The Big Zeros Wind Down

As the ball drops in Times Square and a mummified Dick Clark brings in the new decade, it's clear we are in for a nutty political year in 2010. Our corporate media is already predicting big losses for the Democrats this year--all their Republican guests and talking heads tell them so. It must be the cheerful message of hope and change they bring to the debate. Mary Matalin tells us that Bush inherited 5% unemployment, a recession and a 9/11 attack--of course this all happened on his watch but I guess he got a nine-month break in historical reckoning.

Newt Gingrich says a New Contract with America would bring 50 seats to the Republicans and that the GOP must campaign on an upbeat platform--like repealing health reform.

Fox news is telling us that the Detroit incident is a wake-up call for America to fight islamic terrorism, as though no one is.

GOP congresscritters complained that the Obama Administration has not been bipartisan and ,if he had governed as Dwight Eisenhower, he would be better off. Since CPAC is being sponsored by the John Birch Society, who thought Ike was a communist agent, it's hard to parse the observation about Obama as Ike--good thing or bad thing.

For the record, the Republicans abandoned any pretence at bipartisanship in February of last year just before the debate on the stimulus package. This is well documented on Youtube for those interested. Even though Reagan economists joined the likes of Paul Krugman in urging a stimulus--actually more than passed, only two Republicans voted for it. You will recall that Senator Judd Gregg was named as Secretary of Commerce but was pressured not to accept by Republicans.

But that should not keep us from the wicked dementia of Jane Hamsher and Grover Norquist's alliance. These unlikely allies want to investigate Rahm Emmanuel or have him resign for crimes unspecified. They also pledge to primary Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Since Grover thinks Charles Schumer, Barney Frank and George Soros are responsible for the American economic collapse, you might suspect a little pattern here. Out of all the random people in Washington,why pick on Bernie Sanders and Rahm Emmanuel-what faith do they have in common? Grover is just so clever.

For all babyboomers, the New York Times printed the annual full page ad--WAR IS OVER if you want it. Love and Peace . Yoko Ono and John Lennon. I had mentioned to my wife that I missed it this year until my ife found it and taped it to the refrigerator.

A word of advice--for me as well as you, the only polls that are meaningful in 2010 will be those after Labor Day. All the rest are rubbish unless they show absolutely huge leads.

It's actually too bad the Detroit incident happened because Republicans can not come back intellectually until they free themselves of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The GOP treats 9/11 as if it's the second Fourth of July. Until they rid themselves of this fixation and the belief that only Republicans suffered that day, they will not move on.

We owe President Barack Obama a great debt of gratitude for flushing out into the open all the "owners of America" who are trying to stop every move he makes. For the first time in my life, major corporations funded demonstrations against the Government. Even oil companies got in the act and stirred up demos against global warming. Think about that--protesting that people believe in global climate change. That's rich. I especially liked the protests against tax hikes when Obama cut 98% of all Americans taxes. I guess if you repeat it enough, it becomes true.

We have no clue what the issues will be this year. I suspect alot of it will be a debate over whether the economic recovery is real or memorex. The absolute shattering of belief in government that resulted from the Bush years will continue as the talking heads here in stoogeland will doubt everything said. I suspect we will have aanother pissfight on the Iran nuclear issue, more nonsense on Gitmo, and more unease with Afghanistan. I think Cap and Trade is a non-starter--basically because no one understands it. I do expect some effort at immigration reform, even though the Republicans will block it--but that's the point.

Who will Barack Obama be this year? The latest e-mail tags him as Juan Peron. So far only Castro has missed the list. But will we have the Chicago machine politician turn into Jimmy Carter as the left and the right seem to suggest. It's really great. There should be a contest.