The utter hopelessness

Looking around at how power, money, and corporations rule, particularly as they continue to derail and dismantle this medical care legislation process, is depressing.

Somehow, it looks like Mitt Romney got elected President in 2008, and we will soon have a Massachussets-style mandated private insurance system, with only cosmetic “cost controls” which will increase profits for the insurance mega-corporations, and continue to raise costs for citizens to pay, under pain of fine or imprisonment– a captive market.

Power and money always win. There is no hope. Politics, like economics and life in general, is a game in which you cannot win, you cannot break even, and you cannot quit. You can only lose.

Sounds like it needs a community organizer

Fascinating analysis of Afghanistan from a guy who was on the ground toting a rifle there for a couple years:

This is the way you win a counterinsurgency war. One village at a time. It’s fucking hard. The shortest, most glib way to describe it is to say that we want to show the people that we offer a better life than the other guys do.

Wow, sounds like a grassroots political campaign. Interesting strategy, and one that lends itself to a peaceful outcome.

Most of the Afghans I met couldn’t care less who was the president of Afghanistan. It has no bearing on their lives. The level of governance that actually affects people’s lives is at the district and provincial level. That’s where things get done.

Wow, sounds like it needs a community organizer, and someone who knows how to do grassroots, local organizing. Good thing we’ve got one as commander in chief.

Grayson and Franken

I want Alan Grayson as Speaker of the House, and Al Franken as Senate Majority Leader.

That is all.

Double Facepalm

When the fail is so strong, one Facepalm ain’t enough

Via religulous stupidity, of course.

Teabaggers. I love saying that.

Of all the silly trends in politics over the past 30 years that I’ve been paying attention to it, nothing has amused me so reliably and continuously, as the use of the term “teabagging” and “teabaggers” in a political context.

It’s so evocative. It’s so fucking funny. A bunch of wingnuts, waving teabags around and shouting incoherently about something or another. Never fails to put a smile on my face, or pull a chortle from my lips.

Plus, it’s a euphemism for sucking testicles. Hard to top that for pure comedy value.

Best yet, it puts it all in perspective. Without knowing them as “teabaggers”, I’d be furiously angry– they’ve been ruining my country for 30 years–, or absoulutely terrified– a lot of them are armed. But, imaging them dangling teabags around, or dipping them in and out fo their mouths, makes the whole thing comedy gold.

I can’t be angry at the teabaggers, or be afraid of them. They’re teabaggers! OK, next3

Treason

Scariest picture I’ve seen this year so far:

A man, with a gun, holding a sign explicitly calling for armed revolution, in "dog whistle" language.

What was the title of that Ann Coulter book?

Walking around armed and calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Government would be pretty treasonous, no?

Like the BlueHampshire guy said: “Ahem, where’s the Secret Service?”

Best summary ever

Stupid + Bipartisanship = FAIL

That’s it.

I’ve finally figured out the pattern

I think I understand now the pattern that Obama is using. He seems to do the same thing every time.

1. He calls for "bipartisanship" and treats his opposition respectfully, and as equals.
2. We activists and partisans howl with indignity, and whine that he’s being too soft and is appeasing those Repug fuckers, who don’t deserve even the slightest bit of respect, and he’s going to lose the whole thing because of it.
3. Obama ignores the partisanship, and keeps treating everyone nicely anyway.
4. The Repugs respond by being total dickwads. Not just being uncooperative, but downright rude, boorish, and even frightening in their level of vitriol and thughgishness.
5. While still being nice and respectful and conciliatory, Obama responds to their obnoxiousness by moving– much to the delight of us partisans– to the left!
6. The Repugs respond by becoming totally unhinged.
7. Obama starts pointing out the partisanship and actual silliness of the Repugs, and shifts even slightly more to the left, as reasonable people kind of shake their heads at the Repugs and join us in supporting Obama.
8. Lather, rinse, repeat. The whole cycle continues, until, of course, Obama wins.

He’s done this several times now, and it has worked every time. In his Senatorial campaign, in the Presidential primary, in the 2008 general election, with the stimulus, with the clean energy bill, with the Sotomayor confirmation, and now with medical care.

Basically, he decides to be reasonable and way too nice, but as his opponents decide to respond by not acting in good faith, he digs in further to his position, but also just keeps on being nice and willing to compromise, and lets them dig themselves into a hole.

That’s because, I think, that he wants to compromise, but, alas, the opposite side doesn’t want to. The big difference with this guy is that he lets them own the problem of their intransigence. It’s simply not his problem if the Repugs don’t want to deal in good faith. It’s their problem, and they own it.

Whatever, hey, it works.

UPDATE: Cool! Governor Dean confirms that this is exactly what Obama is doing! Thinking about this a bit more, it seems that having the first African-American president is a very helpful thing: he’s studied Dr. King. A lot. The tactic Obama is using– which Dr. Dean correctly identifies as "smart"– is exactly how the Civil Rights movement did it. Be dignified, be peaceful, be strong, be calm, and let the other side bring out the water cannons, batons, and attack dogs.

Libertarians explained

I love it when things I’ve been trying to explain for years, get summarized more succinctly and accurately than I ever could… and as a passing comment:

…the freedom they’re fighting for is the freedom of corporations to make even more money off of them.

Exactly. Too many libertarians and objectivists have for long been the "useful idiots" of the corporate power elite. Well, not really "idiots" per se, more like naive abstract idealists getting chumped by the powers that be.

No system at all

This sums it up:

American health care is not really a system at all. It’s a market. In a market, people with money can buy what they want and many people are left out. So we thought, no, we don’t want market-driven health care. We want a real system, something that covers everybody and doesn’t depend on how much money you have.

Best summary of the problem that I’ve ever seen. And, it also sets up the fundamental conflict between capitalism and democracy. Markets are, by definition, anti-democratic. One dollar, one vote. No dollars, no votes. It’s corruption in a bag.