Before we all get too comfortable after watching our guy's speech kick the crap out of their guy's speech, let's all have a nice splash of cold water to the face...
Lobbyists Line Up to Torpedo Speech Proposals
Go read it. If you are under the delusion that our enemies are defeated, that they have given up, or that the legalized bribery and fraud known as "lobbying" that has dominated our government for the last generation has somehow become a thing of the past, you need to wake up.
We all do.
I'm not saying I'm the guy with the answers, and I'm not trying to call anybody out. But quite frankly, my perception is that we're all breathing our collective sigh of relief and recuperating from the campaign season, and we're now running down every rabbit trail we see after our favorite pet cause.
That won't do.
You'll be amazed how little that 75% approval rating means when it gets down to crunch time. Allow me a quote from the above article:
"We were surprised President Obama included farm payments in his speech," said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "But it is Congress where the rubber meets the road."
Mr. Stallman is exactly correct. Congress is also where our new President and our great progressive ideas can slam up against the rocky shoals of corruption and greed.
I believe in Barack. I trust him. I'm still not sure if that makes me a sap or not.
But I damn sure don't trust Congress to do right by the American people--not when it's inconvenient to their corporate masters.
I'm ready to fight. Hell, I'm ITCHING to fight.
But, like I said, I don't have all the answers. We seem to have a dozen different progressive groups for every conceivable issue, all asking for money and all duplicating each other's efforts. The "Organizing for America" website (the former Obama campaign website) doesn't seem to have much real organizing going on. I fear we are turning into the proverbial herd of cats, and I fear even more that we are going to wake up a year from now and find that we have lost a golden opportunity--that our one chance to change the world was stolen away from us while we thought we were winning.
So what do we do, Kossacks? What do we do to make sure change actually happens?
Brainstorming welcomed. I yield the floor.