Standing Up On Their Hindlegs

And finding, yes, I think, a little spine in there. I'm referring to both Obama and the Democrats in Congress.

Obama insists on tax increases for the wealthy, including his Buffett Rule, that millionaires should pay taxes at the same rate as the middle class. He came out with a surprisingly muscular jobs bill, although it is still far from enough. And then he issued a veto threat (his first?): against any super-committee budget agreement that doesn't include tax increases as well as cuts to programs. His proposal actually is estimated to come 40% from tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, 60 % from expenditure cuts.

Republicans for months have been insisting that: "you can't raise taxes in a recession." Nor on "job creators," their euphemism for the stinking rich, so Obama's position is no longer compromise; it's confrontation. It's as if somebody finally got to him and said: "They'll compromise with you only if it'll guarantee their chances of defeating you in 2012. They're not sincere; give up trying.

Maybe he's given up trying. The Republicans, especially the House backbenchers are every bit as crazy as the radical Republicans after Lincoln's assassination. It's definitely better to show Americans what they really are.

Which brings us to the US House Democrats: they voted against the short-term budget, and so did enough sane Republicans that the government could shut down beginning next Tuesday.

Sane to shut down the government? Democrats?

What the Democrats were voting against was the insistence by the Republican majority that, counter to all past practice, disaster relief should be "paid for" by cuts to other programs. A program Republicans were going to cut was for developing more highly efficient vehicles: it was already creating jobs and was highly popular.

Now, Speaker Boehner is going to have to find a majority, not among the radical cutters, but among the sane. Insisting that disaster relief has to be "paid for," is like saying: "If I help him, I'll have to take the money from you." That's not going to be very popular.

With accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, and Republican crazies denying that humans have anything to do with climate change (it's just sunspots), disaster relief may become our new growth industry. But if you're going to accelerate disasters, at least you should help out the victims. The polluting companies and their shareholders should fund disaster relief from their excessive profits, even if the Kochs, et al deny any responsibility.

The debt-deficit mania, the austerity abroad, military stalemate, the increasingly polarized (and irrational) politics both in the US and in Europe spell rapid decline, not just of the American Empire but of any kind of western pre-eminence.

We do still have a chance to turn things around: Democrats standing up on their hindlegs is a start.