Post Trump Letters to My Democratic Senators

As much as know-nothings and racists, corrupt Democrats who don't listen to or fight for their constituents cost their party the presidency.

Here's one of my letters to my three Democratic senators (one is being replaced at the end of this term by another). I live in a Republican House district, so I have no rep to contact there.

Feel free to copy and send it to your own senators, reps, and state and national party officials.


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Sen. Dianne Feinstein

United States Senate

331 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

November 13, 2016

Sen. Feinstein,

As a Democratic voter old enough to remember the George W. Bush years, I urge you to fight against Republicans and fight for progressive values rather than repeat the shameful enabling that Democrats in both chambers did for nearly all of the Bush presidency.

I am under no illusions that Democrats made some faulty tactical political decisions to pursue a greater good. 

The reality is too many elected Democrats take their marching orders from Wall Street banks and other corporations even when what they want conflicts with the best interests and wishes of the overwhelming majority of your constituents.  This has been especially true on issues like Wall Street deregulation and  bailouts, instead of regulation and vigorous prosecution, enabling the privatization of public education and prisons, and not publicly challenging the business and geopolitical goals of our foreign policy and means of implementing them.

A profound example of this was Obamacare that was written largely by insurance companies with seemingly no provision to control their arbitrary price increases instead of something like Medicare for All or at least a public option that would have served as a threat to private insurers that if they didn't act ethically, their customers could leave them for that.

Democrats in Congress have also supported rather than opposed our profoundly dishonest and criminal policies in Middle East.  Our allies in the Gulf, and indirectly (barely) our own government are supporting groups like ISIS to undermine secular regimes like the one in Syria, and the past one in Libya.

Likewise, the recently declassified Saudi pages of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 make it clear that Saudi Arabia funded and supported the 9/11 hijackers, which our government did nothing about.  This makes it clear that terrorism is not a problem our government is fighting but a tool and excuse it is using to pursue other goals.  No one in the leadership of Democrats in Congress has ever clearly articulated what those goals are and consistently fought this agenda that I know of.

Worse, once the Cold War ended and Russia became at least as capitalist as us, rather than find a way to cooperate with them, we have violated our word, expanded NATO to their borders, and fomented coups in places like the Ukraine to install regimes hostile to Russian security and economic interests like the transit of oil and gas from Russia to European markets.  A lot of people like myself balked at voting for Hillary Clinton since she had enthusiastically implemented this policy as Secretary of State and during her campaign, announced even more confrontational policies that could have lead to war with nuclear armed Russia.  While we might "win" such a war, millions would lose their lives and trillions dollars would be wasted to benefit very, very few.

While you have been progressive on many domestic issues, your family’s profiting from war contracts makes your support of any policy in that area suspect to say the least.  

Senator Feinstein, I urge you to help make the Democratic Party represent working people instead of just being the corporate party that doesn't pander to bigots.

Urge your colleagues to fight for leaders of the Democratic minority in Congress who will fight for progressive values.  Wall Street tools like Chuck Schumer should not even be considered an option.

Democratic voters will no longer tolerate politicians who give us lip service during election season, their back after, and their loyalty to Wall Street.

Sincerely,

 Professor Smartass

friendly advice for centrist Obama supporters

 You are doing a piss poor job of convincing progressives to reelect Obama.

I believed you guys were actually Republican trolls until I heard the same words coming out of the mouths of top Obama aides and in only slightly milder form out of the mouths of the president and VP himself.

Does that persuade you and make you want to keep reading?

I didn't think so.

So why do you repeatedly insult the progressive majority of Democrats to try to keep them in the Obama tent?

I am not 100% pleased with Obama, but I will be voting for him again. Your efforts mostly make me feel like an idiot for doing so.

If you sincerely want to help Obama win reelection, here's some tips that might help you warm up the base.

Enough with the insults. You know what I'm talking about--calling anyone who criticizes Obama from the left ''far left'' (going as far as to say we are as bad as the far right), ''the professional left,'' ''hopeless idealists,'' and perhaps most aggravatingly ''Obama haters.'' That last one is just fucking lazy. You borrowed it from the Bush PR team.

Stop being crybabies. When you come to a discussion board, expect that people are going to criticize your guy as well as praise him. If you want undiluted praise, go to Obama's campaign website. If you come to a site like this expect to have to defend some of his actions and do so as if talking to your peers not your children.

Retire some of these talking points:

• You don't understand the process--it requires compromise. Actually, we understand that perfectly well. What we don't understand is why the president we elected to pursue Democratic policies gives away half the pie before negotiations even start and then gives up even more to make a deal. That would make some kind of sense once Republicans took over the House, but Obama did this even when Democrats had majorities in both chambers. Either honestly explain why he did this or just leave it alone.
  
  Most of us also notice that this isn't the way the GOP negotiates, regardless of whether they hold the White House or either chamber of Congress. They start with proposals that are clearly conservative, excoriate the Democrats, and then grudgingly compromise at the end of negotiations (and sometimes not even then).
• Obama has to be president of ALL Americans. Again, this one is an insult to our intelligence. We understand that he has to be president of ALL Americans, but we hold elections to decide what policies we want our president pursue. A solid majority of Americans thought they elected a Democratic president, not one who rarely mentions the name of his own party and blames it as much as the opposition that blocks everything and tries to destroy popular, effective programs, and not one who thinks every proposal has to include at least 50% Republican content. The Republicans certainly don't play that way when they take office, and even if they did, that would mean our vote would be meaningless since either party would do the same thing. With just the Democrats doing it, we essentially have a choice being 100% GOP policies or just 50% plus, which is barely a choice at all. So stow this shit.
  
  
• Any Republican will be WORSE. progressives seem to know this better than you or Obama does. If they are so bad, stop agreeing with them and letting them set the agenda, as your points about process and bipartisanship prove.
• Obama will be more progressive in his second term. Maybe FDR did that, but no president in my lifetime has. Bill Clinton was doing well to hold onto office and like Obama agreed with the GOP policies far too often. For good or ill, you have to run on what Obama has actually done (and not just the nice things he has said or will say during the campaign.

That brings me to the one thing you guys do well, the list of Obama's accomplishments. Even your presentation there has room for improvement though.

• Edit the list for a progressive audience. The catfood commission, the Afghanistan surge, and certainly the recent debt ceiling deal are not things you want to brag about with a progressive audience.
• Emphasize the radical and confrontational rather than incremental and bipartisan. So for example with health care reform, instead of talking about the market based exchanges and ''cost controls,'' the latter meaning controlling costs for insurance companies, talk about what the reform did to help the average American and bring insurance companies and big pharma to heel.
• Give it to people in chunks instead of the big dump. Focus especially on progressive moves that aren't getting a lot of MSM coverage, like working to get Medicare Part D to negotiate drug prices.

There are a couple of points that you also avoid mentioning, like why Obama started with an economic team that included so many of the architects of our financial collapse, and why he lets firms like Goldman Sachs pick their regulators instead of picking their cellmates in the Federal pen.

Another area where you need to address progressive concerns is K-12 education. I'm glad Obama gave schools money to keep them from laying off teachers, but a lot of us who care about kids have trouble trusting him on this issue when he hired an education secretary who right wingers praise for his union-busting, mass firing of teachers, emphasis on repetitive standardized testing and privatized charter schools, all ''reforms'' backed by billionaire dilettantes rather than trained educators.

The problem with Obama's approach to Wall St, education, trade, and other aspects of foreign policy is that it is top down rather than bottom up--he appears to talk to almost exclusively the wealthy and largely does what they ask, rather than looking at the wishes of average Americans, who would like to see Wall Street subject to the rule of law and suffer the same kind of consequences a middle class or poor person would if they intentionally caused as much damage, and would like to have safe public schools that borrow the best practices of private schools, rather than privatizing public schools so our tax dollars can be siphoned off in profits and teachers treated like interchangeable burger flippers.

You must address these concerns if you want to get progressives in the tent, and address them in the way that Bruno Bettelheim laid out in his essay ''The Victim.'' He told about how as a concentration camp inmate he needed to get an SS guard's approval to get medical treatment for frostbite. He had to make his case to someone who had no sympathy, all the power, and a gun. So far, you guys have been arguing more like the guard than the inmate.

FINISH THIS SENTENCE: Low taxes on the rich matter more to Republicans than ____________.

For example, Michelle Bachmann thought low taxes on the rich were more important than veterans benefits--until vets handed her her ass and she backed off.

Clearly, low taxes on the rich are more important than smaller classes in K-12.

Low taxes on the rich are more important than having enough firefighters.

Low taxes on the rich are more important to Republicans than having enough cops on the streets.

Ironically, low taxes on the rich are even more important to Republicans than low taxes on everyone else.

and so on.

Please add your own (with a link if possible).

NOTE: Unfortunately, that question could also include a lot of Blue Dog and DLC Democrats, who (like Republicans), think public office is a way to audition for jobs as lobbyists, CEO's, or highly paid, do-nothing board members.

talking to college kids about Obama & Democrats

I teach college English composition, so my students are all those idealistic kids who voted for Obama and helped put him over the top.

I was impressed with changes made to the student loan program to take the loans away from private banks, formulas that dramatically lowered monthly payments (mine went down 40%), and forgiveness of balances after ten years of payments for those who went into public service.

I expected my students to be equally impressed by this as I was when I told them about it since most of them struggle to work their way through college. Instead, the comments I got were ''Why do we have to pay for college at all?''

''Isn't college free in Europe?''

and of course, "I don't get it. What difference does that make?''


My point is not that the ONLY changes that should be made are sweeping game changers--sometimes incrementalism is the only option--but when you got elected with the support of idealistic kids, you better do something for them that they can instantly understand or better yet, they can clearly see and feel the effects of in their lives.

I suspect that in other areas where kids aren't directly affected, like foreign policy, they see even less reason to be excited since the change is mostly in tone not substance.

I work with my faculty union and see this in the frustration our negotiators have: they are fighting for a small but significant change, but they can't get faculty to take any kind of job action (let alone strike) so they end up with even less. To get people to act on their own behalf, the change needs to be big and clear, not a 3-5% change in their life amortized over a decade.

Kids are definitely not going to be impressed by the Gibbs/Rahm/Axelrod strategy of telling progressive voters (which is what college kids are) to sit down, shut up, and vote for them because their only other choice is the GOP Manson family. That's the kind of thing that pissed off college kids in the 60's, and if they stick with that strategy, Obama will go from being this generation's JFK to to its 1968 LBJ.

BP spill could move Southern whites left, but will Dems be there?

I was a conservative & evangelical in 1989, seemingly the unshakable base of the GOP, but I went to work as a commercial fisherman in Alaska that summer and ended up cleaning oil off rocks and picking up dead animals instead.

More disturbing to me than the actual spill though, was the relationship between the Coast Guard and Exxon, the corporation that caused the damage.

A helicopter landed on a beach we were cleaning, and a Coast Guard captain and a greasy, frat boy Exxon exec got out. I expected the captain to be leading this guy around by the scruff of his neck and rubbing his nose in the oil patties. Instead, the Exxon exec was barking out orders and the Coast Guard captain was all "Yes, sir! No, sir! Right away, Sir!"

I grew up with a great respect for the military, was in a cadet program all through high school, served briefly in the military myself, and was shocked to see a high ranking officer grovel before a corporate criminal.

It was clear that Exxon was above the law, we needed politicians who would change that, and Republicans refused to do so, so I became a New Deal Democrat on the spot.

I suspect the same will happen to many Southern whites as they try to get help by appealing to their Republican elected officials and get nothing. They will migrate to politicians and the party more likely to restore and protect the waters that give them their livelihood.

Sadly, over twenty years later I saw the same scene re-enacted with a BP exec in the Gulf of Mexico even though we have a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House of Representatives. So even as Southern whites may be driven left, they will find no major party there to receive them, just more bowing and scraping to corporate money and power.

An unequivocally progressive Democratic Party could capitalize on this moment and re-establish a New Deal-like consensus that would last decades.

Instead, under the leadership of Rahm Emanuel, and unfortunately even President Obama, they are striving to replace the GOP as corporate water boy, and looking to line their pockets with corporate donations now and when they leave elected office, with fat salaries as corporate lobbyists, CEO's, and board members.

The newly lefter bubbas will find they have nowhere to go.

Response to Democratic party chair quitting

Chair Rochelle Sivan sent to the Framingham, Massachusettes Democratic Town Committee resigning because she changed her party affiliation from Democrat to none, and her letter was published in the Boston Globe.

My short response is ''Thank you."

The reasons why she quit will be familiar to progressive Democrats: continuing the Bush wars, the bailout that favored the Wall Street sociopaths instead of their victims, the erosion of our civil rights, and the final straw is the health care reform bill that also rewards the criminal insurance companies by delivering us as their coerced customers.

She anticipated the response of the apologists for the Democratic Party and gave her response to each:

• Elect more Democrats and progressives - there are 82 members in the Congress Progressive Caucus and only 52 conservative "blue dogs" but which side constantly prevails? The problem isn't in the numbers.

• The bill will be improved later - Like Nafta? Or the Patriot Act? Will that happen when we have control over the Congress and Presidency? Oh wait...

• The other side is worse - Yes, the Democrats are better than the party of rabid conservatives the GOP has become, but not enough to matter, not enough to make the changes this country so desperately needs.

• There is no other choice - I agree there is no viable third party but almost all of the important achievements the Left has won for the people of this country have come from people working outside of the political system - see the Abolitionists, the Labor activists, the Suffragettes and the Civil Rights movements. Apparently, the existing political system is too invested in the status quo to change without enormous outside pressure.

FULL TEXT

I posted the following response on the Boston Globe article:

In a two dominant party system like ours, the two parties don't exist forever. When one party no longer serves a sufficient constituency, it can disappear in a flash like the Whigs did. In the case of the Whigs, they failed to deal forcefully with slavery and left the wound to fester into gangrene.

We are at a very unusual place where that is about to happen to both parties. While the right wing constituency doesn't seem to realize the problem, the left does all too well--our economy and political system is rigged to benefit a very, very few even when it harms or even kills (in the case of our wars and health care system) the vast majority of working and middle class Americans.

The Bush administration pulled the mask off this system, making even the slightly milder corruption of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress intolerable to those of us who really believe our government should try to form a more perfect union and support the general welfare.

The problem is not individual politicians or even one party, but a system that makes profound corruption and amorality the norm. While there have been some campaign finance and ethics reform, the fact that politicians can leave office and go to work as lobbyists, CEOs, and board members for companies that have business before Congress and still be respected by their colleagues and even run for office again instead of being thrown in prison makes us look like a Third World kleptocracy.

PROGRESSIVE DEMS: PURGE the DLC/Blue Dogs or SURGE out the door?

Surge out the door into a new progressive democratic party that is.

Progressives in the Democratic Party are faced with a serious dilemma. While it is clear that at least the majority of elected Democrats in Congress are progressives, the Blue Dog/DLC wing is more than willing to sabotage any progressive change by siding with the Republicans on all issues that have to do with money: health care insurance reform, war, the nature of any economic stimulus, Wall Street bailouts, trade, privatizing government functions to reward cronies, and after giving away the store to corporate America, claiming that spending on education, health care, social security and the like are breaking our budget (not the corporate welfare of defense spending and now direct cash surrenders to Wall Street).

Compounding this problem is that though progressives seem to be a majority of Democrats, the leadership of the Senate is not, and the leadership of the House, while nominally progressive, seems to follow their lead in many priorities.

The fact that corporate owned politicians are the functional majority even while the Democratic Party (which we wrongly assume means progressive) is the majority on paper partly explains some of the worst and otherwise inexplicable actions of the Democrats like compromising more than half way on any legislation BEFORE THEY EVEN INTRODUCE IT, which inevitably leads to negotiating a halfway okay policy down to nothing. For example, the public option was a compromise to begin with. If Congress was really interested in providing the most cost effective option, they would have started with single payer and negotiated down to a public OPTION.

They must do this because though progressives are the majority of Democrats, the DLC/Blue Dogs do not care about the success of progressive goals or even the Democratic Party--they care about who's writing the checks, now as donations and later as their employers.

In the 90s, the Republicans purged their ranks of those who wouldn't reliably vote for certain core principles. While that led to horrible policy when they were in power, if someone voted for them, they could at least know that certain things were going to happen: taxes for the rich and corporations would be lowered, businesses would be deregulated, wars would be started.

What does anyone expect when the Democrats win? That essentially the same foreign and economic policies will be pursued with a friendlier face, and maybe some modest social programs will be implemented to salve the pain of deindustrialization and outsourcing our jobs, and the maimed veterans of the corporate wars will actually get the care and benefits they were promised?

So one temptation is to try the purge, take over the party structure, favor more progressive candidates in primaries, etc. There are a couple of problems with this: the corporate candidates will always have the money and friendlier media coverage. Another is that the purge in the GOP was from less reliably corporate to MORE reliably corporate, so the money and power was on the side of the purge. That all of the replacements parrot a religious right line as well is simply a matter of sticking to a marketing strategy that worked for a couple of decades (they are probably frantically pitching new images to focus groups, like their Ayn Rand, selfish superman one). Our purge would not be guaranteed success.

A surge out the door of the party to form a new party, possibly combining with some of the smaller progressive parties of the left like the Greens, would have it's own set of problems. One is that some progressives would stay in the Democratic Pary out of inertia. Another is where the corporatist Democrats would go--to the GOP. They would not tolerate being in a powerless micro-minority party. That is not what they are paid to do. Even if a similar schism occurred in the GOP, with the teabagger know-nothings leaving the corporatists, creating a three or even four party system, the gullibility of the teabaggers shows that they will be swayed into alliances with the corporatists most of the time if a policy can be sold with fear, racism, get-rich-quick, anti-intellectual, or violent themes. And of course the corporate Dems, whether in a rump Democratic Party or as Republicans would vote with them as well, leaving us about where we are now.

I think I laid out the negatives of both options, and would definitely like to hear the problems with that analysis.

PROGRESSIVE DEMS: PURGE (the DLC/Blue Dogs) or SURGE (out the door into a PROGRESSIVE PARTY)
	PURGE (the DLC/Blue Dogs)
	SURGE (out the door into a PROGRESSIVE PARTY)
	SUBMERGE and hope the corporatists throw us a bone if we keep quiet
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Is Rahm Emanuel Karl Rove's retarded cousin?

I would submit that he is equally amoral as Karl Rove but less competent.

Rove at least seemed to have a coherent plan to keep his guy in office: smear and fear. Smear your critics, make the public and legislators fear terrorists and crossing Bush. While the corruption and incompetence of the Bushies at actually governing or conducting a war led to their eventual train wreck, Rove's smoke and mirrors were enough to get Bush into his second term.

By contrast, whatever political advice Rahm Emanuel is giving Obama seems solely designed to appeal to corporate patrons with little thought to how it will play with average Americans, particularly, no thought to how the public will react if the final form of health insurance reform is perceived as a gift to insurance companies instead of helping the rest of us.

It is really dishonest to say they are ''moderate'' or ''pragmatic'' when in reality, they are serving their corporate donors and future corporate employers rather than the wishes of their constituents.

This has been made most obvious in polls of voters in blue dogs' states and districts about the public option in health care reform:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/21/montantans-not...

http://www.laprogressive.com/2009/09/22/new-study-publi... /

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/analysis-public-...

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/10/abc-new...

Even voters who reside in more conservative districts are not retarded or prefer being raped by insurance companies to having access to something like Medicare as an alternative.

In fact, one CBS poll found that even Republican voters favor a public option.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/09/poll-even-re...

Even in places where people have drunken the conservative KoolAid and think they don't want a public option, once they had it given to them, they would probably cling to as tenaciously as the teabaggers cling to Medicare, even as they decry ''socialized medicine.''

Giving people a real public option would yield long term dividends for the Democrats.

Even severe compromises on health care would have been easier to swallow if Obama had taken swift action to punish, rein in, and neuter Wall Street--especially after giving them the second half of the Bush no strings attached bailout.

Obama has certainly done good things on less visible issues like student aid and repairing our image abroad although even the foreign affection for Obama will wear off if he continues Bush like policies in Afghanistan and starts a new Operation Condor in Latin America.

And if corporate compliant Rahm is calling the shots, that is likely to be the trajectory.

Even on the pragmatic level of giving Obama's base a reason to pound the pavement and open our wallets for him in 2012, baldly corporate first action seems stupid.

So my question is, is Rahm brilliantly playing some long game of chess on behalf of the American people, or is he so syphilictically corrupt that he can't help but do a Bush-like corporate smash-and-grab robbery of the treasury on behalf of big business?

NOTE: no offense meant to the retarded, those with syphilis, or Karl Rove

Is Rahm Emanuel more short-sighted than Karl Rove?
	NO--Rahm has some brilliant strategery that hasn't played out yet
	YES-- Rahm thinks he is Karl Rove, but he's really the Dem's Palin--everything he touches turns to shit
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Machiavelli: Is candidate of people or corporations stronger?

The GOP and corporate Democrats think they are being clever by sucking up to corporations and Wall Street, but even Machiavelli saw that true strength derives from the consent of the governed, not treating them like suckers while you suck up to the nobles.

They might do well to recall that it took almost 50 years before the Republicans dared attempt to reverse the changes that FDR started, and even then, a sizable percentage of the public still believed in what FDR did. By contrast, the Reagan Revolution is looking (and smelling) like a dead man walking in less than half that time because it was a scam to oppress the people and serve the nobles as Machiavelli would say.

Someone said that the Republicans hope their candidates will do what they say and Democrats hope that their candidates won't. The reason for both is the same--too few actually serve the voters apart from the way a sushi chef serves fish to his customers.

THE PRINCE
Chapter 9

...principality is obtained either by the favour of the people or by the favour of the nobles. Because in all cities these two distinct parties are found, and from this it arises that the people do not wish to be ruled nor oppressed by the nobles, and the nobles wish to rule and oppress the people; and from these two opposite desires there arises in cities one of three results, either a principality, self- government, or anarchy.

A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles, accordingly as one or other of them has the opportunity; for the nobles, seeing they cannot withstand the people, begin to cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and they make him a prince, so that under his shadow they can give vent to their ambitions. The people, finding they cannot resist the nobles, also cry up the reputation of one of themselves, and make him a prince so as to be defended by his authority. He who obtains sovereignty by the assistance of the nobles maintains himself with more difficulty than he who comes to it by the aid of the people, because the former finds himself with many around him who consider themselves his equals, and because of this he can neither rule nor manage them to his liking. But he who reaches sovereignty by popular favour finds himself alone, and has none around him, or few, who are not prepared to obey him.

Besides this, one cannot by fair dealing, and without injury to others, satisfy the nobles, but you can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed. It is to be added also that a prince can never secure himself against a hostile people, because of their being too many, whilst from the nobles he can secure himself, as they are few in number. The worst that a prince may expect from a hostile people is to be abandoned by them; but from hostile nobles he has not only to fear abandonment, but also that they will rise against him; for they, being in these affairs more far- seeing and astute, always come forward in time to save themselves, and to obtain favours from him whom they expect to prevail. Further, the prince is compelled to live always with the same people, but he can do well without the same nobles, being able to make and unmake them daily, and to give or wake away authority when it pleases him.

FULL TEXT

POEM FOR DEM SURRENDER: Ballad of the Dry Powder

I wrote the poem below for some past democratic capitulation when they hadn't even bothered with the token resistance they put up this time.

It is no longer enough to email, write, or call your congressman and senators. You must GO to their LOCAL OFFICE.

Every congressman has an office in their district, and every senator has offices a spread around the state so constituents can go their to be patronized and ignored in person.

Don't make an appointment or dress up, just show up and ask a couple of questions:

• When will you end the war?

• When will you impeach Bush?

You don't have to yell or argue, but when the staffer finishes handing you a hatful of bullshit, simply say, "Do you believe that yourself?"

Our system is profoundly broken when we have to scream and stamp our feet to get our elected representatives to actually represent us. Before we can fix it, we need to make these steaming sacks of shit in neckties fear us more than Wall Street or the corporations whose boards they hope to sit on when they leave Congress.

Find their office and go.

FIND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE

FIND YOUR SENATOR

Ballad of the Dry Powder

When we fought King George, Colonel Harry Reid was sent to gaurd a mountain pass.
He had twenty men, the high ground, and a good view of all possible routes of attack,
but just one small keg of gunpowder for all their muskets blasts.

Each soldier would have powder to let just ten bullets fly.
General Washington gave thought to this when he bid them good-bye.
He said, "Take care boys, and keep your powder dry!"
He would soon regret those words for they led good men to die.

One night as Reid's boys were sitting around the campfire at their post up in the pass,
a grizzly bear got scent of them and into their camp crashed.
Johnny grabbed his musket and aimed at the bear's boulder of a head,
but before he squeezed the trigger, Col. Reid jumped up and said,
"Stand fast! Our bullets are for Redcoats, save our powder for them instead!"
Johnny held his fire and the bear tore out his throat.

As the bear began to eat him, the other soldiers grabbed their guns,
but Reid said, "Fight him if you must, but no bullets should let fly!
Washington has ordered we must keep our powder dry."

So they turned their muskets round and swatted with the butts,
they pulled their Bowie knives and they tried to slash his guts.
The bear just took the beating, but he would stand the cuts.
He turned on his attackers clawing flesh and chewing heads.
By the time that he was finished, half Reid's men were lying dead.

Reid thought it a victory for that keg was tight and dry.
Every bit of powder meant another Redcoat boy would die.

When the dead were buried, and the night lightened to day,
The watch saw Indians approaching with warpaint and sharpened blades.
Bob whispered to Reid, "They are fighting for the crown."
"That may be so," said Reid, "but when Redcoats come around,
we need every bit of powder to shoot each soldier down."

Bob was going to answer when a bullet hit his lung.
The Indians weren't as stingy with their own powder drum.
Harry took the powder and he began to run.
Half his men were killed again,
just five left from when he had begun.

"Now we can fight," he said.
"We have plenty for each gun."

As the day was fading and they lay up there in wait,
a half dozen Redcoats approached them, lined up perfect in their sights.

Tom pulled back his hammer and almost fired a shot,
but Harry grabbed his barrel and said this squad need not be fought.
"A bigger army's coming, and no powder can be lost."

"But if we all are dead, then who will fire the shot?"
Tom tried to wrest rifle, but in the struggle it went off.
The Redcoats were upon them, and then all five were caught.

While he tied their hands, the British sargeant asked why they hadn't fired a shot.
Harry Reid said nice and loudly, "I cannot tell a lie,
Gen. Washington himself told me to keep my powder dry."

"But if you shot the bear, your men would have lived to fight.
And if you shot the Indians, and put a bullet in my eye,
you could have stole our powder and have more to be kept dry."

The soldier took his bayonet, and Harry had to die.
Then he killed the others,but man he told to fly,
and take with him the powder keg
with Reid's head in it to keep the powder dry.

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SIROTA: 'Bipartisanship' shows real power divide--people vs. money

As soon as there is talk of bipartisanship, whether from Democrats or Republicans, it means they all got the same fax from the Chamber of Commerce. As Sirota points out here, the real divide in Washington is not ideological but people vs. money, as was shown by trade and business oriented bills that get broad support even though they screw the vast majority of Americans. He could have taken this even further and applied it to our foreign policy. Pundits, even many on the left, pretend that foreign policy is a struggle between ideologues and realpolitik types. It is not. It is about money. American oil companies want the profits from Iraq's oil, and we invade Iraq. The elected president of Venezuela wants to keep more of the income from his country's oil, thus cutting into oil company profits, and he is targeted for recall elections (sound familiar?), coups, and assassination. Any talk of spreading democracy at gunpoint is a lie. They want to steal, and they tell a nice story so we go along with it. This not only puts money ahead of Iraqi and other foreign people, it puts money ahead of us. To the degree that these wars affect terrorism they increase it. And a big reason why terrorism exists is because businesses have demanded our government put their profits ahead of the economic welfare and self-determination of people in the Middle East. In addition to paying the cost of seizing that asset for oil companies with our safety, we pay with our tax dollars and soldiers lives. And how do oil companies repay us? They demand more tax cuts, gouge us at the pumps, and pay their PR machine to quash alternatives to their product. I like capitalism. It gives me good tennis shoes and this nice computer. But just as we wouldn't let a nymphomaniac write our sex laws or a drug addict write our drug laws, we should let corporations write our foreign and domestic policy or they will stack the deck and privatize everything to squeeze every last dime out of us, and by doing the same to other countries, make us hated to boot. KEY EXCERPTS: “Bipartisanship” Hides the Real Power Equation That No One Talks About 11/23/2006 {SNIP} Anyone who spends 5 minutes around the halls of power in the nation’s capital knows that Washington is dominated by one party: The Money Party, and that the People Party is far outnumbered - even after this election. Look no further than votes on the bankruptcy bill, the energy bill, the class action bill, China PNTR and NAFTA to figure out which politicans who call themselves Republicans and Democrats actually belong to the Money Party and which politicians actually belong to the People Party. The Establishment pretends this paradigm doesn’t exist - they need the drama of Democrats vs. Republicans to sell newspapers, and more importantly, hiding the existence of the real power equation is in the interest of all the major for-profit corporations that own the media. {SNIP} What this election really was was a surge for the People Party, because so many candidates were elected on anti-Money Party themes (opposition to pay-to-play corruption, opposition to lobbyist-written trade pacts, etc.). This explains why in the election’s aftermath we hear such repetitive calls for “bipartisanship”: they are really repetitive and not-so-hidden attempts to make sure the Money Party that includes both Republicans and Democrats remains dominant and that the election’s mandate is ignored. The thing they really do not want is for the People Party to assert itself against the Money Party. I hope when Pelosi and other Democrats talk about “bipartisanship” they understand the real partisan divide in Washington, and will use their power to build coalitions of Republicans and Democrats to push the People Party’s agenda. Because doing the opposite - solidifying coalitions of Republicans and Democrats to continue pushing the Money Party’s agenda - is not the “bipartisanship” this country wants or deserves. To paraphrase Barry Goldwater, I would remind progressives that partisanship in the defense of regular people is no vice, and Washington’s faux bipartisanship in the pursuit of selling out is no virtue. FULL TEXT: http://davidsirota.com/index.php/2006/11/23/bipartisans...

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