It's dead, Jim!

And guess who pulled the trigger?


/Begin letter-perfect Harry Reid impersonation here/

Hi. My name is Harry Reid. Your President's one, big, domestic policy item for his second term was going to be the looting of Social Security and the knife in back of the last of Franklin Roosevelt's humane shields against poverty and misery for the poorest and weakest among us.

And I just shoved it right back up his dumb ass and broke off the handle.

You wanna fuck with me?

I head-faked your Maximum Leader into nominating a cuttle-fish to the Supreme Court who showed up for her interviews with "Mrs. Harriet Bush" practice-copied into the pages of her spiral binder so many times it made Nicholson's "All work and no play" opus from "The Shining" look as terse as my dry-cleaning list.

Which so completely unhinged the Sociopath Right Wing that they forced Dubya to drop trou' in the public square so utterly that his "Property of James Dobson" ass-cheek slave-brand was clearly visible from space.

So that's a two-fer.

Oh, and I closed the Senate down and forced Bill "The Doctor Who Lawyers-Up" Frist's head to implode to the point where he was coughing up his own eyeballs on CNN. Over some extremely important national security matters involving treason and other high crimes committed by your President which you have categorically refused to investigate. And as Frist was busying mopping up what was left of his dignity and credibility with the big slab of his ass I'd just handed him, Trent Lott suddenly remembered where he'd packed his vintage Confederate bayonet and took that opportunity to sink it into Frist's kidney all the way to the pommel.

So that's a three-fer.

Your President is visibly melting down (Where have all of those post-vacation, "crisp" decisions gone? Hmm. Perhaps it's time for...another vacation!) and Mr. Mandate's poll ratings are now doing hard time in Hoover country. Cheney's numbers are within a rounding error of actually hitting zero, and he is morphing into a less appetizing version of Spiro Agnew before our very eyes.

And I seem to be able to donkey-punch you at will.

Oh and did I mention that, I'm managing to do this while I'm in the minority?

Can you even imagine what I'm going to do to you despicable creatures when I'm the Majority Leader?


/End of fantastic Harry Reid simulation/


It is time again to do a happy dance. A break out the bottle we only half-finished for Fitzmas and knock back another coupla for Harry Reid. This is not addressed to the poor unnatural mutants that call themselves Moderates, but rather the "We're so screwed! Give up! It's all over!" crowd in my own Party.

Part of winning a war is troops. Part arms. Part weather. Part supply chain. Part air support. Part luck.

And a whole lot of fighting spirit.

The will to win is essential...especially when you're down.

An esprit de corps that'll help you through the dark days.

Winning is terribly hard work because in the process of winning you lose. A lot. That's what it means to be the underdog. To place second. And if you lose a few and sit down and cry, well that's fine. Shit, I do it all the time. But you lean on me, and I'll lean on you, and we'll three-legged-race our way forward, stumbling and falling and getting pissed, but always moving.

However if after every setback you do nothing but sit and wail about how doomed we all are, and how fucked it all is, and how there is nothing ahead but darkness forever...please either get off my team or grow up.

You know what defeat looks like. You know the sting of getting your hopes up and then falling on your ass.

Fine.

But if you don't sing and dance at a wedding as hard as you mourn and grieve at a funeral, then you're not living. You're either dying, or damaged, or playing Tokyo Rose for the Bad Guys. We simply must learn to recognize a victory when it comes around and really savor it. We have to top-off the tank when we can, 'cause baby, this is a for-real fight we're in and we need all hands on deck.

So, your assignment is as follows.

First, read this...

Bush Social Security Plan Laid to Rest

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

The Senate staged sparsely attended burial services Tuesday for President Bush's long-dead plan to remake Social Security through creation of personal accounts. Metaphors outnumbered mourners.

Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said every attempt to reach across party lines on Social Security had "met with a partisan obstructionism that is as rock-solid as the marble before me on the rostrum" in the Senate chamber.
...

Sen. Max Baucus (news, bio, voting record), D-Mont., dismissed the maneuvering as political theater.

"Everyone knows this is not really a serious effort," he said. "It's just an attempt frankly to make a statement to the press and the people back home."

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid blocked Santorum's effort to force a full floor debate on the measure. "This legislation is a sham. S-H-A-M," he said. "Social Security benefits are guaranteed today. ... It's the law of the land."

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., joining forces with Santorum, wanted a debate on legislation requiring the government to place surplus payroll taxes into individual accounts set up in the name of all workers who pay into Social Security. He called the measure a "Stop the Raid Bill," referring to the Social Security trust funds, and noted that the government currently spends the surplus payroll tax money on other federal programs.

"My Democratic colleagues oppose ownership," he said. "They want the government to continue to spend the money on other things. ... They say it's going to increase the deficit. Again, not true. All this does is make us honest with our accounting."

Reid objected once again, calling it "simply another bill to privatize Social Security."

By its action, the Senate thus sealed a place in history for Bush's proposals — a defeat administered to a president at the dawn of a second term by a Democratic minority demoralized by the loss of seats in the same elections.

...confronted with near-unanimous Democratic opposition and polls showing voter unhappiness with Bush's proposals, Republicans flinched. Legislation failed to reach the floor of either the House or Senate.

Then stand up and say out-loud, "Fucking -A!!" and enjoy it. Swagger around tomorrow just a bit and when your shoes pinch a little remember that your guys just beat the invincible GOP juggernaut.

To. Its. Knees.

Find a moment to raise a glass to our own "Give 'Em Hell, Harry" and try to remember one win for every loss. One kiss on the lips for every scar on your back. Not idiot Pollyannaism, just balance. Just some hard-headed optimism and pragmatic hope, based on the solid footing afforded by our core beliefs. We don't want to win just because losing sucks: we need to win because, for all of our flaws, we're right, they're horribly wrong, and every day they are in office does damage to our nation. And when we sink our roots deep into that, we become stong, happy warriors able to weather the vicissitudes of passing storms.

Because the battle is not over.

Far from it.

The battle has just begun.