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“Waste, Fraud, and Abuse” has long been a battle-cry for the Grand Old Party when describing government.  So now may be the time to turn that phrase on them.

GOP Waste = $24 Billion wasted in the cost to our economy in the last three weeks of government shutdown and debt-ceiling brinksmanship.

GOP Fraud = A false premise told to the country that the shutdown/brinksmanship would defund/delay Obamacare, when the Affordable Care Act is primarily funded through mandatory funding not discretionary funding.  Obamacare cannot be de-funded, and won’t be delayed unless the president and Democrats themselves  decide to delay elements of the law in order to make it more effective.

GOP Abuse = Actual harm done to the economy with a cut of 0.6% off 4th Q GDP growth, the credibility of the United States of America questioned internationally, and jobs growth lost with falling consumer confidence causing businesses to pull back on hiring.

Cable TV seems to be primarily discussing the harm that the GOP has inflicted on themselves politically.  We are hoping that the facts of the actual damage done to the United States of America will be highlighted as well.

The extremists in the GOP are willing to do damage to the nation in order to try to advance their own agenda, even in the face of the reality that their goals are not achievable through threats and hostage-taking.  If they are honorable people, and just didn’t understand the ramifications of their actions … then we will soon know that.

If they didn’t mean to inflict pain on the country, then they won’t repeat these brinksmanship actions.  If they do it again after the first of the year, when both the Continuing Resolution on the budget and raising the Debt-Ceiling will again be up for decisions  … then we will know that they just plain want to harm the economy in order to try to harm the president.

Then we’ll know that they hate the president more than they love our country.

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THREE OUT OF FOUR AMERICANS DISAPPROVE OF THE GOP’s HANDLING OF THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!

The Grand Old Party seems to be on a path to party self-destruction.  Oh, they may hang on for a decade or more but eventually the Republican Party is either going to move back to the political center, where the American people actually are in their thinking, or they will be taken over by their fringe-wingers and cease to be serious players in American politics.

The Huffington Post lays out the current state of GOP reality in a terrific article that spells out America’s bad mood and growing lack of confidence in the Republican Party.  According to an ABC/Washington Post poll released Monday the American people are horrified with the performance of one of the nation’s two major parties.  And this spells big trouble for the GOP.

The Democratic Party is more and more in line with the center of American political thought, while the GOP continues to bleed national support.  Esquire explains in, 13 Things That Define the New American Center that the American center holds the majority.  There are major areas of agreement in the center of our politics: Same Sex Marriage; Abortion Rights; Separation of Church and State; support for Background Checks for Guns; and Increasing the Minimum Wage.

And now, at the cost of $300 million a day, the GOP shuts down our government (with truly weak and confusing reasons) and threatens to throw our nation into defaulting on our debt.  Default will mean having our credit rating downgraded again — it was last downgraded when the GOP threatened default in 2011 — and will result in spiking interest rates for the American people and businesses.  Economists overwhelmingly predict that an American default on our debt will plunge our nation  back into recession.

It’s hard to know just where this current crisis is going to land us.  The American people are basically optimists, and most of us (including Wall Street!) continue to believe that what we’re currently seeing is gamesmanship being played out in Washington, and that it will stop in time to avoid too much damage to the country.  But, maybe not.

It has become pretty clear that the GOP has no intention of permitting our economy to grow in a healthy way.  They have put up roadblocks at every turn.  They have insisted on economic austerity, long after even Europe has abandoned the misguided idea as a failure; they refuse to fund investments in our future economy such as infrastructure and education; they continue to defend the discredited theory of Trickle-Down economics by insisting that we cannot ask the super wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.

But we’re now in an even lower place politically, when the majority of lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans both, do not want default or shutdown … but appear helpless to stop the minority of Tea-Publicans in the House of Representatives from plunging the nation into dangerous territory.

American Democracy cannot survive when a small minority of House members, acting as domestic terrorists along with their special interests on the right, can halt progress in our nation by threatening the nation with devastation if they don’t get laws overturned that they don’t like.  That is not Democracy.

Maybe it is time for the President to give history a real legacy for his presidency.  If the GOP’s determination to institutionalize Congressional gridlock cannot be broken to allow for economic recovery, then perhaps the President needs to instead define his place in history as the President who saved our Democracy — by standing up to the bullies in the House and affirming that America will not be ruled by a minority of rabid extremists.

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We have been off-line for some time due to technical difficulties.  We will be resuming our commentary shortly, if there is an American government left standing.

What do the two extremely consequential Supreme Court decisions this week have in common? In one decision we have a basic gutting of the most important section of the Civil Rights Act, and in the other we have the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act — leaving many Americans scratching their heads. The decisions appear to be liberal in the striking down of DOMA, and conservative in striking down the key section of the Voting Rights Act.

But the liberal/conservative lens is the wrong one to be using to view these momentous Supreme Court decisions. What they actually have in common is that they both take power away from the federal government, and give it to the states. Under these decisions all states now have the right to establish their own individual voting requirements, and now have the right to establish their own marriage standards.

The practical effect of these “states rights” Supreme Court decisions is to empower states to both discriminate against minorities in voting laws, and to also empower those states that have codified marriage equality. But both decisions support the basic battle cry of the old Confederacy: STATES’ RIGHTS!

Make no mistake, the Conservatives on the Robert’s Court intend to curb the power of the federal government and turn the UNITED States of America into a loose confederacy of states!

Don’t be lulled by the “appearance” of a liberal Court decision — our courts are at risk and the meaning of America is on the line.

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.

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We can feel it … can’t you? Just as Ronald Reagan turned the country to the hard-right, Barack Obama is turning the country to the center-left. It just doesn’t seem fast enough or far enough for many on the left —and impatience abounds. But, it is happening, while Conservatives are floundering around in the past.

What a pleasure to witness our nation moving into a new future of pragmatism and sensible, logical problem-solving. It feels a lot like watching a child grow up — from magical thinking to maturity.

On almost every issue from wars, raising taxes, marriage equality, immigration reform, women’s right to control their own family planning, and yes —- even on guns — America is leaving the old and tired ideas behind.

It’s important to remember that our nation didn’t get to this place overnight. It took over 30 years for Reaganism to take hold and turn Americans into “rugged individualists” — or as I like to call us, the “greed is good individualists!”

Progress won’t always be even. Sometimes it will be really fast, as in the new consensus view on marriage equality. Sometimes it will be very slow, as it most likely will be on gun-safety.

But, it is happening, and it’s really nice to be able to acknowledge that!

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Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are closely linked in the minds of both Conservatives and Liberals — on both sides of “the pond.” The two served as heads-of-state at the same time in the 80’s, and together they transformed both nations by instituting radical free-market economic theories.

As America observes the death of Margaret Thatcher and the predictable articles lauding her tenure, we must also take a good look at the results of her austerity, union-busting, and privatization policies. Great Britain is today suffering the consequences of her misguided leadership, and America is still paying a huge price for Reaganism.

Both Thatcher and Reagan cut unions off at the knees, which combined with their massive tax breaks for the wealthy, led directly to the beginning of the great income disparity both countries are now suffering. Income disparity has huge negative impacts on nations economies, according to The International Monetary Fund.

For really good assessments of the reign of Margaret Thatcher as England’s Prime Minister, check out this article on msnbc.com , and this one at New York’s Daily Intelligencer.

Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan drug their respective countries into extreme conservatism, and both nation’s are paying the price today.

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Our nation’s level of rising income inequality started in the 1980s with the GOP “theory” of Supply Side Economics — otherwise known as “Trickle Down Economics.” Their theory asserts that if taxpayers give the wealthy and corporations huge tax cuts and tax havens, that the bounty produced for the 1% will somehow “Trickle Down” to everyone else and that the entire nation will prosper.

Clearly that theory did not work. There are a multitude of charts and studies that thoroughly de-bunk this idea. And, our own observations and experience tells us that IT DID NOT WORK! Wealth trickled UP, and our nation’s debt ballooned.

But, what we ALL need to understand is that the Republican Party is still advocating for this failed economic policy … and they are actually Doubling-Down on Trickle Down. The Ryan Budget cuts taxes for corporations and the wealthy — it cuts taxes for the affluent to even deeper levels from where they are now, which are already the lowest they’ve been in decades.

THE GOP IS ONLY PROMSING MORE OF THE SAME OLD VOO DOO ECONOMICS!

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RISING INCOME INEQUALITY

It’s easy to see that a massive wealth transfer began in America in the 1980s. The logical conclusion is that Reaganomics, a.k.a. Trickle Down Economics, has dramatically harmed our country.

Eventually, the 1% will be forced to face the masses and explain just why it is fair for them to be raking in the overwhelming majority of the economic gains, while everyone else is living paycheck to paycheck.

Check out this Forbes article, “Average America vs The One Percent.”

Forbes tells us that, there is a fallacy about hard work: “It’s a common belief in America that all people have the same opportunity for success as the top 1 percent. Most people consider success to be a by-product of hard work, and hard work is something that Americans are extremely familiar with. In fact, Americans have increased productivity by 80 percent since 1979; unfortunately, their income hasn’t risen accordingly, if at all.”

The New York Times reported in October 2012, “Income inequality has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression and the recession has done little to reverse the trend, with the top 1 percent of earners taking 93 percent of the income gains in the first full year of the recovery.”

The question is: What will it take to make them face up to America’s economic inequality? And, what will it take to force them to face the fact that income inequality produces a weaker economy for all of us? Here’s another great Forbes article on how damaging it is to the economy for this income inequality to continue, “How Income Inequality Is Damaging the U.S.”

In the long run, our nation’s elite are thinking short-term. And … one day, maybe sooner rather than later, the masses will demand an answer. Will the 1% be able to handle that?

WHAT WILL THEY SAY? “LET THEM EAT CAKE!” ???

“First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” So said Margaret Thatcher, the first woman Prime Minister of England. Eugene Robinson wrote a wonderful column this week in The Washington Post, comparing the transformational English leader Margaret Thatcher to our own Barack Obama.

Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister from 1979 – 1990, when Ronald Reagan was President from 1981 – 1989, and the two of them were on the front lines of the new Conservatism … they were the advocates for cutting taxes, a tough foreign policy, and were the pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-boot-strap kind of leaders.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were both transformational leaders. They moved their respective countries drastically to the right politically. And, both countries are still paying the price for that “experiment” today. Trickle-down economics did NOT work. Aggressive foreign policy did not work. Abandoning the poor did not work. Conservatism has come up short.

But, Maggie was right on one score: First you win the argument, then you win the vote. And, Barack Obama is winning the argument … big time.

He’s won the tax debate, recent polls show that by wide margins the American people want taxes raised on the wealthy and on corporations. They don’t believe that giving huge tax breaks to the 1% will trickle-down money to them, because we’ve tried that and it didn’t!

Obama has won the “entitlements” debate. The American people overwhelmingly want Medicare and Social Security to stay intact and not be cut. They favor raising taxes to keep these popular programs as they are.

He’s winning the gun debate. Oh, progress will be incremental, and much slower than many of us would like, but we will win this argument, and there will be some restrictions on guns.

And, he’s been very persuasive on education issues, with overwhelming majority support for universal pre-school for four-year olds, for expanding Federal support for college and job training programs, and for raising standards for public schools.

Climate change, marriage equality, minimum wage, and so many left-of-center issues are polling with very high approval ratings among the American people.

YEP ~ FIRST YOU WIN THE ARGUMENT!