Tweet
Cicero . . .
How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us?
The Majority Leader of the United States Senate has abused our patience time and time again, the madness of his complicity in Republican treachery has mocked us for years. Well brace yourselves for more abuse, it’s far from over, there will be no limit to it as long as Harry Mason Reid presides over that travesty that used to be the United States Senate . . .
Through the drifting smoke of bipartisan battle, a hero can be seen, mounting his horse and drawing his sword. Wait . . . he’s dismounting . . . he forgot to put his boots on. OK. His boots are on now. He remounts his horse and draws his sword again. His Lordship, Harry of Nevada, is ready, he gives the command to advance, the sound of bugles echoes across the valley, and off they go, Lord Harry and his host of halfwit hussars, riding like the wind into C-Span glory . . .
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Complicity
Ride the Democrats.
Filibusters to the right of them,
Filibusters to the left of them,
Filibusters in front of them
Volleyed and thundered.
Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Complicity,
Ride the Democrats.
We interrupt this poem for a special announcement . . .
FDR . . .
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
When Democrats were actually Democrats, they gave us FDR and JFK, but now we have to settle for BHO. When he was planning his “presidency” in 2008, BHO talked about the crises so many working families were facing, about quiet storms, about the broken economic system that’s causing those quiet storms of anger and disillusionment. He’s a good talker, a very good talker, but he doesn’t listen worth a damn. Neither does Lord Harry. Except when Wall Street talks. BHO and Lord Harry always listen then, they listen to every word.
Because of all the economic treachery BHO and Lord Harry have aided and abetted as they’ve “negotiated” with McConnell and Boehner and Cantor and McCain and all the other Catilines in Washington, those quiet storms of the past few years won’t be quiet much longer. There have been too many betrayals, there’s been too much suffering, there are too many consequences piling up, the “economic recovery” is not going to last, the biggest storm this country’s ever seen is heading our way and there won’t be anything quiet about it.
Those Catilines are sailing right into it, but they don’t even see it. I don’t know when it’s going to hit, I don‘t know where it’s going to hit, I don’t know how high the waves are going to be, but I know one thing, when that storm hits full force, it’s going to be much too big for those centrist sailors and their little boat.
As the wind howls like a hammer, and the night grows rainy, democracy is like some raven, at my window with a broken wing . . .
21 Comments
Make that two broken wings.
Preach it, Brother Isaiah!
I will. We all will. Thank you, HotFlash.
Bravo, Isaiah; well said. Corporate governance is no longer viable but they press on because they don’t know any other way to be. Still, their age is showing and that will bring them down; it will. The center is brittle; it cannot hold. Spurious arguments do age and do become transparently odious even to the dullest of minds; it just takes a while but it will happen.
The great leveller in this country is that when the “unum” falters and fails, the “pluribus” triumphantly picks up the pieces. I think that process is hovering on the horizon, and just maybe the sun is deciding to rise in the west this next round.
Excellent post, Isaiah. The truth of it rings out, and must reach the ears or bones of those who still can trust Democrats with this final perfidy.
You’ll like to read this piece from 2008 by Pham Binh. A couple key paragraphs of many good and true ones:
Yes, the time will come. Echoing juliania:
Our job is to reach the hearts and minds of more of those will become the best. ;o)
“Our job is to reach the hearts and minds of more of those will become the best.”
Rather, you, who do reach hearts and minds in a time when all is under seige, you who tell it so plainly and poetically for those of us inclined to despair, who keep on keeping on – we know who you are – working to craft the music, keep it going, spur us on, to all of you like Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinth, we cling approaching the Beast.
You are the best.
Recommend!
Shoot, juliania. Remember elisemattu bringing the Edith Wharton quote?
T
You and the others of scrupulous ethics acting as undaunted champions for all our brothers and sisters (and the Rule of Law) are the candles; we’re just trying to be the mirrors. But…your words did make me weep, and hope will Isaiah, too.
LOL. There are two ways…
Thank you, juliania. That sun will rise for us. Corporate capitalism has an appointment in Samarra. The actions being taken to avoid the death of that system are instead ensuring the death of the system.
Very nicely said, Isaiah 88. I believe as you do. Recommended.
Thank you for the link and excerpt, wendydavis. Binh nails it. I’m in favor of replacing the Pledge of Allegiance with those epic lines from Yeats. If schools enlighten children and teach them how to think instead of just how to conform and obey, we could start solving society’s problems instead of just making them worse.
Very true, juliania. wendydavis is the best and she keeps getting better.
Thank you, timesthree.
You know it has to be too painfully obvious for a star from MSDNC to have such a negative story about a dim, I imagine the rest of the episode was probably 5 – 1 the other way to make up for it.
I remember just a few days ago the plethora of dim apologists being in favor of WS insider Mary-Jo White being nominated for SEC as being “the best that could be confirmed”, yet they seem strangely quite about this event and its implications and enablements.
When I read the FDR quote my immediate thought was Sharon Angle.
Marx told us that unrestricted Capitalism was a revolutionary force, the State Capitalism we have now seems to be revealing itself as more Stalinist every day. Hard not to “pay no mind to the man behind the curtain” when there’s no longer a curtain.
Rec’d
Nice piece. Reminds me a little of ‘Rusty1776′, who I miss.
Unfortunately, I have been hearing about this impending ‘Storm’ for 50 years. I work out among the day to day folks of this country. In an area that is pretty well educated, somewhat informed – as Americans go.
My observation? Still, for the most part, nobody knows anything and are not the least bit inclined to do anything.
I’ll tell you when the Storm is about to break. It’s when that contingent of my Facebook friends, the ones whose lives are absorbed by motorcycle meet-ups and NFL barbecues, baby showers and shopping excursions, – when those folks start posting that they feel something is coming, then yeah, the Storm might be on it’s way. Whatever form it takes. Until then, *yawn* just wake me when the thunder starts to roll.
Actually, I am rather impressed with how palpably disgusted Maddow is in this video. I stopped watching her a few years back when she devolved into little more than a Dem Party cheerleader.
Of course, she didn’t stray into the forbidden territory of explaining that this is how a 2 party dictatorship works – each party enables the other and makes sure there is always this faux 2 party tension and in the end nothing gets done unless it disempowers the 99% and enriches the 1%. And that the filibuster is one of the prime weapons in that process.
But she did hoot and holler and call out Reid, as he should be.
And Hey. The other day the Sierra Club, the ultimate Veal Penners, actually announced that for the 1st time in their history they were going to employ civil disobedience. They said they had tried everything else and it wasn’t working.
Whaddaya know. Maybe things are happening. A little.
Good quote from Binh.
In the aftermath of this filibuster fiasco I kept wondering. Where was Elizabeth Warren? She made a big deal out of filibuster reform. Where has Al Franken been?
The Democratic Party has been the Party where good ideas go to die and good people get subsumed.
Rachel et al are good sometimes, but as we know, there’s a limit to their criticism of Dems. This was a good piece, IMO, Rachel didn’t pull any punches.
Good comments, thanks blueokie.
Hi GDC707. I hear what you’re saying about the Storm. Waiting for it reminds me of a Lenin quote . . .
Those weeks when decades happen could come sooner than people think. Support for the current system is still broad but there’s deep discontent right under the surface. Wall Street is going to crash again, that will be the trigger event, IMO, and the Storm will be here.
A wonderful thought, Isaiah. Schools have become authoritarian factories that stifle creative learning and so often even the love of learning and natural curiosity. The increased corporatization of schools will have hideous outcomes, especially in minority and poor neighborhoods.
But silly, juliania was praising both of us for our posts; it was a collective ‘you’. And that’s a pip of a quote from Lenin. I have to agree: the stage is set.