President Barack Obama, reflecting the Hawaiian culture where he was raised, spent the last three years reaching out to his political opponents in a quixotic effort at bipartisan American harmony.   

This noble effort in the face of unrelenting character assassination by the Conservative movement reminded me of former Senator Tom Daschle after George W. Bush gave the best speech of his life. The speech, delivered from the halls of Congress, united the entire nation following  September 11^th attacks on America. 

I remember Daschle, then the Senate Majority Leader, hugging Bush after the speech. It appeared real and heartfelt and was followed by Daschle delivering on his support. In the months that followed 9-11, Daschle delivered everything from the Patriot Act to the Afghanistan War for Bush. Democrats saw this as a time to unify behind our President, even though many believed he didn’t legitimately win the 2000 election. 

But as the Bush-Cheney Administration was picking up steam to go into Iraq and some Democrats were calling for the President to slow down, here is what Bush had to say, "The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people."

The mild mannered and compromising Tom Daschle hugged the president and his hug was returned with a metaphoric knife in the back.   

This has been the case with President Obama and the Republican Party, which is now dominated by the Tea Party movement. The genteel President, hoping to create a new way of finding areas of agreement, reached out to Republicans, included their ideas into legislative negotiations and talked and talked and talked. 

And what did Boehner, McConnell, Cantor and company do? Merely breaking off negotiations was not enough. They accused the President of being against the well being and long term viability of the American economy. Sound familiar?

So many of us have been waiting and waiting for President Obama to put his Hawaiian roots aside and channel the muscular liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt who displayed no fear of calling out his political opponents in 1936.  

"For twelve years this nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred."

Those words convinced the country that policies needed to change and they did. It wasn’t a negotiation with Congress that convinced them to end the Depression by enacting the New Deal. It was a discussion with the nation, who then pressured their members of Congress.

 From Roosevelt to Kennedy to Johnson to Reagan and Bush, Presidents who have been able to convince the people that their policies are best for the country create not only a negotiating edge with Congress, they put electoral pressure on Congress to break from their fears and obligations to the moneyed interests and do what the people demand. 

President Obama took his first step toward this approach when he spoke to Congress and presented his Jobs Bill. Then he continued to pressure Congress with fiery speeches that at long last didn’t include an appeasement to Republicans or an apology for showing off his Progressive philosophy. 

“Now, you’re already hearing the Republicans in Congress dusting off the old talking points,” he said. “You can write their press releases. ‘Class warfare,’ they say. You know what? If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor."

FDR would have been delighted. 

But he wasn’t done. President Obama laid it on thick, calling out his two most powerful antagonists, Senate Minority Leader and Filibuster-in-Chief Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House John Boehner on their own turf.  The President spoke in the shadows of the Brent Spence Bridge that carries two interstates connecting Kentucky and Ohio over the Ohio River. The bridge is in bad shape, Obama called it ‘functionally obsolete” and needs either a $2.4 billion repair job or replacement. Obama says his Jobs Bill will speed up the repair/replacement process and Boehner and McConnell are preventing the repair of their own constituents’ bridges.  "Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge," Obama said. "Help us rebuild America. Help us put this country back to work. Pass this Jobs Bill right away."

 President Obama has been quite aggressive in support of his two big proposals, ending the debt with a combination of large spending cuts and increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires, and his $447 billion Jobs Bill. 

The nerdy pencil-necked big-eared geek from Aloha Land just punched the bullies in the nose. And as many of us have been predicting for decades, the bullies whined like five year olds.

McConnell: "If a bridge needs fixing, by all means, let's fix it. But don't tell us we need to pass a half a trillion dollar stimulus bill and accept job-killing tax hikes to do it.

Boehner : “It's a very simple equation. Tax increases destroy jobs.” 

 Eric Cantor’s office issued a statement saying the cuts in what the top 2% can deduct on charitable donations will drop and therefore Obama deficit reduction is a “tax on soup kitchens.”

Fox “News” Senior Business Correspondent and alleged journalist, Dennis Kneale:  “How is it that his (Warren Buffet’s) company, though it reaps billions, it pays very low in taxes? You know what? He's allowed to do that. He should do that. We should hold onto as much of our money as we can. We'll make the economy better not worse.”

This whining by the bullies who also, get this, accused President Obama of taking his ball and going home, is exactly the response many of us, who have been hoping for a more aggressive posture by the President, believed would happen. And their whining paints them into a very difficult corner. At every turn, while millions of Americans are barely making ends meet, barely paying the monthly bills, barely hanging on to their mortgages and competing against hundreds of people for the same jobs, they see the  Republicans whine about the top 2% of the wealthiest people in the country having to play a role in balancing our budget and creating jobs. 

Every statistical evaluation of the Bush years show that tax cuts for the so-called job creators—millionaires  like Eric Cantor—did  not create jobs; instead jobs sunk through the wormhole of the Wall Street and economic meltdown in 2008. And when Obama gave in and allowed passage of another extension of the Bush tax cuts for the “job creators’ in December 2010, we saw no uptick in job increases. 

And the response by other progressive thinker has forcefully dispelled the myths the Limbaugh crowd have been pushing around for 30 years. Tax cuts for the wealthy do not create jobs and tax increases on the top earners are not ‘job killers’. 

It’s very simple. During the Clinton Administration when taxes on the top 2% were increased we saw a 22 million jobs increase. 

During the Bush Administration we saw huge tax cuts with only 3 million jobs created and a hemorrhaging of jobs at the end of the Bush administration, with 700,000 jobs falling by the wayside every month. 

What we’re seeing now in the wake of Obama’s proposals is…more of the same. If the President would have offered $2 trillion in tax cuts and $1 billion in tax increases, we would have heard the exact same rhetoric and Obama would be negotiating from a very bad position.

But now we see the same cloud of whining as the President forcefully offers up his Progressive proposal to balance our budget and bring jobs back to American workers. 

Despite what Bill Maher says, I believe the American people will get it, eventually. As Muhammad Ali would say, “They’re not as dumb as they look.” I think most Americans are simply too busy to pay attention. When they do, they get it. When the President speaks out forcefully, they listen. And then they get it. 

 I also believe Democrats are very much to blame for many Americans not getting it thus far. From Carter to Mondale, from Dukakis to Gore to Kerry and at times Obama, Democrats have cowered at the firestorm of Limbaugh inspired accusations about Liberalism. They have more or less apologized for their beliefs and defended themselves as ‘not as bad as you think.’ At the same time the so-called journalists in our world are so frightened of being labeled liberally biased, they overlook crucial facts and report the inaccurate statements of Conservatives as if they were true. But what they don’t understand and what so many Democrats haven’t understood is this simple truth. Even if you abide by their wishes to the letter, the Conservatives will always label you as an unpatriotic, anti-American, big tax, big government cult. 

So if they’re going to lie and whine when you are cooperative, then why not just state what’s true? Put the Progressive truth up against the Conservative story. Be aggressive about it and put them in the position of defending the idea that the wealthiest among us should not contribute to the two wars, the Medicare drug plan and the recovery of our economy.

 We can’t afford to wait for Rick Perry to be president for the American people to get it. Republicans are their own worst political enemies when they are in a position to govern. That’s because when they go ultra conservative, jobs are lost, debt is increased and gap between the very rich and the middle class grows wider and wider. 

But President Obama has put himself in a position (hopefully not too late) to change the conversation and put the Republicans on the defensive.

Of course the GOP House is not going to ‘pass this bill’. They will only pass a bill that has draconian cuts to everything from education to Medicare. But if the nation is convinced, if the American people see both positions with clarity, they will pressure many of these Republicans to relent, or vote them out in 2012. 

President Obama has finally begun to talk the talk. But he must not retreat into his familiar conciliatory position.  He must continue to demand that they give in.  

He must now walk the walk.  

 His presidency and the future of the middle class and impoverished among us, are at stake.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”-Ronald Reagan

I remember in the early, heady days of the Tea Party movement I had an opportunity to moderate some local Town Hall events in Henrico County, a suburb of Richmond, Virginia in the heart of Eric Cantor’s district. Held at the Innsbrook office park,  they were designed to be civil affairs with people of different opinions getting a chance to listen to different viewpoints. 

Virginia’s Tea Party Senate Candidate Jamie Radtke brought a whole contingent of Tea Party faithful and I was happily surprised at their civil demeanor and their willingness to listen to opinions they did not share. 

One conversation I had with a prominent businessman gave me a glimmer of false hope. As the endless talk of freedom from government regulation dominated the conversation I brought up gay rights. This businessman told me he didn’t care what gays did and thought they should be allowed to be married. It was, after all, a liberation movement; a movement about the rights of individuals.

I figured that if the Tea Party were to ever have control over government institutions they would wreak economic havoc and potholes and bridges would never get fixed; but at least they would fight for the private rights of all individuals. 

Boy was I wrong. 

Turns out the Tea Party movement, given its first chance to govern in states across the nation, has become the most anti individual rights political movement we’ve seen in our nation since the 60s. And what’s really frightening, is that they have become quite effective at tearing apart the Constitution and destroying the rights millions of American citizens. 

Governors and legislators in a variety of states have quickly make government a vehicle for creating multiple classes of Americans with limited rights, including the most important right we all have as Americans; the right to choose our representatives in Government by voting.

The first sign of this frightening agenda came in Michigan. In 2011, shortly after Tea Party backed Governor Rick Snyder took office, he and the legislature created a new law that allows the Governor to dissolve any city or town council, local school board or any other government entity and have it taken over by an ‘emergency manager’ or a corporation; essentially privatizing an entire elected government body. 

It didn’t take long after the law was passed for the first declaration of martial law in one Michigan town. This past April the town council of Benton Harbor was essentially dissolved. According to one news report dated April 16, “Elected officials in that city are now limited to calling a meeting, adjourning a meeting, and approving minutes of a meeting. Beyond that, they can do nothing.”

Former Richmond City Manager Robert Bobb, used his powers as the “Emergency Financial Manager” for Detroit to fire hundreds of Detroit school employees without so much as a vote by the Detroit School Board. Said Bobb, “I fully intend to use the authority that was granted." Bobb was referring to a new law that gives these emergency czars, or Little Dictators, the authority to modify -- or terminate -- collective bargaining agreements.

In February, Bobb converted 41 of the district's schools into charter schools, after ordering half of all the district's schools shut down. Class sizes in Detroit are now 60 students to every teacher in some schools. 

These efforts in Michigan are a drastic form of the same thing that’s happening in Wisconsin; the effort to do the bidding of large corporations that limit the rights of workers to bargain for better wages. Corporations are more profitable now than at any time in American history, and one of the reasons is they have been able to get more people to do the jobs of more than one person and do so at flattened or lower wages while corporate CEO salaries have skyrocketed.

This was just the beginning of the Tea Party movement ripping the Constitution to shreds in the United States of America. 

In Virginia, Kansas and other states, Governors and Legislators have used creative legislation to make it nearly impossible for a woman’s health clinic to provide services to low income pregnant women, especially those who want to have an abortion. 

These states have forced clinics to make physical changes to their structures that echo the same restrictions as large hospitals, making the changes that are utterly unaffordable. This has left the entire state of Kansas with just one clinic that can provide abortions. 

In Florida, Governor Rick Scott and the legislature had the audacity to make it illegal for a pediatrician to discuss gun safety in the home with parents of their patients. While the National Rifle Association, an organization that used to promote gun safety, gave Scott an “A” in endorsing him for Governor, a Florida judge gave him an “F” in Constitutional authority. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke decided the Constitution was still relevant; rendering the law a gross violation of the First Amendment rights of physicians and their patients. 

THE RIGHT TO VOTE-Tea Party Access Only

“There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today,”

That was former President Bill Clinton, who grew up in the segregated south, expressing his alarm at Florida and a host of other states that are trying to restrict the rights of voters to be able to get to the polls. In this case he was talking of convicted felons who had served their time; people who were helped to get back into the voting process by none other than former Governor Jeb Bush.

In a frightening and well documented piece of journalism by Rolling Stone Magazine, dozens of states across the country are making it more difficult for senior citizens, students, Hispanics, African Americans and low income Americans to vote. Backed by the Koch Brothers’ giant oil conglomerate, many of these states have enacted laws that require the kind of identification that is often unavailable to these voters who tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic Party candidates. 

In Rick Perry’s Texas you can vote with the gun license but not a student ID.In Florida and Ohio early voting has been dramatically curtailed, making it more difficult to get to the polls for full time workers. 

In Florida, according to Rolling Stone, “six states have introduced legislation to impose new restrictions on voter registration drives run by groups like Rock the Vote and the League of Women Voters. In May, the GOP-controlled legislature in Florida passed a law requiring anyone who signs up new voters to hand in registration forms to the state board of elections within 48 hours of collecting them, and to comply with a barrage of onerous, bureaucratic requirements. Those found to have submitted late forms would face a $1,000 fine, as well as possible felony prosecution.

As a result, the law threatens to turn civic-minded volunteers into inadvertent criminals.”

Voter ID laws in several states, including Governor Scott Walker’s Wisconsin make it harder to get the newly required government IDs in time for elections. Again from Rolling Stone: “… roughly half of all black and Hispanic residents in Wisconsin do not have a driver's license, and the state staffs barely half as many DMVs as Indiana – a quarter of which are open less than one day a month. To make matters worse, Gov. Scott Walker tried to shut down 16 more DMVs – many of them located in Democratic-leaning areas. In one case, Walker planned to close a DMV in Fort Atkinson, a liberal stronghold, while opening a new office 30 minutes away in the conservative district of Watertown.”

Dictatorships in Michigan.  Government intrusion into patient-doctor relationships in Florida. Abortion rights curtailment in Virginia and Kansas. Jim Crow reruns in dozens of states across the nation.

The notion that the Tea Party is a movement about freedom is more than just another political lie. As the Tea Party has taken its collective seats in state and local governments it has proven to be a movement to make American citizens who don’t agree with them on a host of issues, essentially a second class, with far fewer rights. 

In achieving their goals in all these states, they have replaced individual American rights with the rights of large corporations to pollute, rip off their customers, keep worker wages at historically low rates and enrich their Boards of Directors beyond their wildest dreams. 

That’s why the Tea Party is so well funded. The large corporations know that for them to have the freedom to do business without regard to the health, safety and rights of individual citizens, they must limit the freedom of those citizens to elect leaders who will work to protect them.  

Maybe that “Don’t Tread on Me” flag should symbolize the rest of us, who actually care about the rights of each individual American citizen.

When Rush Limbaugh began his political talk show in 1984, the United States was working to emerge from the effects of the uproarious battles over civil rights, women’s rights, the Vietnam War and the Nixon fiasco we all know as Watergate. As John Lennon said,  “Wasn't the 70s a drag? Here we are. Well, let's try and make the 80s good…”  

What Lennon never saw due to his tragic death was the whiplash reaction to 20 years of Americans ripping apart legal racism and sexism while ending a horrific war fought on the most dishonest of terms, while also ridding ourselves of a President who grossly violated his constitutional authority. 

As Liberalism was winning these huge battles of for the rights of individual Americans and the limits of authority in the White House, Conservatives were busy creating well funded think tanks that were about to explode on the scene and transform the discussion. 

I remember reading articles in the beginning of the 80s describing the Angry White Man; a typical white American male who was made to be apologetic for centuries of racism and sexism in America. These angry white men were growing tired of being given second rate status to Affirmative Action efforts designed to create equality after 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow laws. 

When Limbaugh’s show was syndicated in 1988 he became the salve to all those men who were tired of being told they should feel guilty about the horrors the United States inflicted on African Americans, the atrocities of the Vietnam War and the inequality suffered by women in the workplace.

Then Rush came along. 

Make no mistake; Rush Limbaugh is one of the most talented broadcasters in American history. His voice, his inflection and his ability to coin phrases in the most simplistic manner, grabbed millions of these angry white men and locked them in for life.  They grew to see him as a satisfying authority on all issues. He let them know their anger was most certainly justified. 

Lazy people taking tax dollars to live large. 

Qualified white workers losing jobs to unqualified blacks. 

Women and their phony glass ceiling. 

Sexual deviance run amuck, a product of the dirty, lazy, unpatriotic 60s. 

Limbaugh’s success in channeling this collective angst has included a recipe of three hours of anger fueled by a litany of shameless lies. Like Howard Stern with sexual innuendo, Limbaugh joined the shock jock revolution that removed all manner of etiquette and use of facts to make a point. He pushed the envelope so wide open that hundreds of copy cats began to feel free to distort the truth, use vicious insults and demand that any sort of areas of agreement or compromise are akin to treason. 

Monikers like “feminazis” were used to describe women who demanded equal pay in the workplace. Public employees were compared to Hitler. Limbaugh even claimed that there was more forest land in America in the mid-90s than at the time the Constitution was written.  

Here’s a small list from the blog by Josh Wilson, called “The Most Dangerous Man in America” describing just one week in a 30 year marathon of Limbaugh lies and racism: 

·         Limbaugh claimed falsely that 95% of all Union dues go to Democrats.

·         Rush: “The Obama Stimulus led to no roads, no bridges, no private sector jobs”

·         Limbaugh: “Public Workers in Wisconsin are the wealthiest workers in Wisconsin.”

The net result of this three decade effort has been to create what has amounted to a second Civil War in America. Not since 1865 have Americans turned against each other like they have as Limbaugh has gained more and more power; leading to an 8 year $400 million contract in 2008. 

Family members drifted away from each other when political discussion turned to angry insults. Co-workers and colleagues sizing each other up in an ‘us or them’ evaluation. And on social networks like Facebook, where the barrier to constructive political debate is created by keyboard and screen often times ends with childish insults. 

Limbaugh’s power is derived from his listeners, who at one point began to call themselves ‘Dittoheads’. Their anger at whatever was getting under their skin at the time was conveniently leveled at Liberals and liberalism; Limbaugh’s favorite targets. He successfully turned the word Liberal, which used to be thought of as the standard for fairness and working class honor, into something dirty. To be labeled Liberal in Rush’s world was akin to being a drug addict or sexual deviant or worse; someone who would take tax dollars from working people and give them to the laziest of the lazy living in slums. 

His true success equaled the success of the rising GOP. He was able to get working class Americans; construction workers, teachers, farmers, car mechanics to vote against their own interests; giving even more power and wealth to the top 5% of the wealthiest people, while wages and benefits stayed flat. He used cultural issues to disguise the fact that the people Rush wanted in office were going to make life much tougher for those working stiffs and much easier for the wealthy class. 

The religious construction worker may not get Medicare when he retires with painful arthritis before he’s 60 but at least the Liberals can’t destroy Christianity thanks to Rush and the Republicans. 

In fact those tax dollars weren’t going to lazy blacks they were going to Oil Companies and CEOs and Wall Street Hedge Fund managers. But with the cultural issues settled, those facts were conveniently obscured.

These Dittoheads ignored many obvious contradictions. In his book, The Way Things Ought to Be, he said, “I believe that strong, wholesome family values are at the very core of a productive, prosperous, and peaceful society.” This while in the midst of four different marriages. 

Limbaugh loves to lambast gays and gay rights despite the fact that the man who ushered him into his first talk radio job in Sacramento was Norm Woodruff, a gay man who eventually died of AIDS. 

"If people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up," Limbaugh said before he was busted for doctor shopping for the pain medication OxyContin. 

But these lies and contradictions are only part of the story. The real story is Limbaugh’s effect on the United States of America. Every issue that affects the American people is now being debated, for the most part on Limbaugh’s terms. 

In the wake of the collapse of the economy in 2008-2009 as the new President was trying to find a way out of this debacle and the bleeding of more than 800,000 jobs a month, Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey lambasted right wing talk show hosts for going after the new president so early while everyone was trying to fix this dire economic circumstance. Gingrey said, “I mean it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of that thing. But when it comes to true leadership… they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell."

That was enough for the Dittohead Nation. Gingrey received thousands of angry emails and phone calls and within a day was on Limbaugh’s show; a member of the United States Congress, groveling to a hate-filled talk show host. 

“Rush, thank you so much. I thank you for the opportunity, of course this is not exactly the way to I wanted to come on. ... Mainly, I want to express to you and all your listeners my very sincere regret for those comments I made yesterday to Politico. ... I clearly ended up putting my foot in my mouth on some of those comments. ... I regret those stupid comments.”

The Gingrey episode was a Canary in a coalmine for all Republicans who dared to work with the new President to try and solve the nation’s problems. From that point on the Republican Party, joined by the nascent Tea Part—an organization funded by large corporate interests and peopled by middle class right wing conservatives who regularly vote to help the rich and powerful while they are left in the dust—decided that no compromise would ever come forward. 

Nearly every effort President Obama has made to compromise with Republicans and work with them to achieve some sort of economic uptick, has been blocked, filibustered and denied by all Republicans. It wasn’t long ago that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his number one goal was to make President Obama a one term President; not to heal the nation’s economy. 

It is clear that Rush Limbaugh is running the conservative movement and the Republican Party. And he has taken them down a most dangerous road. Already we’ve seen 9-11 Responders, the good faith and credit of the United States and Hurricane victims held hostage to tax cuts for the rich and draconian cuts in everything from education to roads and highway to health care. 

This is not the Republican Party of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp; principled conservatives who understood that compromise and a willingness to listen could pave a path to long term success. Rush Limbaugh has convinced, or should I say, frightened the Republican leadership into considering Democrats and especially President Obama, to be the enemies of the people. There should be no compromising. And most certainly not dinner and drinks with the spouses after a session of Congress.

President Obama, unfortunately has not followed the teachings of Sun Wu, the mastermind of “the Art of War”. He has allowed Limbaugh’s demagoguery to control the debate. In turn Conservatives have been able to corner him into very bad compromises that have stalled the recovery created by the Stimulus (which created/saved several million jobs) and the auto bailout (more than 1 million jobs saved). 

And so not only is Rush Limbaugh the most powerful political figure in America but he’s also the worst thing to happen to our nation in our generation. He has led a 30 year effort to turn Americans against each other by stoking fears of racial equality, religious hatred, sexual openness and any other cultural fire that can be fueled by his brilliant broadcasting skills. 

He has inspired hundreds and hundreds of copycats and the former producer of his ill-fated TV show, Roger Ailes created Fox “News” which helps create an enormous echo chamber for Rush’s rhetoric. 

When Rush says the phrase, “failed stimulus” then you can bet Fox, the litany of copy cat right wing talk show hosts and all Republican politicians will repeat the phrase “failed stimulus” throughout the week, so the low paid construction worker who has no health insurance, can’t pay the bills and still pays a higher tax rate than the Hedge Fund Manager who helped to wipe away any of his retirement savings, will believe the Stimulus failed. That same angry man also believes that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim terrorist who wasn’t even born in the United States and his wife is an ‘angry black woman”. 

The perfect salve for the angry white male who is happy to help Rush turn the United States unto a country that is far from united.