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Fareed Zakaria reminds Americans that this newest re-taking of the House is the third "Republican revolution", behind the Reagan revolution and Newt Gingrich's Contract On For America. Neither era of Republican control worked out well for the vast majority of Americans. Will the American people give the GOP another chance if they screw this one up?

I know that there are many who agree with Susie Madrak that this is an opportunity to show once and for all that Republican policies simply do not work. Unfortunately, as much as I like and respect Susie's attitude, I just can't be that sanguine. One would hope that people could have been sentient enough to realize that it was the Republican policies writ large with majorities in both the House and the Senate as well as control of the White House that put us in the dire straits we're in and that the trickle-down effect of Reaganomics really never did trickle down to not vote in this third Republican revolution. But unfortunately, overestimating the American people's ability to think critically and sanely seems to be a Democratic curse.

And worse, there is little chance that the majority of Americans will have this pointed out to them via our traditional media. Sure, you and I see it and we seek out media that provide facts and context, but the vast majority of people in this country do not.

That's why it's so refreshing to have a cable news commentator say what needs to be said: The Republican Party have shown time and time again they cannot govern the country well.

Transcripts below the fold.

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I've been a little down lately, because it seems too many people are in a state of learned helplessness and don't want to participate in our democracy if it involves stepping away from the computer.

But then I saw this letter from Michael Moore and I felt a lot better. Because it's still our country, and we can still make a difference:

Friends,

It's the #1 question I'm constantly asked after people see my movie: "OK -- so NOW what can I DO?!"

You want something to do? Well, you've come to the right place! 'Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system.

Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

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It’s been more than seven years, but I still laugh when I look back at this classic satirical item from The Onion, in which George W. Bush assured the nation that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”

“My fellow Americans,” Bush said (in this fake-news item), “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

Of course, this piece, written four days before Bush’s first inaugural, proved to be rather prophetic. But in the meantime, whenever I see or hear references to “peace and prosperity,” I think of The Onion, and the strength and success Bush squandered.

I was reminded of it again this morning, listening to Bush’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“Listen, the stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.”

Really? Where is this elusive “prosperity and peace”?

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

Bill Moyers finds parallels with the degradation of rampant steroid use in baseball to how degraded our country has become by those seeking quick ways to short cut and short circuit level playing fields.

You don't get a level playing field with performance enhancing drugs, any more than you get an honest government with political action committees and bundled contributions, or a fair economy with some derivatives, hedge funds, and private equity managers taxed at rates lower than their janitors. You get a level playing field only when the fans demand it. Suppose people stopped attending games in large numbers, stopped watching on TV, stopped buying the products hyped by the icons. The leveling would happen, or baseball as a money-making business would die. It's not likely to happen. If we can't organize to stop a brutal, bloody war in Iraq, or rectify an economic system that divides us further every day, we can hardly expect collective action from baseball fans.

There was a lesson in George Mitchell's report that I'm not sure even he recognized. The day Americans don't feel strongly enough about the need for level playing fields to fight for them -- the day when cutting corners and seeking an edge become the national pastime -- is the day democracy will be lucky even to find a seat in the bleachers.

The entire transcript available here.

"You could find just about everything at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week: the bumper sticker that says "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton....read on"

This sentence says it all.

...former candidate for the US Senate Seat in Ohio and Iraq Veteran Paul Hackett is announcing his decision to join Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Political Action Committee (IAVA PAC) today, as a member of the group's Board of Advisors. IAVA PAC will benefit those candidates, who like Hackett, are Iraq or Afghanistan Veterans seeking to continue their service to their country by seeking elected office....read on

"Seeing as he's an outspoken social conservative, some folks were surprised to find out that one of the largest contributors to Rep. Roy Blunt's (R-Mo.) political action committee last year was a businessman who made his fortune in the 1990s off the phone-sex business...read on"

A liberal documentary producer who became an unexpected victor of the first ever Conservative Idol competition recently got an equally unexpected surprise: The folks he was trying to scam were in fact scamming him, as well as the four other winners. Jeremy Levine, an independent filmmaker and a junior at Ithaca College, attended the Conservative Political Action Conference last February as an undercover reporter for the alternative student publication, Buzzsaw Haircut. While reporting on the conference, Levine entered a competition to become one of five “Conservative Idols”—a spin on the pop culture hit that happened to have a $500 prize.

Levine, who recently finished work on a documentary about vigilantes along the U.S.-Mexico border, entered the immigration category. Having spent months along the border filming the virulently anti-immigration militiamen, Levine could easily spout their hateful rhetoric. Stealing the words of the gun-touting extremists, Levine hoped to claim Conservative Idolatry. “All I had to do was think of something vaguely racist and paranoid, dress it up in some patriotic jargon and hope the conservatives would vote for me,” says Levine....read on

Tom DeLay's state political action committee was just found guilty of violating Texas campaign finance law. A Texas judge found, in a civil trial, against DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, holding that the committee failed to report $600,000 in corporate contributions, in direct violation of Texas law. This is the first time ever in a court of law Tom DeLay's fundraising empire has been held to account.

The Daily Delay has more.

Howard Dean's words about Delay may be coming true.

Delay guilty of fundraising shakedown? Bartcop

Click Here

Excerpt;
Fundraisers for a political committee founded by Tom DeLay routinely solicited donations by identifying legislative actions that prospective givers wanted, from video gambling to lawsuit limits, memos show.

"What companies that you know of would be interested in tort reform in Texas with asbestos problems that might support TRMPAC?" one DeLay fundraiser wrote in a memo prospecting for donors to Delay's , Texans for a Republican Majority  (TRMPAC).

   
, but maybe it looks a lot different when you're on the BFEE payroll and it's your job to help crooked Republicans and attack Democrats.

Voting Rights:    Move Left

Counties Buy Expensive Electronic Machines, and Then Create Long Lines by Combining Precincts to Make Up the Cost

Most don't print a voter-verifiable paper ballot, and therefore these machines allow elections to easily be rigged.

Some electonic machines do print a voter-verifiable paper ballot, but even then most voters don’t check the printout anyway, and so there is still room for rigging.

Optical-scan (fill-in-the-oval) ballots and plain paper ballots are superior for this reason: voters inherently check an optical-scan ballot or a paper ballot.

Electronic voting machines are also bad because they're the most expensive of these options.

political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC).

, but maybe it looks a lot different when you're on the BFEE payroll and it's your job to help crooked Republicans and attack Democrats.