Exactly

Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign advisor, said it best on Meet the Press this weekend:

"I think sometimes you listen to the Romney campaign and they do think a lot people in this country are stupid," Gibbs told NBC's David Gregory. "Their message is: You didn't clean up our mess fast enough."

More direct swipes at Romney and the failed GOP philosophy of governance:

"The last six months of the Bush administration, we lost three and half million jobs. We know this about Mitt Romney: He's not a job creator. When he was governor of Massachusetts, they were 47th out of 50 in job creation. His experience is in downsizing, outsourcing jobs and bankrupting companies and walking away with a lot of money for himself."

Gibbs added: "His economic ideas are the failed economic ideas that we tried for eight years, tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and letting Wall Street going back to writing the rules all over again. That is the policies that got us into this mess."

Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein of two different institutes with two different political bents have joined forces to actually tell the truth: the reason our political system is so frustratingly polarized is almost entirely the fault of the modern-day Republican Party:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

Or, as Jimmy Kimmel put it at the White House Press Correspondents dinner on Saturday:

I have my own theory about President Lincoln's death. I think John Wilkes Booth was innocent. I don't even think it was an assassination. I believe that Abraham Lincoln had a vision about what the Republican party would become in 150 years, and he shot himself."

Let's hope America is less self-destructive in November.

Global 99%

Noted economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz had this to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement in an article in English language Al Jazeera this weekend:

The protest movement that began in Tunisia in January, subsequently spreading to Egypt and then to Spain, has now become global - with the protests engulfing Wall Street and cities across America. Globalisation and modern technology now enables social movements to transcend borders as rapidly as ideas can.

And social protest has found fertile ground everywhere: A sense that the "system" has failed, and the conviction that even in a democracy, the electoral process will not set things right - at least not without strong pressure from the street.

...

The rise in inequality is the product of a vicious spiral: The rich rent-seekers use their wealth to shape legislation in order to protect and increase their wealth - and their influence. The US Supreme Court, in its notorious Citizens United decision, has given corporations free rein to use their money to influence the direction of politics. But, while the wealthy can use their money to amplify their views, back on the street, police wouldn't allow me to address the OWS protesters through a megaphone.

The contrast between overregulated democracy and unregulated bankers did not go unnoticed. But the protesters are ingenious: They echoed what I said through the crowd, so that all could hear. And, to avoid interrupting the "dialogue" by clapping, they used forceful hand signals to express their agreement.

...

The protesters have been criticised for not having an agenda. But this misses the point of protest movements. They are an expression of frustration with the electoral process. They are an alarm.

...

On one level, today's protesters are asking for little: A chance to use their skills, the right to decent work at decent pay, a fairer economy and society. Their hope is evolutionary, not revolutionary. But, on another level, they are asking for a great deal: A democracy where people, not dollars, matter, and a market economy that delivers on what it is supposed to do.

The two are related: As we have seen, unfettered markets lead to economic and political crises. Markets work the way they should only when they operate within a framework of appropriate government regulations; and that framework can be erected only in a democracy that reflects the general interest - not the interests of the 1%. The best government that money can buy is no longer good enough.

Amen, brother. And how about Stephen King in Florida a few months back:

#OWS is about speaking truth to power. If markets are not regulated properly, if the disparity between rich and everybody else gets too great, if the wealthy seek only to protect their own capital and bleed the rest of us, we know historically that empires fall and revolutions arise. For example, the American Revolution.

So, leaving aside a noble sense of civics: will greed or self-preservation win out?

Elizabeth

Candidate for Massachusetts Democratic Senatorial nomination, Elizabeth Warren:

I like how Obama and Warren are attacking the GOP "class warfare" smear head-on.

And lest we forget, she spoke so intelligently on the financial crisis and need for reform, she made Jon Stewart horny.

Class Warfare

The Republicans have declared class warfare by violating historical norms for taxation of the wealthy and the raising of taxes during U.S. wartime. With the Crash of 2008, the abject failure of the Bush tax cuts in any philosophical or economic sense, the laughable lie that calls the wealthiest Americans, the ones who have benefitted most from automation displacing those pesky workers and replacing Americans with foreign workers, "job creators."

Even Rep. Dan Lundgren (R-CA) doesn't have the energy of believability in his tired repetition recitation, his "I'll take my ball and go home" hostage move when confronted:

No one seriously believes this crap anymore and it's the antidote to the fallacies and identity politics of the teabaggers. And I don't care to call them "Tea Partiers" since I doubt Sam Adams would have approved of the majority of them. It's an economic theology that somehow denies progressive taxation in the name of liberty.

Like the robber barons who ruled America with a violent fist at the turn of the previous century.

Awesome

Have you addictive site, Awesome People Hanging Out Together? It goes like this:



(Patti & Robert!)

and this:



(Walt & Sophia!)

Also in awesomeness, Matt Damon. Best last line ever:



His mother's a teacher and he's right about the economics:

"I'm so disgusted," he told a reporter about the protracted negotiations. "I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. So, my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot."

Still, despite any sympathy, he was furious with the negotiations' outcome, as well as the greater thrust of American economic policy.

"The wealthy are paying less than they paid at ay time else, certainly in my lifetime, and probably in the last century," Damon said. "I don't know what we were paying in the roaring 20's; it's criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I don't mind paying more. I really don't mind paying more taxes. I'd rather pay for taxes than cut 'Reading is Fundamental' or Head Start or some of these programs that are really helping kids. This is the greatest country in the world; is it really that much worse if you pay 6% more in taxes? Give me a break. Look at what you get for it: you get to be American."

When asked whether he thought tax cuts helped create jobs, he was more than clear in his belief that they do not, and struck again on the inequality in the nation.

"I didn't go start a small business with my tax break, and I don't know anyone else who did. No, everybody's socking their money away," he said. "I was against those tax cuts. I thought they were ridiculous. So little is asked of the upper class anyway. I mean, what percent of them or their kids are fighting in any of these wars? What percent of their day is occupied by the fact that there are men and women in positions over the world, risking their lives. If you walk down 5th Avenue, there's no sense of shared sacrifice."

I wonder if he ever thinks about running for office. I'd vote for him, Affleck as well.