**Facebook still cannot embed videos from imported sources so you will not be able to watch unless you go to youtube or my blog**
Republican House leadership invited President Obama to one of their annual "retreats" in Baltimore yesterday for a dialogue that proved to be some of the most intriguing political television I have ever seen. I literally could not take my eyes off the tv for the over 60 minutes of the impromptu Q&A. Whatever Obama lacks in tangible leadership ability, he more than made up for with this rare show of confident, intelligently precise evisceration of Republican questioning, each preluded by a talking-points, bumper sticker-esque attack on the President.
The entire time I'm watching this unbelievable political spectacle, I can't help but think how G. Dub. would have responded to such reciprocal questioning. It probably would have looked something like this:
During the 2008 presidential campaign, I had a Republican family member firmly state that he would rather have a relatively ignorant soccer mom in the White House over a Harvard-educated lawyer \any day. He would rather have had someone who had graduated from a state college with average grades after transferring three times due to academic probations, who had never travelled outside of the United States or had nothing more than a rudimentary understanding of economics and foreign policy and literally... LITERALLY zero understanding of science and the importance of research in societal progression and quality of life. (I'm of course talking about Sarah Palin as McCain probably would have died shortly after had he been elected in the ultimate finale of apocalyptic irony). Whereas Obama graduated top of his class in the number one law school in the world. (Law school rankings fluctuate annually.. or something). Someone please explain to me how this makes sense.
Where does this distrust, not only for intellect, but for experience come from? The simple and correct answer is that it stems from selecting and being confined to a role and more germanely, taking every piece of information at face-value that permeates from the respective politically philosophical collective. The worst part of all, momentum is built that terminally narrows perspective and creates an ideology where, for example, any aspect of socialism will inevitably lead to the disintegration of the United States and ultimately space-time as we know it, and where any aspect of capitalism is inherently corrupt and middle-class killing.
I read an article today from CrooksandLiars touching on this same idea.
"No matter what the topic, from health care reform to Wall Street, and no matter how many points we agreed on or how many facts I laid at their feet, someone would invariably turn to me and dismissively say "Yes, but you're so left wing that you..." or "This is a center-right country, and you're so far left that..." In each case I asked them to explain -- please give examples of what makes me, or anyone, "left wing." The only thing they could come up with was deficits! Pelosi and Reid! Beyond that, it was because I didn't hate people like Al Gore and Howard Dean and I watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and EVERYBODY knows they are really "far left."
Head. Smash. Desk.
The irony of it all is that in the end, we agreed on about 90% of everything we talked about. Old habits die hard and they couldn't let go of the old targets they were trained to hate by the right wing media. In their minds, any policy or legislation that comes from Democrats with no support from the right is just far left and that can't be good. We ended up agreeing to disagree ... on all the issues we agreed on! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has suffered through these kinds of skull-numbing experiences so if you've found yourself in the same position, please feel free to use this post to vent. "
In the following video, President Obama eloquently touches on this transparent idea of Republican obstructionism and hypocrisy for the sake of politicization. Obviously this happens on both sides as it doesn't take a genius to identify when a liberal radio host attacks a conservative for 'X', but wouldn't touch a fellow liberal who did or said 'X' as well. However, there is nothing more relevantly disgusting as the current politicization against Obama, which he coherently destroyed at the Republican's expense (and at their invitation). Say what you will after you watch it, but when conservative news sources don't cover a historically epic event such as this, it is because the more people see it the more it hurts their agenda.
There were two points that Obama made which are unequivocally corroborated by non-partisan organizations and every objective observer that has an ounce of grey matter:
1) "Now, look, let's talk about the budget once again, because I'll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. -- $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the -- a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true.
And what is true is that we came in already with a $1.3 trillion deficit before I had passed any law. What is true is we came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade -- had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000 when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren't paid for.
You had a prescription drug plan -- the biggest entitlement plan, by the way, in several decades -- that was passed without it being paid for. You had two wars that were done through supplementals. And then you had $3 trillion projected because of the lost revenue of this recession. That's $8 trillion.
Now, we increased it by a trillion dollars because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus. I am happy to have any independent fact-checker out there take a look at your presentation versus mine in terms of the accuracy of what I just said."
Republicans ALWAYS assert that all progressives want to do is create a larger more obtrusive (fascist) government which is run through perpetually irresponsible spending. Again, say what you will about Obama always blaming Bush, but the fact of the matter is what would you do if someone was trying to take the above truths and turning it against you? My question is, why the fuck should we allow the Republicans to govern again after the last 8 years, who not only took a budget surplus to a budget deficit, but took the budget deficit to a projected $8 Trillion over the next decade and pawned it off as a result of Obama's policy? Again, for the bazillionth time, between the Patriot Act, Medicare Part D, irresponsible defense spending ( ie F-22), and two police actions that were not paid for... holy shit people.. come on.. AND YOU ARE GIVING OBAMA SHIT?!?! THE HYPOCRISY IS PAINTED ON YOUR FUCKING SKULLS!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) "And so I'm thinking to myself, well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist -- no, look, I mean, I'm just saying, I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.
So all I'm saying is, we've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality. I'm not suggesting that we're going to agree on everything, whether it's on health care or energy or what have you, but if the way these issues are being presented by the Republicans is that this is some wild-eyed plot to impose huge government in every aspect of our lives, what happens is you guys then don't have a lot of room to negotiate with me.
I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party. You've given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you've been telling your constituents is, this guy is doing all kinds of crazy stuff that's going to destroy America."
Now, I hope you can identify my assertions at the beginning of the post and tie it in with what Obama was saying and ultimately why our current political system is ineffective in fixing any problems. Congressional Republicans tacitly understand that Obama's policies are not ideologically oppressive, socialist or fascist and are actually far more conservative than the policy that spewed out during the last 8 years of Republican control, but politically they have tried to and have successfully villainized him to their constituents for the purpose of politicization. Now, the absent-minded citizen will pick up on these hypocritical talking points, which perpetuates this intellectual tunnel vision. Now no matter what, Republicans cannot be seen compromising on anything or they run the very real danger of being seen as a socialist-fascist-babyeating-sociopath-ideologue by the monster they created.
Republican leadership had almost a decade of control and look what happened. Now progressives have been in power for one year and they are already bitching and refuse to participate.
FUCKING BABIES
