4 January 2011 They’re selling postcards of the hangings

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

“Get Ready for a G.O.P. Rerun

By BOB HERBERT

Published: January 3, 2011

“We’ll see and hear a lot of populist foolishness from the Republicans as 2011 and 2012 unfold, but their underlying motivation is always the same. They are about making the rich richer. Thus it was not at all surprising to read on Politico that the new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton of Michigan, had hired a former big-time lobbyist for the hospital and pharmaceuticals industries to oversee health care issues. “

“I remember President Bush going on television in September 2008, looking almost dazed as he said to the American people, “Our entire economy is in danger.”

“Have we forgotten already who put us in such grave peril? Republicans benefit from the fact that memories are short and statutes of limitations shorter. It was the Republican leader in the House, Tom DeLay, who insisted against all reason and all the evidence of history that “nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.”

But that’s all water under the bridge. The Republicans are back in control of the House, ready to run interference for the rich as recklessly and belligerently as ever.”



“A health-care fight Democrats should welcome
By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Republican leaders aren't dumb enough to explicitly propose taking all these benefits away. But Democrats can, and should, force them to have that debate.

The GOP strategy is to go after the less popular elements of the reform package. These include a requirement that businesses do a lot more paperwork for the IRS, a measure allowing federal money to pay for abortions in the case of rape or incest, and the mandate compelling individuals to buy health insurance. "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble," Upton said.

But these are fights that Democrats should welcome.



Maybe the new House leadership believes it needs to stage this fight to keep the Tea Party types from going rogue. Smart Republicans must know, however, that they won their public-relations advantage on health-care reform by framing it as a big, amorphous beastly thing labeled "Obama-care."

All along, what Democrats really wanted was for Americans to look closely at the details. Now it looks as if the GOP is ready to oblige.”

Cassi Creek: We truly seem to be incapable of recalling anything that happened more than 12 hours earlier. The GOP’s “project deregulate”, undertaken to satisfy the demands of the wealthy financial lords who pay the lobbyists, who pay Congress, opened the door for the predations of the biggest banks and financial houses. It also allowed insurance companies to behave as if they were banks. And it allowed the very wealthy to gamble with everyone else’s money while keeping their free from any risk.

Despite all this, the voters turned around and put these same tools of the financial houses back into control of the House. Instead of listening to the reports of the various crisis study groups, which consistently found the GOP’s owners at fault, the mentally deficient little voters let the GOP terrify them with the word, “socialist.” They let the GOP\teavangelists feed them one lie after another, let them distract them from reality and fault by creating myths designed to unseat the first black POTUS.

Bless their southern strategy vulnerable hearts, they are so afraid of a black President that they will let the GOP and the teavangelists gut the Constitution, sack the treasury, and sell the nation’s resources to the highest bidders as long as they can get away with it.

We sent people to Congress who want to do away with taxes, carry combat arms on the main street, abolish any national government capable of defending itself or its people, and who want to create a theocratic system of laws. Why didn’t we just send them all to Somalia or Afghanistan?

It promises to be two long and ugly years as the most unfit Congress of the century tries to roll back the calendar ca. 1000 years. It will be easy to tell you are in an American city when this Congress has finished fucking up the nation. We’ll all be on Desolation Row.

“Now at midnight all the agents

And the superhuman crew

Come out and round up everyone

That knows more than they do

Then they bring them to the factory

Where the heart-attack machine

Is strapped across their shoulders

And then the kerosene

Is brought down from the castles

By insurance men who go

Check to see that nobody is escaping

To Desolation Row