An Open Letter to Speaker Boehner and the Republican Leadership

 Mr. Speaker,

I write to implore you to govern.  You may believe that the steps you have taken in response to the President’s stated intention to act on immigration reform is governing, but it is nothing more than political gamesmanship.  If you think that the mid-term elections provided you with a mandate to continue with the same strategies you have employed over the past six years you are sorely mistaken.  The only mandate granted to your party is that you govern. The nation demands it and demands that you cease this tiresome and destructive course of gamesmanship. That means that you offer a plan for governing. Sitting on an immigration bill that received support from both Senate Republicans and Democrats for two years is unconscionable. The tax payers of this country pay your salary and demand accountability from their elected officials…accountability that mandates that you inform us of what your plan for governing entails. The President has challenged you to pass a bill if you are so unhappy with his having exerted his constitutional authority. Responding to that challenge by suing him over the ACA is not governing.  That you decided to take such an absurd tact in response to the President’s message can only be taken to mean that you have absolutely nothing to offer us in response.

Mr. Speaker, the people demand an explanation. Please explain why nothing has happened to the immigration bill passed by the Senate., and why that bill has not even reached a house committee. Please tell us  how the house proposes to correct the bill if, in fact, the House has reviewed the bill and believes it should be amended.

Please explain why you chose to bring suit to force the President to enforce provisions of the ACA that Republicans vehemently oppose and how this action is not simply more political gamesmanship. Apparently voting 54 times to repeal the Act did not waste enough of the nation's time, money and patience. How much of my money is now going to be wasted in pursuit of a suit that has no purpose other than to score political points?

Your collective hyperbole about the President’s “unconstitutional” behavior may play well to your base (which needs no convincing that Obama is the devil) but does not answer the call of the majority of Americans who demand that you cut the crap and provide us with your vision for governing this country now that you and your colleagues have taken control of Congress.

There is a lot of work to be done, Mr. Speaker. The people demand that you get to work.

P.S. Credit to Ed Wexler for the terrific cover.

Party of Cowards

The landslide victory of the Republican party can certainly be traced to a variety of causes. The burgeoning effects of Citizens United certainly had its impact but does not completely explain how or why so many people would vote against their own interests and choose to increase the rolls of a party that has controlled the House of Representatives since 2010 and claims as its only success securing the lowest approval ratings of any Congress since opinion polls came to the fore. It is on many levels nearly impossible to understand how a populace, supposedly sick and tired of the gridlock that has gripped Washington since Barack Obama's election, could vote to change the gridlock  by rewarding those most responsible for that gridlock; increasing the power of the very obstructionists who from the beginning vowed to govern by doing nothing but oppose the President and his agenda. Yet that is precisely what we have done.  Paul Krugman, in his first post-election Op Ed piece, "Triumph of the Wrong", in fact, points to the election as having validated Republicans'  obstructionism as a winning strategy and, indeed, he is right. What is left unsaid, however, is the very real contribution the Democratic party made to its having been placed on the periphery of the political process.

The performance of the Democratic party throughout this and every electoral season since the mid-term elections of 2010 has in a word been cowardly. There is not a single issue that has embraced the nation that the Democratic party has not run away from. Whether it is gun control, the economy or health care, given a choice of standing for the policy and against violence, against intolerance and against greed, Democratic candidates and their managers at the DNC have chosen not to stand for Democratic ideals but to argue  policy on Republican terms. That this is a losing strategy is borne out by the results of the last three elections (save for Obama's own re-election in 2012) which have seen a dramatic shift in the debate and consequently to the make up of the government at virtually every level to the right. 

The nation as a whole appears abjectly blind to the tremendous amount of good that has been accomplished by the Obama administration despite the Republican vow to do everything possible to ensure that Obama fails and is left as an after-thought when Wikipedia recounts this time in history in years to come.

• The economy was brought back from the brink of collapse;
• The auto industry was saved and, along with it, the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans;
• The unemployment rate has dropped from more than 10% when Obama took office to just above 5% today;
• The stock market has climbed more than ten thousand points since 2006 and taken with it the pension plans and 401Ks of millions of Americans;
• The budget deficit has been cut in half;
• Millions of people, previously without health insurance, now either have insurance or the ability to obtain insurance when none was previously available to them

To be clear, there have, in my view, been missteps along the way including some questionable foreign policy decisions but on so many levels so many Americans are better off today than they were six or eight years ago. Yet with perhaps one or two exceptions not one Democrat running for office stood before the electorate and hammered these facts home. Republicans ran this cycle on a strategy of lies and deception claiming that Democratic policies were killing jobs, driving up the deficit and generally destroying the economy, none of which is true. Yet rather than standing up and denouncing the GOP strategy for what it was Democrats, almost to a person, played the GOP game, distancing themselves from the very policies that had benefited the vast majority of the voting public.  In many instances Democratic candidates not only failed to defend these very tangible Democratic successes but insisted that they did not support Obama and should not be blamed for the manufactured failures that their Republican adversaries had conjured up.

Intellectual and political cowardice in the face of obstructionism, lies and deception is not a winning formula at any level and should not be accepted by Democrats who believe that their party should stand for something more. The damage that the Democratic party has done to itself and to the nation by its failure to respond  is incalculable and certain to have a lasting impact that may be nearly impossible to reverse. With several Supreme Court judges nearing the end of their tenure the composition of Congress virtually guarantees that we have not seen the last of the likes of  Scalia,  Alito and  Roberts and make no mistake that it is the Court's pronouncements which have the most lasting impact upon our lives. If you have any doubts just consider for a moment the impact that PAC money had and is continuing to have on the political process.

I write these words in the hope that I am wrong and that my party will gain the courage to stand up and fight. The recent past suggests otherwise. Those who hope for a nation of tolerance and prosperity that everyone can share in have to hope that the Democratic party acts on the moral authority to protect our lives, liberties and our happiness. 

The Gaza Threat

Viewed from a historical perspective the events unfolding in Gaza are part of an ongoing struggle between Israel and the Arab world that has played out repeatedly over the past fifty years. What distinguishes the current situation from those that have preceded it is the broader implications for the outcome of the struggle and why, however horrific the effects upon both Israelis and Palestinians, the conflict must continue until Israel succeeds. The region as a whole has since Hussein was removed from power, convulsed with violent conflict that has engulfed Syria, Egypt and Iraq pitting Sunni against Shiite in a battle for the heart and soul of the Arab world. One secular, the other extreme in its fundamentalist view of Islam's as a global power, the Middle East has been become a battle field at which the outcome of the region, including that of Israel, is at stake. It is, in my view, not a coincidence that the most recent fight between Hamas and Israel has coincided with the rise of extreme and violent fundamentalist Islam in the body of ISIS which, with surgical precision, has sliced out large sections of both Syria and Iraq, set up governance based upon an extreme interpretation of Sharia Law with aspirations for a more broad-based imposition of fundamentalist Islam throughout the region. The fact that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE have chosen not to intervene and, in fact, have supported Israel's actions speaks volumes about the regional fear that the Hamas uprising represents an attempt by those seeking to impose Sharia throughout the region to establish yet another staging point from which ISIS and it's like can seek to attack and overthrow the more moderate and secular Arab governments in the region. 

Certainly losing Gaza to the extremists who are spreading like a cancer through vast portions of Iraq and Syria would not only pose a threat to  moderate Arab states neighboring Israel but to Israel itself. Though distant in miles the threat posed to the west should Israel not succeed is real and cannot be ignored. That the military response by Israel has yielded such horrific results amongst the civilian population should not dissuade or distract Israel and it's supporters in the West from the broader implications of what has been happening in the Middle East since Hussein's removal.       

Shoshanna Richman - Counting The Seconds @ The Laurie Beechman Theatre

And now for something totally different...the beautiful and talented Ms Shoshanna Richman. Enjoy!

What Would Jed Bartlett Have to Say About Arizona?

The recent attention on the Arizona state legislature and the abhorrent attempt by both local and national religious organizations to hide their bigotry and intolerance behind some bizarre interpretation of biblical commandment brought to mind Jed Bartlett's dismantling of a religious right radio talk show host on election night. For those inclined to find justification for your hatred and intolerance in biblical verse give a listen and have at it.