A letter to update Abe Lincoln

Open Letter to Abraham Lincoln:

Dear Mr. President:

It's been quite awhile since we've heard from you and I thought it might be a good time to bring you up to date on your party (Now old, but hardly grand these days.). Sadly, you would not recognize it, even though local pretenders still hold Lincoln Day dinners in a blatant annual exercise of identity theft. Whatever works for a night out, I guess.

Would it be too much to ask the Lincoln Day hosts what attributes are shared with you today? Yes, I guess it would.

You have been remembered throughout the years - even in a few textbooks in South Carolina and Georgia - as a great leader who kept the Union from dividing. How times have changed! A new generation of Republican governors is now plotting at several levels with plans that not only divide their constituents but divide us as a means of conquering the unions themselves. Rapacious members of your party, from Washington to state capitals, have created such havoc that the deep political wounds to the national interest will linger for many years to come.

I'm sure that you recognize the ninjas among us today with their talk of states rights, nullification and secession that is making the rounds. John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis would have felt quite at home with this gang, right?

But there's more to illustrate that despite your heroic efforts at governance in troubled times, the GOP is giving up its soul daily with scandalous theatrics that have nothing to do with how we live together as the Republic that you saved at your own peril. Yesterday, Rep. Peter King of New York staged a reprehensible McCarthy-like hearing in congress that singled out one group of Americans as the enemies of the people. Peter King, for God's sake, the devout supporter of the IRA across the ocean. The show trial against Muslims was such a pathetic political farce that it should have embarrassed every American while serving to dishonor all of the Tea Party- inspired robots on Capitol Hill.

There was nothing to be gained from it in meeting the challenges of modern terrorism. It was strictly for show, and nothing at all was learned from it. How shameful, don't you think, Mr. President?

You have also missed the clinical madness of several Republican presidential pretenders. Let me update you.

Mike Huckabee, a former preacher mining his audiences along the yellow brick road, has tried to associate President Obama with a Mau Mau childhood. And Crazy Guggenheim (aka Newt Gingrich) ludicrously explained his adulterous married life (on the Christian Broadcasting Network, no less) on forces that were well beyond his control. He said his powerful libido was partly driven by his deep passion for his country. He was standing in front of big American flag when he said it.

And up in Wisconsin, the billionaire-owned governor, Scott Walker, is proudly proclaiming a victory on the backs of public worker unions, fibbing that it was all about budget deficits. From all that I have read about you, Mr. President, I'm convinced you were a sensitive man, quite conscious of the welfare of other human beings. If you were here to see this fellow Walker, you might agree with me that he is a deadpan with motionless eyes who never makes eye contact with anybody else. It's creepy, don't you think?

Finally, since every Scatterbrained Republican on the TV news each night is considered to be presidential (dead) timber, there's a gal up in Minnesota, Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has lowered herself to be the queen of the congressional Tea Party Caucus. It is her right of passage to Fox News and other right-wing asylums(and you think you had it bad!) where she can pursue her certainty that President Obama is the capo di tutti capi of a gangster government.

I should leave you for now, Mr. President. It's too depressing to continue. I want to tell you however, that I will best serve your honorable leadership by staying away from those Lincoln Day Dinners. They have become nothing more than show trials, too. Meantime, you and I can both ask of these troubled troublemakers: Is that all you've got?

Respectfully,

Abe Zaidan , AKA Grumpy Abe

Kasich-Walker: Euphoric union busters

"This is the our moment to change the course of history!" - Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker

Those heady words were the governor's boast to a man on the phone that he had been duped into believing was his billionaire benefactor, David Koch. Such hubris has marked those Republican governors and lawmakers who have put on fright masks to alarm the voters that their states will perish unless budget deficits are erased by summarily ending collective bargaining by public unions.

Such fairy tales, however, disguise the real reason that public unions have been targeted with unsupportable math. It's naked union-busting and I would give the GOP gang at the statehouse more credit for authenticity if they came flat out and said so. But that would blow their cover for the longer-range scenario in play. President Obama will be running for reelection in 2012 and his Republican rival will need all of the help he or she can get to fulfill his opponents' goal that has been on the clock since he was sworn in.

Now that we are past the Academy Awards rites, the attacks on mostly Democrat-friendly unions will be one of many top-billed theatrical narratives short of impeachment (but Newt Gingrich may try it anyway). Still worst-laid plans often go awry. Gov. Walker woke up this week to new polls that show him falling into minus-territory with the Badger voters for his Rambo role in this.

It's even worse in Ohio, whose wisdom-less governor and legislature will soon give us an even harsher restriction on public unions. Unlike Walker's gambit, John Kasich has no problems including police and firefighters in the repeal of collective bargaining. By all accounts, he is expected to win this one, if not with the public, at least with his Republican Sugar Daddies. (Walker says he talks to Kasich every day.) This is a high- stakes maneuver, folks. Next on the gallows: closed union shops. Talk of right-to-work is in the air.

Disclosure: Years ago I joined a newspaper staff that had the option of not joining the American Newspaper Guild. Several staffers decided to play nice to impress the boss and didn't join. However, whatever was earned in a new contract by dues-paying members also was awarded to the non-joiners. I didn't think that it was fair at the time, and nobody can tell me why it would be fair now.

I suspect the collective bargaining ploy will haunt Republicans who support it for some time. For younger Republicans with long-range political ambitions they may win the battle today but lose the war in the next chapter of their careers. That's something they might want to consider.

Tea Party rebels upstaged by the one in Egypt

HOW INCONSIDERATE of the Egyptian protesters to hog up all of the precious TV time when the Tea Party rebels stormed Washington to take their country back. The mainstream media gave the conservative gathering's opening night rites such scant attention you could wonder why they didn't try to persuade Richard Engel to come home for the only true revolution.

The only thing absent from the throng of 10,000 saviors were fifes and drums and a tribute to Betsy Ross. Oh, Sarah Palin,too. She is so confident of her ascendancy in the public venues that she decided to stay away from this C-PAC to tend to her financial empire. Way to go, Sarah!

From the snippets I picked up of the calls to arms, the speakers obsessed on such things as President Obama's socialism, the delusion that he descended from the Montezumans, and that health care reform will lower the average life span of Americans by 20 years. (Think of the fogies on Capitol Hill that it would eliminate!) Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an unintended humorist, said he has a plan to defund ObamaCare. You will be hearing King's name often in a walk-on role in the months leading to the next election.

For these circuses, you merely have to round up the usual subjects to make it a worthwhile night on the town. Michele Bachmann was the keynote speaker, taking great delight in her every word. My favorite, as always, was Newt Gingrich, who for reasons that I can ony partly explain, reminds me of Jackie Gleason's pal, Crazy Guggenheim. Some of my friends might disagree, saying he more closely resembles Crazy Joe Davola of the Seinfeld cast. Gingrich never seems to be talking to anybody in particular as his words wander off into the atmosphere with ease.

I should mention, too, that along came Donald Trump with a surprise appearance that drew a crowd when he said Ron Paul couldn't win. He could have added the names of several others on the scene.

Finally, one of the Tea Party's major architects, Glenn Beck, remained in his classroom with all of the scribbled blackboards, grieving that America will be consumed by a new World Order while Obama joins the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Chinese Communists, whatever. "If you want to call me crazy," Beck babbled, "call me crazy." OK. I will.

P.S. Watch for the delirium over a straw poll at the conference for the presidential candidates. I predict the straw will win.

She's not even stopping to take a breath

SARAH PALIN is America's leading growth industry. To those of you who have tired of hearing the name, she's only getting started. The New York Times, which is not usually given to superlatives to political pop stars, has already described her as a "booming...media empire." That seems a bit excessive. Media empires tend to boom anyway.

Still, Sarah is never content to rely only on a wink and a nod in her 24/7 quest for the presidency. She has her own TV series, sort of a travelogue on the wonders of Alaska, where she spends as little time as possible. She is on Rupert Murdock's payroll as a chirping insider on the Fox News of the day. She is a mainliner at right-wing rallies. And her daughter Bristol found her way onto "Dancing with the Stars" to finish a dubious third-place in the finals, outlasting purported better dancers for TV ratings-sake.

Oh, in her spare moments she writes books. For some reason, she is said to prefer California for her literary endeavors. She will begin a national tour, including a stop-off in a small town in politically-hot Iowa, for her latest tome, "America by Heart"" - a wispy title that is sure to become a best-seller among all of her heart-felt disciples. It didn't hurt that the advance notices from HarperCollins, her publisher, describes it as a "highly personal testament to her deep love of country, her strong roots in faith, and her profound appreciation of family." (She will doubtless leave her affection for Babe Ruth, Shirley Temple and the Durants' voluminous 10-part history of civilization for her next effort.)

Nevertheless, HarperCollins seems to have touched the traditional native emotions of Americans with its clever way of saying "God, mother and country." That squares nicely with her own boast that she is doing the work of God.

By now Palin, has surely moved ahead of some of the other presidential sketches such as impossible dreamer Newt Gingrich, deep south governor Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee. Poor Mike has already warned the other so-called contenders for the crown that Sarah might "run away" with the nomination, and very well could be. I can't imagine Newt Gingrich tugging at a kayak in the Alaskan wilds and Barbour scaling a deadly cliff for a travelogue. For that matter it would be unseemly for Huckabee, a man of God, to beat a convulsing and bloodied fish in front of a movie camera.

What seemed impossible after she helped shatter John McCain's dream of the presidency, now seems quite doable for a tireless, self-absorbed, heavily-promoted agent of promise for a staggering nation - at least among her wing of the Republican Party. Her GOP opponents are taking notice. And some are already wincing, "It's scary....Very scary."

Grassroots? Where are the roots?

Derided by elitists as  phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous..." - Karl Rove

A FEW NIGHTS ago   I had dinner with a  fellow who said his paycheck is a bit healthier these days because of the tax cuts arriving via the Obama Administration.  He said others in his company had experienced the same benefit. No one was prepared to make a down payment on a new yacht or a Lear jet, but all had more dollars  in their pockets.  Would anybody deny that these income tax cuts embraced all middle income taxpayers from California to New York? 

Well, yes. Indeed, if you listened to the rants on tea-party day, the President's policies are drenching all Americans with steep federal tax increases.   Karl Rove, a political survivor whose wallet will never deny him a good meal enhanced by a job with the Fox megaphone,  insists America is entering a new phase when the common folks aren't going to put up with runaway "tax-and-spend government".    Republicans like the sound of tax-and-spend because it has been around on their calling cards since the days of Herbert Hoover. Meantime, Republican presidents have spent and spent.  Or didn't they tell you that? 

Rove and his cohorts, who slammed us with eight years of George Bush,  are in denial.  They have no options left but to tell us, when the occasion calls for it, that Thursday is Saturday and Monday is Wednesday, and the dark spot on the moon is a wayward cow. Now they are selling "spontaneous " tax revolts that would be quite agreeable to winning elections for their brand of conservative Republicans down the road.   

Spontaneous?    For Rupert Murdoch's Fox News,  such imagined impromptu tea bagging was such a seductive thought to rabble-rouse that the  station's incendiary talk show hosts sold it endlessly to their  audience  with the vigor of those bombastic used-car commercials.  Joining the "grass-roots" assault on the White House was an old pro at this sort of nonsense:  Dick Armey, the former Texas congressman who is now the head of an outfit called FreedomWorks, another of the right-wing enterprises that confuses patriotism with Wounded Knee.  

All of the old crowd were out there sellin' their wares:  Newt Gingrich, whose curse we must bear because he has yet to find a job that will get him entirely out of the way; Phil Gramm, an inspired deregulator, a vice chairman of UBS (which is being investigated for serious tax fraud)  and a super-rich Texan, who got his share of income as a senator from oppressed taxpayers;  Tom DeLay, another discredited Texan  who smiles painfully when  Chris Matthews toys with DeLay's loopy invasions of reality.    

If there were anyone big enough to lead a fragmented McParty these days, he or she would promote a series of Smart Parties around the country that would begin with the premise that nothing is working for the GOP's good these days, so maybe it ought to consider something more sensible as the loyal opposition.   At the moment it is nothing more than a composite of silly free-lancers on the right who have kidnapped the GOP as their own private plantation where they grow peculiar ideologies from barren soil.  A party cannot survive with the wealthy alone.  

So be alert when you see grassroots as the key to the party's revival.  If  the tea parties were the domain of the future look of the party - white Obama-haters with Hitler-Obama posters - the slugs have eaten the roots and converted the lawn into a rollup carpet.  

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