Warning to Democrats

Don't get any new ideas. They will only confuse the New Republicans.

The best new idea I've heard is the Buy-In to Medicare, where average Americans could pay for Medicare insurance at roughly one-half the rate of regular insurance. This would cost the government zero money so it should be friendly to Republicans. Cough. I don't know wether this will be introduced when the Progressive Caucus submits its bill for the public option in the House.

Last night Howard Dean had to talk Rachel Maddow down because she complained that the White House was once again "Punching Hippies" by appointing Bill Daley as Chief of Staff. The progressive response has been predictable. But Matt Bai got it right in the New York Times. President Obama was mired in legislative wrangling for two years and wants to break out of this trap. Daley allows him to make contact with state governors and other regional politicals, instead of the Beltway crowd.

The Business community has hailed Daley's and Sperling's appointments. The reason for this is that the business community is terrified now with the teabaggers and want to help the Obama Administration to triangulate pressure to ensure that the debt ceiling is raised so America's creditworthiness is maintained and also to exert pressure on the Congress to continue to spend money for the economy. For this reason, you have the strange bed fellows of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce come together to lobby on behalf of infrastructure spending, something the teabaggers want to cut.

My colleague protested that I was wrong that Republicans would invoke the Heritage Foundation figures rather than CBO to prove their ideological points. Well, to late, the Heritage Foundation has countered the CBO's estimates on the repeal of Healthcare with a presentation that Obamacare actually contributes to the deficit--so there. This flies in the face of several reports that demonstrate just the opposite.

Harvard University has down its own estimates on how repealing Healthcare reform will be a job-killer. If healthcare reform was said to add 400,000 jobs a year, Harvard claims any repeal will actually cost 400,000 per year for a decade. That's job creation for you.

I guess the U.S. Chamber squeezed Paul Ryan's nuts because today he said that the debt ceiling absolutely has to be raised. Whether this goes over with the freshmen Congresscritters is a different story.

There is a dilemma. Should we ignore the mayhem in the House as not relevant to our lives or should we pay attention as a warning about threats to the country in the next two years? Life is much more productive and entertaining with one's own intellectual projects than to be dragged into the sewer with the latest insanity.

The problem I have is that the new House is so capricious and arbitrary. The House republicans so far have ad-libbed everything. That should be shocking to any average citizen. I even raised the issue of the basic illiteracy with some conservative friends of mine, who have no clue what I'm talking about. "Well,the repeal can't be any more illiterate than Obamacare." Well, yes it is. And the total lack of capable drafters will lead to more legal mayhem than we have already. So, what's a poor boy to do? Ignore them and just build a moat around the house?

The deliberate disdain for expertise has gotten worse in Republican circles since George W's term and it was already bad then. Whatever you believe is true. Tax breaks don't affect the deficit. Just announce it and it's true and the conservative think-tanks will crank out something proving it. Don't believe in climate change,it's true. It's a hoax just consult the Koch Brothers. Barack Obama favors Sharia Law. It's true and the elderly wing of the neoconservatives will write something that proves it is the new reality. Now everything the House Republicans proclaim will be true and broadcast on Fox.

Republicans are cutting spending and dealing with the deficit. Absolutely false as we've seen in the last two days. But will soon be perceived as true. Republicans will create jobs. Barack Obama has created more jobs than the Republicans did in eight years. But it doesn't matter because it will be declared true.

We all know what this is about in terms of elections. We just experienced a mid-term election which had more out-and-out lying about everything than at anytime in the past. That's bad. But it's worse when people who are given authority for government actually believe their own talking points and propaganda.

This is not ideology. This is not reasoned thought. Conservative should be ashamed of themselves because they now pander to this know-nothing mindset. There really are basic facts. Economics entails certain principles. Science has an empirical basis. All this is being sacrificed and has been for nearly a decade for a shot at political power. And what worth is political power if your policies are based on gibberish.

Progressives complained that President Obama kept the Republicans in control of the Pentagon. It actually looks now that he thought to keep the only rational Republicans left. Their presence actually calms down the war wing of the Republicans for now. They will be in full cry around 2012. Not Georgia as John McCain wanted. More probably Iran.

A closing thought--Golden Voice Ted Williams, the homeless hero of Youtube, has been arrested fewer times than Darryll Issa. Darryll now says that Barack Obama is as corrupt as a hard disk.