The Enemy Within

There's been a campaign going on around the blogosphere for awhile, advocating that MSNBC ban Pat Buchanan from appearing on the network. Buchanan is a political analyst, who, in the wake of the tragedy in Norway, wrote an editorial, which appeared to rationalise, if not favour, the motives of the assassin in question, Anders Behring Breivik.


If that were not enough, Buchanan dug himself into a deeper hole, when he appeared as a guest on Rev Al Sharpton's new MSNBC progam, and made reference to the President, using a term with echoes the collective periods of time encompassing the Antebellum South right up through the era of Civil Rights struggles. You can watch the incident, which occurs at about the five-minute mark here.


That's right. Pat Buchanan, political speechwriter, strategist, commentator and one-time Presidential candidate, referred to the President of the United States as a "boy."


Now, I know Pat's past seventy, and he's a man of his era and time. I grew up in the South, and Pat always, for some reason, makes me think of the Virginia history textbook I was made to study in the Seventh Grade. I don't think it had been re-written in sixty years, and that was in the mid-1960s. Every five years or so, the publishers would tack another couple of chapters onto the end of the thing, as time passed and more events occurred; but in Virginia, in 1966, in the wake of historic Civil Rights legislation passing, we were still being taught how happy and gay (as in contented) African Americans were when they were enslaved, chattel, someone else's property and not their own person.


The quaint little drawings showed plump, well-fed people, dressed simply, but smartly, dancing happily around a campfire and receiving gifts of a ham at Christmas. We were taught that masters and mistresses were kind, and that their slaves didn't really want to be free. I think Pat bought into this too. In fact, I think he genuinely believed and still believes malarkey like this.


But, rightly, politely and forcefully, Rev Sharpton upbraided him on this slip-of-the-tongue. When Pat referred to the President as "your boy, Barack Obama," the reverend was ready:-

He’s nobody’s boy– he’s your president, he’s our president, and that’s what ya’ll don’t get through your head.

Rev Sharpton, that's what a lot of people don't get through their heads.


The next night, Lawrence O'Donnell, had as his guest, Arianna Huffington. I've followed Huffington's career for about thirty years. She's the privleged daughter of a corrupt Greek politician, whose family fled Greece in the socialist coup of the early 1960s. Huffington, nee Stanisopoulos, is a prime example of someone who has used money and sex to climb both the social and professional ladders.


Following her academic career at Cambridge, she expected to be welcomed with opened arms into the British political media, most of whom are traditionally centre-Leftish; but Huffington was so far to the Right in those days, she made Phyllis Schlafly look like a weeping Nellie atheist. She wrote a couple of books, and got sued for extensive plagiarism in one of them. In fact, plagiarism follows Huffington like a lost puppy, as does unethical journalistic methods.


She decamped to the US in the early 1980s and suddenly became BFF with Baba Wawa, no mean social climber, herself. Then she managed to marry Michael Huffington, a closeted gay politician, who needed a wife for his image as much as Arianna needed a (rich) American husband in order to stay in the country. Huffington was a neocon and to the Left of Madam, who was still rabidly Rightwing.


He served as a Congressman from California for two years in the 1990s, hoping to win a Senate seat in 1996 from Diane Feinstein. (He lost). I've no doubt, had he won, he may even have attempted a run for the White House in 2000 or 2004. Imagine Zsa Zsa Mach II as our First Lady!


Also, during the 90s, Arianna developed a penchant for Newt Gingrich and a pathological hatred for all things Clinton. She contributed to George W Bush's Presidential campaigns, not once, but twice, and suddenly woke up on the morning of November 3, 2004, the day Dubya officially became Lame Duck plus three, and experienced a full-on Damascene conversion, declaring herself no longer a neocon, but a 100% dyed-in-the-wool Progressive.


No questions asked, no details given, the shallow and insipid 24/7 news media accepted her as the new and fully-fledged voice of the Left.


In another space and time, she would have been called a ratfucker, because since Barack Obama's inauguration, she's worked steadily and consistently to ructure irreparably the Left. It was she, as well as Jane Hamsher, who made sure that the Firebaggers (who inhabit the opposite side of the political coin from the Teabaggers, but who share with them a single brain cell) were sufficiently conflicted to believe that the President was weak, spineless, a tool of Wall Street, a closet Republican, a war mongerer, an enemy of the people, especially the Middle Class.


In the weeks leading up to the 2010 Midterms, she trolled the United States, being given almost unlimited airtime on MSNBC, to tell all and sundry of the middle class that "the President just isn't that into you."


Almost as much as Ed Schultz, another ex-neocon rapidly converted to progressivism, she was instrumental in ensuring that people on the Left, who should have voted, sulked out the vote and gave us the Tea Party Congress we loathe and detest today - and all the while, referring to the President as "nowhere man."


Last night, she set up her shingle on O'Donnell's show, to talk about the debt ceiling agreement, and immediately offered this choice titbit about the President:-

I think he needs intense therapy, to explain to himself first of all why he did what he did, because there is no rational explanation.

All said with that maliciously sweet butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth smile plastered to her greasy, botoxed face.


That was a pernicious remark, which exhibited the utmost contempt and disrespect for this man. She's a nasty piece of work, totally without tact or class. A person whom, in the words of Oscar Wilde, knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.


She is, above all, the embodiment of white privileged elitism, from the debutante daughters to the flaunting of her own brand for her own purposes.


Oh, and she still cahoots with Newt.


But what dismayed me the most about the entire segment of the O'Donnell show is the way the host let her spew her disrespectful venom without once taking her to task.


Kudos to Rev Sharpton, who didn't stint in reminding a long-time political operative from the other side, that a modicum of respect was due the President of the United States. Neither is it mete to imply, snarkily or otherwise, that this President is mentally or emotionally unfit enough to require therapy, but it seems that the President and anyone who supports him now not only are told regularly by the Professional Left that they need professional help or that they really are Republican trolls (like the President is a secret Republican) paid by Andrew Breitbart or that they're "the dumbest motherfuckers," we're now deemed "starry-eyed followers", like the adherents to some sick cult.


I guess the question we are left to ponder is why Rev Sharpton was quick and right to call out blatant disrespect, and Lawrence O'Donnell wasn't?

Fine Young Cannibals

When the Democrats have to be told home truths by Pat Buchanan, you know something is not only rotten, it's shameful.

Earlier this week, in one of his many appearances on MSNBC, where he's the Grandpa Munster of political analysts, Buchanan was amazed at how the Democratic Party were sneakily and rather unobtrusively trying to move the President into a position of isolation. Looking any other way but at him. Sniping surreptitiously about his policies to a rabid and irresponsible media, but always "under condition of anonymity."

Suddenly, less than 18 months before the next election, the President has become Leper-in-Chief. Actually, this situation began in earnest during the Midterm hustings, when the Democratic party ran away from defending healthcar and distanced itself from the President in general. Two high-profiled Democratic Senators argued against bringing repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest to a vote before adjourning to campaign. If these could have been repealed successfully at any time, the best time to have tackled the issue would have been in September 2010. Then candidates could have campaigned on the fact that the Democratic Party had secured a permenent reduction in taxes for the all-important middle classes, whilst repealing tax cuts for the wealthiest.

But Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, and Russ Feingold, were in tight Senate races, and didn't want to have to campaign on raising taxes for anyone just yet. They pleaded with the President to delay the votes until after the Midterms.

And that worked out so well, didn't it? Herewith was established the infinitely erroneous myth of the President "caving" on tax cuts to a revitalised Republican Party, who refused to do any sort of lame duck business until the tax cuts had been extended. Ne'mind the President got more from the compromise than the Republicans and actually got them to effect legislation important to the economic well-being of the unemployed, the working class and the working poor - that's all by the wayside in perpetuation of the myth of Obama the "poor negotiator,", the "pussy", the wimp.

No matter what this President does, it's never good enough. The standard for him has been raised to an impossible height. Not only a willfully ignorant public, but also his own spineless, indolent and puerile political party expects him not only to eforce laws legislated, but actually do the legislation, himself. There have even been some from his side of the political fence who accuse him of the murder of Osama bin Laden.

The President doesn't chest beat, but one prominent gay rights' activist is certainly chest-beating today in The Huffington Post bragging about how he and his ilk had achieved a bit of progress in their agenda simply by "beating up" the President.

I know it's only a figure of speech, but what a violent one to use. And where were such voices "beating up" on Bill Clinton, Democrat, when he signed not only DADT, but DOMA?

But back to Buchanan.

Pat was reminiscing about Nixon and the period during which Nixon had become a veritable political pariah, when Watergate was at its height, when people were wondering what Howard Baker stated about what the President knew and when he knew it, when it was reported that Nixon harboured an enemies' list, incorporating such people as Carol Channing, when Nixon stated that there was no "whitewash at the White House."

Nixon's party visibly distanced itself from him during this period, Buchanan reminded, and only he, Pat Buchanan, publically defended the President until and after his resignation.

Now, Pat says, David Axelrod, who's left the Obama Administration, is the only Democrat who will defend what President Obama has achieved, whilst all around him in the party nitpicks and criticizes.

When a former plastics salesman who happens to be the Republican Speaker of the House plays politics and asserts that the President's action in Libya was illegal, this is the Opposition speaking; but when a member of his own party, who boasts a communications degree and a pocket Constitution and who's never been more than a political operative since his early youth, demands not onlly that a President from his own party be impeached, but actively seeks to sue him for breach of Constitutional law over Libya, then something stinks.

It's become an ass-end-out situation when the likes of Lindsey Graham speaks up for the President with integrity and prescience, whilst Dennis Kucinich unwittingly becomes the biggest tool the Republicans have in their box of tricks to ensure that Obama becomes a one-term President.

Not one serving Democratic representative is offering this President any sort of support on anything, but they are capable of whining and wanting his support to do their work.

When a serving member of Congress and a leader in the latino community threatens to withdraw support unless the President "does something" about passing the DREAM Act, I wonder how the hell these people made it to Congress. I would like to politely remind Congressman Gutierrez, AKA Congressman Gilipollas Flamante that YOU legislate and that the DREAM Act has failed to pass muster in the Senate on TWO occasions, thanks to four Democratic Senators voting with the Dark Side. How, exactly, does he expect the President to "do something" now, especially since the lower House has a Republican majority?

Compared to Nixon, a crook who was saved from investigation and imprisonment by his successor's Presidential pardon, this President is a saint. Buchanan, who's no admirer of Obama, admitted as much. Yet no Democrat will stand in support of this man. Is this real buyer's remorse or just craven fear that sometime in the future another qualified black man might seek the highest office in the land?

Or maybe they're just waiting for a great white hope of a primary challenger to step out of the woodwork, so we can really achieve another one-term Carteresque Presidency. The last time the Democrats went cannibal on one of their own, we got twelve years of Republican rule, which meant trickledown, the Gipper, the Gulf War and a lot of the things that resulted in the shitstorm we're negotiating now.

But this ain't Ronald Reagan's Republican Party who'll triumph as the Democrats munch down on their own. These are Goldwater's grandchildren, mutated Birchers who've sucked the tits of Koch whilst being read bedtime stories by Ayn Rand. These are people who want to see literacy tests reintroduced before people are allowed to register to vote. These are people who want to reduce the working class to a undereducated demographic of peasants willing to work long hours for peanuts and be thankful. These are people who are against a woman's right to choose and who would prosecute any woman as a murderer if she sought an abortion. These are people who want to rid the land of public schools and get rid of Medicare. These are people who would unflinchingly invoke "property rights" in dealing with anything concerning civil rights.

These are not nice people, and if they come to the fore and gain the White House in 2012, you will see an unbroken hegemony of Republican Presidents for a generation, because the Democrats will have eaten their own.

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