Drawing: Faces #1281 - the moderates

By Jack Brummet

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"Shut It Down, America" - Let's take Howard Schultz's suggestion and close our purses and wallets

By Jack Brummet, Ethics Editor

and
Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

We could follow our earlier advice and "throw the bums out."  But we just might end up with a President Bachmann, or President Nader.  Or, we could take up Howard Schultz's suggestion and starve them out.  Eliminating all campaign contributions would seriously shake the pumpkin.

"This means not kicking the can anymore. It means reaching a deal on debt, revenue, and spending long before the deadline arrives this fall. It means considering all options, from entitlement programs to taxes." - Howard Schultz

illustration © 2011 by Jack Brummet

A "throw the bums out" movement won't really change anything, because politicians thrive on backbiting, sophistry, backlash, and factionalism.  But choking off the supply of cash to all politicians would surely have desired effect. It is the thing they fear the most.

Let's give it a shot.  In the words of Tina Fey, "Shut it down America!"

In his--now--widely distributed email dated today, Schultz wrote:

August 15, 2011

Dear Fellow Concerned Americans:

Our country is better than this.

Over the last few weeks and months, our national elected officials from both parties have failed to lead. They have chosen to put partisan and ideological purity over the well-being of the people. They have undermined the full faith and credit of the United States. They have stirred up fears about our economic prospects without doing anything to truly address those fears. They have spent a resource even more precious than the dollar: our collective confidence in each other, in the future, and in our ability to solve problems together.

As leaders in business, we have watched all this unfold, first with frustration and then with dismay. Like so many of our employees and customers, we are gravely concerned about the current situation. Today, with both humility and urgency, we propose to do something about it.

First, we aim to push our elected leaders to face the nation's long-term fiscal challenges with civility, honesty, and a willingness to sacrifice their own re-election. This means not kicking the can anymore. It means reaching a deal on debt, revenue, and spending long before the deadline arrives this fall. It means considering all options, from entitlement programs to taxes.

This is what so many common-sense Americans want. That is why we today pledge to withhold any further campaign contributions to the President and all members of Congress until a fair, bipartisan deal is reached that sets our nation on stronger long-term fiscal footing. And we invite leaders of businesses – indeed, all concerned Americans – to join us in this pledge.

We also believe in leading by positive example. And we believe that while the long-term fiscal challenge is serious, even more painful to millions of Americans today is the immediate crisis of jobs. Tens of millions are unemployed and underemployed. Right now our economy is frozen in a cycle of fear and uncertainty. Companies are afraid to hire. Consumers are afraid to spend. Banks are afraid to lend. Record levels of cash are piling up in corporate treasuries, idling. That cash is not being used to expand operations, train new workers, underwrite new ventures, or spark innovation.

The only way to break this cycle of fear is to break it. The only way to get the country’s economic circulatory system flowing again is to start pumping lifeblood through it. That is why we today issue a second pledge. Our companies are going to hire. We are going to accelerate growth, employment, and investment in jobs.

We do this because we want to set in motion an upward spiral of confidence. We are not waiting for government to create an incentive program or a stimulus. We are not waiting for economic indicators to tell us it’s safe to act. We are hiring more people now. We invite leaders of businesses across the country to join us in this pledge as well – and to bring their stakeholders into the effort. Confidence is contagious. The best thing we can do now is to spread it.

This is a time for citizenship, not partisanship. It is a time for action. We don't pretend that our two pledges are quick fixes. We just believe that in this moment of great uncertainty, the government needs discipline, the people need jobs – and leaders need to lead.

Our country is better than this. Let’s get things moving now.
Respectfully,

Howard Schultz

Other recent relevant posts on ATIT:
"Throw The Bums Out" - images from a quick web search
Throwing The Bums Out Does Not Mean Replacing Them With Teabaggers
"Throw the bums out!": more reflections on the deficit fiasco

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The Best Obama Speech Yet

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor



I liked BHO's speech last night; it was his best speech yet, because it was the hardest. I liked the plaintive (as opposed to soaring) tone, liked that he hit at what he inherited, ripped into the GOP leadership, as well as the Democrats and the bi-party electioneering/posing and factionalism. Change 2.0. We could still get it right.

From another President's state of the union:

"Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are... running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution."


- President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, in Idiocracy
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Clown Wars: Pablo Fanque reports on the factionalism, disarray, depression, hopelessness, and continuing losing prospects of The Republican Party

Click the Governor to enlarge

By Pablo Fanque
All This Is That National Affairs Editor

[Pablo Fanque's work appears in numerous journals, blogs, books, and at times, on the sides of buses and even scrawled in bathroom stalls and phone booths. After working as a community organizer for two years in southeast King County, near Seattle, he began his college education. After his expulsion from Harvard University in 1977, Fanque continued (and even completed) college while working in the publishing business, in San Francisco, New York City, and in the Pacific Northwest. Pablo's artistic output includes hundreds of paintings and drawings, including his monumental "Heads," consisting of 150 canvases, each with 16 or 96 portraits. He has completed, and is now revising his next book, "The King Begins To Falter." Fanque met Jack Brummet in 2004 at a rock show in Austin, Texas, and they have been friends, and collaborators, ever since.]

How can we analyze or understand the dissension, disarray, division, and decimation visited upon the Republican Party in the last year or two? When Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich emerge as the charming and likable voices of moderation and reason, you know the party has come off the rails. A simple enumeration of the [unelected] voices of the party tells the sad story:

Sean Hannity
Michael Steele (who surely will be shuffled out the door sooner rather than later)
Jon Voight
Rush "Oxy" Limbaugh
Liz Cheney

There are even a few elected Republican voices:

Sarah Palin
Haley Barbour (he's been visiting New Hampshire and Iowa already)
John Boehner
Tim Pawlenty
Mitch McConnell
Bobby Jindal (but let's face it, his pathetic performance in his state of the union rebuttal pushed him back into the wings)
John McCain

And then there are one-time elected Republicans, some of who hope to leap back into the fray, or even make the leap into The Oval Office:

Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich
Dick Cheney
Mike Huckabee (who feels like the front runner, along with Gingrich, and Governor Palin).
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appeared at a Republican congressional fundraiser Monday night, ending a long and drawn out will-she-or-won't-she mystery that, in the end, probably overshadowed the event and left the GOP even more frustrated and in greater disarray than before.

Palin -- the party's disastrous 2008 VP nominee--was originally scheduled to headline the annual Senate-House dinner. She was shunted aside in favor of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. After that, Governor Palin left the organizers hanging in the wind...even as late as Monday afternoon. [This is not the first time Palin has thrown a public tantrum over not being allowed to speak. Remember Election Night? Palin expected to give a speech, but soon learned that no losing VP candidate gives a speech on election night, particularly when they violated the VP Hippocratic oath--Do No Harm.] Let's face it. . .the GOP slapped a muzzle on the pitbull with lipstick. Last week, when it started to look like a real event, Palin's advisers told the RNCC she would be near Washington and would like to come. Uh-oh.

Republican officials involved in the discussions (who spoke on condition of anonymity--natch, because of the sensitivity of the matter), said Palin was invited to sit at a head table but would not be given the chance to speak. The GOP was worried that she might swamp, or out-maverick, Newt Gingrich. Granted, Newt isn't exactly a dynamo on the rostrum, but if you're sweating Governor Palin overshadowing you at a Republican dinner, well, friendo, your Presidential dreams are ashes.

Palin didn't like this turn of affairs one bit, and did not make clear whether she would refuse to attend, officials say. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, made a personal appeal over the weekend for her to attend and invited her and her husband, Todd Palin, to sit at the big boys' table.

Late Monday afternoon, Palin's aides informed the organizers that she and her husband would attend, although a spokeswoman for the governor's political committee would not confirm that.

Palin has her eyes on the White House in 2012. In March, the National Republican Congressional Committee, put out a news release saying that Palin would be the keynote speaker at the dinner--one of the party's largest fundraisers. Palin's representatives then weaseled, saying the governor wanted to make sure the event did not interfere with state business. Right.

It can't have helped Palin's cause that she is being accused of plagiarizing Dick Cheney's speeches (or that she is embroiled in a very public pissing match with David Letterman.) I don't know about that one. I've just always kind of assumed, when there is any content in her speeches and edicts, it was lifted from elsewhere. She is accused of snagging a substantial portion of a speech from Newt Gingrich--the man she will eventually run against in the primaries.
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