Congratulations to WSJ, Koch Bros., Scaife, Murdoch, Limbaugh

Those named above, their genial front men Reagan and W. Bush, and their fellows on Wall St. and in the churches, brought about the current financial mess. Then, with the necessary help of their appointees to the Supreme Court they ensured that they would come to own it, and once Romney defeats Obama, and a majority of the Senate is Republican, it will be their mess to deal with. Congratulations.

Obama and Geithner came into office facing the worst mess since the Depression, and a far more difficult, chaotic political scene than existed even then. They certainly made mistakes in trying to deal with the mess they inherited. But I think that much of the retrospective advice now pouring forth about what they should have done instead seems to me unreasonable, given what they did not know at the time.

In the first months of 2009 they could not know that the Republicans would form a solid and virtually treasonous opposition to everything Obama sought to do, or that any such effort would prove wildly successful and publicly popular. Nor could they expect that Republican operatives and billionaires would successfully gin up the Tea Party movement, or foresee the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. That decision led directly to the suicidal debt ceiling impasse last summer, and the super-committee's failure now. It has opened wide the right wing political spending spigot, forced every Republican politician who is not suicidal to toe the radical right's line (however hateful and imbecilic it may be in terms of the general public interest), and thus destroyed our constitutional democracy. Hence, what was right economically proved implausible politically, and vice-versa. The reality is that Obama and Geithner have struggled cleverly and valiantly against these developments, and won some brilliant victories. But the war is lost. The radical right now gets to deal with the problem--if they even think of it as such. Given their cruel and pitiless nature, I fear that great pain lies ahead for us all.