Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

Let's remember: President Obama supports nuclear power (despite the leak and cover-up at Vermont Yankee which has a decades-long record of cover-ups) and off-shore drilling (despite...well, you know: The President is down in Louisiana for one of his photo-op opportunities -- does this guy ever stop campaigning?)

PBS ran a fine documentary about U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink, who co-authored Title IX banning gender discrimination in education.

Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority

However, it was disingenuous, as when it showed her attempt to introduce an amendment ameliorating Newt Gingrich's CONTRACT ON AMERICA hit on welfare recipients, it was portrayed it as a Sissyphian battle of liberals against "mean" and heartless Republicans, FAILING TO SHOW THAT IT WAS BILL CLINTON, A DEMOCRAT, WHO SIGNED THE REPUBLICAN'S WELFARE REFORM BILL INTO LAW. Clinton was determined to run up a big win in 1996 (he failed to get a majority), so he signed off on welfare reform.

(Can anyone believe that -- unlike Harry Truman -- Clinton and now Obama have their eye on a huge, multi-million, nine-figure payoff in their post-Presidency years when they go about policy-making? Jimmy Carter might have been wrong -- he was a conservative, after all, despite his post-Presidency stands -- and a political incompetent, but he wasn't a whore.)

We have one party, the Republicrat Party, with two wings: hard-right (GOP) and center-right (Democrats). We should be spending out time in an effort, akin to the Progressives at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th centuries, to bring about real democracy in America. It can't be done in an 18th Century "Republic" created specifically to curb democracy and keep an oligarchy in power. Otherwise, we're just joining in the fugue that made Reagan and Bush 43 possible.

What a sorry list of Presidents this country has had!