Annoying Email of the Day

 

Dear Karen,

Last November, we did something special: we took on the full power of the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, FOX News, and the energized Republican Right, and we re-elected President Obama.

How did it all happen? In The Center Holds, Jonathan Alter tells the epic story of an embattled President fighting back with the support of millions of us.

Buy yourself a copy and savor our historic victory!

Bob Fertik

This is the same Bob Fertik who co-founded the anti-Bush, anti-war organization called AfterDowningStreet.org (I still wear my ADS tee shirt occasionally, and my ADS sticker is still affixed to my old laptop.) This is the same Bob Fertik who, in 2009, called for the newly-elected Barack Obama to hold the Bush war criminals accountable for torture and worse. This is the same Bob Fertik who apparently hasn't noticed that "the man you re-elected" has not only embraced Bush's anti-democratic policies, he has expanded upon them. And that the man "we" re-elected raked in over $1 billion from kowtowing to the rich donor class, and that his re-election victory was wholly dependent upon that money paying for non-stop branding, advertising, and super-secret data mining.

Oh, and the fact that Mitt Romney was the greatest gift that the Wall Street Democrats could ever have asked for. Mitt Romney is the devil incarnate, and Obama is the devil in disguise. "We" chose the Satan Sandwich with the more appealing garnish. 

Incidentally, the Jonathan Alter book, based on the usual insider intrigue, sycophantic access and schmooze, is getting lukewarm reviews. (here, here, here ) I'd already decided to give it a pass after Maureen Dowd plugged it in a recent column. As I mentioned in my comment at the time, I'd call such discourse shallow were it not for the fact that whenever I read that kind of stuff, I feel like I'm suffocating in a deep hole, with no chance for escape.

The centrist cult center of the plutocrats that Alter serves so well may be holding, but millions upon millions of Americans are barely hanging on by a thread. And because six media companies now control 90% of everything we read, see and hear, Alter is getting the grand book tour star treatment. The true center cannot hold for very much longer. It's shrinking as fast as the polar ice, as almost all of the gains since the 2008 meltdown have gone straight to the top. A recent report from the St. Louis Fed reveals that the average household has only regained 45% of the wealth it lost since the beginning of our long depression. And put another way, via Pew Research," the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion, while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $0.6 trillion."

Yeah. It's a deep, dark, suffocating hole. It's the Class War. And yet here we have an erstwhile "aggressive progressive" tell us that it's really all about a Battle Royale between Obama and his enemies.