Louisiana Democrats have produced a video called “Forgotten Crimes” about Senator David Vitter’s admission that he hired women to have sex with him and how’s escaped any ramifications from the act. Vitter refuses to answer questions about the crime, but he’s up for reelection this year and the Democratic Party is hoping Louisiana voters will take him to task for the hooker scandal.

According to rightbloggers, such as Jonah Goldberg and Paul Berman, they’re not allowed to talk about links between Islam and Nazism.

The gist of Goldberg’s argument today is that there was a connection between Islam and Nazis and no one in the mainstream media is talking about it, and so Goldberg and other rightbloggers are being silenced on the issue.

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make any sense.

On his blog today he pulls some text from Berman’s recent post in the Wall Street Journal.

“In our present Age of the Zipped Lip,” Berman moans, “you are supposed to avoid making any of the following inconvenient observations about the history and doctrines of the Islamist movement.”

Among the taboo topics is the Islamic-Nazi connection.

Berman assures us that “no one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders.”

Yes, I’m sure it’s indisputable.

And he said that “Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.”

Goldberg is shocked that “such an enormously significant historical fact – the Nazi-Islamist connection – could be ignored for so long.”

Well I don’t think it’s been ignored. The issue is that 70 years later, it’s only of academic significance. I can’t imagine a front page New York Times story with the headline “Islamic-Nazi Connection Exposed” popping up in the near future.

It’s not news that Islam has had a serious beef with Jews – they have for a very very long time – even before Hitler.

It’s also not news that many people in the US, Christians even, supported Hitler. In fact, the George W. Bush’s grandfather was a shareholder and director of companies that benefited from Hitler’s rise to power. Historical documents show that Prescott Bush financially backed Hitler – these are actual war crimes.

My question is this, what does Goldberg hope to achieve by connecting the dots between Islam and Hitler? Should we launch another Crusade against Muslims? How about burning down all of the mosques in the US and rounding members of the religion and putting them concentration camps like we did with the Japanese during World War II? What’s the practical application that can be gleaned from this historical observation?

And who’s telling Goldberg he can’t talk about this stuff? His own blog post refers to two recently published books on the matter. That’s right, books on printed paper and sold in book stores. Yeah that’s some serious suppression of ideas there.

My theory is that Goldberg, like many rightbloggers, is trying to ratchet up the hatred towards Muslims because they are today’s enemy du joir. It used to be communists, and to Glenn Beck it’s both commies and Muslims, but for most of the rightwingers out there – we’re at war with Islam.

They’ve got to hate somebody – I guess.

Here’s more evidence that the Tea Party movement is not a movement but merely a political operation geared towards getting Republicans elected and making lobbyists rich.

On Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, Olbermann interviewed Politico’s Kenneth Vogel about his story on Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Express and the lobbyists who are backing it. As it turns out, this so-called grassroots movement is little more than a well-funded old-school political operation funded by Republican political consultants Russo Marsh + Rogers out of Sacramento, California. That’s the same group that helped boot out Democratic Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When it’s convenient, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele claims his race is a non-issue, and when he needs to do so, he uses his race to slither out of a tight spot.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein has the story.

On Monday, the RNC chairman told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, as an African-American, he is being held to a higher standard than his white peers.

“The honest answer is, ‘Yes,’” Steele said. “Barack Obama has a slimmer margin. A lot of folks do. It’s a different role for me to play and others to play and that’s just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of it.”

The remark capped a week’s worth of largely unfavorable stories about Steele’s competence to manage the party. They also introduced the element of race into a conversation that truly had nothing to do with the topic — in the process inviting another debate about whether or not skin color plays a role in political discourse.

The fact is that obviously the RNC’s choice to put an African American to lead the party’s primary fund raising organization to blunt President Obama’s race.

Stein reported.

Steele has expressed similar criticism of Democrats on multiple occasions. Indeed part of his appeal when he was picked for his current job was that a black Republican would be the perfect foil for a president who was insulated from criticism due to his race. When he was running for the chair, Steele more or less accused Obama of building his campaign on top of this pedestal.

“[T]he Obama campaign played the race card, and it worked beautifully,” he told a conference call of conservative bloggers. Charges of racism, he said, hurt Bill Clinton, “tripped up Hillary Clinton,” and “stymied” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) because he refused to bring up Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

The sad truth is that race does matter. Post-racial? I think not. Pretending race doesn’t matter is political correctness for political correctness’ sake and Steele can’t have it both ways. Regardless of his skin color, Steele has failed as the leader of the RNC and should step down. I predict Steele will be forced to resign.

On Mar. 30, 2010 at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, Fox News’ Sean Hannity publicly admitted that he thinks the Tea Party movement is comprised of anti-government extremists, or as he said, “Tim McVeigh wannabes.”

“I think we won the debate,” Hannity said. “When you think of the vast majorities that they have in Congress, and they had to bribe, back room deals, corruption; that’s all because of the Tea Party movement – all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here.”

Wow. That’s nothing short of shocking. Of course, Hannity is a total freaking moron, so take what he says with a huge grain of salt, but to call a crowd of people Tim Mc Veigh wannabes and to get cheers in return, that’s amazing.

For those too young to remember, McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995. He killed innocent women and children when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building. At the time, it was the single biggest terrorist attack ever in the United States.

Each year, anti-government extremists celebrate this event along with the Waco Seige by the FBI of the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists on April 19.

Regulating the health insurance was a big effing deal, but reigning in the the banks is arguably far more critical to US economic stability. As usual, Economist Paul Krugman is your guide to all things economic, and today he broke down financial reform in simple and easy to understand terms.

There are three groups of people involved in this process. There are those that don’t want any regulation of any banks under any circumstances. We’ll call them Republican members of Congress. Then there are two groups that want to regulate banks but differ in how it should be done. One group we’ll call the Volckers and the other we’ll call the Krugmans.

The Volckers, named after former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, want to regulate the size of banks. For them, the solution to our banking problem will be in eliminating “too big too fail” banks. The theory is that if we just break the banks into smaller pieces, and if some of them fail, the free market will kick in to solve the problem and prevent another taxpayer bailout. Unfortunately history doesn’t support this claim (e.g. The Great Depression).

The Krugmans believe that to fix our banking crisis we need to regulate what banks do – not how big they are.

Opposing the Volckers, Krugman wrote:

Here’s how I see it. Breaking up big banks wouldn’t really solve our problems, because it’s perfectly possible to have a financial crisis that mainly takes the form of a run on smaller institutions. In fact, that’s precisely what happened in the 1930s, when most of the banks that collapsed were relatively small — small enough that the Federal Reserve believed that it was O.K. to let them fail. As it turned out, the Fed was dead wrong: the wave of small-bank failures was a catastrophe for the wider economy.

Paul Krugman economist

According to the Krugmans, the same could happen today, so rather than bailing out a few big banks, the taxpayer would be bailing out lots of smaller banks. The end result would be another taxpayer bailout.

Here‘s the Krugman solution.

After all, the U.S. banking system had a long period of stability after World War II, based on a combination of deposit insurance, which eliminated the threat of bank runs, and strict regulation of bank balance sheets, including both limits on risky lending and limits on leverage, the extent to which banks were allowed to finance investments with borrowed funds. And Canada — whose financial system is dominated by a handful of big banks, but which maintained effective regulation — has weathered the current crisis notably well.

What ended the era of U.S. stability was the rise of “shadow banking”: institutions that carried out banking functions but operated without a safety ne

t and with minimal regulation. In particular, many businesses began parking their cash, not in bank deposits, but in “repo” — overnight loans to the likes of Lehman Brothers. Unfortunately, repo wasn’t protected and regulated like old-fashioned banking, so it was vulnerable to a pre-1930s-type crisis of confidence. And that, in a nutshell, is what went wrong in 2007-2008.

So why not update traditional regulation to encompass the shadow banks? We already have an implicit form of deposit insurance: It’s clear that creditors of shadow banks will be bailed out in time of crisis. What we need now are two things: (a) regulators need the authority to seize failing shadow banks, the way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation already has the authority to seize failing conventional banks, and (b) there have to be prudential limits on shadow banks, above all limits on their leverage.

From a banker’s perspective, they’d rather have the Volcker regulation than the Krugman one – or even better no regulation at all. Under the Volcker plan, banks merely have to break up into smaller chunks but could still do business as usual. But under Krugman’s plan, banks would have to dramatically adjust how they’ve been doing business, and that they don’t like.

The question is, can Congress fix this problem? If health care reform is any gauge, the answer is maybe.

–
Financial Reform 101 by Paul Krugman

The Tea Partiers will fail because for them to succeed we would need to shred the US Constitution and start over. That would require a revolution, and that’s not going to happen.

You just have to examine what they stand for. They claim to be strict constitutionalists, but they can’t stop screaming that what Democrats are doing is unconstitutional – against the will of the people.

The Tea Partiers must have forgotten that Democrats won two elections – one in 2006 and another one in 2008.

Obama and Congressional Democrats campaigned on health care reform. So it’s disingenuous for the Tea Partiers to now claim that Democrats are defying the will of the people by pursuing the agenda that they campaigned on.

In a representative republic, the people’s will is determined by elections and not protests – just ask liberals who rallied by the tens of thousands to stop the Iraq war in 2003.

But if the Tea Partiers have their way, no matter who gets elected, a radical right-wing agenda must be adhered to. If not, bricks will be thrown, guns will be drawn, politicians spat on and death threats – thinly-veiled  and otherwise – will be hurled.

The problem with the Tea Party is that they have no faith or respect for our democracy. They seem to not realize that when liberals win elections, they have not only a right, but an obligation, to implement the agenda that they campaigned on.

The consensus among the talking heads, political wonks, hacks and bloviators is that Democrats will lose big in November’s elections.

The logic is that the party in the White House always gets their ass handed to them in the first election after the president takes office. That’s what happened in 1994 after Clinton beat Bush in 1992. It didn’t happen in 2002 following George W. Bush’s controversial election in 2000.

The mainstream media and pundits are also convinced that voters are going bludgeon Democrats over their passage of health care reform. Following passage of Medicare in 1965, Republicans picked up 47 House seats in the 1966 election. Democrats still held a 247 to 187 majority in the House, but it was a good year for Republicans. Besides Medicare and Civil Rights legislation passage, there was also an unpopular Vietnam war raging and race riots sweeping the nation.

However, just like the prospectus for a mutual fund, past performance is not proof of future performance. And if you think that people paid to blather on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN are speaking the truth, or know what they’re talking about, means you haven’t been paying attention – these fools are wrong more than the weather man. Just remember what Bob Dylan said about the weather man.

As far as health care reform is concerned, it’s hard to see how getting beat by the GOP and failing to pass health care reform legislation would have proved a winner for Democrats in November. One things that is a constant in US history is that Americans like it when things get done and they like to vote for winners and not losers.

But if Democrats want to pull out big wins in November there’s a hanging fastball that they just need to swing at – take on the bankers. It’s a guaranteed home run. Everyone from all walks of life, whether Tea Partiers or left-wing anti-war activists, everyone hates bankers. Many Americans reflexively loath bankers and Wall Street big shots.

Senate Democrats and House members need to go back to the drawing board and produce some tough new regulations on bankers and Wall Street fatcats. There needs to be a campaign to rid the nation of banks “too big too fail” and to set up a strong consumer protection agency that’s not part of the Federal Reserve. Democrats need to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies either with new legislation or with the power of the Executive.

Let the GOP campaign supporting of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Wall Street hucksters.

This the issue an overwhelming majority of Americans care about, and if the Democrats hit it hard – they not only won’t lose in November, they could even have greater majorities in both houses.

Barack Obama has been talking about health care reform since 2007. Back then he talked about single-payer and universal health care – and you elected Obama with a landslide victory. While you didn’t get universal health care or single-payer – you did get health care reform.

Last night’s vote in the House of Representatives to pass health care reform was historic. But what makes it so amazing is that the Democrats didn’t cave – they actually passed a huge piece of important legislation despite the lies and fear mongering spewing from the mouths of Republicans and so-called “conservatives.”

The campaign to misinform you about health care was quite effective. Support for health care reform did fall substantially as more and more Americans started to believe Republican liars. Sarah Palin kicked off the “death panel” lie. And who knows where all the crazy numbers about the cost of the bill came from – yesterday someone said the bill could cost $10 trillion. Abortion, the GOP’s old fallback position, became a central theme for the opposition. Some Republicans even said that this bill will not only fund abortions but it will “promote” them – as if you’re going to see ads on TV for abortions next to ads for Viagra.

The list of outright lies are too many to list but they’re irrelevant now.

What is relevant is that Democrats did what they needed to do and they didn’t cower in the face of the vicious hate-filled opposition to health care reform. They didn’t quit when they were called socialists, communists, niggers, faggots, baby killers and when they were spit on. So if you have a moment, send your member of Congress an e-mail or call them on the phone and say thank you.

And remember that while it’s easy to say that there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans – there is. Paul Krugman made a great point in his column today by highlighting a fundamental distinction between what Democrats and Republicans believe.

The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made … And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”

And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation.

The GOP sees the world in purely cynical political terms. They don’t see you. They don’t see your family. They only see the next election and the next tax cut or war profit. And maybe Gingrich is right, maybe passing civil rights legislation was wrong politically, but who, besides racists, can argue that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Looking back at our nation’s history, how many politically challenging decisions were still clearly the right choice? Civil rights, Medicare, Social Security, and let’s not forget that great Republican President Abraham Lincoln who ended slavery despite a nation that had yet to cleanse itself of overt racism. President Lincoln was murdered for that decision.

No, despite the cynicism of people like Gingrich and Karl Rove, politicians sometimes need to make unpopular decisions, even if that means they will lose their seat in Congress. That’s what a republic is. To paraphrase James Madison, a republic is virtuous men making virtuous decisions in spite of what an excited faction may want.

So please, call your members of Congress and tell them you’ve got their back. Tell them you will vote for them in November. While you’re at it, why not sign up to volunteer for them too?

Too many Americans either don’t know or don’t like to think critically. It’s much more comfortable to just know what you know and that’s that. But critical thinking isn’t an optional component of living in a civilized society – it’s vital.

That’s why you need to read Frances Moore Lappé’s story “Let’s Drop the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Talk, We Need to Grow Up as a Species.”

Bad people are not to blame for our problems and better people can’t make everything right. We need to create the social conditions that bring out the best in everyone.

Let’s Drop the Good Guys vs. Bad Guys Talk, We Need to Grow Up as a Species

Watching the conservative echo chamber in action is a frightening experience that most people don’t have to stomach on a daily basis.

The latest misinformation parroted by the rightwing machinery is that President Obama is buying votes on health care with judicial nominations.

As usual, it all starts with just a simple question. This time the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard got the ball rolling.

Read the entire story on Examiner.com

Politico broke a scary story today. They’ve un-earthed a PowerPoint slideshow detailing the GOP strategy to use fear and mockery to stop Obama’s “socialist” agenda. It includes pictures of the president as the Joker, House Leader Nancy Pelosi as Cruella DeVille and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Scooby Doo.

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

Read the entire story on Politico

Almost all politicians stretch the truth, or outright lie, to convince people that what they’re doing is for their benefit. But what’s happening right now regarding a possible parliamentary move by Senate Democrats to use reconciliation to pass health care reform is just too much.

There are so many Republican lies whizzing across the media landscape about reconciliation it’s hard to keep up. The two biggest whoppers that GOP Senators and Fox News are disseminating are that Republicans would never dream of using reconciliation to thwart a filibuster, and that the use of the existing reconciliation rule (created in 1974) is the so-called “nuclear option.”

Republicans and Fox News are counting on no one looking at the public record and uncovering their blatant fabrications. If you look, you’ll see that Republicans have used reconciliation way more often than Democrats have. In fact, in the more than 20 times it’s been used, Republicans are on record with using reconciliation 17 times.

Most recently the GOP chose reconciliation to pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005.

And as far as the so-called “nuclear option” is concerned – that has absolutely nothing to do with reconciliation – nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

It was Republicans who coined the “nuclear option” phrase back in 2003 when they threatened to change Senate rules outlawing the filibuster. They were pissed at Democrats who were trying to filibuster judicial nominees. It had nothing to do with reconciliation.

Watch this video. Stop watching Fox News. Think. Read. Research. Be critical. The information is there. “The truth is out there.” — Fox Mulder

President Obama appears to have finally realized that Republicans will never support any effort to reform health care. On Wed., Obama is expected to release a plan to pass health care reform. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the president would like Republicans to not filibuster the bill in the Senate and allow a simple up-or-down vote, but that’s not going to happen.

Now Republicans know they have lost this battle and they’re freaking out. One can only hope there’s a special place in hell for these so-called Christians who lie through their teeth.

This is the complete rush transcript of a speech Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) gave on the House floor this morning at approximately 11:30 a.m. eastern time.

The House was debating the health insurance anti-trust exemption created in 1945 by the McCarran-Ferguson Act. The act allows insurance companies to collude with one another to keep prices high and to share data for the purposes of cherry picking the best customers to insure.

We should listen to our constituents.

I did town halls in August and they were attended by over 8,000 people.

And there was one item of agreement between the extremes in the debate between those representing the Tea Party and those representing single-payer.

And that was consensus, that this industry, the health insurance industry, should not enjoy a special exemption under the law.

They should not be able to collude to drive up prices. Limit competition. Price gouge consumers. They should play by the same rules as every other industry in America.

And this archaic exemption from anti-trust law should go to the dustbin of history.

There was consensus on that.

Now come the Republicans, oh wait a minute, “We’re not protecting the industry, we don’t to allow them to still have the anti-trust exemption, it’s about the little guys.”

It’s always about the little guys, isn’t it? So let’s give the little guys a loophole, oh but wait a minute, the big guys can use the same loophole.

Now the other thing I’ve heard is let’s be bipartisan.

Well there’s nothing much more bipartisan than the report of The Anti-trust Modernization Commission from April 2007.

This was a commission created by the Republican Congress when they controlled both the House and the Senate and the White House with the members named by President George Bush and the Republican leadership of Congress.

They came to the conclusion that this loophole, that they’re advocating today, should not exist.

And I’ll quote briefly from the conclusions from the bipartisan Republican created commission.

They said, “A proposed exemption should be recognized as a decision to sacrifice competition.”

Oops, I thought they were for competition?

“And consumer welfare.”

I thought they were for the consumers?

“And should be allowed only if Congress determines that a substantial and significant counter-valuing societal value outweighs the presumption in favor of competition and the widespread benefits it provides.”

They go on to address their arguments and they say, there are those who will argue that the small companies need to aggregate data and they will need this safe harbor.

And they [the commission] say, no actually not.

This again is the Republican created commission.

“Like all potentially beneficial competitor collaboration generally, however such data sharing would assessed by anti-trust enforcers, and the courts, under rule of reason analysis. They would fully consider the potential pro-competitive effects of such conduct and condemn it only if on balance it was anti-competitive. Insurance companies would bare no greater risk then companies in other industries engaged in data sharing and other collaborative undertakings. To the extent that insurance companies engage in anti-competitive collusion, however, they would then be appropriately subject to anti-trust liability.”

They want to give them a safe harbor – that is so big that the Justice Department could never review it. Their objective to the fact that the Justice Department might look at and investigate the activities surrounding data sharing and potential collusion by the industry to continue to price gouge consumers and benefit unreasonably and profit unreasonably.

They want to create that loophole. That loophole is unnecessary.

If you adopt that proposal, we might as well just not pretend to care about consumers and consumer welfare and that we’re going to meaningfully address this industry playing by the same rules as every other industry.

[Will the gentleman yield?]

No I will not yield. The gentleman has his own time.

This industry should play by the same rules as all others – plain and simple.

Americans get that.

They’re not happy with seeing their insurance premiums double every ten years – and now it’s more of doubling rate of three to five years.

They know that they are being taken to the cleaners.

They know that the industry is trying to cherry pick.

They know there’s anti-trust activity going on.

It’s time for that to change.

No loopholes!

Last night the Senate Finance Committee worked until 2 a.m. this morning to vote on all of the remaining amendments to the Baucus bill. Unfortunately, aside from some minor tweaking, the bill still looks like a huge pile of steaming horse manure.

Almost everyone will be forced to purchase health insurance – a boon for the insurance companies. Some poor people will be exempt from the individual mandate, but that just means they’ll still not have health care. The public option is nowhere in sight.

It’s too bad the Senate is such a worthless governing body – apparently filled with lapdogs for insurance companies, Big Pharma and hospitals. I’m not surprised. It’s obvious that the politicians have successfully rigged our political system so that they can remain in power while doing nothing for us and everything for their real constituents – corporations and the Elite. Oh well, did we really think anything good would come from Congress? Nope.

I keep saying it, but now is the time for a real revolution. We need a real government run by the people. Let’s organize.

Read the New York Times story on the latest Baucus bill developments

It appears that the crazy radical-right has continued killing people they don’t like. The latest murder is of a census worker in Kentucky. On Sept. 12, 51-year-old Bill Sparkman was found dead in a Kentucky cemetery. Sparkman was naked, gagged and had his hands and feet bound with duct tape and the word “fed” written across his chest.

This is just the beginning, now the right-wing – fueled by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs and politicians like Michele Bachmann from Minnesota – have murdered an abortion doctor, shot up the holocaust museum in DC – killing a security guard – and now a census worker is dead. Crazy.

Read the Huffington Post story about Sparkman’s death
Books about right-wingers on Amazon READ!

WASHINGTON — A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against President Obama since he took office, a culmination of a summer-long season of protests that began with opposition to a health care overhaul and grew into a broader dissatisfaction with government.

Read the complete New York Times story

The New York Times ran an editorial calling for Democrats to abandon any hope of Republican support for health care reform. Screw the super-majority necessary to stop a filibuster, the Democrats need to go it alone. It should be interesting.

The talk in Washington is that Senate Democrats are preparing to push through health care reforms using parliamentary procedures that will allow a simple majority to prevail in their chamber, as it does in the House, instead of the 60 votes needed to overcome the filibuster that Senate Republicans are sure to mount.

With the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, the Democrats do not have the votes just among their 57 members (and the two independents) to break a filibuster, and not all of these can be counted on to vote in lock step. If the Democrats want to enact health care reform this year, they appear to have little choice but to adopt a high-risk, go-it-alone, majority-rules strategy.

Read the entire story on The New York Times

The last time the Republican party was this disseminated, disorganized and dysfunctional was 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal. I was too young to remember – only five days old when Nixon’s crew broke into that Democratic National Committee office – but I’m going to guess that Americans were sick of Republicans after Nixon’s shenanigans and President Ford’s pardon. In 1976, Jimmy Carter was seen by voters as unique, an honest man in a sea of corrupt politicians. Unfortunately, Carter’s popularity plummeted when the people decided that being a nice guy wasn’t what they wanted. Carter became a one-term president. Just like 30 years ago, the Republican party is in a shambles following eight years of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, two wars, 9/11 and a crippled economy. And just like 1976, voters in 2008 elected a president because he seemed different and campaigned on hope and change. Will President Obama become the first one-term black president?

What should be scaring Obama and his supporters is that while the Republican party has been shattered, they can still tear his policies to shreds. Obama was elected because he promised to end the war in Iraq and reform health care. The war sponsored by Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater is still raging and health care reform is already so compromised that real reform seems unlikely.

Like Carter, Obama is trying to be the nice guy and Republicans are taking advantage of that by punching him in the face whenever they can. Sarah Palin accused Obama of wanting to kill her son because he has down syndrome (I know what you’re thinking, why does Palin keep complaining about the media talking about her kids, when she never shuts up about them). But rather than coming out strong with a message decrying these false accusations as ridiculous and educating the public on what health care reform will actually look like, Obama and the Democrats are going to pull the “confusing” section of the bill on setting up living wills.

The Republicans don’t control the White House or Congress, yet they continue to dominate the news cycle and have a stranglehold on Obama’s policies. If they can hold on for a couple more months, Obama’s window of opportunity will close, next year’s elections will get going, and there’s a real possibility that Obama could become the first one-term black president.