KOCH BROTHERS ALLIES/BIG DONORS POUT OVER THEIR IMAGE

The Koch Brothers and their minions of moneybags are taking heat, so supporters, like USA Today, are trying to clean up their image by saying things like, "The American Dream is simply too far out of reach for far too many people." Now who the hell do they think made it unreachable? The administration of George W. Bush squandered this "Dream" started with Bill Clinton during his presidency, saying as late as June of 2014, the middle class is the key to ending poverty. Keep the middle class healthy and it will pull up the country. All the Koch Brothers and their followers are interested in is to build wealth in the upper 1% of incomes and to hell with the rest.

LIBERALS NEED TO WAKE UP AND DO THE RIGHT THING

In a recent article in The Nation, Eric Alterman is putting out a "Wake Up Call for Us Liberals." He starts by citing the dinner Barack Obama had with arch conservatives like George Will, William Kristol and others. It was a misplaced confidence the newly elected President had that the extreme right could temper its ideologies and work with the left. No such luck. Alterman explains why defining the differences in beliefs: "The primary difference between liberalism and conservatism, at least in theory, is that the latter is an ideology and the former isn’t." He continues with an observation from Lionel Trilling, ” Liberalism is a large tendency rather than a concise body of doctrine.” In other words, the Progressive is free to be...progressive. The conservative is narrowly limited by its ideologies. Our political dysfunction has several sources but one of the most important is allowing, "...conservatives to define the terms of debate at a time when conservatives have lost all sense of moral, intellectual and especially practical responsibility."

More on this later.

IS HILLARY CLINTON PROGRESSIVE ENOUGH FOR 2016?

The Hill blog has uncovered several emails that find considerable unrest among Progressives over Hillary Clinton's 2016 bid. These are influential voices that represent left-leaning liberals that feel they are not being heard. Activists, strategists and journalists, The Hill says the group includes prominent Democrats, Sierra Club officials, journalists who work for The Huffington Post and The Nation magazine, senior union representatives, leaders at the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and the president of NARAL. The frustration says she is, "too much of a hawk, too cozy with Wall Street, hasn’t spoken out enough on climate change, and will be subject to personal questions and criticisms, members of the group stated in the emails." The piece says she has ducked issues like the Keystone Pipeline and I would add to that gun control. When you look at Elizabeth Warren on all these issues, the Progressives find agreement.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TED CRUZ'S POLITICAL PLATFORM

Cruz's platform: "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim," by George Santayana

TED CRUZ LIKE BARRY GOLDWATER...NOT

You can imagine my astonishment when an Arizona newspaper journalist compared Ted Cruz with Barry Goldwater. Now I am a strict left side Progressive but I have tons of respect for Goldwater's style of politics, as well as the man himself. I was even there for his book signing of "Conscience of a Conservative" in Phoenix. And then I read on, it has to do with Goldwater's "crash and burn" presidential bid in 1964. Don't think the writer was portending exactly the same for Cruz but the likeness fits for me. A huge exception with Ted Cruz is Goldwater's hostility toward the religious right. There's more but in the context of this article, the whole thing sounds farcical.

FANATICISM IS INHERENT IN REPUBLICAN GENES

In his blog Robert Reich said, "The Only Way Left to Beat Republican Fanatics: Call Their Bluff and Go Over the Cliff." That was in 2012 when John Boehner couldn't convince the very right House Republicans to raise taxes even on millionaires. He added, "...that fits the fanatic's strategy exactly." In 2013, when Sen. (now Presidential candidate) Ted Cruz was instrumental in literally shutting down the government, one of his fellow Republican Senators in a meeting among several more Senators, including Cruz, said, “It was very evident to everyone in the room that Cruz doesn’t have a strategy – he never had a strategy, and could never answer a question about what the end-game was.” Yet the man still wants to be president.

WHY ARE PROGRESSIVES NON-VOTERS?

A 2007 Study found that non-voters are more economically liberal, preferring Barack over Mitt Romney 59% to 24%. Marginal voters, those affected by weather or election timing, are liberal. Among the 34 million registered to vote in 2010 midterms, 63.1% were Democrats. Liberals do benefit from high voter turnout, which can also be volatile. So, from this should we assume that liberals are lazy couch potatoes afraid of the rain who vote only when they see a crowd collecting at the polls?