That’s the title of a great song by Philadelphia based Phil Roy. I keep searching for Hope in a Hopeless World, but find little these days.
Sure, there’s hope in the words I read from Paul Krugman, Frank Rich and others, but unfortunately our president doesn’t seem to spend much time absorbing their very necessary advice.
I have started and abandoned this blog post at least four times already this morning, and realize that on some days I do much better just talking than writing. Originally, I was going to point out the hypocrisy in the Opposite World the GOP inhabits. Today, it seemed as if President Obama is visiting too…
You know Opposite World, right? Where the wealthiest are immune from paying their fair share of taxes because they’re the “job creators”; where a recession is made better by cutting spending; where government is inherently bad, and greed is good; where privatization is the goal for every social program in place.
In Reality World, we know that when the wealthy get tax cuts, they just sock away the money in foreign banks or tax shelters so that it never sees the light of the US economy again; where the way out of a recession or depression is spending to get people back to work; where the government helps and philanthropy is good; where the way to fix the problems with health care and energy would be to take it out of the private, for-profit sector.
Unfortunately, in President Obama’s press conference today (click here to watch), he seemed to drive head-on into the Opposite World territory by embracing the austerity measures that the right is calling for and is currently driving stakes into the coffins of the EU.
I think we’ve lost the idea of a progressive – or even Democratic – president for now. What we must do to salvage whatever decency and concern for the general welfare of the other 98% in this country is to elect as many true progressives to Congress as possible.
This morning, I spoke with congressional candidate Ilya Sheyman, who’s running from Illinois’ 10th district. Already endorsed by Democracy for America and Blue America, he’s the kind of guy we need to get behind.
As she does every Monday morning, Crooks and Liars‘ Nicole Belle joined me for “Fools on the Hill” – as we take on the Sunday talking head shows. Although much of our segment was consumed with listening to President Obama triangulating during today’s press conference, this is what Nicole brought to us today:
I wish I could say that there was some unifying theme to Sunday’s clips, but I’m really struggling to find one. Mostly it’s more of the same kind of disingenuous coverage and right wing framing we see over and over.
It’s a measure of the concern over the debt ceiling debate that the White House got representative of the administration booked to discuss the debt ceiling. Unfortunately, it appears that the White House has accepted the Republican talking points.
They’re not the only ones. The media has most definitely accepted the GOP framing too. Like this clip from This Week. See if you can count how many times Christiane Amanpour repeat right wing talking points. (It’s a 10.5 minute clip, but kind of hard to figure where to cut. ) It’s all about how the Democrats are unwilling to see that there has to be “entitlement” reform and that it is them—not the GOP—standing in the way of the “grand bargain”.
And if that’s not enough Democrat-punching, Jim DeMint –one of the leaders of the Tea Party Caucus, so clearly an authority on economic issues—placed the blame for the debt ceiling crisis squarely with the White House on Fox News Sunday. DeMint claimed that Geithner—who appeared on the show earlier (why are we giving the Tea Party guy the last word again?)—was playing “Chicken Little” on the debt ceiling. It’s a shame that Chris Wallace didn’t ask him where this concern was the eight previous times that DeMint voted to raise the debt ceiling under George W Bush.
Luckily, Fox News Sunday also had on Rep Xavier Becerra and he did a fairly decent job of acquitting the Democrats, telling Bret Baier that Social Security should never have been even offered up as part of the negotiations. It’s a 5 minute clip, but Becerra does such a good job of shooting down Bret Baier’s Fox News talking point that Social Security is merely a trust fund filled with worthless IOUs.
Besides the debt ceiling talk, Tim Pawlenty also made a game attempt to promote his floundering presidential candidacy. Interestingly, Pawlenty pulled punches against front runner Mitt Romney, but opted instead to going tough on rising star (and fellow Minnesotan) Michele Bachmann. Pawlenty distinguished his candidacy from hers by comparing the achievements of his governorship to Bachmann’s “non-existent” congressional accomplishments. Oddly, Pawlenty’s list of accomplishments includes shutting down the government.
And finally, because all of this drama over the debt ceiling could be entirely avoided if the GOP wanted to do what was in the best interest of the country instead of wringing every crisis for partisan advantage (or personal profit, if you’re Eric Cantor), let me remind you once again what Mitch McConnell’s avowed primary goal is: to make President Obama a single term president.