Revolution In The Air ?  

Crikey has a look at the upset Republican victory in MAssachusetts over the anointed heir to Ted Kennedy - The GOP: They’re baaack. It looks like any hope Obama had of making any real changes has disappeared entirely (not that he appeared to be trying particularly hard).

“The upset of the century,” claims George Stephanopoulos of the loss of the Kennedy ancestral seat of Massachusetts in the US Senate. As I write, it is almost certainly lost. With it goes the Democrats filibuster-proof control of the Senate and, despite protestations, health-care reform. The market is already viewing Big Pharma and managed care as winners, while health-care stocks that have risen in expectation of reform look shaky. Wait until the deluge.

But again the great divide is evident. While the mainstream media is busy inventing all manner of reasons for this unthinkable defeat — I expect the poor weather will soon join the list — the net-roots sees this as a simple rejection of the political class that rules the US. Which is why the mainstream media can’t see what’s happening as it, of course, is the ruling political class.

The Kennedy heir Martha Coakley is already ducking bricks, including abuse for forcing President Obama from his desk to pound the Boston flesh when he should be saving Haiti and seeing the health-care package through. But, on the later count, there can be no package without that Senate seat. And the criticism of Coakley is thin. She is but an Attorney-General who was seemingly the right woman for the Kennedy mantle — cut from the cloth of the established establishment — the perfect loser in the current environment of a pox on all your parties. I suspect Kennedy himself might have had trouble holding his seat.

Luckily for the Republicans, who doubted they had a chance at taking a seat Ted Kennedy had held for 47 years, they nominated a nobody called Scott Brown who drove a truck — a fact the Democrats somehow allowed to become an issue. Naturally Brown, equipped with political advisers as the Republicans smelled not blood but a bloodbath, drove at their behest to Wall Street, where he somehow managed to park.

It wasn’t a huge issue but it played well — the message presumably was that sophisticated people from places such as Boston were not represented by folks who drove trucks. Kennedy sure didn’t drive a truck.

The shell-shocked mainstream media better get used to it, for there are many shocks to come. That the Republicans had the sense to see “truck” and “Wall Street” and bring the two to one was clever indeed. But I suspect the election was long lost. The scattered polls —  the ones with the little dots that seem the best gauges — already had Brown well ahead. Ten percent and climbing.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul, a Republican of the grand old party tradition, explained what was happening in a speech he gave this week outlining what he thought of the current political and economic system. I saw no mention of it in the US MSM but it sure made the internet rounds.

“Could it all be a bad dream, or a nightmare? Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? It's surreal; it's just not believable. A grand absurdity; a great deception, a delusion of momentous proportions; based on preposterous notions; and on ideas whose time should never have come; simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; insanity passed off as logic; grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; evil described as virtue; ignorance pawned off as wisdom; destruction and impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; violence, the tool of change; preventive wars used as the road to peace; tolerance delivered by government guns; reactionary views in the guise of progress; an empire replacing the Republic; slavery sold as liberty; excellence and virtue traded for mediocracy; socialism to save capitalism; a government out of control, unrestrained by the Constitution, the rule of law, or morality; bickering over petty politics as we collapse into chaos; the philosophy that destroys us is not even defined.

We have broken from reality--a psychotic Nation. Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. Money does not grow on trees, nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits.

We're now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people's money, exorbitant taxation, deficits of trillions of dollars--spent on a failed welfare/warfare state; an epidemic of cronyism; unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth.

A central bank that deliberately destroys the value of the currency in secrecy, without restraint, without nary a whimper. Yet, cheered on by the pseudo-capitalists of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, and Detroit.

We police our world empire with troops on 700 bases and in 130 countries around the world. A dangerous war now spreads throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Thousands of innocent people being killed, as we become known as the torturers of the 21st century.

We assume that by keeping the already-known torture pictures from the public's eye, we will be remembered only as a generous and good people. If our enemies want to attack us only because we are free and rich, proof of torture would be irrelevant.

The sad part of all this is that we have forgotten what made America great, good, and prosperous. We need to quickly refresh our memories and once again reinvigorate our love, understanding, and confidence in liberty. The status quo cannot be maintained, considering the current conditions. Violence and lost liberty will result without some revolutionary thinking.

We must escape from the madness of crowds now gathering. The good news is the reversal is achievable through peaceful and intellectual means and, fortunately, the number of those who care are growing exponentially.

Of course, it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that I'm seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so. But just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-distant future.”