Motley Moose – Archive

By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

The Democratic Party has always been the party of immigrants. Even as everything else about the party has changed, as it has turned from a party of Southern whites to the exact opposite, immigrants continue to vote Democratic. In the 1850s the immigrants were Irish-Americans. Today they are Mexican-Americans.

Of course, not all immigrants support the Democratic Party. Many immigrants, such as Cuban-Americans and Vietnamese-Americans, vote strongly Republican. There is a very simple explanation for why this is so, an explanation that requires merely one word:

Communism.

More below.

Dear Speaker Boehner,

Always remember, this year and next, that you are the Speaker of the House for a country that re-elected President Obama, that increased the Democratic majority in the Senate, and that cast over a million and a half more votes for Democratic congressmen than for Republican ones. You are the speaker, but not the majority leader; Nancy Pelosi leads the majority as chosen by the people. You sit in the Speaker’s chair because many Republican state legislators defied democracy and gerrymandered their states. They deprived their citizens of an effective franchise.

You did not do this, but you are charged with leading one of the two legislative chambers. How can you do that responsibly and with due regard for the true majority in the House? You have already begun in one regard, by ignoring the Hastert rule twice. Throw that anti-democratic rule out the window. It never had a policy basis. It was always and only a partisan, anti-democratic dodge to keep control.

Another thing you can and ought to do: consult with Nancy Pelosi. She represents the majority – let her voice be heard, let amendments be considered, let bills out of committee. In short, trust the American people and democracy.

No more road blocks. No more obstruction for the sake of obstruction. No more silly bills that will never pass the Senate, even when passed for the twentieth or thirtieth time. Just settle down and do the work of the people.

I invite all my readers to send this open letter to John Boehner in your own names. I particularly invite the Republicans who are reading this. As the daughter and granddaughter of Republicans, as a former Republican, I would love to see the party return to its principles. As a several-great granddaughter of a Republican Civil War soldier who fought for liberty, as the granddaughter of a Republican who told Branch Rickey to hire Jackie Robinson, as the daughter of a Republican who signed, with Eisenhower, the appointment papers for the first African-American post master in New York, as a former Republican who voted for Gerry Ford (he of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the executive order against assassinations), nothing would please me more than to see the Republican Party grand again.

The previous post analyzed the magazine Ebony during the Civil Rights era. The post utilized the magazine’s archive, which can be found here.

The archive also provides a fascinating picture into the gradual alienation of the black community from the Republican Party.

More below.

Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the wife of the late Ted Kennedy, has an op-ed in the Washington Post. It is well worth a read. I really don’t have a lot to add to it.

My late husband, Ted Kennedy, was passionate about health-care reform. It was the cause of his life. He believed that health care for all our citizens was a fundamental right, not a privilege, and that this year the stars — and competing interests — were finally aligned to allow our nation to move forward with fundamental reform. He believed that health-care reform was essential to the financial stability of our nation’s working families and of our economy as a whole.

…

As President Obama noted to Congress this fall, for Ted, health-care reform was not a matter of ideology or politics. It was not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It was a passion born from the experience of his own life, the experience of our family and the experiences of the millions of Americans across this country who considered him their senator, too.

The bill before Congress will finally deliver on the urgent needs of all Americans. It would make their lives better and do so much good for this country. That, in the end, must be the test of reform. That was always the test for Ted Kennedy. He’s not here to urge us not to let this chance slip through our fingers. So I humbly ask his colleagues to finish the work of his life, the work of generations, to allow the vote to go forward and to pass health-care reform now. As Ted always said, when it’s finally done, the people will wonder what took so long.

Disclaimer: When I wrote this I was envisioning it as a Saturday Night Live skit.

[Flashback to three weeks ago]

The President is seated at his desk in the Oval Office. He shuffles through some papers. A hard knock on the private door used by the Chief of Staff causes the President to lift his eyes and call out, “Enter.”

The door opens and the Chief of Staff hurries in with the President’s science adviser in tow.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Mr. President, but this couldn’t wait.”

“What is it, Bob?”

“Dr. Singh has brought urgent news. A large asteroid is headed for Earth. We have three weeks before it strikes.”

“Good God,”

The harried looking physicist who had entered with the Chief of Staff glances at his watch and says, “22 days, 2 hours, and 14 minutes, Mr. President.”

One of the most common complaints about the Beltway media is that they are more concerned with process than with policy. That's why we get stories about Boehner improving his image by leading the House Republicans against the stimulus. We also hear about Republicans getting shut out of the debate. When it comes to policy, silence. That is why we never heard a discussion about the merits of the items in the stimulus bill that the Republicans opposed. All we heard were the Republicans belittling such items.

The media is sometimes part of the solution, but more often part of the problem. There are signs that the blogosphere is causing the media to improve their coverage. The signs are few and far between now, however that will change as time goes on. With that in mind, how should the Moose contribute to the discussion? In other words, what do you guys and gals want to read?

Issues:

The recent addition of the Rachel Maddow Show to the MSNBC nightly lineup has added a highly effective voice to the liberal arsenal. Ms. Maddow has proven herself to be a witty, highly intelligent, and effective commentator. Her show has garnered rave reviews and wide viewership. I, for one, am grateful to MSNBC for giving her a platform.

A recent article in The American Prospect gives a full background on Rachel and the path she took to her present prominence in the political commentator world.

Maddow’s self-deprecating, wry wit comes across clearly in the article, just as it doesn on her radio and television shows.

“I think I have a fear in general about whether being a pundit is a worthwhile thing to be,” Rachel Maddow tells me over dinner at a Latin restaurant in lower Manhattan. It’s more than the ordinary self-deprecation of someone who just got her own cable commentary show. It’s an insecurity essential to the on-air style that’s powered the 35-year-old’s rapid rise from a wacky morning radio show in western Massachusetts to the liberal radio network Air America and now to her own prime-time show on MSNBC.

This woman is awesome. Her new show on MSNBC should be a huge success among progressive viewers. We are gaining a really strong voice for progressive politics.

I give Keith Olberman much credit for helping her get where she is on MSNBC. I view him as her mentor there. It says a lot about him that he isn’t threatened by such a strong-willed, intelligent woman.