There's no difference, Nader now vindicated
The Obama Presidency has had the remarkable effect of finally convincing Democrats of the principle argument that Ralph Nader has been making for three decades—that there is no practical difference between Republican and Democratic governance in Washington.
The dissatisfaction with Obama has been most pronounced in respect to the corporate giveaway legislation that was disguised as health reform, the abhorrent budget deal involving the debt ceiling this summer that will gut social programs, and his unilateral, illegal bombing of Libya. The public frustration is palpable even if nobody affiliated with the party yet has the stones to challenge the president in a primary in 2012.
It’s been a gradually-rising tide of anger, but now a prominent progressive writer has taken the critique to a new level by challenging even that loudest charge against Nader’s 2000 third-party presidential campaign—the accusation that the Al Gore presidency that Nader supposedly sabotaged would have been an improvement on the Bush II presidency. As the runner-up in the 2000 campaign, Gore evolved into a loud public critic of the war in Iraq, but a
President Gore would not necessarily have done anything different than Bush did in respect to toppling Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. The new champion of this theory is Salon’s
Steve Kornacki:
It should be noted that when he announced his opposition to Bush’s war push in the fall of '02, Gore endorsed the basic goal of removing Hussein and securing his (supposed) WMD stockpiles. What he objected to was more the go-it-alone nature of Bush’s approach. In other words, you could also argue that Gore, still stung by the 2000 election outcome, may have been motivated in some way by his desire to stage a big, principled fight with Bush -- and that a different result in '00 might have produced a different, more hawkish response from Gore, one that would have led to … an invasion of Iraq.
As U.S. Senator from Tennessee, Gore had been very much a hawk on the issue of the Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, and his would-have-been presidential advisors in 2001 and 2002 were major hawks—including, of course, his VP nominee Joe Lieberman, who would have us bomb
Iran tomorrow if it were his call to make. Kornacki argues that there would have been tremendous political pressure on Gore to go to war as Hussein continued to thumb his nose at world leaders and weapons inspectors.
Statesman Gore and President Gore would have been different in other ways as well. Statesman Gore is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocate for protecting the environment. Yet as Vice President, Gore was the highest-profile advocate for NAFTA, the trade deal that favored private sector investment and expansion over environmental regulation, and that would come to devastate traditional farming practices in the U.S. and Mexico. Indeed, over the years, the required sacrifice of capitalists for the sake of a healthy planet has been "an inconvenient truth" for corporate Democrats as much as it has been for anybody.
According to this "60 Minutes" and Vanity Fair poll cited by Kornacki, 56% of Americans now fully equate the concept of an Al Gore Presidency with the W. Presidency, including 48% of Democrats. Shockingly, only 44%--
of Democrats-- believe today that the world would be a better place if Gore had won the 2000 election. Consider my mind blown. But then again, those polled have now endured three years of a Democratic president and it looks a lot to them like the Republican President. Hope and Change have both taken on the discernible stench of hog manure. Ralph Nader and his small, courageous, and prophetic group of supporters await your apologies and your support for a truly progressive (third-party) presidential candidate in 2012.
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How ridiculous are U.S. drug laws? We've begun
requiring prescriptions for over-the-counter cold and allergy medications because one of their principle ingredients is used to cook methamphetamine. This type of stupid prohibitionist legislation should be the only proof we need that these well-financed and parasitic medical and pharmaceutical corporations are calling the shots with lawmakers. A high is perfectly legal if there's a health industry conglomerate out there that can make a dollar off of it. The shit on the street is nothing to them but competition. Have a 24 hour bug or even just a seasonal allergy? That'll be 90 bucks for a visit to the doctor's clinic, thank you, or if you're lucky, only a $20 co-pay and half a day off of work. Not to mention that $50,000 a year it already costs to storehouse your neighbor in a private prison after his possession charge. What's up next? Am I going to have to carry around photos of my workbench on my cellphone to show the guy at Lowes that I'm not planning to sniff the wood sealant?
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I don't have a workbench.
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If my entry looks and feels different today, it's because I'm typing it on my new laptop. Oh, the places we will go...
Back on duty
Let's see... what did I miss last week?
-Kim Kardashian got married on August 20th. The couple-- Kim and the NBA's Kris Humphries-- apparently found a way to pay for a $5 million wedding and even
make millions of dollars through sponsorships, and television and photo rights. I can't say I was surprised to hear that Kim was able to make money on the back end.
-In an important investigative piece, the LA Times
reported that the Department of Homeland Security is spending $75 billion every year on national protections that include a "Zodiac boat" with side-scan sonar for 22-mile-long Lake McConaughy in Keith County, Nebraska.
Says Ohio State University professor John Mueller: "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year."
-Iowa Governor Terry Branstad
never said that gays are subhuman. He simply said that they don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us.
-The reason I was gone last week was that I spent a week of vacation in St. Louis going to ballgames and seeing the sights. The Cardinals lost the first three games, then won two. I rode the metro train a lot, and saw much of Forest Park and the Central West End especially. Forest Park is as much a civic treasure in St. Louis as the Arch. Within it you have a world class
art museum, the St. Louis Zoo, the Science Center, the Muny outdoor theater, the underrated
Missouri History Museum, lakes, trails, a golf course, a tennis club,
the Jewel Box greenhouse, the Boathouse restaurant,
the pavilion from the 1904 World's Fair, and over a thousand acres of green space. I saw and did many things during the week, yet I'll forever remember this trip for having been there the night that the Cardinals' $120 million outfielder, Matt Holliday, left a one-run game in the 8th inning because a moth flew in his ear.
Dog days
Summer is certainly winding down in a hurry. I work until 8 o'clock three nights a week at my job, and it really begins to feel like the season has come and gone when I no longer have the daylight on my drive home. This week was nothing short of tragic. There were some late day thunderstorms mixed in, still it seemed like we were losing about 20 minutes more of light each day. Gosh, I hope there's nothing wrong with the Earth's rotation.
Don't expect any posts this week. I'll be on the road as part of an end of summer odyssey of sorts. During my absence, the concierge is available to assist you. Begin by pressing 7 on your room's direct dial telephone. Enjoy this YouTube clip that's been making the rounds on blogs and newsfeeds. It's
the most sexist television advertisement of all-time.
Searching for Ron Paul
Ron Paul finished second to Michelle Bachmann in the Ames Republican Straw Poll on Saturday. (Oh, my beloved former home of Ames, Iowa-- why must you be increasingly known for this mortifying exercise in political and media fraud?) Paul lost by fewer than 200 votes, has raised more money than any GOP candidate other than Mitt Romney, and routinely finishes in the top 3 or 4 in GOP presidential nomination polls.
But he does not exist as far as the national news media is concerned. Bachmann appeared on five national television news programs on Sunday morning. Paul had one scheduled appearance, he says, and the show cancelled on him. Iowa's largest newspaper and national papers like USA Today declared Bachmann, Romney, and recent entry Rick Perry to be the frontrunners-- in bold headlines Sunday and Monday. Paul was given the same concentration as Herman Cain.
This is how it works. Paul is not a "serious" contender, by the estimation of the insiders, because he bores them with substance. He talks about policy while Bachmann accuses her political opponents of being anti-America. He questions the existence of the Federal Reserve Bank while Perry
vaguely threatens violence towards the Fed's chairman.
Paul holds a belief system (libertarian) that is well-documented and quite popular, but he is anti-Washington to his core. He defies their narratives. He appears with Ralph Nader at
joint news conferences and
interviews to promote the concepts of third-parties and citizen empowerment. He's a Republican that opposes the imperial wars of Bush and Obama in the Middle East, opposes the surveillance state championed by both Democrats and Republicans, and opposes Wall Street bailouts on
philosophical grounds, rather than politically-expedient ones. (In other words, unlike Bachmann, Romney, and Perry, Paul opposed bailouts under President Bush before he opposed them under President Obama.)
I'm not a libertarian. If you're talking about keeping government away from the sex lives of adults, or opposing illegal overreach by law enforcement against accused enemies of the state, I'm with you, but economically, for example, laissez faire capitalism has corrupted and nearly destroyed us. We've attempted at the allowance of investing and lending without government regulation and consumer safeguards, and the result is the clusterfuck you see outside your window. Bankers made off with billions by selling garbage loan products and then betting against them. Libertarians, at this point, should be considered wholly discredited in the debate, frankly, after the reckless and totally avoidable collapse of 2008. But I respect Paul, who is a libertarian through and through, because he never, ever panders and he's fundamentally honest. And you can count the honest politicians in Washington without having to take off your shoes and socks.
That's the final reason the Washington press corps doesn't treat Paul as a "serious" contender for the Republican nomination-- even though he drew 10% of party support in 2008 and has grown his campaign and fundraising operations considerably since, along with his national profile. The candidate that
is treated seriously says things that are complete and utter bullshit. He or she flat out lies. In fact, if you don't lie or attempt to spin, you're not acting "serious," in their view. The traditional political press doesn't want to discuss matters of policy. Then they would be forced to acknowledge that some political ideas have more merit, fundamentally, than others. Instead, they prefer to hear mindless, focus group-approved piffle from candidates that allow them to judge the "performance" rather than the ideas themselves. That's what we've
been getting from them thus far, and unfortunately, that's what we're going to be forced to endure for the next 15 months.
FOUND!! VIDEO OF EPIC BASEBALL MOMENT THOUGHT LOST FOREVER!!
Ok, first: despite the attention-grabbing
and very accurate headline: Don't skip to the end! This is very important.
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1986 was a very long time ago. Your faithful blogger was only 11 years old that year. A full quarter century later, I'm lucky I can still feed myself. Ronald Reagan was President in 1986. He was lucky
he could feed himself. Tom Seaver, pitching hero of the '69 Miracle Mets, was still an active ballplayer. Sade was on her first ever world tour, although she looked
exactly the same as she looks today! One night in St. Louis that summer, September 15th, little-used first baseman
Mike Laga, in just his 8th-ever at-bat as a Cardinal, stepped to the plate and did the unthinkable. The unimaginable.
Michael Russell Laga played in the big leagues each season from 1982 to 1990, but in only 188 total games. That's an average of less than 21 per season. The most was 41 (in '88), and the least was 9 (in both '84 and '85). He would finish as a career .199 hitter. He was in the big leagues because of his power potential but he would hit only 16 home runs in 423 career at-bats. If you mistakenly type in "Mike Lage" on a search for him online, Google will not suggest "Mike Laga."
His Cardinals teammates would often tease him about his time spent shuttling up and down between the major and minor leagues. "Sparky wants to see you," they would say. This was a cutting reference to an episode that had taken place during Laga's pre-Cardinals career with the Detroit Tigers. For the first time in his career, Laga was going to break with the Detroit club out of Spring Training due to an injury to another infielder. It was thought that the other player would need to be placed on the disabled list to start the season, but at the last minute, trainers determined that he was healthy enough to go. The very last minute. A lieutenant of Tigers manager (and "WKRP" star) Sparky Anderson was charged with finding Laga on the team's charter plane out of Florida and pulling him off. ("Sparky wants to see you.") The plane sat for several minutes on the tarmac as Laga exited, his suitcase and equipment were pulled from the baggage hold, and his teammates watched.
Fast forward to that night in 1986, however-- at bat against the Mets' Ron Darling. Laga hits a ball
entirely out of Busch Stadium. An absolutely spectacular accomplishment, but a rather peculiar one in that the ball he slugged was foul. Nobody else ever did this in the history of old Busch Stadium-- not from its opener in 1966 to its final game in 2005. Not fair. Not foul. It was a cereal bowl. Nobody was thought to have even come close. I went to a lot of games in the old stadium. I sat in the upper deck most of the time-- more than 90 times. I'd say that during those games, I saw maybe ten balls even hit
into the upper deck, and usually into the the first couple rows. Knowing the legend of Mike Laga, I would sometimes sit there in amazement considering how somebody could hit a ball
over the upper deck and over the concrete roof far above my head.
This photo is the best I can find online to sort of illustrate the extraordinary trajectory required to accomplish what Laga did. With my game mates, I would speculate where he must have hit the ball. I knew he was left-handed so it must have been pulled to the right side, but what kind of pitch location and swing could produce a ball hit so high but with so much obvious wood on the ball? I literally could not fathom it.
And here's the other thing. It's hard to remember now, but 25 years ago, many, many Cardinals regular-season games were not televised. There was no ESPN. You could see them if they played on the cable channels of the Cubs or Braves. They might be featured on the national Saturday afternoon Game of the Week, or, a few times, on something once called Monday Night Baseball. A few games were broadcast locally in St. Louis, but for a number of others, more than not, the only video recording was an overhead camera high above home plate. That camera was there to record for the league. If a brawl broke out on the field, for example, the czar of punishment for the league would need the video to see who attacked who.
The Cardinals did not have a video recording of the game, and if they did, they didn't bother to keep it for very long. Baseball is a meticulously recorded game for the consideration of history-- but it's recorded on paper. The Mets ran away with the division in 1986. By September 15th, they were probably 20 games ahead already of the
second place team. There were no nightly baseball highlight shows. Today, there are highlights on a 24-hour loop. During the Cards' pennant race of 1987, as their magic number dwindled, I remember running upstairs every night to inform my Dad about whether the Cardinals had managed a win (or were winning). During the sports segment on the Cedar Rapids late local news, the Cards might be winning in the 7th inning at 10:20 at night. That score was probably an hour and half old at 10:20. Nobody in the Cardinals organization saw fit to store away a video of a foul ball hit by the #25 man on the club.
But guess who did. The New York Mets. Thank God-- again!-- for large market baseball teams. WOR-TV in New York was there. They broadcast
most of the Mets games in 1986 to the tri-state area of New York, Connecticut, and Jersey, and several cable systems nationwide, and of course, they were there for a weeknight tilt between the Mets and their division rivals two weeks before the start of the playoffs. They've had video of the foul ball this whole time and didn't know that anybody was looking for it. A video company like the one that produced season highlight videos for the Cardinals' pennant-winning clubs in 1985 and 1987 (respectively, "Heck of a Year" and "That's a Winner"-- I have both of these burned to DVD if you want to borrow them) produced a video for the '86 World Champion Mets called "A Year to Remember," and I'll be damned if they didn't include this foul ball highlight just for giggles.
And now you're glad you waited. After 25 long years, Cards fans,
here it is-- the foul shot heard 'round the Midwest, and the first line someday in congenial Mike Laga's obituary. The legend gets substantiated. Strike two.
Understanding the concept of "nothing to lose"
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has the solution for rioting and looting:
more head busting. In Great Britain, where the locals have still not grasped the proper use of a baseball bat, the street riots have moved into their fifth day as the country's Conservative leader attempts to explain why property destruction should be
the exclusive domain of privileged preps.
One can argue the purpose and effectiveness of this civil disorder, but it's unarguably political in nature. To say otherwise is to deny the rage and desolation felt by individuals of the world's growing underclass. The riots were touched off by the shooting death of a civilian by a law officer charged with maintaining peace-- this was an inherently political action. These neighborhoods of English cities, pockets of injustice, racial tension, and high unemployment, and popular destinations for refugees fleeing developing-world homelands scorched by corruption, violence, and Western armies, are going to be highly-susceptible to physical clashes between their residents and the assigned, uniformed, and armed guardians of middle- and upper-class wealth. The results of the riots will be destruction, death, and sadness, but one can't help but shake his or her head at the sight and sound of the elites of their country and ours imperiously admonishing the rioters for "destroying their own neighborhoods." This is people with futures scolding the behavior of people without.
How will American politicians respond when our corrupt and unfair social and economic systems ultimately lead to large-scale violence? The United States, as much as any wealthy nation on Earth, ignores the plight of its underclass and instructs its poor to blame themselves for the necessities they don't possess. We're forced to return again to the words of warning from John Kennedy: "Those that would make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
7 MInutes in Heaven
I have a new favorite TV show. It's a web series called "7 Minutes in Heaven," an interview program on Hulu hosted by "Saturday Night Live" writer Mike O'Brien. Celebrities are fed alcohol and then they answer O'Brien's questions inside of a clothes closet in which interviewer and interviewee are uncomfortably close together. Sometimes they act out a dramatic scene in a segment called "Closet Theater." At the end, the host tries to make out with them.
There have been only four episodes so far, but there are at least three more to come. O'Brien's "SNL" colleague Kristen Wiig
led off in humorous fashion. She was followed by Bravo TV producer
Andy Cohen, then actor (and Cedar Rapids native)
Elijah Wood. The most recent guest, actress Patricia Clarkson, became the first to
fully grasp the concept of the show. Curiously, each episode clocks in at a little less than 5 minutes.
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Sade is in Chicago this weekend. At Saturday night's show, I'm going to attempt to scale the stage and present her with a ring. It's not an "engagement" ring per se, more of a "promise" ring. Like a promise to be "exclusive." Here's Sade at
Live Aid in 1985.
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Quote of the week: Deadspin commenter Arthur_Digby_Sellers on the death this week of former NFL and "Police Academy" star Bubba Smith, "Somewhere, Michael Winslow is impersonating a trumpet playing Taps."
What's in a (TV) name?
Run out of blog ideas? Never. How about six of the greatest TV names ever? How did I arrive at the magic number of six? That's all I could think of.
Rule 1) These are all character names that help to define the person. They're all quite colorful, but there are no "nicknames." There's no "Hawkeye," no "Gomer" or "Goober," no "Paulie Walnuts" or "Big Pussy," no "Dot Com."
Rule 2) Many TV names are very distinctive, but excluded here because I find them to be rather pandering to their audience. "Thomas Magnum"-- here's a tough guy private eye named after a gun. I get it. It's no reflection on the show, but that's too easy. Why not just call him "Peter Gunn"? Aha, because that was already taken. "Mork from Ork"? Cute, but "Mork" shares alliteration with "Mindy," and "Ork" simply rhymes with "Mork." I was 15 hundred miles away and two years old at the time, but I feel like I was at the pitch meeting. And "Ralph Malph"? Come on. Another rhymer. Nobody's last name is really "Malph." I'm serious. Google it. Nobody.
Rule 3) I tried to strain out the great names that
became great simply because the characters or the actor portrayals were so wonderful. "Archie Bunker" is now an actual
type of person. "Ralph Kramden" now seems like a terrific name for a guy with great ambition stuck in the lower middle of American social life. We all know what a bonehead a real-life "Clavin" can be, but nobody walked out of the first filming of a John Ratzenberger "Cheers" episode and said-- "That character "Cliff Clavin" has a great name."
There you have it. Only
I fully understand the rules. Most TV character names are just afterthoughts. They're designed to fit snugly, but not get in the way. These six go the furthest above and beyond, says me.
LES NESSMAN: Good ole' WKRP-AM in Cincinnati, Ohio. "With More Music and Les Nessman." "Les
Lessman" would have been too cute. "Les
Nessman" is just slightly off. The bow-tied, balding radio newsman was rarely seen without a Band-Aid somewhere on his person, and he was probably not a great journalist despite the seeming respect of the agriculture industry. When the Shah of Iran was overthrown, as just one example, he missed the story completely. His lead story that day was about a pig that could do addition and subtraction. As his name suggests, he was a slight man, and often-poignantly inconsequential. In the series' 27th episode, Nessman strikes up a conversation with a co-worker's blonde, hunky beau named Steel Hawthorne. Says Steel: "I like to think that a man's name says a lot about the kind of person he is. What's your name?" Les: "Les." You can't
write dialogue that good.
JACK TRIPPER: The history is entirely undocumented, as far as I know, and call me naive, but I choose to believe that the creators of "Three's Company" already had the name of their lead male character picked out when they cast John Ritter in the role. The series was based on the British series "Man About the House," in which the lead character was named Robin Tripp. But there's no evidence (on Wikipedia) that the original character, with two female roommates, was a "klutz," yet with the brilliant Ritter on "Three's Company," the stateside version of the show had itself one of the brilliant comic pratfall artists of all time. For seven seasons, Ritter "tripped" through every swinging door and over every living room couch that ABC set designers could put in front of him.
BEAVIS: When considering the names of the two principals of MTV's "Beavis and Butt-head," one's mind tends to first consider why some parent, or set of parents, would endeavor to name their child "Butt-head." But as far as we know as viewers, this dysfunctional child had no other Christian name. Yet there could have been no "Butt-head" without the perfect name to balance it. I simply love the name "Beavis," which was drawn from the last name of one of creator Mike Judge's college friends. I love the way it rolls off the tongue, its complete lack of sophistication, and most of all, the way it holds up the more outrageous, showy name without drawing attention to itself.
OPRAH WINFREY: In the mid-1970s, an ambitious but unassuming young local news reporter in Nashville, Tennessee named Gail Robinson made the professional decision to change her on-air moniker, and the rest, as they say, is broadcasting history. While watching a re-run of the Marx Brothers' film "Go West" early one morning dressing for work, Gail decided to take the name of her favorite Marx family funnyman, Harpo, spell it backwards, and begin her television ascent armed with the most bizarre, unforgettable name possible. She imagined news directors all across the country leafing through piles of reporter headshots, wondering to themselves, or out-loud, "Let's see here, should I hire this smiling lady named
Jessica Payne or this one named
Oprah?" The now-legendary TV talker cunningly anticipated the day when all afternoon talk shows would be given one-word titles named after their host.
MEADOW SOPRANO: This is the first one I thought of for this list. I like it not for what it says or means about the character, but what it says about the character's parents that gave her the name. In the first episode of "The Sopranos," we see mafia boss Anthony (Tony) enamored of wild ducks that have taken up residence in his swimming pool. It becomes a running theme of the series to show Tony's spiritually empty life contrasted with his ideals about where he would prefer to fit in the world. We also come to find Meadow's mother Carmela obsessed with classic literature, and intellectually-curious far beyond the stereotype of her social position. It's never referenced or even exactly alluded to, but it's so perfect that two decades before the series begins, Tony and Carmela, probably only subconsciously, gave their daughter not a traditionally-Italian or Roman Catholic name, but instead a rather "pagan" one that could help potentially separate her from her family heritage of criminal activity and the accompanying psychological burden. She was given a slightly-improved chance of escape. Of course by contrast-- and this is no accident-- her younger brother is Anthony Jr.
GOB BLUTH: On "Arrested Development," George and Lucille Bluth's oldest son is a failed magician and ventriloquist, an inveterate liar, a selfish conniver, and his parents' least favorite of their four children. He wants nothing more than the love and respect of his father, but never achieves it. He is officially "George Oscar Bluth II" and so I should probably identify him as "G.O.B." with the periods added, but acquaintances refer to him as GOB, pronounced like the biblical character of Job. The name is constantly being fouled up by others however. Is the 'o' long or short? Does the 'g' make the 'juh' sound or the 'guh' sound? Even GOB himself gets a little fuzzy on which of each it should be. When he forms a business partnership with his brother-in-law Tobias, they name the new venture "Gobias," pronounced, we're told, like "'go buy us' some coffee." Um yeah, like the guy with the $6000 suit wouldn't land on the list of the best TV names by the blogger who doesn't make that much in three months. Come on!
The Democrats circle the drain
The story of America’s Congress dating back to the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1981 is largely a story of one party capitulating to the other. Republicans lead. Democrats cave. Tonight on Nightline. The often-used metaphor (at least by me) for President Obama and the Democrats is that of the kid at school getting his lunch money lifted off him every day by a pack of bullies. This week's agreement on the budget and the debt ceiling rises not quite to that level though. Imagine instead the boy that's getting robbed also being pantsed and stuffed headfirst into a garbage can. Now we're getting close.
Washington's “compromise” agreement contains no tax increases. There are no hikes for the rich even though our nation's top tier earners have seen their tax rate of 91% during the Eisenhower boom of the 1950s plummet to 35% under Bush and Obama. There was no closing of tax loopholes. There was not even an extension on unemployment benefits in the plan. These should have each been dealbreakers for President Obama. The lack of tax revenue is what caused this mess to begin with (along with our costly and immoral wars overseas), and yet the rich will wind up having to sacrifice nothing. Wall Street criminals made off with trillions, throwing a raging keg party with our money at our house in our absence. They were rewarded with even more bags of money, no new regulations in the banking industry, and now working people and the unemployed get to clean up the vomit and the garbage that the party left behind.
We’re set up now for more than $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, a new Congressional panel that will look into even
further cuts in entitlements, and automatic cuts if Congress fails to find common ground during the future negotiations in which Republicans will have less incentive than ever to compromise since their opponents again demonstrated that they will eventually fold their tents. Democratic Congresswoman and shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords theatrically interrupted her long and difficult convalescence to travel to the Capitol Monday and cast a vote that will gut Social Security and Medicare. This is a dramatic and thrilling new standard for demonstrating how much strength and effort the Democrats will expend to disappoint us.
This vote provides an opportunity for the conservative con men of the political class to now destroy Medicare, a program they hate with career-motivating passions because it stands as vibrant, living proof that government-administered health care works better than a system of health care-for-corporate-profit. The “shock doctrine” has been effectively implemented in the United States. Fear of the nation’s default forced by ideological warriors of the extreme-right exposed the president again as both a coward and a fool. (Oh your god, I can't get over what a weak politician this guy is.) You have to guess otherwise that he’s just been playing the game until he can cash out financially upon leaving office.
Some Republicans didn't vote for the budget deal today, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they didn’t get everything they wanted. There were a handful left behind to be publicly angry with "the compromise,” but if a Republican voted against this deal, that’s only because that hard-line individual wants to starve the nation of even more of its basic services and protections for the poor and disadvantaged and for our crumbling infrastructure. Theirs is a curiously-popular ideology. It promotes taking money away from nursing homes and schools because a tax on yachts would restrict “individual freedom.” I don’t pretend to understand it, but I can recognize it. They know that as long as they can continue to swerve hard to the right, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi will hug tight to the "middle" regardless of where the line is painted on the road. The people don’t matter now. We’ve been cut out of the process by the Citizens United ruling and the effective dissolution of the McCain/Feingold Act. It’s a government now of the corporations for the corporations by the corporations. They’re swerving us as far right as we can possibly go. Life in the fascist lane.
