"Politics in 2009 is very silly." This statement is about as naive as any statement could be. Politics in 2009 is very dangerous and deranged. Poo-pooing what the right wing and its media supporters are doing these days totally underestimates the fundamental threat they present to our democracy, let alone our ideals.
Perhaps Obama shares this humorous view of the opposition to everything he's trying to do - which is why his response that opposition has been so ineffectual. What's going on is everything but an actual shooting war for the future of our country, and we had better see it just that way.

The next thing we should prepare for would be the inevitable apology from the right wing .
The abject , heart breaking sadness of decades of distortions fulminating at an echoic McVeigh moment , just when they had subjugated reality into a lap pet , the invincible house of cards came tumbling down .
Bill kristol or jonah goldberg could be a success in any venture they chose . Alas to put a little work into something ...
Work like daylight actually kills an earnest victorian vampire . Facts and light , the horror , the horror

I agree with Sheldon that the right is not silly, but dangerous, because hey have power, and someone who is silly with power is never "silly". The death of Obama, caused by their words and actions, would not even faze them, for example, though they would be "silly" about it.

Obama will win if his supporters correctly gauge the opposition.

Alas, Steve you have forgotten the context of the speeches.

In 1991 we were a nation at peace, blissfully unaware of the coming conflict.

Today, in 2009, we are a Nation at War, embroiled in a stuggle for the very survival of the Constitution.

I speak, of course of the war between the Democrats and the Republicant's. . .

No guts, no glory. Simple as that.

"Politics in 2009 is silly," yes, and it is the media's responsibility to call this out. Not that such will happen, given that the MSM is corrupt. I'm not sure the new online publications like this one can take up the slack. Even well-meaning people like John Dickerson at Slate don't see how they're being played by the Right, and their so-called "neutrality" and "objectivity" in the face of crap like the school speech story amounts in the end to their being party to spreading lies.

The mood in the US right now is way more crazy than anything seen on the eve of the assassination of Rabin in Israel some 10 years ago. Sheldon, the first poster above, is quite correct.

Everyone here must spread this news far and wide. There are big chunks of the public that still care about consistency and hypocrisy.

Has the MSM been reporting that other, Republican presidents have made political pitches to youngsters in the classroom? I don't watch TV, so I would have no way of knowing.

Mr Benen, as Sheldon pointed out, "silly" probably is not the best word to use. What we have here is a Democracy being undermined because the message is controlled by an insane minority.

I've been waiting for the level of hysteria to subside on the right, and it doesn't. I would have thought that they would realize that throwing tantrums over made-up crap would eventually lead to the "boy who cried wolf syndrome" and that they'd do better to hold their fire until there's a genuine reason to raise the outrage meter to the red zone. The media's failure to do their job is helping the crazies, of course, which does not help the country.

IT IS NOT SILLY...it's pathetic! Listening to Gregory ask Axelrod whether he was surprised about the uproar over the president's speech and shaking my head in disbelief...this cycle will be all about BECK/JONES and the SPEECH - forget anything important that our corporate media MIGHT actually be informing people about...Of course it is probably beyond time for this administration to begin all their daily plans with thoughts about what the CRAZIEST (Beck/Limpballs/Bachman/DeMint et al) can come up with before taking a step forward...then factor in the STUPIDITY of the very people who should be assisting our country to use it's resources for progress and the benefit of ALL...GEEZ

I agree, Sheldon. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we see escalating violence, maybe even assassination, come out of all the hate-mongering.

I live in a heavily Republican part of California, and the level of fear and hysteria among a lot of whites (middle-age and elderly) is scary. They really believe Glenn Beck and their ilk; they really are convinced that Obama is going to ship them off to death camps and enslave their children and god knows what else. It won't be surprising if one of these people decides they have to "save the country" by something crazy.

BTW folks, it is also the job of people like Axelrod to bring up GHWB's speech and similar "precedent/consistency watch" issues. Did he? There are plenty with access who need to use it, and their words will indeed be carried whether the Media itself will bring it up.

"Silly?" Steve has, uh, misunderestimated. Republican nonsense would be silly if the public were fairly briefed on context and content; if the lunatic fringe had not been offered center stage; and if those in doubt still thought for themselves. But after 8 years of docile MSM, spoon-fed, infantilizing terror alarms, and daddy-party platitudes, many no longer make up their own minds. Or laugh at scare tactics. Core issue: corporate, right-leaning ownership of much MSM. Give us a free, independent press -- the #2 item on Ben Franklin's list of requirements for democracy -- and we'd be fine. (#1 was "absence of tyranny.")

Yes, too scary and dangerous to be merely "silly." Many people will not take it seriously as a threat unless we make it sound as dangerous as it is (w/o being "hysterical", but not such a damn fine line ...)

I completely disagree that is is Axelrod's job to bring up what past presidents have done...MY GOD, that is what the press should be researching and presenting (as I stated in an e-mail to that ineffective and embarrassing fool on FTN)...they do NO RESEARCH and feel it is their job to referee "discussions" between parties presenting equally truthful points of information...WHEN was the last time you even saw that happening? Our media SUCKS!!!

Yes I suppose that "silly" is too kind because it's hard to combine the idea of silliness with that of malice. Perhaps "As silly and ridiculous as much politics in 2009 seems, at bottom it is a poisonous combination of folly and malice". In fairness to SB, it's hard to do justice to the present-day Republican party, the willed, cultivated irrationalism, combined with low-level cunning; the viciousness, the comical, but dangerous ignorance, the smugness and sickening sanctimony, the shamelessness, the self-pity combined with indifference to others; the self-righteousness and hypocrisy; the incompetence in all matters except deceit and manipulation. Words fail one. I know the F word has been thrown around too much, but "incipiently fascist" doesn't seem too wide of the mark to me.

one-note-johnny here... reminding that both the repugnants and the dims are the house slaves of corporate america, and we, my friends, find ourselves outside -- either in the fields of the masters, or hunkered down trying to glean enough to survive.

obama is quickly morphing into the big dawg role of "slick willie" and any progressive leverage looks to be fading quickly to affect this administration.

i'd say the axe comes down one way or the other on wednesday night.

obama, by articulating what he stands for with regard to healthcare in this country will -- more importantly -- articulate where he stands in the unannounced civil war raging in this country:

for or agst the citizens;
for or agst the corporate profit-making war criminal, imperialist, cannibal machine.

simple as that, my friends. at this critical juncture, at this moment in the long crisis of our times, it is either/or.

Dancer, we have the Press we have and not the Press we wish we had. It should not be Axelrod's job to bring up yadda, but he will have to because the Media won't. You do what you have to. Things have become so wretched and so wrecked that it's like a hurricane hit: you don't say, "Dammit Jim, I'm a surgeon not a journalist" - well Bones, the journalists are either sick or dead. You do it or it doesn't get done.

*

sometimes I try to cheer myself up by reminding myself that it's not as if every voter is watching fox news and believing it, or even listening to rush and believing him... but it is too bad that we have such cowardly representatives (and senators) who don't take responsiblity to speak out and then vote for rational, not irrational, positions.

People are probably concerned because Barack Obama's only real leadership experience before becoming POTUS was during his years with with a non-profit group advocating reform of schools via "social justice teaching." This was alongside William Ayers, who has apparently discarded terrorism in favor of education reform as the "motor-force of revolution." These are Ayers' words from the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela in 2006. Great praise for totalitarian Chavez in the same speech. Look it up. Obama's speech will be totally innocuous, however -- especially with all of the media attention.

And here's a thought experiment: If GW Bush's department of education had prepared identical teaching aid materials to those of Obama's, and GW Bush intended to beam his face simultaneously into all K-12 classrooms in the US, what sort of reaction would ensue? Answer: Apoplectic Left.

Perhaps our society's extreme political polarization explains the backlash among those who aren't familiar with Obama's education reform history.

gotta hand it to ya win, you build a mighty fine strawman.

as it turns out, W did talk to schoolchildren, in an even more coercive manner than teevee - he went to their classrooms in person.

the only thing the left got apoplectic about in regard to this practice is when it appeared that reading to schoolkids was the entire extent of W's abilities as hijacked planes slammed into buildings in NY and Virginia.

I just watched NBC tonight. They showed Newt saying what Obama was doing was OK (!) They also mentioned GHW Bush giving the talk and perhaps some detail, don't recall. But they also said some Democrats complained. Anyone know?

Neil B. -- Pat Schroeder and Richard Gephardt complained about GHW Bush's speech, according to the St. Petersburg Times fact check article that ran in my local paper.

Neil: Yes, some Democrats in Congress complained that it was a partisan use of taxpayer money. But no one accused Bush I of insidious brainwashing or indoctrination of children. And there was no Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck to demagogue it for a mass audience.

Schroeder and Gephardt's criticisms are remarkably mild compared to the typical conservative criticisms of Obama's school speech ("indoctrination," "Hitler youth," chairman Maobama," "brainwashing," etc.).

DAY: Alas, Steve you have forgotten the context of the speeches. In 1991 we were a nation at peace, blissfully unaware of the coming conflict. Today, in 2009, we are a Nation at War, embroiled in a stuggle for the very survival of the Constitution. I speak, of course of the war between the Democrats and the Republicant's. . .

you left out that bush was white...

and obama was black...

Zeitgeist????

Its a hypothetical, not a strawman. Simplified: If GWB's education administration did exactly what BHO's did, the Left would be apoplectic. Denying this is to deny reality and to ignore recent history.

You say GWB -- for whom I'm no apologist, BTW -- talked to schoolchildren in a coercive manner? By reading them My Pet Goat in person? Do you want to be taken seriously?

GHWB addressed the nation's schoolchildren on television in 1991 as was noted in the original post above. Byron York details the congressional and NEA reaction in today's Washington Examiner -- "When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings."

You should look that up too. But you won't.

Not only that, but how many kids know how to write a letter?

Benen writes: "... and in the midst of a recession, the left had better things to do with their time than throw a tantrum over a presidential pitch to kids."
Yeah ... not really.

So there was no back lash...?
I think your intentialy trying to decive here as I was able to find the elusive back lash.

"The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Rep. Richard Gephardt, then the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives.
"And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"

Patricia Schroeder, then a Democratic member of Congress from Colorado, said the speech showed "the arrogance of power," and that the White House should not be "using precious dollars for campaigns" when "we are struggling for every silly dime we can get" for education.