Dear Mr. President

It's time to lead.

I know you're a "process guy" who genuinely believes that every stakeholder with honorable intentions should be offered a chair at the table and a shot at helping shape policy regardless of party affiliation.

And I know that you're smarter than Benjamin Disraeli freebasing Cato the Elder.

And that's just super great and all, but some of us out here on the slaughterhouse floor of the American Dream are getting very concerned that you have somehow failed to notice the Reagan-era backwash sloshing around in the leadership caste of the GOP are not honorable people. That they do not give a shit about the good of the nation and they are not capable of divesting themselves of their failed ideology even as the rubble created by their President and their policies continues to burn out of control on every horizon.

As they line up to bend over backwards and kiss the Whiny Stone at the Rush Limbaugh Ass-Smooching Booth -- sweaty dollar bills clutched in their tiny hands -- it is painfully clear that what there in nothing left inside the skin of the Party of Lincoln but a squalling bunch of the Gingrich Nazgûl. Wingnut Ringwraiths who see their only future as one where a President Palin and Vice President Joe the Vice President rule forever over a permanent, drooling feudalist Idiocracy.

And because this is the only version of future in which the modern Republican Party can have any hope of weidling power, it is towards this horrifying tomorrow they relentlessly drive.

Of course the bloodlust-drive foreign policy and Ponzi economics of the last eight years are an obscenity.

And of course a failure to act to save the nation will lead to catastrophe.

Obama: Catastrophe coming if Congress doesn't act

By ANDREW TAYLOR

President Barack Obama said Wednesday the recession will turn into "a catastrophe" if the economic stimulus is not passed quickly, lobbying anew for the plan as its price tag climbed above $900 billion and drew more criticism.

The president rejected several complaints about the plan, including arguments that tax cuts alone would solve the problem or that longer-term goals such as energy independence and health care reform should wait. Obama opposed such piecemeal approaches.

Instead, he argued that recalcitrant lawmakers need to get behind him, saying the American people embraced his ideas when they elected him president in November.

While urging members of Congress to act swiftly, he also promised to make changes to the legislation, which has been criticized as larded with spending that won't have an immediate impact on the economy.

"No plan is perfect, and we should work to make it stronger," Obama told reporters at the White House. "Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let's show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task."

Obama has sought each day to ratchet up the pressure on lawmakers, bringing different supportive groups to the White House, scheduling a series of TV interviews, even traveling to a charter school to tout one portion of the bill.

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future," he said. "That's why I feel such a sense of urgency about the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."
...

We out here on your Left know all that. Hell, we've known and have been screaming it at anyone who would listen for, oh, about 30 years now.

And we like it that you are the kind of guy who can man-up and admit a mistake.

What we now fear is you have somehow failed to notice that those on your Right -- those directly responsible for the profligate, tragic waste of so much American blood and treasure -- have never, ever apologized once for their lies, their treason and their disastrous choices.

That you have somehow failed to notice that the only thing they're sorry for is that they didn't manage to bomb the shit out of a few more countries, cut a few more taxes, liquidate a little bit more of our already-threadbare social safety net, and abolish a few more pesky health, safety and environmental regulations.

That you have somehow failed to notice that the GOP is following Rush ever deeper into a slobbering, totalitarian abyss

"These Republicans are scared to death of Rush Limbaugh because he is the most powerful person in that party. Which is kind of odd that a political party has a radio talk show host as its intellectual power house, but that's today's Republican Party, and we Democrats have to acknowledge that."

because the destruction of the United States as a tolerant, pluralistic, Middle Class nation has always been their goal.


UPDATE: Many thanks to Urantian Sojourn for the sweet Weblog Award e-bling upgrade. Of course, now I have to go back and remonogram all my underpants...