One of the (many) problems I have with the Democratic Party and the leftists who love them is the inability to bring a gun to a knife fight.

There are fighters in the Democratic Party to be sure (though I can only think of two), but overall, their response to baiting and attacks by their conservative counterparts always carries a whiff of effete uselessness. It's as if Dems want to believe that they should be fair and balanced when dealing with those who tar and feather them. I keep waiting for the day they will unleash their fury and match Republican vitriol with some devastating attacks of their own.

Alas, that will be the proverbial cold day in hell. To whit: it wasn't that long ago that anyone who dared questioned the Bush Junta would immediately become questioned about his patriotism and mental health. Dems would attempt to brush that off, but the tactic, as ugly and cheap as it was and is, worked very well. If you didn't support Bush and our Iraqi Expedition, for example, you wanted the terrorists to win. You rooted for American deaths. You couldn't hate your country enough.

So, here we are with a Democratic president and a virtual Democratic lock on the Hill, but they still refuse to fight fire with fire. Dems appeal to their majority as proof that the winds of fortune have shifted in their favor. They like to use that abstract language ("the people") to make a concrete point. And as usual, they're failing.

Witness human pig Rush Limbaugh, speaking in front of a coven of assholes also known as CPAC, reiterating his desire for the president's plans for economic recovery to fail. He seems to delight in it as if receiving a lifetime supply of oxycontin and young Jamaican boys. But what do Dems do? They don't even bother to hurl deserved charges against him as being unpatriotic. Not one. That's the worst charge to make, and honestly, how isn't it true? What real American wants his country to fail? What true patriot would wish for Depression-like hardship to be visited upon people under a barrage of lies that America will no longer be recognizable after Obama gets his way?

I'll tell you what kind of people: unpatriotic scumbags. Conservative losers who never met a poor person they couldn't run over fast enough. Republican assholes who desire to resurrect the corpse of (tax-raising) Ronald Reagan and insist He was the Chosen One and the 1980s were the Golden Age of America. Their backwards, reactionary elitism is like watching French monarchy loyalists proclaim the goodness of Louis XVI's rule while starvation, poverty and misery blanket everything. Their hatred of their own countrymen is evident in their shitty, despicable attitudes about wanting the president to fail. And there you have conservatism and Republican values in a nutshell: they will fight to the last American to preserve their corrupt, reactionary ways. This is the core of their "philosophy," and their raison d'être.

If only the Dems and their leftist allies (who spent more time hating Hillary Clinton than they could ever attack their real enemies) would just grow the balls and attack these bastards.

Like I said, it will be a cold day in hell before that happens.

Well, it's all the rage, but here's a contrary thought: I want to work for AIG.

And why shouldn't I? What's going on there is the really the perfect crime: you need to pay millions of dollars in bonus money to the very people who took the company down, and the reason for this is because if you let them go, you will never be able to undo the damage. These people made the problem and we need them to solve the Gordian knot so let's sweeten the deal and give them a shitload of money.

Now, you might wonder if I'm willing to work there because I have criminal proclivities. No, I don't, but I do have a growing sense of distate for the hoi polloi, and I feel that now is the time to exploit this feeling by going into business. And what better business than anything dealing with the financial sector? After all, Rick Santelli gets famous for a rant on the trading floor where he called homeowners "losers" and gets rewarded for it. With him as my guide, I'm beginning to see that having contempt for people is a key trait to have if you want to get ahead in business. You need to slay the demon of morality and ethics and focus, focus, focus on the bottom line: what does this get me? Do you really think that the AIG folks had prayer circles each morning on how to better mankind? How to make people rich? Hell no! They sought to create a complicated, maze-like system that maximized their ability to make profits; that people who trusted them with their money is inconsequential to the larger goal of making some crazy loot.

Of course, we have some heavy-handed tsk-tsking from the Obama Administration about the use of taxpayer money for the AIG bonuses. Yeah, I'm recoiling in shame over it. And that brings me to another reason why I want to work for AIG: I might get yelled at by the muckety-mucks, but it's all just theater. And well-acted theater to boot: an "angry" Timothy Geithner "scolding" Edward Liddy who writes in a letter to the former how "distasteful" he finds the bonus payout, but nevertheless, as we are a country of laws and contracts, these payments must be honored.

Glad to see that the fabric of our republic rises or falls on contracts with crooks.

Thus, there is a lot of huffing and puffing and use of the word "outrageous" but you'll notice that nothing is going to change. Everyone is going to get their money, AIG will continue to whip it out and piss on the taxpayers and then look contrite when going back to Congress to ask for more money: "We're too big to fail" is their new slogan. And you'll notice that no one has said anything about renegotiating these contracts so that it doesn't happen again.

Just an oversight, I'm sure.

So I want to work for AIG because it embodies our financial system like no other, and quite frankly, I'm tired of playing by the rules. I want to make some serious money, and I don't mind taking yours to do it.

Now this is too funny.

With the Bush Administration, we had a cabal of folks who didn't give a shit what others thought, especially Democrats. They ran roughshod over everything, were successful at intimidating their opponents (and Democrats) and did exactly what they wanted to do. From the invasion of Iraq based on lies and damnable lies, to torture, Guantánamo Bay, you name it: these people got away with a lot of things and they weren't scared of anybody.

Our hapless media fucks assisted them every step of the way. The aforementioned Democrats couldn't find a Rent-A-Sac even if they wanted to. Sure, they pissed and moaned but really didn't do much.

Now, here we are barely two months into the Barack Obama Administration and then Dems can't stay on any script at all. The AIG bailout mess has compromised Obama badly: at this rate, you need a scorecard to keep track of all the declarations and backpedaling going on in Washington. Who knew about the bonuses and when did they know it? Our Media Glitterati have latched onto this story with all the gusto they did Monica Lewinsky. Now they find their backbones.

But here's the really funny part: for a country that had no problem coming up with legal memos to torture and declare anyone an "enemy combatant," it's suddenly turned all yellow over the legality of contracts. Fucking contracts. Are you shitting me here? We invaded another country, dropped billions of dollars with no true accounting of where it all went, set up torture sites in friendly countries in Europe and we're afraid of getting a fucking lawsuit from a bunch of greedy bastards?

Oh sure, you can say that it's all part of reclaiming the high ground after Bush. "We do things legally and with respect to institutions," is a phrase I'm expecting to float out of a White House staffer's mouth. This is all part of the openness and transparency of a new administration.

Bullshit.

How could Democrats stumble so badly on this? Are they still mental hostages to Republican thuggery that they could allow the head of their party to look like either a liar or an incompetent? How can this country suddenly be afraid of the (supposed) legal ramifications of not paying bonuses to a bunch of scumbags but do nothing about the Patriot Act? (Sorry, blogging your disatisfaction about the Patriot Act doesn't count.) I can't tell if this is all just farce or horribly bad comedy.

Here's the clicher: Republicans will dance a jig over all this for a long time to come. They're already setting up 2010 election jingles and talking points about it and the Democrats will probably do nothing to hit back. They'll just take it because being the court eunuchs has gotten rather comfortable for them during the past decade. Why stop now?