Monday, March 01, 2010

What President Obama needs to do—right now!


Okay, so we’re a nation of idiots. So Americans need to understand Washington in terms an imbecile could grasp. So maybe I need to explain in comic book and fantasy action movie terms what it is President Obama needs to do.


Remember “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Remember Indiana Jones, his whip always at the ready, vanquishing foe after foe with his bullwhip—knocking them down, knocking the weapons out of their hands, yadda yadda until it all becomes a bit tiresome?


And then suddenly Indy gets approached by a another posturing thug, a turbaned bozo who not only waves a sword, but does sword tricks with it. But our hero has had enough of this posturing horsecrap. He shrugs, whips out his pistol, and plugs the posturing jerk right between the eyes. In the theater where I watched this, the audience stood up and cheered!


President Obama needs to take a leaf from the Indiana Jones script. Enough already with the debating, the arguing, and worst of all the compromising with posturing Republicans (and a few Democrats) who refuse to compromise. That’s all bullwhip.


Instead, the President needs to pull out the Presidential equivalent of his pistol—the public accusatory confrontation—and start plugging Republicans right between the eyes.


For example, there’s a Republican Senator named Jim Bunning, who has forced the furlough of Federal transportation workers—putting a stop to construction projects that are desperately needed to keep our infrastructure maintained and Americans working. He’s also strangling desperate Americans by choking off their unemployment benefits.


It’s time for President Obama to call a televised press conference and declare:


“If a terrorist tried to starve millions of Americans, render them homeless, and bomb the US economy, we’d have every right to declare him a war criminal, arrest him, and try him for war crimes.


“Senator Jim Bunning, you are the moral equivalent of a war criminal. You are sabotaging the business of the people of the United States. By putting a chokehold on the extension of unemployment benefits and other critical expenditures you are causing hunger. You are causing people to lose their homes. You are exacerbating a severe economic situation, damaging every American, every citizen, every taxpayer. I’m calling you out, Senator Bunning, as the the closest thing there is to a traitor who deserves to be turned out of office and run out of town on a rail.


“Now let me talk about another moral equivalent of treason—the actions of that smug, smirking Senator Mitch McConnell, who is creating Tokyo Rose-type propaganda to demoralize and mislead Americans who simply want affordable healthcare….”


There’s ample precedent for the President to publicly call out the troublemakers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it—and achieved the New Deal—by sneering at a trio of bloviating enemies of America, the infamous “Martin, Barton and Fish.”


Would there be howls of dismay from the right? You betcha! There were howls of dismay and worse under Roosevelt.


Would the obstreperous senators who’ve currently afflicted the Congress and the American people with legislative sclerosis tremble in their shoes, even as they pretend to outraged? Sure they would. But in short order they’d also buckle, particularly if the next step is public torchlight demonstrations in front of their homes, angry throngs calling for their heads in Washington and demands for investigations of their financing and their intentions.


So enough with the bullwhip, Mr. President. Pull out the pistol that was installed in your bully pulpit by virtue of the overwhelming majority of people who voted for change and now want to see you either change things or at the very least make an all out effort that will leave the obstreperous Republicans with something a bit messier than egg on their faces.

2 comments:

Toni said...

Oh how I wish he'd pull out the pistol. But, as I remarked at Underbelly, I'm afraid the guy's got too much Hawaiiana. If you're not familiar with how that flower-scented humid air can affect the psyche, I can communicate it best by saying that I doubt you'd find a blog entitled "The Hawaiian Islands Crank."

But please keep up your crankiness. We in California depend on the jolt it gives us.

mdk said...

As a lifelong Democrat and yes, proud liberal, I agree with your characterization. However, it's never going to happen with this sell-out, spineless puss of a president we elected. We've unfortunately gotten another Jimmy Carter on our hands, and the entire country is going to suffer decades of right-wing rule because of it. Hillary sure sounds a lot better now, doesn't she?