Great Ideas But Sucky Execution

I have been voting since 1972 and in that time I have only voted for one winner, 1976….not something to be proud of I realize but it also says a lot about the quality of the candidates……basically the quality sucks!

I have said over the years that liberals have great ideas but truly suck at the game of politics. They seem to not have the balls to go after the prize with gusto they sit back and pray for bi-partisanship….a pipe dream.

The New Republic tries to explain why liberals are such pansies when it comes to politics.

The editors ask if today’s liberalism is equipped to win “this battle,” too sprawling a question rooted in too runny a concept. We have more than just one current battle! Then, after the mystery of the “battle,” there’s the gooey concept of “today’s liberalism.” For this historian, “today” reaches back into the early twentieth century, where “liberalism” as a living, breathing, inspiring-but-myopic phenomenon resides in my own historical imagination. I know histories of liberalism date its origins to anti-monarchy, to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. But in American history, where monarchy was a foreign idea and slaveholding handicapped the Founding Fathers’ civic imagination, liberalism only truly starts to come alive in the Progressive era. The founding of The New Republic in 1914 embodied liberalism institutionally. While definitions of liberalism vary tremendously, The New Republic and its history offer means of thinking about a concept with a political history that is, in large part, a partisan history.

Erstwhile TNR editor Franklin Foer sees former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt as a crucial figure in The New Republic’s birth. Roosevelt’s 1912 National Progressive Party presidential campaign did not succeed, but his campaign platform called for including a minimum wage and “a single national health service.” Roosevelt’s blessing signaled TNR’s founders of the approval, Foer says, of “T.R.’s social set—Harvard and Yale men with an intellectual proclivity and a progressive bent.” At the time, they were most likely Republicans.

TNR’s founders were the crème de la crème of American “progressivism,” a description they initially preferred to “liberalism,” which they associated with Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s Southern, states’ rights, small government creed. TNR’s founders’ book titles broadcast their optimism: Herbert Croly, a Harvard man married to a wealthy wife, had published The Promise of American Life in 1909 and Progressive Democracy in 1914, both with the Macmillan Company, among the most prestigious publishers of the time. Walter Weyl, a Wharton School-Penn man who also married into wealth, published The New Democracy: An Essay on Certain Political and Economic Tendencies in the United States with Macmillan in 1912. Another founder, Walter Lippmann, also a Harvard man, had published his influential A Preface to Politics with the New York publisher Mitchell Kennerley in 1913. These were no obscure, self-publishing radicals, and they received sizable and repeated infusions of money from the cotton-gin-Whitney heiress Dorothy Payne Whitney and her investment banker husband, Willard Straight, a Cornell man.

The Progressive Party’s 1912 platform included a brief “Equal Suffrage” plank advocating voting rights for women but made no mention of the disfranchisement of Black men in the South. This omission carried over in the Progressive Party’s credentials committee’s recognition of white Southern delegates and its refusal to seat Southern Black delegates. This is where early-twentieth-century liberalism gets personal for me.

https://newrepublic.com/article/182384/liberalism-race-gaza-trumpism

A very nice trip down memory lane but it did not address the lack of backbone of liberals once elected.

I think the Progressive Party had great ideas and a goddamn shame they did not get a chance to prove it…..their ideas translate well into the 21st century….and then money happened.

There has always been money in politics I am not naive but the court allowed boat loads of it to travel through the political system…..and when you have that much corruption you get the system as it is today….broken and dysfunctional.

But that is what I think.

Educate, Agitate

I Read, I Write, You Know

cognito ergo agito

The Political Cancer

We are well aware of what a cancer is…..our country is infected with a political cancer….a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate.

That cancer has a name….greed.

Because of greed the Democrats have lost the very foundation of this once proud party….the working class.

Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way.

How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism and why would Democrats want to be there? Others think Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. Please. What good would that do? And after four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?

The biggest failure of the Democratic Party — a disease that threatens the very life of the party — has been its loss of the American working class. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg concluded after the 2016 election, “Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class’ problem. They have a ‘working class problem’ which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate.”

The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. What happened?

https://www.alternet.org/the-democrats-disease/

To illustrate what I mean by my accusation….I give you the ‘Indicted Congressman’s Club….

Well-deserved indictments keep hitting Congress. The latest indicted legislator is Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, the politician backed by former House speaker Nancy Pelosi in his last election, against a more progressive opponent, of course. On May 3, the justice department charged Cuellar with accepting roughly $600,000 from Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company and a Mexican bank. These payoffs were for “official acts as a member of Congress.” Sound familiar? It should, because it resembles the case against New Jersey Democratic senator Bob “Gold Bar” Menendez, charged some months back with selling his office for gold ingots, a fancy car and other gifts. And then, back on October 10, New York GOP congressman George Santos was charged with conspiracy for, among other things, stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization. What a buncha guys!

Since the indictment, Menendez has taken to the airwaves to insist he’ll fight to the finish. How is he even still in Congress, you ask? A massive case of narcissistic entitlement, that’s how; Cuellar – same problem. Instead of doing the correct and decorous thing, namely resigning, they cling to their congressional seats. The GOP-controlled House had the decency to expel Santos, but don’t expect such propriety from the Dems. They reserve their threats of expulsion for great senators, like Al Franken, guilty of making an off-color joke that riled the Me-Too fanatics. But when it comes to two congressional bigwigs like Menendez and Cuellar? The Dems may squabble about one or both resigning, but they put no muscle into it. Not like they did for the incorruptible Franken, on whom they ganged up and swarmed like a mess of angry hornets, and with about that much, insect-level, brain-power. Looking at you, Kirsten Gillibrand.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/05/24/the-indicted-congressmans-club/

These are just the most recent indictments….the sickness of greed goes well back in this country’s history.

One of the carriers of this cancer are the “Lobbyists”…..

The relationship between foreign governments and members of Congress is generating headlines and drawing scrutiny. First, on May 3, the Department of Justice charged Texas Representative Henry Cuellar with bribery, money laundering, and doing work on behalf of a foreign government. Then on May 15, the trial began for New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who stands charged with using his office to facilitate favorable deals and agreements involving select businesspeople and the Egyptian and Qatari governments. The Menendez case has produced sensational and salacious details — ranging from stacks of cash to gold bars found in the Senator’s residence — attracting a massive media spotlight. Cuellar has said he is innocent and Menendez has pleaded not guilty.

Yet, while the two cases are grabbing headlines, they are far from the first time foreign governments may have courted members of Congress. Such efforts — often illegal — have long been a way to shape American policy so that it benefits other countries. Foreign governments frequently pursue a dual track strategy in which they court policymakers through lobbying and other means, while also working to shape American public opinion to limit the options for members of Congress and the President. These strategies have paid great dividends in the past, even as they have also at times resulted in scandal.

https://time.com/6981957/foreign-interference-lobbying-history/

This cancer can be mostly cured by removing lobbyists and cash from our political organism.

These reports illustrate just how deadly cash is to the health of our beloved system….we need a surgically remove the malignant parts so the system can survive.

The problem is that this sickness is entering into Stage 4 and may be too late to save the entity we say we love.

Any thoughts?

‘cognito ergo me agitare’

How About A Gag Order?—-Warning

Warning: This post may contain subject matter that some may find offensive. Read at your own risk.

Enough Assholes enough!

From now on both parties in the economic debate need to shut the fuck up! The stimulus plan has not divided the country–it is the media and paritsan politics. A gag order is seriously needed.

I will say that most, but not all, of the media is trying to give bot5h sides of the debate. Unfortunbately too many host are partisan and get a lot my air time than those who support the bill. The problem is that they do not present the news in away that would help the viewers understand what is going on with the bill. And some keep using the “I won” statement is just plain silly. It is hearsay or it would be posted on line by now. It is one of the main tools being used to divide the country. The economy is a trainwreck–we do not need more observers we need lots more EMS.

The division of the country is doing NO good–nothing is being accomplished, but some goddamn political game–The Dems as well as the Repubs are playing this moronic game of political tennis. They stuck a bunch of crap from the last 8 years into this bill–that is called partisanship. Incase you were wondering.

This game has got to stop if the economy is to ever get rolling again. Change has not come to Washington. It is the same shit, different adminstration—guess what? That is called partisanship!

Here is a piece of goddamn bi-partisanship–stop paying these assholes until they cease the political bullshit and work to solve the country’s problems. Here is anmother piece for the dipshits! Take all the spending parts out of the 675 pages, the parts that actually stimulate the economy, and pass them as a seperate bill. Then they can go back to playing the stupid little mindless bullshit we pay them for.

A GAG ORDER! Is the only answer. Or this slimy crap will continue ad nauseum!

Why Pick On The Whigs?

In some past writings I have compared tthe future of the GOP to the old Whig Party….I still think that they are a dinosaur that needs to get a new breath or it will slowly fade as a leading force in American politics.

But Inow wish to apologize to the Whigs for my comparison. The Modern Whig Party is making a charge to prominence and doing it well. I came upon their website, http://www.modernwhig.org, by accident and decided that I should check them out—-I was impressed–more so than most other third parties that I have seen.

From their wbsite on Issues:

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY — The Modern Whig philosophy is to empower the states with the resources to handle their unique affairs.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE — Reduce dependence on foreign oil by developing practical sources of alternative energy. This will have the simultaneous effect of changing the national security dynamic.

EDUCATION/SCIENTIFIC ADVANCEMENT — Increased public and private emphasis on fields such as space, oceanic, medical and nanotechnology. Also, providing common-sense solutions to enhance our educational system from pre-school to university-level studies.

STATES RIGHTS — Each state can generally determine its course of action based on local values and unique needs.

SOCIAL PROGRESSION — Government should refrain from legislating morality.

VETERANS AFFAIRS — Vigilant advocacy relating to the medical, financial, and overall well-being of our military families and veterans.

Basically, it is a party of independents that see value in some Repub tenets and some Dem….thus their motto…”a party for the rest of us”.

I suggest that if you are disillusioned with your party, then stop by their website and give them a look….they are still in the process of constructing the party but they seem to be doing it right….

I know….I know….this is not much of an agitation….but wait! It is if you see that I am saying to get rid of the parties we have and start over…..we need a party of the people right now we have NONE.

The Whigs will be seeing more of me in the future…hope to see you there…..