COFFEE BREAK 127

+ updated at 10:36am EST, Wednesday, January 20th, 2010, the first anniversary of President Obama's inauguration.

+ Thanks to The Witherspoon Society, I discovered "An Open Letter to David Brooks on Haiti" by Tom Driver and Carl Lindskoog of Union Theological Seminary in New York. I signed it. Here is the concluding paragraph: "During the Vietnam War an American officer famously stated that 'it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.' Today Haiti is virtually destroyed. The earthquake having done the hard part, Mr. Brooks, you think 'intrusive paternalism' will save it. Lacking a foundational understanding of Haitian history and culture, and bearing the familiar colors of American imperialism you and your ilk will do vastly more harm than good."

+ Truthdig offers "What Massachusetts Got Right" by Robert Scheer. Excerpt: "If he wasn’t prepared to make a breakthrough in health care, and that meant a reform program that would begin sooner rather than later, he should have put it on a back burner. The furor over a very unsatisfactory plan drew attention from the far bigger crisis concerning the meltdown of the nation’s economy. By accepting and indeed expanding the Bush administration’s strategy of throwing money at Wall Street, Obama ceded the populist label to the Tea Party Republicans who now pretend that a banking mess brought about by their radical deregulatory philosophy is not of their making."

+ In a huge upset in Massachusetts the Republicans picked up the Senate seat long held by Edward Kennedy who died last summer.  I suspect the main cause is the continuing recession.  The Democrats will be blamed for it now that they are in power even though it began under Bush and is largely the result of misguided Republican policies.  The Republicans won this seat by taking advantage of the fear and the anger and the frustration of the populace. 

As I recently said,

The last 30 years according to the Right wing: Reagan tripled the debt. Clinton’s fault. W tripled the debt. Obama’s fault.

The Right Wing has the money to make the people believe the big lie.