said in another thread, I'm from Massachusetts, and I feel like a building fell on me last night.
As it happens, I have the day off today; I was blogging the vote from 8am to 9pm yesterday. I was all over the city interviewing people, and was in Coakley headquarters when the million-pound shithammer (hat-tip to HST for the line) came down...thus, I get a day to rest. So I've been reading DU pretty much since I woke up. In that time, I've learned ten things I didn't know, laughed, got pissed, got inspired, got in an argument, settled it amicably, and am a little smarter and better now than I was this morning. That happens to me a lot with this place. Thank you, DU. You've made a galactically bad day very much more endurable. Again.   Hold off on any definitive-sounding proclamations of voter fraud in the MA race. I know it's a convenient, and occasionally accurate, refuge to which we flee when matters turn against us.
But when I walked out of that ballroom tonight, Coakley was down by more than 100,000 votes. Let me say it straight: if anyone is rigging elections in the state of Massachusetts, it ain't the GOP. SecState Galvin and his praetorian guard are not the kind of folks to let Republicans fuck around with ballots - electronic or otherwise - in a state so controlled at the local level by Democrats. The Dem machine here is fierce; they are the only ones with the wherewithal to nab elections in this state, which I guess is a testament to their honesty, cuz they sure-as-fuck didn't do it tonight. I heard about the pre-marked ballots for Brown. That kind of crap happens all the time, and maybe amounted to 0.000001% of the overall outcome. We lost. Until I see substantive proof otherwise, that's what I'm going to think. Hugs, all. Yesterday, I put up a post predicting a Coakley win. "Bank it" were the words I used specifically.
I apologize to anyone whose hopes I got up. This. Sucks.  |
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last 24 hours.  Here There Be Monsters (a personal story about bullying) 271 recs : By WilliamPitt This is just unfuckingacceptable. 113 recs : By lonestarnot Helen Thomas: " President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It's called war." 103 recs : By kpete Are you listening to David Schuster on MSNBC now? 94 recs : By napi21 Focus on the Family is a hate group 73 recs : By ruggerson GRAYSON: The Story That No One Will Tell 71 recs : By kpete All Bank Charges Reversed! 69 recs : By PCIntern Our Corrupted and Failing Democracy 57 recs : By Time for change Payback time for Virginia Foxx 47 recs : By claypool4prez James O'Keefe Bayeux Tapestry discovered!!! 43 recs : By arcadian Random Journal
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