Posts from — June 2012

Who can imagine what the Founding Fathers were thinking? My own guess is that they did not trust human nature, that they set up the American system of government to guard against our inherent frailty. But for whatever reason, they created a Rube Goldberg machine that only a president like Barack Obama could manipulate effectively enough to produce health care reform.

My simple mind boggles at the complexity of the reform legislation. To me, the simple answer would have been expansion of Medicare and Medicaid to provide an affordable alternative to the confusing and abusive health insurance industry. But simple logic doesn’t cut it in the American system. Too many conflicting interests have to be reconciled to get anything done.

Like all organic creations, the industry has grown this way and that, driven by need and greed. Dealing with it is like pruning a rank bouganvillia bush. It has become one of the most expensive and incompetent health care systems in the world, driving millions of Americans into bankruptcy and leaving millions more to die for lack of the money to buy insurance – or lack of regulations to ensure that the insurance companies meet their obligations.

Democratic presidents have been trying for decades to provide universal health care for Americans. But it took Obama to get it done.

This president does not have a simple mind. He deals in nuanaces and subtleties, what-ifs and better-nots. He has the patience and the guile to sort through the tangle of special interests that had to be placated and come up with “a little something” for everybody concerned.

After all that, he thought he had a deal. He thought the Republicans would go along, he thought the industry would go along, and he thought the craven Blue Dogs in his own party would go along. And, as a constitutional law professor, he contrived a package to fit the constraints of the Constitution.

If you have the fortitude to slog through all those pages, you will find a law that resembles a bushel of crabs in a sack, each crab trying to go its own way, with the end result that the sack shuffes along some sort of way. Only the genius of an Obama could work it out so that the sack moves in the desired direction.

The legislationis full of compromises, loaded with ideas that originated with the Republicans, and offering a windfall to the health insurance industry by mandating that everyone must buy their product – or else.

Disappointingly, after seeming to go along with the deal, the industry – fronted by the Republicans in their pocket – double-crossed the president, stirring up a mindless mob with lies about death panels, deficits and other dire fantasies.

Despite the intricate checks and balances… Despite the greed and treachery of a rapacious industry and the cunning of knaves who twisted the facts to incite a pack of fools… Despite the handicap of a Democratic Party infested by Blue Dogs with starkly conflicting political ideals… Despite all of the above… Obamacare is alive and well today.

The most conservative Supreme Court in America’s history has declared it legal – as the constitutional law professor in the White House bet it would.

It is a landmark victory not only for the president but also for the people.

The process is underway, the healing has begun. Within a few years, America will join the rest of the developed world in providing affordable health care for all, old and young, sick and well, adults and children, rich and poor.

Future generations will thank their lucky stars that a president named Barack Obama had the perseverance and the smarts to work through the convoluted system of government that the Founding Fathers devised.

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I have to confess: I lied to my wife. I didn’t mean to, but a lie is a lie. All I can say in my defense is: it wasn’t my fault. But that’s what all of us men say, isn’t it?

Here’s what happened.

Sandra asked me what the fuss over “Fast and Furious” was about, and I glibly repeated what the media have been reporting all these months. I told her the government was deliberately selling guns to Mexican drug dealers in order to catch the criminals by tracking the ID numbers on the guns. At least that’s what I understood the media to be saying.

I should have known something was wrong with that story.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sandra said right away. “I don’t believe it.”

She was right, of course.

As I found out a few hours later when a journalist named Katherine Eban showed up on TV to explain what really happened.

The story I heard was just another lie ballyhooed by the Republicans in Congress to discredit the president and his administration. There was no government operation that called for selling guns to Mexican drug dealers. “Fast and Furious” was actually a program designed to track “straw” buyers suspected of buying guns for resale to criminals.

Ms. Eban  had written a Fortune Magazine article, revealing that “the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.” The introduction to her article declared:

A Fortune investigation reveals that the ATF never intentionally allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. How the world came to believe just the opposite is a tale of rivalry, murder, and political bloodlust.

Here’s what happened, as Ms. Eban tells it:

In 2009 the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives promoted Dave Voth  to lead Phoenix Group VII, one of seven new ATF groups along the Southwest border tasked with stopping guns from being trafficked into Mexico’s vicious drug war….

The Sinaloa drug cartel had made Phoenix its gun supermarket and recruited young Americans as its designated shoppers or straw purchasers. Voth and his agents began investigating a group of buyers, some not even old enough to buy beer, whose members were plunking down as much as $20,000 in cash to purchase up to 20 semiautomatics at a time, and then delivering the weapons to others.

On Dec. 14, 2010, a tragic event rewrote the narrative of the investigation. In a remote stretch of Peck Canyon, Ariz., Mexican bandits attacked an elite U.S. Border Patrol unit and killed an agent named Brian Terry. The attackers fled, leaving behind two semiautomatic rifles. A trace of the guns’ serial numbers revealed that the weapons had been purchased 11 months earlier at a Phoenix-area gun store by a Fast and Furious suspect.

Ten weeks later, an ATF agent named John Dodson, whom Voth had supervised, made startling allegations on the CBS Evening News. He charged that his supervisors had intentionally allowed American firearms to be trafficked—a tactic known as “walking guns”—to Mexican drug cartels. Dodson claimed that supervisors repeatedly ordered him not to seize weapons because they wanted to track the guns into the hands of criminal ringleaders. The program showed internal e-mails from Voth, which purportedly revealed agents locked in a dispute over the deadly strategy. The guns permitted to flow to criminals, the program charged, played a role in Terry’s death.

After the CBS broadcast, Fast and Furious erupted as a major scandal for the Obama administration. The story has become a fixture on Fox News and the subject of numerous reports in media outlets from CNN to the New York Times. The furor has prompted repeated congressional hearings—with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder testifying multiple times—dueling reports from congressional committees, and an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. It has led to the resignations of the acting ATF chief, the U.S. Attorney in Arizona, and his chief criminal prosecutor.

As you probably know by now, it also led to the House of Representatives voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder (above, left) in contempt of Congress because he failed to turn over a torrent of documents fast enough to suit Rep. Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (above, right).

So how did I get the idea that the Obama administration was deliberately supplying drug lords with guns? Here’s how Ms. Eban explains it:

Quite simply, there’s a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today. It’s a story that starts with a grudge, specifically Dodson’s anger at Voth. After the terrible murder of agent Terry, Dodson made complaints that were then amplified, first by right-wing bloggers, then by CBS. Rep. Issa and other politicians then seized those elements to score points against the Obama administration…

So some disgruntled agent lies to get back at his boss, CBS picks up the story without checking it out, and the Obama haters pounce on it as ammunition.

Rubbing its hands with glee, Fortune Magazine declares:

‘Fast And Furious’ Just Might Be President Obama’s Watergate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the media blindly repeat the calumny without bothering to find out the facts. I don’t think that would have happened in my days in the newsroom. If a story didn’t make sense, we gave it a skeptical second look before running it.

But not today.

Today it’s the lies that come fast and furious. And they get repeated over and over - often embellished to advance the agenda of the TV station or whatever repeating it.

The days of credible news reporting seem to be gone for good.

I should have taken this into account before repeating nonsense to my wife.

Click here to read the Fortune Magazine article.

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I can’t shake the suspicion that the Republican Party has been infiltrated by characters who plan to plunder the American treasury. I know it sounds preposterous. I know I should respect opinions that disagree with my closely held beliefs. And I recognize the right of conservatives to pursue their political goals, however much these goals might conflict with my own.

But there is a pattern in recent Republican policies that stirs my deepest fears.

I am not talking about the relentless assault on women’s rights, or the bigotry displayed in anti-immigration and anti-civil rights legislation. I am not talking about the racist witch hunt targeting Attorney General Eric Holder or the scandalous disrespect of America’s first black president.

I even acknowledge the reasoning that makes conservatives want to shred the social safety net. I do not agree with it, of course, but I recognize a kind of ice-cold logic behind it.

I think it is morally reprehensible to lower taxes on the richest Americans while subjecting the poorest to hunger and hopelessness. And I deplore the barriers Republicans are imposing to block their victims’ path to redress through the ballot box.  But while this kind of policy is morally reprehensible, I don’t see it as financially benefiting individuals who might be criminals.

The kind of policy that stirs my suspicions is the party’s crusade to deregulate the financial industry. (I also smell a rat in in the persistent pattern of bailing out the big banks after massive – and possibly contrived – disasters. But I have to concede that Republicans are not alone in this; some Democrats also seem strangely eager to funnel public funds into this bottomless pit.)

Another policy that smells to high Heaven is privatization.

By turning over the operation of prisons to private companies, for example, state governments are making some people extremely rich.

Now there are those in Congress who would close the United States Post Office and entrust the distribution of the public’s mail – including such essential things as checks and medicines – to private interests.

What a massive coup that would be!

I can’t even imagine the amount of money involved.

And I am sure the result of privatizing the post office would be higher mailing costs for us – much higher.

Other side effects would include depriving remote areas of mail service as only the most profitable routes would be retained.

Obviously privatizing the post office would not be in the interests of the American public. So why do it?

The answer could be ideological, I suppose. Privatization would be one way to get rid of the union and union busting is a favorite Republican tactic. But I think there might be more to it than that.

The real motive might be to enrich some very influential people. Again.

Click here to read more about privatizing the post office.

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When you hear Mitt Romney and his fellow-Republicans calling for deregulation of Wall Street, do you wonder just who they want to deregulate?

Surely, you don’t imagine that the financial industry is peopled entirely by distinguished gentlemen in pinstriped suits (and a few elegant ladies) who lead irreproachable lives?

Surely you realize that anyone – as in ANY one – with the money can join the game?

And surely you know that Organized Crime figured out long ago how to make more money dealing stocks than robbing banks?

The way I see it, deregulating Wall Street would be like repealing the Criminal Code.

There’s an intriguing piece in the current edition of Rolling Stone, by Matt Taibbi, that supports my point of view. Titled “The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia,” the article describes a recent financial corruption case involving three Wall Street “bit players.”

According to Taibbi:

Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia.

Yes, I know, you’re rolling your eyes. That’s what Sandra does when I muse out loud about the possibility of the Mafia infiltrating America’s – and the world’s – major institutions.  But consider this: the Mafia has been raking in billions – make that trillions – over the past several decades. So what do you think they’ve been doing with it? If it were me, I would have bought myself a bunch of politicians, invested  in real estate development and moved in on Wall Street – among other lucrative and legitimate enterprises.

Isn’t that what you would do? So what makes you think we’re smarter than they are?

And, in case you still think I’m crazy, the Rolling Stone article reports that  “the reigning American crime syndicate …  now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street.”

Taibbi cites the conviction of the three Wall Street scam artists as a case in point. He writes:

 The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from “virtually every state, district and territory in the United States,” according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being ­cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime.

 In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What’s more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street’s secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves’ cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about “getting a button man to clip the capo,” on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like “pull a nickel out” or “get to the right level” or “you’re hanging out there” – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime.

 So that’s how those financial “masters of the universe” act when they think they can get away with it. And those are the people Romney and his allies in Congress want to deregulate.

Give me a break!

Click here to read how the scam works.

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As I remember it, the Norse god, Thor (above), was challenged to drain a cup that was secretly connected to the ocean. Of course he couldn’t do it. But Americans apparently expect their president to do something exasperatingly similar.

On the 24-hour news channels, the pundits keep saying that the  November election will be a referendum on the economy.

How unfair is that?

Surely American voters are smart enough to realize the mess they’re in today is partly their own fault?

They must know by now that the 2010 midterm elections were a big “oops.” 

By giving the Republicans, and specifically the Tea Party Republicans, the power to gum up the works, the voters got themselves into this jam, and they’re the only ones who can get themselves out of it.

Barack Obama is extremely smart but, as president, he has limited power. Faced by Republicans in Congress dedicated to ruining the country (so they can get him kicked out of the White House), he has been unable to implement his economy saving policies. And, worse, with so many state legislatures in Republican hands, he faces the same kind of problem Thor faced: as fast as his policies create private-sector jobs, the Republican legislatures lay off state workers.

Republican dominated state governments are laying off hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters, law enforcement officers and other public employees in their crusade to torpedo the jobs market and make the president look bad.

They claim it’s because of “budget constraints” but you and I know better.  Their pals in Congress could address that concern by passing the president’s jobs bill, which provides federal funds to boost state payrolls.  But the Republicans aren’t about to do that; they want the unemployment numbers to soar because they believe voters will blame Obama for it.

It’s shameful for those TV talking heads to predict that voters will  blame the pesident for the weak economy. By making the prediction without putting the economic problems in context, they’re suggesting that’s what voters should do.

Even with a reasonable Congress, Obama would face a challenging task. With Europe in freefall and even China struggling, America is bound to feel the ripple effects. And let’s not forget that this country is still recovering from two devastating wars.

With Republicans in Congress deliberately getting in the way, and with Republican legislators slashing state payrolls, the president is like Thor trying to drain the ocean.

Click here for a report on the jobless situation.

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Didn’t we already vote on John McCain’s agenda? Didn’t we tell him to stick it? So why is he still trying to sell his Dr. Strangelove ideas?

In case you haven’t noticed, the old warmonger is yapping at President Obama’s heels, nagging him about attacking Syria. Before that, he was yapping about bombing Iran.

Meanwhile, the Republican who is actually running for president this time is letting McCain carry his water. Mitt Romney is clear about one thing: he is OK with bombing Syria or anybody else McCain wants bombed. But he isn’t saying much about it.

It’s a blessing that the current president is sane enough to resist calls for bombing Syria.

Who knows what is  really behind the Syrian uprising? Who knows what Iran would do if America came to the aid of the resistance? Who knows how Russia would react? Or China?

There’s no doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an evil man, and must answer for massacring his people sooner or later. If he doesn’t pay for his wickedness in this life, he will surely pay for it in the next. But America is not the world’s avenging angel. Or supreme court. That’s supposed to be the job of the United Nations.

I am sure that President Obama is doing everything in his power to persuade Russia and China to stop supporting Assad’s bloodstained regime. That’s what he said in his press conference last night, and I believe him.

And, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on MSNBC  later on, there’s more going on behind the scenes. She observed that a Russian ship loaded with military helicopters aborted its voyage to Syria after the president spoke privately with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin recently.

I don’t know what’s going on in Syria. I doubt that anyone knows. But it certainly looks as if Assad has to go, and that’s exactly what President Obama told Putin. No wonder Putin had such a long face in their photo op. But it would be foolhardy for the American president to intervene militarily.

Looking back at the uprising in Egypt, I have to wonder how much good it did. Mubarek is gone, but who will take his place? The army? The Muslim Brotherhood? Is either of them so much better than Mubarek?

nd how long would Mubarek had lived if the uprising had not occurred? He might be gone by now, anyway.

And what about Iraq?  Is that country so much better off today that it was before it was “freed” by American troops?

I have to confess that I do not know.  It’s not easy to choose between two evils.

But this I know: it’s impossible to justify the loss of American lives and the devastation of this country’s economy in a quixotic crusade to right the world’s wrongs.

(Photo above shows burning buildings in Baba Amr, Homs, an area heavily shelled by the Syrian regime.)  

Click here for an article explaining Russia’s support of Syria.

Click here for a report on Syrian atrocities.

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I wonder if they still have the “partner” system in Jamaica. Remember? Everybody has times when they need a little extra cash – for school fees, for example. So throughout the island, people would get together – say a group at the office – and contribute a little something each paycheck. Then they would take turns getting the jackpot.

It’s what Americans should be doing today – in a more sophisticated way, of course.

It’s not a new idea; there are co-ops all over the country. Credit unions, for example. They’re building a Mid Florida Credit Union branch down the road from our home as I write this. I think MidFlorida was started for teachers but now just about anybody can join.

I’ll have to talk to Sandra about moving our account.

Why should we put our money in the bank so they can lend it back to us at a profit?

But that’s what we do. And it’s what the government does, too.

The co-op idea could be the answer to the way big, bad banks treat the public. And it could be the answer to the “vulture capitalism” that has blighted the American workplace

Writing in The Nation this week,  Laura Flanders tells the story of  a group of Chicago workers who have formed a co-op to take over the factory.

You might remember them; they’re the ones who occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory in 2008 when the owners closed the plant and tried to flee the state owing them back-pay and benefits (photo above). They won a $1.75 million settlement from Bank of America and Chase Bank. But now,  the plant’s new owners plan to close the plant.

The workers have responded by founding New Era Windows, LLC a worker-run cooperative to keep the operation going. They’re hoping to raise about $500,000 to buy the plant.

I think the government should lend them the money.

It seems to me that if taxpayers don’t mind the government printing money and giving it to the banks, then borrowing it back at interest, they shouldn’t mind lending workers some seed money to get co-ops off the ground.

But that’s just me. Other folks might consider that Socialism, and most Americans would never put up with that.

Click here to read the article in The Nation.

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If you’re Hispanic, you would have to be crazy to support the Republican Party.  Especially now that the president has used his executive power to do the right thing by the children of illegal immigrants.  If only he could enact a regulation allowing illegal immigrants to vote.

But illegal or not, immigrants or not, most Hispanics must surely sympathize with the president’s humane approach to immigration.

I’m not talking about the Cubans in Miami. Many of them are former Batista supporters (or their children), and – from what people who should know tell me – Batista was in bed with both the Mafia and the CIA. Furthermore, Cubans have a special deal as far as immigration is concerned. So those Hispanics are overwhelmingly “conservative.” Marco Rubio for example.

And I’m not talking about former CIA collaborators from places like Chile who were granted asylum in the U.S. as payment for their regime changing services. They’re part of the fascist underground that helps to keep right-wing governments in power here and abroad.

I’m referring to the millions of Hispanics from places like Mexico, many of them “undocumented,” who brought their families to America in search of a better life. I’m confident that President Obama can count on their support.

But shouldn’t the rest of us applaud Obama, too?

Not crazy Allan West, of course. Not insidious Lindsey Graham. Not any of the xenophobic Republicans in Congress who are howling for the president’s impeachment. They’re mad as hell and… whatever.

I mean the rest of us… those of us who are not bigots or racists or jerks…

Ordinary, decent people with good hearts. People who can imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes and share their hopes, dreams and pain.

Americans the way they used to be.

And as some still are today.

How many? We’ll find out in November when the country goes to the polls.

Click here for CNN’s take on the president’s immigration policy.

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Of course Tiger Woods is the big story of the U.S. Open. His life has been a modern-day Greek tragedy and if he wins this weekend it would be a real tear jerker. But I don’t need to sing his praises. Everybody else is doing that.

The guy I want to spotlight is Hunter Hamrick.

Who?

Hunter Hamrick. He beat the Tiger by three strokes in yesterday’s round. In fact, he beat everybody.

On a day when the world’s reigning Number One shot 72 and missed the cut, Hunter shot 67. But nobody noticed. The media was abuzz over another youngster, Beau Hossler, who shot 73. That’s because Hunter’s first round score was 77, and shooting the lowest round on Friday still left him tied for 18th – looking at the rear ends of 27 other golfers. Beau shot 70-73 to share ninth place  - with such luminaries as Hunter Mahan, Matt Kuchar and Jason Duffner.

You’ve probably heard of Beau. He’s an up-and-coming 17-year-old who has a famous coach. But I hadn’t heard a word about Hunter Hamrick (photo above).

So I looked him up on the web, and learned that he’s from Montgomery, Alabama, and captained the Crimson Tide golf team. According to his USGA player profile, he is 22-years old, stands 5 ft. 9 in. and weighs 155 pounds. The player profile says he turned pro this year, but he is listed as an amateur in today’s scores.

Anyway, I don’t know about you but I’m impressed when a kid that age – and that size – shoots 67 on a course that sent Luke Donald packing,  a course that left Bubba Watson scratching his head, a course that beat up Phil Mickelson, Rory McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Lee Westwood…

The U.S. Open is notorious for flash-in-the-pan performances, one-round wonders, who shine for a brief, glorious moment and then vanish. The USGA makes sure that golf lives up to its reputation of being a game of skill and luck. The courses they choose and the way they set them up are – to put it kindly – quirky.

So Hunter’s 67 could just be one of those quirky things.

I don’t think he will beat Tiger today or tomorrow. He might not even break 80 on either day. But he did have this great round. And somebody should take note of it.

Way to go Hunter! Fairways and greens!

Click here for more about Hunter Hamrick.

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I hope I’m wrong but it looks as if President Obama’s reelection campaign is being undermined by the Clinton camp. I am not just talking about Bill Clinton’s famous “gaffe,” where he seemed to oppose the president’s position on the Bush tax cuts.  And I’m not referring to his book, which came out last fall, in which he criticizes Obama’s handling of the debt ceiling crisis.

There’s a lot more going on that smells fishy to me.

I’m hearing and reading widespread criticism from so-called progressives – many of them supporters of Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary. Everybody seems to know a better way for Obama to run his reelection campaign. For example, Democratic strategist James Carville (photo above), who was an avid Hillary supporter in the 2008 primary, has released a ”strategy memo” warning that the president  needs to change his campaign narrative or “face an impossible headwind in November.” The way I read it, the memo proceeds to provide valuable ammunition to Obama’s opponents.

Some Obama critics are even suggesting that he abdicate and let Hillary run in his place.

Could these boll weevils be deliberately undermining the president?

Could they be planning to let the Republicans win in November, figuring they will do such a terrible job that Hillary will have a cakewalk to the White House in 2016? Could they be that corrupt and cruel? Would they deliberately subject the American people to four more years of war and poverty?

It’s possible. Today’s politicians seem capable of anything, no matter how despicable it might be. The Republicans have not balked at inflicting economic misery on millions of Americans in their crusade to defeat Obama.

Increasingly, Washington is falling into the hands of the worst possible people. Many members of Congress are no better than criminals. Most are morally bankrupt. They’ll do anything for money.

A lot of people admire Bill Clinton. A lot of people admire Hillary. They are both extremely bright. As president, Bill brought the good life within reach for many of us. As secretary of state, Hillary has done a magnificent job.

But they’re as ambitious as Macbeth. And who knows what their supporters are capable of?

As I said, I hope I’m wrong. The “advice” the president is getting could be well intentioned.  Perhaps these folks really are trying to help him run a more effective campaign. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t you think they would whisper their advice in his ear, not broadcast it all over the universe?

These are not political amateurs; they know what they’re doing.

And what they’re doing looks suicidal to me. This is not the time to find fault with President Obama or his campaign. This is a time to close ranks and face the Republicans with a united front. As the Bible cautions us, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Click here to read about Carville’s memo.

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