The Reality

GOP Hissy Fits: A List of Things Obama Is

2012-09-07T13:57:00.017-04:00

I will update this for 4 years:

Obama is Kenyan
Obama is a Marxist
Obama is an enemy of humanity
Obama is a Fascist
Obama is an oligarch
Obama is a Socialist
Obama wants to kill grandma
Obama wants death panels
Obama wants to build his own liberal army
Obama is like Hitler
Obama is like Stalin
Obama is like Goebbels
Obama is like Mengele
Obama is like Lenin
Obama is entirely dependent on teleprompters
Obama throws like a girl
Obama has no birth certificate
Obama is part of the Black Mafia
Obama is a racist
Obama drinks the wrong beer
Obama will tax your favorite beer
Obama eats arugula and fake food
Obama wants nationalized banks
Obama wants a nationalized auto industry forever
Obama is a Communist
Obama hired Van Jones because Jones is also a Communist
Obama wants to indoctrinate school children into Socialism
Obama is a terrorist because Gaddafi called him his son
Obama is like Kim Jong Il
Obama is brainwashing school children into singing his praises
Obama should be overthrown in a coup
Obama has mean, uncivil allies
Obama wants schools to perform secret abortion field trips
Obama wants sex clinics in schools
Obama is weak internationally and can't drive a hard bargain
Obama is bully internationally who blows the Olympics because he's not respected
Obama is weak internationally when he shows his hand rather then attack Iran
Obama is like a rapist
Obama supports NAMBLA
Obama is worshipped internationally because "the world" is stupid
Obama won't bomb the Taliban so he bombs the moon
Obama is dithering about the war in Afghanistan
Obama needs the GOP's permission to accept the Nobel Peace Prize
Obama is juvenile for saying FoxNews not a real news network
Obama is surrendering the War on Terror
Obama is daring the terrorists to attack us again
Obama has the gall to allow Muslims to walk around like “regular” Americans
Obama is trading safety for politically connected Government jobs
Obama is a jihadist intent on destroying white people

.

The Opposition:

It's 1977 And I Quit Politics

2009-12-23T16:20:00.005-05:00

The Year Is 1977. Politically. And because it's 1977 again, I have to quit.

Now, as it was in '77, punching hippies is just about the only thing the GOP does well. It’s actually the one thing that unites both political parties.

‘Punching hippies’ is a technical term used to describe various instances in modern realpolitik. Applications range from when moderate Democrats throw liberals under the bus procedurally, to when party leadership elbows us out of power via triangulation, to when conservatives literally kill us with bullets, to when media calls us Marxist-Socialist Nazi Communist Fascists and suggest we should be hung for treason, or shot with aforementioned bullets.

All of those things can be described as ‘punching hippies.’

How is it 1977? I talked to a veteran politico friend about her career in politics. She got sucked into party and campaign politics because of Bobby Kennedy, but after the country went off the rails in '68, she stayed in politics - - transitioning into what i'll describe generally as anti-Nixon extra-party structures - - mostly out of pure loathing for Nixon. She recently told me that right now feels exactly like how she remembers 1977.

After Carter pardoned draft dodgers, which she celebrated, she said that the rest of that whole year felt like one losing battle after another. Social justice liberals lost the fight against the Death Penalty. Liberals lost several battles against gay-bashing Anita Bryant, the Supreme Court started chipping away at Roe v. Wade on the Medicare Amendment, environmentalists lost the battle of the Alaska Pipeline. Even the violent crimes which conservatives sensationalized were blamed on liberalism's effect on our culture. Reagan started running hard against Carter not long thereafter.

That is her recollection of 1977.

Very similar to her story, I got sucked into politics by Howard Dean - who also sought to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party - and then I was kept in politics by rage at the atrocities of Bush-Cheney.

But here’s the thing, Bush-Cheney, and the GOP in general, have never stopped fighting 1968’s culture war. Democrats seem to think that they won the war with the unforced error of Watergate. They could not be more wrong.

Conservatives and Nixon believed in Norman Rockwell’s make-believe America. Nixon believed that he was the last line of defense to preserve the precious painting. Thus Nixon justified his illegal acts as necessary, akin to how total warfare perpetrated by victors are later forgiven... by themselves. Firebombing Dresden, Sherman’s March, tapping the DNC’s phones, turning USAGs into an arm of the RNC, etc.

Nixon was waging a full on war from the White House against Americans: young people, poor people, and minorities - the enemy was the DFH (dirty fucking hippie). It wasn’t just rhetoric, this conflict was occasionally militarized - especially in cities and on campuses. Debased by Nixon, liberals were arrested, beaten and otherwise flogged relentlessly by conventional wisdom zombies in the press. This is where our modern understanding of ‘punching hippies’ comes from - schmucks like David Broder.

Tragically, liberal candidates and liberal political heroes were murdered in 1968 by conservatives and Nixon won the election. Nevertheless, a surprising majority continued to fight Nixon, often forming extra-party political structures like issue advocacy organizations. My friend I mentioned above was one of those people.

Next to the victory of impeaching Nixon, putting a Democrat into the White House after those eight long painful years was well-earned schadenfreude. This is how I felt when we beat McCain and got Obama in.

Had I been a professional political operative 1976, I don’t think I would have been able to stomach the constant belittling and undercutting attack campaign that the conservative movement waged against President Carter. To be honest, I would have probably joined Ted Kennedy’s campaign to primary Carter.

Conservatives attacked Carter relentlessly and called him hapless and timid. He reacted as they anticipated: poorly and timidly. Famous actor scumbag Ronald Reagan attacked Carter for the entirety of Carter’s pitiful term. It did not abate: after a few years, Reagan simply shifted his all-purpose bad guy from Carter into Mondale.

The gutter-style politics which Nixon resorted to, was perfected and elevated to an art by Reagan’s people. American politics in the 80s was a shitshow of epic proportions. Impeachable offenses, policy failures... horrible stuff - punctuated always with Atwater’s flawless character assassinations spun through perfect media control and heavily reinforced scapegoating.

Which now brings us to 1992.

A sanity recap: this cycle beginning in ’68 marks how for the next 24 years, most of the American political spectrum found common cause in the joyful practice of punching hippies. For 20 of the 24 years it was done directly from the White House! As a liberal American, it doesn’t feel good to have your country so rejoice in beating the shit out of you.

Enter Clinton. The GOP calls him a hippie and punches him, and what does he do? A brilliant maneuver - unless you’re a hippie - he too punches hippies. It works for two terms, he’s able to diffuse most attacks by joining with the attack slightly pushing focus onto a strawman... or some unfortunate actual living hippie. That brings us to 2000.

This was when America went completely insane for 8 years. The result of thirty-two years of violent anti-liberal attack propaganda; hate speech equating liberals & Democrats to murderers, rapists, terrorists, pedophiles, abortionists, communists, and of course dirty fucking hippies.

The result was that the very vocal minority who voted for George W. Bush cheered whenever he got his way over objections of the loathed Democrats. If “his way” was an illegal war, or torture, or financial ruin, impeachable offenses, often literally criminal acts, no matter - they cheered. The jumbotron told them to.

Today, the year may as well be 1977. Obama is so much like Carter it’s frightening. If he doubles down on Afghanistan without passing a healthcare plan with a public option he may end up more like LBJ without the Great Society legislation. Both analogies are pain.

Think of the losses Carter’s liberals soldiered through in 1977: the Death Penalty, gay-bashing Anita Bryant, the Hyde Amendment, the Alaska Pipeline!

Four years of losses like that, plus the all out attacks from professional dickhead Reagan and his conservative movement goons, and it all added up to a really depressed party base. Just as dispirited as we are today.

Based on my experience these past years, to be a professional liberal in American politics is to know mostly pain, loss, and sadness. I love my wife too much to share that kind of life with her. It is a life away from your family, underpaid; it is to be attacked by your enemies, and then betrayed by the “friends” who you put into power. It is to be attacked by your own party, even: Rahm, Obama, and Reid really do not like us. It's an infuriating life.

However, there will be no Ted Kennedy-esque primary campaign against Obama. The identity politics would tear the party apart. (To be honest, odds are even that Obama may be able to win reelection without any accomplishments because he has such a nice smile.)

Things go in cycles, like circles around - then down - a drain. I think that where we are right now with our hapless, timid Obama is at the same point in the cycle that I described for Carter’s liberals, just 32 years later - and deeper down the drain.

Had I been born in the same year as Bill Clinton, I probably would have gone clean for Gene, switched to Bobby, and then spent the next 8 years of Nixon fighting the evil bastard tooth and nail. And then I would have walked away from the madness.

I’d rather not be like Carter’s liberals. I’m a Howard Dean guy. Thanks to him I fought Bush to his demise and then I helped elect a Democratic President. It’s not my problem that the man is Carter-redux and the cycle is beginning again. Instead, it’s everybody’s problem that we’re not allowed to have liberal leaders in this country.

The good news is that because it’s 1977 we’re only a few months away from some sort of analogue to the day when The Talking Heads began their collaboration with Brian Eno. That plus the recording of Led Zeppelin’s final studio album helped kill off disco for good.

I’m looking forward to the updated version of that - we’ll know it when we see it. Because it’ll be awesome. Already, people are making Avatar is the new Star Wars analogies. Star Wars, you remember, came out in 1977. Next year, I will be born.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

With Apologies to The Onion

2009-12-13T23:49:00.006-05:00

this is something i keep wanting to quote:

Soulless Cultural Wasteland 'On The Grow' In Southern California Desert

Los Angeles to Be Hellish Megalopolis by 1950

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - The soulless cultural wasteland in the California desert, considered one of the bleakest and most God-forsaken stretches of uninhabitable scorched earth in the nation is "on the grow," West Coast sources say, as the burgeoning city of Los Angeles continues its cancerous expansion.

Originally a tiny villa called Los Diablos, a coastal settlement of no distinction save for its capacity of heartlessness, the boomtown is now bigger than ever. Despite its lack of any life-sustaining natural resources, the city, which has no reason to exist at all has all the earmarks of a spectacular soulless cultural wasteland on the rise.

Tourist-Friendly Dystopia

Thanks to its policy of draining every conceivable water source from within hundreds of miles via massive network of pipes, as well as the Chamber of Commerce's approval of a name-change to the more tourist-friendly "Los Angeles," the up-and-coming wasteland shows every sign of ballooning into a full-scale dystopia.

Although recently a mid-sized, primarily agricultural settlement, trends indicate that the city is on its way to becoming a sprawling nightmarish megalopolis within the next few decades. Complete with desperate poverty, rampant crime, and a callous indifference to the spirits it has crushed, this business-minded realm of demons is hoped, by as early as 1950 to be the leading soulless cultural wasteland in the world.

Thriving Arts Haven

Staggering in its economic disparity, the planned wasteland will be an affront to human dignity, not only in the shallow excesses of its bloated overlords, but in the anarchic savagery of its desperate underclass. Yet, it is in the area of the arts that Los Angeles hopes to truly make its mark.

"Our town's lowest-common-denominator cultural output has the potential, one day, to be second to none in insipid banality," Wasteland Development Director Randolph Moloch said. "We hope to suck up the souls of promising artists like a great, black vortex, spitting out only the most lifeless, commerce-produced cultural products possible."

"We have high ambitions for the lows to which our community will sink," Moloch said. "We don't just want to be an overpopulated crucible of dehumanizing corruption, materialism, and race hatred; we want to be known the world over the a place where ideas come to die."

A Faustian Bargain

Perhaps the words of the late civil engineer William Mulholland, who was responsible for the construction of the aqueducts that feed Los Angeles as blood feeds and vampire's undead corpse, best articulate the civic spirit of Los Angeles. IN a speech before the city's Chamber of Commerce in 1930, the "Father of the Wasteland" said, "We're willing to do whatever it takes, including entering pacts with Satan himself, to achieve our hellish dreams. We have stolen an entire river from an ancient ecosystem hundreds of miles away, destroying the lives of all who lived there. WE built a criminally unstable dam whole collapse killed more people than the San Francisco earthquake. That takes guts. No, it takes more than guts - it takes sheer, unrelenting hatred of all that is good and decent."

A Land War in Asia - One of the Classic Blunders

2009-11-28T16:46:00.002-05:00

Thirty years ago today the Soviets fell for one of the classic blunders, they got suckered into a land war in Asia. Ha ha!

Then again, forty years ago today, we fell for the same blunder in Vietnam. Aw.

November 28, 1979 is when the Soviets sent KGB down to Kabul with an ultimatum. Basically saying, “we’re going to occupy you and make you more like us... if you aren’t able to instantly be exactly like us and do it peacefully.”

December 18 is when the first military moves are made, where Soviet units stationed in Bagram begin taking control of the Salang Pass. Shortly there afterwards mechanized infantry rolls in from Tashkent. So in effect the invasion is under way.

But the Soviets were there already, and the first stage of the war was really a coup, where officers of the previous government were arrested, often being invited to parties or meetings, before or during the main body of Soviet forces entering Afghanistan.

After ten years, the Russians quit. Alexander the Great gave up after 5.

To be fair, ten years before USSR’s Afghanistan blunder, President Nixon had his own land-war-in-Asia blunder with Vietnam. Nixon’s Vietnamization plan was to occupy the country while training local fighters who could fight in our place. It was exactly like what we’re doing in Iraq right now.

When Nixon sold Vietnamization to Americans with his November 1969 address, he used language literally exactly the same as what George W. Bush said about Iraq. ‘We stand down as they stand up.’

Oh, by the by, Obama is doing it again. Afghanistan - that place which ruined Alexander and Russia - for at least ten years, starting this December.

The thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet blunder in Afghanistan will also be the date we fell for the same blunder.

A date, by the way, which is also the fortieth anniversary of our previous eerily similar blunder in Vietnam.

What is it about the month of November in years ending in 9 that makes conservatives fall for the same classic blunder over and over again?

Where Alexander the Great failed, and where the U.S.S.R. failed, stumbles the United States. It’ll be horrible decade, folks. Buckle up.

Scalia's Pain Fetish

2009-10-27T17:31:00.004-04:00

Supreme Court clown Antonin Scalia excretes conservative nonsense:

"The whole purpose of a constitution is to constrain the desires of the current society.''

Really?!

As you may know, Scalia is a dogmatic member of Opus Dei, the rightwing cult that believes corporal mortification is an acceptable way to "constrain the desires of the flesh."

To Scalia, the constitution is no more than a Cilice with which he beats himself.

Let's investigate the Preamble to the constitution paying particular attention to the active verbs:

form a more perfect Union
establish Justice
insure domestic Tranquility
provide for the common defence
promote the general Welfare
secure the Blessings of Liberty
ordain and establish this Constitution

All of those are verbs of construction, verbs of growth. And yet, this man Scalia, the human personification of a grumble, sees only the need to retard, to constrain or to destroy.

Scalia, like other conservatives is a retardant. Pure and simple - a retardant. His interpretation of the Constitution is hopelessly perverted by his pain fetish.

Click-to-Call Widget v1

2009-10-07T12:07:00.000-04:00

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-28T12:28:00.003-04:00

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself, it invites anarchy. Therefore, if government officials break the law “righteously” we should look forward and not backward, we should trust that the accused did what they did because they thought it was best, we should not investigate, or really, not even bring it up too often as that would be impolite. Also, if committing a crime becomes a central plank in the platform for one of America’s political partys, then that’s another reason to not do anything about the crime, because doing so would look too political. And if the daughter of one of the government criminals often goes to the press and pleads on her father's behalf we don't want to be called sexist or mean so we should let just let it go.

- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1939

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-25T19:31:00.002-04:00

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Will the corporations that profit from the status quo lose too much money? And if so, can't we punt for now and come back to this later?"

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-21T18:50:00.004-04:00

The challenge of politics and public service is to discover what is interfering with justice and dignity for the individual here and now, and then to decide swiftly upon the appropriate remedies. ...And if that means suggesting to the interference that it stop interfering, so be it - but if the interference points to it's giant pile of money collected though the act of interfering, then our challenge in public service becomes to find a way to let the interference continue injustice for a few more years until some sort of trigger is pulled ...with their consent, after which, some sort of blue ribbon committee should be formed to explore appropriate remedies all over again.

- Robert F. Kennedy

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-20T18:58:00.004-04:00

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, and reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, and war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred. I welcome it to the bargaining table to reach a compromise where I offer 50% and it counter-offers that I fuck myself. I grab it’s hand, shake it, and exclaim ‘New Deal! How about 25%?" But the organized mob seethes in anger and silently mouths to me the same words: "Fuck... You..." I gleefully reply "How about we say 10 percent then?! No? Five percent? Look," I admit, "I'll do anything to be bipartisan." Silence. "Okay 1%" Still silence from the greedy corporations and their minions - all with that loathing stare. Finally I say: "How about you be President? Will that make you happy?" And then the old enemies of peace -- big business, monopolies, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, racism, and war profiteering - become President. Which is by itself a big change... from what voters asked for when they elected me. Therefore I have brought them change! Huzzah!"

- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-08T17:22:00.004-04:00

To those in my party who have recently urged me to take a strong and unambiguous stand on the pressing matter of the day, I must remind you that not all in our party's ranks have safe congressional districts in which re-election is guaranteed or even likely.

It is with the future of these jeopardized Congressmen in mind -- specifically those that represent constituencies who preferred Stephen Douglas in the last election -- that I have decided, however reluctantly, not to require the Emancipation Proclamation in any future settlement of the current Civil War.

--Abraham Lincoln

h/t JeffLieber

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-09-08T17:15:00.005-04:00

"It having been found very inconvenient to persons concerned in trade, that the mail from Philadelphia to New England sets out once a fortnight during the winter season: This is to give notice, that the New England mail should henceforth go twice a week the year round at one uniform rate to Philadelphia and New York. Furthermore, post roads should be surveyed between coastal cities and inland townes and built at great expense in order to connect areas of this land that are not in markets of large importance. In times of national hardeship when the bonds of countrymen should need be strengthened and unified, providing this service for a more perfect union, encouraging a sense of nationhood through dependable communications among all citizens at the same price, regardless of income factors, is a worthy goal we encourage the private messager companies to accomplish through a system of wholesome competition."

Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin, 1765

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-08-25T18:55:00.001-04:00

Women, we might as well be dogs baying the moon as petitioners without the right to vote! The dog is man’s best friend. Women, let’s be dogs! Don’t trouble yourself with voting, women, bark with me!

- Susan B Anthony

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-08-21T18:58:00.001-04:00

Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers. But those money powers deserve a place at the table and we should give them half of what they want, if not all of it. Let’s not be partisan, okay boys!

- Mother Jones

J'Accuse Le New York Times

2009-08-09T18:09:00.007-04:00

The Times' Ian Urbina wrote this about the pro-insurance company activism that is currently pushing a sort of Chewbacca Offense at Congressmembers' townhall 'debates':

The tenor of some of the debates has become extreme. Ms. Pelosi has accused people at recent protests of carrying signs associating the Democratic plan with Nazi swastikas and SS symbols, and some photographs showing such signs have been posted on the Web.

Pelosi DIDN'T!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused this woman:

of carrying a sign that associated Obama's reform of the insurance industry with Hitler.

or was it this woman?

An accusation... is it true or false?

We're not to know. Apparently it's not The Times' job to actually assess whether such things are true. Maybe Pelosi is lying. After all, the picture above and the video that GOP officials have posted on the web, or the non-stop Nazi analogies coming from talk radio gasbags and Fox News nutballs, don't prove anything, right? Nah, "He Said/She Said" is a safer construct.

This journalistic voice is simply not respectable, it does not educate readers, it is not truthful, it is the reason why people don't trust news organizations.

It's no longer a surprise when media companies fail to investigate charges and report on the findings, opting instead to set up the issue as a 'debate' between partisans, even if one side of the debate is complete 'lies' and utterly 'insane.'

Amazingly, in this instance, The Times does report on it, and they still call it an 'accusation'. I believe therefore that this is a perfect distillation of what is so ludicrous about our broken media.

They don't want to get wrapped up in a partisan battle, after all...

The essentially modern American partisan battle, that is, between liars and cowards.

(This, by the way, is also why we can't have nice things.)

Digby Sez

2009-08-09T15:36:00.002-04:00

She is so good.

if health reform fails, I believe that when the history is written it will be seen as a Democratic failure. If you put an issue on the table and are given a mandate to enact it, you are blamed for its failure, particularly when the whole promise of your campaign was based upon the magical notion that you would change the very nature of the political system. Sadly, if that happens, the likely result will not be a newly invigorated, liberal president with lessons learned and a fresh approach. It will be a chastened and weakened president newly committed to the status quo, just as the Village ordered from the beginning. And that, in the end, may be what was being promised all along: symbolism over substance. It wouldn't be the first time.

This is what happens when you don't elect actual liberals.

Netflix is Great

2009-08-09T14:47:00.002-04:00

They are smart.

Libertarians Hail Hudson River Helicopter-Plane Crash

2009-08-08T10:36:00.005-04:00

Local conservative libertarians hailed the recent crash of a helicopter and a small plane in unregulated air space over the Hudson River as an example of the wise free market unencumbered by government oversight.

A local conservative man, protesting the office lobby of Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in favor of insurance industry profiteering took time to remark how the events over the hudson bolstered his case that the "nanny state thinks it knows best, but it doesn't."

"Who's to say if that plane and the helicopter didn't plan that?" he said, referring to the crash. "Maybe it was an elaborate sky dance? That's the wisdom of the free market," he continued. "It's wise. It's like God, we can't know It's plan."

The man admitted that he couldn't be sure if the crash was an elaborate sky dance because, as he said, "everybody died, so... I'll just assume it was the proper functioning of the free market."

Similarly, he said, "we [have] the best health care in the world precisely because government doesn't get involved."

Another protester at Nadler's office agreed with the wisdom of the free market - especially in regards to health care. But when asked about the government-funded Veterans Affairs Health Care system that American troops enjoy, this reporter was called a Communist and told to fuck myself.

Another protester whose banner showed a rendering of Obama as Hitler and equated a public health care option as Communism said, "having the government force insurance companies to lower their rates is Communism."

When told that the public option wouldn't force private insurers to lower rates, but would merely compete for the best rate possible, she said, "we have the best health care in the world because our system works."

When told that there are almost 50 million Americans with no health care and that America ranks 18th among modern economies on major health indexes, she said, "we have the richest health insurance companies in the world, I mean."

When told for point of fact that Nazis were right wing fascists and that Communists were left wing socialists and that the two are so at odds that they fought each other in bloody World War II battles, this reporter was told to fuck myself.

Another anti-socialist who was riding the subway with a "NoBama" tee-shirt also remarked, "Your socialist nanny state wouldn't have allowed the plane to fly where it wanted. And maybe that's what those pilots wanted to do. More power to 'em."

When asked how he felt about riding on public transportation funded with tax dollars, this reporter was told to "fuck myself."

Not all conservatives and libertarians felt that the crash was a sign of thriving free-market aviation policy, one woman, visiting from New Jersey said "I heard that on one of the planes (sic) they were immigrants. I mean. Just goes to show ya."

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-07-25T18:49:00.001-04:00

Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off... Unless you want me to, then, fine, have it your way.

- Fannie Lou Hamer

Democratic Senators Make Obama into Carter

2009-07-17T15:43:00.003-04:00

This morning on a conference call, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) laid out the stakes the Republicans see in delaying a health care vote past August: "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."

Obama knows this. That’s why he has pushed hard for a final vote before the August recess, arguing that delaying until September could slow momentum and risk missing a historic opportunity.

This afternoon, the organized effort to slow down the process began to dig in it's heels. A letter was sent to Senate leadership asking for just such a delay that Jim DeMint describes as Obama's Waterloo. Who asked for the delay?

Of course, the actual messengers were the so-called "moderate" (but completely loyal right-wing Republican) senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. The same pair of "moderate" (loyal right-wing Republican) Senators who have been heavily courted by Obama all year, hilariously, as if they would ever help a Democrat.

And unsurprisingly, the two senators got a bunch of stupid right-wing Democrats to join them manning Jim DeMint's Republican roadblock.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a right-wing Democrat who apparently hates that the country elected a Democratic President and is trying to sabotage him called in some of his fellow Democratic clowns. I can picture Nelson asking in the cloakroom “who wants break a popular Democratic President” and unsurprisingly a number of Democratic Senators' hands shot up.

Joining "effectively President" Nelson is the right-wing Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, a corporate shill from the conservative corporate-owned state of Louisiana. She believes that her political survival depends on opposing the progress America voted for, thus leaving her to battle for reelection against the state's Republican party without any Democratic voter support [which she just pissed away]. Stupid lady.

Also at the GOP roadblock is Ron Wyden, a bitter Democrat from Oregon who has a big sad because his amendment from the Bush era wasn't included in the plan. It wasn't included, of course, because it's politically idiotic to do what the Wyden/Bennett idea does: destroying the employer-based health care system, removing the public health insurance option, ergo not holding down costs, plus benefit plans actually reduce over time... this poor guy's plan would have garnered no votes and killed health reform immediately. He's sad of it, and he's apparently now holding a pitchfork that Sen. Coburn (R-OK) just handed him. Blinking, dazed, he's wondering if this is what he's supposed to be doing. And exactly where this pitchfork came from. And if it's really intended for him to use. And on who? But it's too late, Wyden has just lined up with the forces defending the Status Quo. Game, set, match.

Next to him is a man not at all confused about his purpose -- the scum of the Earth, the biggest Prima donna saboteur since Tanya Harding, the completely worthless asshole, Joe Lieberman. President Lieberman is beaming. He has signed on board with this letter, of course, because after all, his actual profession is opposing Democrats. No matter the cause. No matter the manner. He is a retardant.

So when this roadblock is successful; when Health Care reform doesn't happen, when autumn comes and the TV is literally nothing but ads blaming Obama for everything, and he has nothing to say for himself except that he trusted that the United States Senate would hash out a plan, and he coos his disappointment at the lack of progress, disappointment speeches which will help no one.. and his approval rating dives under 50%, never to return, and he fails to win reelection, and is Carter Redux, I will remember who signed this letter. Will you?

Previous Change Agents from Fake History

2009-06-25T18:49:00.002-04:00

The biggest mistake sometimes is to play things very safe in this life and end up being moral failures. But as a Democrat, that’s what you do.

- Dorothy Day

Mark Sanford, Republican Moral Scold, Cheats on Wife... John Edwards is Back in the News

2009-06-23T20:24:00.002-04:00

The radical right wing Christian Republican governor of the beautiful but failed state of South Carolina, who voted to impeach Bill Clinton ten years ago, and who a few months ago became a GOP hero for refusing President Obama's stimulus money, opting instead to let SC continue it's death spiral... cheated on his wife.

This means only one thing: We're going to be hearing a lot more tawdry details about John Edwards' scandalous, terrible, hypocritical affair.

Your liberal media, folks.

When Edwards is all over the tee-vee in a few days, remember me, saying "I told you so."

Note to Self: Next Time, Elect A Liberal

2009-06-21T18:12:00.004-04:00

Here's why we can't have nice things:

Obama isn't a liberal. And he isn't a fighter.

In November of 2008, the country voted for things that the Conservative Governing Majority* hate. (The CGM is loosely defined as all of the GOP, many Democrats, and most political media institutions.)

During a year of campaigning for President, the national political dialogue made it clear that if Obama won he would do many wonderful and/or dasdardly things. The shopping list was drilled into our heads:

And apparently we voted overwhelmingly for universal healthcare reform, we voted to end the war in Iraq, we voted to tax the rich, we voted to stop gaybashing bills like DADT, and on, etc.

Those things will never come... without a fight.

Why? Because there is too much profit being made by Corporations and the Senators they have purchased in our current system of Corporate Feudalism. To achieve the shopping list items meant fighting against the will of the Conservative Governing Majority.

Obama is not a liberal and he is not a fighter.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Here is the really tragic part: George Bush's destruction of the Republican Party brand, and his exposure of Conservative Ideology - fiscal, foreign, and domestic - as an absurd sham, truly opened the door for a New New Deal. One that could revitalize American society much in the same way that FDR had done after Hoover, 80 years ago, presaged Bush's performance.

“When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters-one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.” - JFK

This grand opportunity is being squandered by Obama. He is becoming Jimmy Carter every day. I sometimes think this is more depressing to watch than the eight interminable years of Bush.

They're Not To Be Taken Seriously

2009-06-17T16:41:00.002-04:00

I'm seeing more and more FOX News comedians and Republican party employees object to President Obama's health care reform plan on the grounds that it presumably runs counter to how they want Conservative government to be run (which is free-market idealism, untethered - each acting in our own rational self interest): These people are not serious.

Stop treating these people as anything other than clowns.

#1 They are arguing for radical libertarianism - the kind of fantasy invented philosophy found in the FICTION novels of Ayn Rand.

It is simply not real. This "philosophy", objectivism, is a work of fiction. Objectivism is the fictional creation of John Galt, himself a fictional character in the novel, Atlas Shrugged.

It's make believe, people!

Can you imagine if Dennis Kucinich proposed an amendment to a Defense budget bill saying that the bill as written was not in keeping with how society should optimally function (the best example, obviously being as explained in the Elvish masterpiece Quenta Silmarillion, translated by Bilbo Baggins in his Red Book of Westmarch.)

The mockery would be awesome.

The conservative counterpoint is no less ridiculous.

#2 As such, America rejected them at the polls in November 2008. They are losers.

Marriage Funnies

2009-06-12T11:39:00.004-04:00

One hundred years ago, conservatives argued against my grandparents getting married on the grounds that they were from different religions. The conservatives quoted the ancient Bible and rested their case on a 3,459 year old essay: "Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons."

Thankfully, my grandparents' love won the fight.

Forty-two years ago, conservatives argued against some people in my parent's generation getting married on the grounds that the couple in love were from different races. The conservatives again quoted the ancient Bible in legal court opinions:

"Almighty God created the races, white, black, yellow, Malay, and red and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix." - Judge Bazile, Caroline County, VA, 1965.

Thankfully, Mildred and Richard Loving won the fight. I didn't marry a white person and nobody gave us guff.

Today, conservatives argue against some people in my generation getting married on the grounds that the couple in love is from the same sex. The conservatives quote the same tired fire and brimstone from the ancient Bible: “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh"? Bill O'Reilly said on the conservative channel, FOX.

I don't doubt that we will win our fight soon. But I'm just so goddamned tired of fighting the same fight over and over again against the same conservatives. Will this country never grow up?

UPDATE:
Dear Bill O'Reilly,

Your ancient book doesn't get to define my legal rights. Our laws do.

You love to say, "Will it end with a box turtle?" No, you're retarded*: iff the turtle pays $36, takes a blood test, is a legal resident of the state, has a legal birth certificate, a social security number, is over 18 years of age, found to be of sound mind, and signs his name with black ink on a civil marriage certificate before the county clerk's officer and a witness... well, yes, that is either a man dressed like a turtle, one of Bush's futuristic animal-human hybrids or, more to the point, you're retarded*.

Kisses,
Fred