Brendan recently posted an article here called Gutless Harry Reid Must Go, an “article” which in reality consisted of a YouTube collage detailing some of Dirty Harry’s more visible crimes (What? You think he got to be Majority Leader by being a good boy? Please. Dis is AMERICA!!! And he’s from Las Vegas. Plesae. He was in power there when the Mob still ran the place openly instead of from behind slick little corporate frontmen. Please!!!) and the following single statement.
Harry Reid must go. He is an obstacle to Obama’s entire agenda. he has to go, and go NOW.
Now…besides the ludicrous idea that anyone besides Barack “Close To The Vest Barry” Obama actually knows what set of agendas he is about to pursue, this got me to thinking.
And the results of that thinking? Following are a few points that I would like to make regarding this sort of naive leftiness political thought.
Read on if you are curious.
1-If Harry goes, so should about 80% of the Dems in Congress.
2-If 80% of the Dems in Congress were to go…who’d take their place? Another buncha maroons? Worse maroons, maybe? Worse maroons, probably. Bet on it. RatPub maroons.
3-How could that sort of trade-off be prevented? Only by changing the entire structure of the political system as it now stands, eliminating all traces of corporate influence on the process.
4-And how could that be accomplished? Only by eliminating all traces of corporate influence on the system that makes up the so-called minds of the populace, the hypnomedia.
5-How to do that? You would either need the corporate-owned hacks in Congress to pass new laws governing corporate media ownership and advertising (not happening, of course) or you would need a massive consumer NEWSTRIKE!!! sort of movement that would break the system’s financial back. Also not happening, at least not on the evidence of the reaction to this sort of idea even from the supposed best and brightest of us on the leftiness blogs, most of whom are actually more media-addicted than are the normal, Joe Six-pack/watch a football game and then fall asleep clomp-clomp-clompers who do most of the voting in America.
So?
What are the real options?
6-Business as usual and hopefully a gradual move towards some form of middle-of-the-road normalcy. (American-style, of course, which means fairly right wing but not so right wing as the gonzos who have been ruling here most of the time since Nixon’s election.)
Or
7-A real revolution, something which will not happen unless the entire infrastructure breaks down to the point of food and fuel riots, something that is not very likely for quite a while no matter how dire our economic situation may appear at the moment.
So…get used to Dirty Harry and the Gang of 100/Dirty Nancy and the Gang of 435, because (with a few substitutions) they are all that you’re gonna get.
And…watch carefully as the Dem-dominated Senate ramps up its resistance to Obama’s moves. Consider Feinstein’s sideways opposition to Panetta’s appointment. (“They didn’t CONSULT me!!!” Bullshit. She wants…the congressional Dem mainstream,…wants CIA pros in there at the top because that way the economic/Intel scam in which they are almost all complicit on one level or another will remain relatively unaffected.] Consider also the collapse…errr, “compromise”…about to happen to the resistance regarding Burris’s seating in the Senate. He has bowed and scraped, promised to be a good boy (and I use that term advisedly in his case…he’s a go-fer for the big fellas and has been such for the entirety of his mediocre political career), and he’ll be a credit to his…position…as far as the Reids are concerned. And watch them hamstring Obama’s rescue package while you’re at it. They will use the “delay to destroy” method. Then when things get really dicey they will throw their weight around and pass something that suits their agendas.
Watch.
A presidential run is a long 4 to 8 years, and the Congressional Club doesn’t necessarily have warm feelings for Obama.
Especially the Senate Club.
He didn’t pay his dues, y’know. Not their style he didn’t. He jumped the line, went right past ’em all. Envy is a nasty beast, and so is competition for dominance.
Watch.
He’s going to have to make nice and/or kick some ass before he’s through.
The sooner the better in the ass-kicking department as far as I am concerned.
Public, direct ass-kicking just doesn’t seem to suit his style. But behind the scenes? We’ll learn about it years hence.
Watch.
He departed from their hill.
He went right by their little committee appointments, senioriities and chairmanships.
Right by, just like it was a little hill of beans.
Which it is, in the scope of world affairs. A bunch of rich, pork-rolling hustlers trying to stay as close to the middle as they can get.
Remember what Paul Hackett said after he was backstabbed by Dem insiders like Harry Reid and Charles Schumer when he wanted to run for the Senate?
Hackett, who says he would still like to help “retool” the Democratic Party, ends his meteoric political career with some advice for other maverick candidates. “They simply can’t rely on any of the party infrastructure to help them, and they must assume that people at high levels will work against them. These guys,” he says of the party insiders, “view the Senate as a club. They’re not gonna welcome you if one day they turn the key on the clubhouse door and you are sitting there with your feet on the table flippin’ them the middle finger. I understand that from their perspective. It works for them, but not for the rest of us out here.”
That’s why they want Caroline Kennedy in and do (did) not want Burris. They know that they can control Kennedy…she’s theirs by bloodline plus I would bet anything that assurances have been made…but since Burris is emphatically not part of their club nor is his sponsor Blagojevitch, they were afraid he would not be beholden to any of them. Of course the fact that he is apparently a fairly weak-willed, unambitious, relatively honest (Read “unimaginative” in today’s political climate. Every day’s political climate worldwide, on the evidence of centuries of history.) pol is in his favor, so I imagine a compromise will come down the pike so’s they can get this little party started, but still…that’s where they are at, and any other, more “honorable” interpretation of their general approach is simply naive beyond belief.
Hackett pinned it.
[They] view the Senate as a club. They’re not gonna welcome you if one day they turn the key on the clubhouse door and you are sitting there with your feet on the table flippin’ them the middle finger.
There it is.
Bet on it.
Obama essentially spurned membership in that club. He used it as a steppingstone to get to the top, nothing more. He’s younger, smarter, more eloquent and probably more honest that are any of them, and there IS going to be some bad blood between the Senate Dems and Obama. The older ones, anyway. The DNC crowd. They will try to take him down a peg or two.
That’s the real reason for Feinstein’s little squeal of dismay, besides her alliance with Intel forces. The first shot in a little under-war between the White House and the legislative branch, Dem version.
Watch.
Betcha.
Later…
AG
