|
|
Monday, September 14th, 2009
| |
6:06 pm
|
|
| Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
| |
2:23 pm
|
Let this be a lesson to Obama and the Democrats in congress (particularly morons like Max Baucus).
The current GOP cannot be reasoned with. They will not compromise, they are not negotiating in good faith. Their supporters are either anti-government zealots or barbarians that, when not being crazy at town halls or listening to talk radio, spend their time howling at the moon. They are not interested in solving problems. They are not interested in solving problems. Their one goal, their sole pursuit, is the acquisition of power. To that end, they will do anything. They will say anything.
At this late hour, any positive change is not going to be the result of bipartisanship. The old image of people of differing ideologies working together to come to a consensus is, right now, as ridiculous as it is anachronistic. If there is to be positive change coming from the government under Obama, it will be partisan. The sooner he accepts this, the less horrific the damage will be.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
| |
7:50 am - wow
|
sometimes, you come across a bit of doublethink that is breathtaking in its simplicity and elegance.
Recently, the president of Honduras was forcibly removed from the country by the military. In any reasoned description, this would be described as a coup d'état, a military overthrow, treason, etc. Because the new dictator ship is seen by some as being friendlier to America, however, certain members of a certain side of the ideological spectrum are inventing all sorts of ways to avoid calling this what it is.
My favorite, without a doubt, is Ed Morrissey's creation: military impeachment.
It's just beautiful.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, June 12th, 2009
| |
3:38 am
|
It seems now that the key players in the healthcare debate have decided that they don't have the votes for a public option; all the republicans are opposed, of course, along with a few "democrats." Conrad is shopping around bullshit alternatives that are either too small scale to address in any meaningful way the problems we are faced with or are simply hamstrung such that they are primiarly designed to provide ammunition in a future push for reform ("we tried some terribly limited option that we knew wouldn't work, and it failed. we can therefore conclude that any government-run system will have the same fate")
Barack Obama has been a pretty mediocre president so far, and in my view that is largely due to his pathological need to compromise. When you place bipartisanship before principle to the degree that he does, the question necessarily becomes "what is the point?" Why should we support programs that are either miniscule improvements or actual regressions? After GDub's friends on the supreme court stole him the election in 2000, he wasted no time in being absolutely as radical as he could, a tendency wildly enabled by 9/11 and the trouncing received by the Dems 2002/4. Obama, conversely, says that he would prefer watered down legislation with wide congressional support than effective legislation that passes by a single vote.
I know that bipartisanship is an aphrodesiac to certain members of the chattering class, but why is it a laudable stance in the current climate? Obama is not God; he shouldn't feel obligated to endlessly woo people who would sooner spit in his face than work with him on anything. Obama does, however, have an obligation to 1) fulfill his campaign promises, and 2) work to better America. He definitely is at least a mild progressive, but you'd never know it from the haste with which he abandons his principles. I had hoped that the republican response to the stimulus would be enough of a lesson for Obama; now I simply hope that he learns it before healthcare reform fully slips away.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
| |
3:26 am - Never forget
|
|
| Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
| |
1:50 pm - To add to the disappointment
|
we see that support for real health care is dwindling.
This nonsense belongs in The Onion, not coming from one of the most influential members of the healthcare debate:
"Public option, in all its variations, is very much on the table," replied Baucus.
Yeah, but are you fighting tooth and nail for it? (asked by HuffPo)
"Public option, in all it's variations, is on the table and I'll fight tooth and nail," he said, then paused and added, "for a version that works, if we can get it passed."
Really? This is what we're working with?
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, June 1st, 2009
| |
7:56 am - There can now be no doubt
|
that the fracas over the release of the DHS memo detailing the threat of right-wing extremism was due to the implicit understanding of those "mainstream" figures complaining that they were and are an essential part of that threat.
It has been obvious for a long time, but the murder of Dr. Tiller establishes beyond any reasonable understanding that the irresponsible and hateful rhetoric from these clowns enables and promotes behavior that is by any definition extremist, dangerous, and a form of terrorism. This guy had people not only calling him a murderer (a fate common to anyone who is not a frothing anti-abortion crusader), but a nazi, a mass-murderer, an agent of satan, etc. The guy that allegedly killed Tiller believes in "justifiable homicide," the idea that killing this one man to "save millions" is something somehow permissible by God, and was surrounded by people and media that supported and confirmed that belief.
We as a country, as a people, need to understand that the individuals who commit these crimes are not "lone nuts." They don't arrive at their understanding of the world, their understanding of acceptable behavior on their own. The people doing these sorts of things come to believe in a very peculiar state of affairs: in this example, that America is ruled by either Godless heathens or actual demonic agents, and that these rulers are somewhere between coldly indifferent to and actually hugely in favor of the massacre of the "unborn." They aren't alone in their beliefs, and they certainly are not unaided by their communities. One of the hallmarks of extremism is that attachment to and engagement with society decrease as a person becomes more and more extreme; that is, as their beliefs become more and more radical, they see less and less reason to, say, discuss politics with someone outside of their increasingly crazy circle. They become less and less willing to entertain the idea of gradual change, compromise, or even mutual coexistence. In right-wing extremism especially, they become unwilling to listen to anyone but established authority figures or thought leaders, and hostile to anyone who disagrees with them or (particularly) a given authority figure.
Unfortunately, there really isn't a good way for a free society to stop the formation of these beliefs. We count on opinion leaders to be responsible, which is even less sane than expecting businesses to behave responsibly. They will say and do whatever increases their numbers in the best of cases; the worst of them will actually believe what they say (Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, et al). They will above all never, ever acknowledge any responsibility of any kind for the creation of a climate that allows for codification of the belief systems of the increasingly deranged people who (coincidentally, we're all sure) carry out attacks for the causes célèbres of these movement leaders.
In this case, the people closest to the murderer on the spectrum of crazy they all inhabit are not sorry that Dr. Tiller is dead; they have issued instead non-condolence condolences (see Operation Rescue's response, for example) and have otherwise betrayed their true feelings on the matter: that they believe his murder to be justified, something to not truly condemn (if not celebrate), that they have no responsibility to moderate their rhetoric, and that an even bigger crime would be to use this tragedy as an example of the consequences of irresponsible rhetoric.
I may write more on this, but I'm too disgusted with the reactions from red state and the rest to think even somewhat coherently. I will say that I eagerly await Bill O'Reilly's segment on Tiller tonight.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
| |
7:10 pm - So, it has been less than a day since Obama announced
|
Sonia Sotomayor as his supcourt nominee, and the "debate" is already totally intolerable. The one silver lining, of sorts, is that it will be something even more obvious than Obama/HRC's presidential run that I can point to when asked for examples of systemic racism/misogyny.
It isn't like the attacks that she has been and will be subject to were unknown. TNR helpfully paved the way for "bully," "bitch," and "stupid" with Rosen's unbelievably irresponsible hatchet job, making sure that all conservative smears of that nature are prefaced with "even liberals/the liberal TNR say..." Alongside that we are seeing attacks on her "qualifications," ignoring the fact that by any standard hers are more impressive than, say, Rhenquist's qualifications and experience when he was nominated. In this particular debate, we can reasonably substitute "insufficient penis/excessive melanin" for "unqualified."
That's not even addressing the standard attacks reserved for nominees of a Democratic president. Expect Sotomayor to be painted as a far left judicial activist, tasked with and dedicated to destroying America. Expect her to be slandered as a beneficiary of aa (which should, to the crazed right-wing mind, make open racism totally acceptable in attacking her nomination), with the understanding that the best candidate would obviously be a white male.
The reality is that Sotomayor is at best a center-left judge, with a solid record in addition to her Princeton education. Like Obama, she has an incredibly inspirational life story, which will perversely be a detriment to her in this process. I would've really preferred a far left nominee; the attacks are not going to change based on the actual political views of whoever Obama picks, so we might as well try for someone as radically liberal as Alito and Scalia are conservative.
I do have to admit I was surprised with the fury directed toward Obama's statement that his ideal candidate would be empathetic. I mean, surely conservatives who objected to that aren't really stupid enough to believe that being a judge is as simple as "following the law." The whole fucking point of our judicial system is to determine what laws actually mean (and whether or not they are in conflict with the Constitution), since they are rarely clear as written. Saying that someone should merely make decisions that are in accordance with the law and nothing else is either being shamelessly disingenuous or is breathtakingly ignorant. Beyond that, I am shocked that people are openly attacking the idea of an empathetic judge. It is clear that empathy towards conservative golden calves is a prerequisite for a conservative nominee, unless all these commentators really think that the rulings of the conservative wing of the supreme court all just happen to be in accordance with Republican Party priorities. The only thing that GOP politicians could do to more obviously paint themselves as hypocrites without principle or shame would be to go ahead and filibuster someone who is by any objective standard both qualified and a good fit for the rigors of the court.
She absolutely will be filibustered by the same people who screamed about the injustice of denying Bush nominees an up or down vote. I bet, though, that there won't be any attacks by the Democrats in the senate against the filibuster akin to the nuclear option that the GOP quickly adopted. A shame, as the filibuster is an undemocratic relic that makes actual governing almost as untenable as California's state government.
Also, a moment of silence for the miscarriage of justice in California today. Those wacky liberal activist judges adopted an incoherent and indefensible interpretation of the state Constitution that allowed them to avoid invalidating the existing same-sex marriages while not angering the whole of the religious lunatic fringe by correctly ruling that Prop 8 constituted a revision of the Constitution, rather than an amendment. Instead, they decided that what was a clear revision amounted to an amendment, thus paving the way for 2-4 more years of legislated bigotry. No one (except the people who could charitably be described as "in too deep") believe that prop 8 will withstand the test of time. All the demographic trends are against it; if it isn't overturned in 2010, I guarantee it will be in 2012. Either or both times, I predict we will hear endless shrieking about how we've already heard the will of the people etc etc. Not that they have to follow those rules (Arizona? Come on guys, be at least minimally consistent), of course.
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, May 21st, 2009
| |
1:21 am - I got an email today
|
that was asking me to sign an e-petition in support of President Obama's health care plan. It is a sorry state of affairs when I feel compelled to refuse to express even the minimal support that is represented by an online petition, but Obama has so far been a huge disappointment on this issue.
One of the things that is constantly said about Obama is that he is someone who places a huge premium on bipartisanship. He describes himself as a "ruthless pragmatist" who is more interested in getting something accomplished than scoring political points. The politics that he follows are those of consensus, moderation, and gradual progress. If you were to ascribe a motto to this particular style of politics, it would be "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." This is a phrase that Howard Dean used constantly in his book, and it made sense at the time. Dean had accomplished pretty significant things in Vermont, and had done so by eschewing a need for total capitulation, by refusing to adopt an all-or-nothing mindset. He worked with the Republicans in his state, and got a great deal accomplished. Obama, too, made working with his opposition a feature of his political career in Illinois, and has since made it something that defines him as a politician.
My problem with this philosophy is that it has a tendency to creep. We're today no longer adopting the good over the perfect, we're accepting any compromise over no compromise. I could be persuaded that people aren't ready for a modern health care system. The AMA and Republicans have done their level best over the last half century to prevent the imposition of any sort of universal system in the style of the European democracies, and the scare-tactics, red baiting, and outright lies have had years of recent repetition without any significant pushback by Democrats/liberals. I could even be persuaded that the total reform our system needs can only be accomplished piecemeal, bit by bit--I'm willing to accept that even in the face of American history, which tends to follow a "punctuated evolution" model, where significant policy changes happen very rapidly and are then tweaked in the following years (examples can be found throughout the history of the country, but the New Deal and Great Society are the two most obvious liberal instances).
What I am not willing to accept, however, is the idea that no real change can be made to improve the system initially. I have absolutely no sympathy for any industry that cannot compete with a self-sustaining government alternative, and I am even less sympathetic to the idea that progress needs to be held back even more in order to preserve the profits of industries that are only slightly less contemptible than predatory lenders and war-profiteers. If we institute what is currently being discussed (mandatory coverage, but no public plan) then all we will have accomplished is putting off the date when we institute real reform. What in the world is the point of compromise when you give away everything to arrive at a deal?
This brings me to a larger point, which are the limitations of pragmatism. As defined in American politics, a pragmatist is someone who will pursue policies that are believed to be effective, regardless of their ideological origin. What this definition ignores are the normative views that lead to varying answers to political questions. If I, for example, believe that health care is a human right, I will have very different policy goals when contrasted with an incorrect individual that believes health care to be just another market. When I am looking at their proposed policies and procedures, I should be trying to determine which combination is going to best solve the problem that I set out to deal with: which solution, in other words, best adheres to my normative goals. If you have two or more functioning, relatively coherent schools of thought, it is definitely possible to pick and choose policies that happen to serve a given end even if they were designed to accomplish something else. An example of this would be adopting comprehensive sex ed and increasing the availability of contraception to reduce abortion rates, even if the initial goal of the ideological proponents of those programs was to, say, reduce the rate of STI transmission. If it had worked, deregulating the airlines as a way to reduce costs and improve service would be an example in the opposite ideological direction.
Unfortunately, things in America are different. We don't have even two schools of reasonable thought. The sad reality is that when an ideology has spectacularly failed in almost every regard, the useful policy initiatives that you can adopt are going to be incredibly limited in number. We have seen this in the Republican/Conservative (they are increasingly interchangeable, much to the chagrin of "true" conservatives/republicans) solutions to virtually every problem over the last few decades. Just looking at proposed solutions since Obama has taken office, we see that their answer to every economic question is "cut taxes and deregulate." Their proposal to make autocompanies more competitive was to slaughter unions. Their solution to the health care crisis is to totally deregulate the insurance companies, while shifting costs to individuals and reducing even the paltry coverage now given to the poor. These are the people that make up the "other side" of the argument. They don't have numbers on their side; they don't have morality on their side; all they have are the decades of fear-mongering that until now have been enough to sap the political will to enact real change.
Ultimately, you have to stand behind a set of principles. You have to draw a line in the sand, and be willing to say "Look, if you are not willing to entertain the idea of even modest changes compared to what we need, then we are not going to continue to indulge you. If you are unwilling or unable to compromise in good faith, then you really are going to be sitting on the sidelines of this process." Obama holds most of the cards. He has the budget reconciliation process, and the immense power of the bully pulpit. 2010, thanks to incompetence from the Republican party (exceeding so far even the incompetence of the Democratic party, no small feat), is looking like another overall win for Obama's party. He even has the experience to know ahead of time that the people across the table are not acting in good faith. In addition to all of that, he has the opportunity, the public support, and righteous reasons to shoot for the stars. Why he is willing to settle for a disgraceful watering down of what we need, and what the people want, I'll never know.
If he really is going to go down that road, the least he could do would be to feel ashamed at the monumental failure that such a compromise would represent. To me, that would include not having the temerity to ask his (former, in some cases) supporters to endorse such garbage.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
| |
10:52 am
|
Apparently all you need in order to be a supreme court justice, even chief justice, is the ability to weave conservative pablum into your arguments. I suppose that this has been true since Scalia has been a member of the court, but I have to give props to CJ Roberts for showing how apparent it is.
There was a recent case dealing with the constitutionality of various plans to integrate schools by having a preference for minority students. What preference there was was not systemic: there were only a few slots at these schools that were largely decided on the basis of race. The court found that, in a bit of "Liberals are the real racists!" style of reasoning, the attempt to diversify schools was unconstitutional because it considered race at all (or too much, if you want to adopt Kennedy's stupid and more charitable concurrence).
CJ Roberts, however, wrote the opinion. Roberts strikes me as a sort of proto-typical angry white male, who firmly believes that he did not benefit significantly from the patriarchy. There is a New Yorker article by Jeffery Toobin full of quotes from Roberts' opinions that make his attitudes pretty obvious. The line that I'm picking as the most insipid, though, is this: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Yeah, the way to stop crime is to have people stop being criminals. Why isn't Roberts cracking down on discrimination by the people in power? Why are his opinions almost always in favor of the more powerful entity in any given confrontation, even when it is shockingly obvious that they are wrong (see the recent AT&T case where he was one of the justices ruling that AT&T is able to reduce pension payments made to women who sought maternity leave before the passage of a law forbidding such discrimination)? If CJR were even passingly committed to the bit of message-board-signature idiocy that I mentioned above, we'd occasionally see him take a break from his conservative activism to work a little justice, wouldn't we?
It is a shame that he is so young. His age, coupled with the ability of people to be sustained by hatred (see Strom Thurmond), virtually guarantee that he'll be able to bring down both the average intelligence and level of real justice provided by the Supreme Court for decades to come.
Oh, and I have to recognize Anthony Kennedy for consistently have no principles at all. I guess enjoying his role as "that crazy swing-justice" is reason enough to forgive his breathtaking ideological shifts from one case to the next.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, April 30th, 2009
| |
3:23 pm
|
Lots of big news in the last few days, but I couldn't let this statement go without remarking:
RICE: I just said, the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.
The more things change etc
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
| |
10:50 pm
|
I suppose it is the nature of philosophy to allow for and even demand the destruction of the adherent in the pursuit of a code. I have largely ignored the question of what I owe to myself, what I owe to my family in my drive to try and better the lives of those poor souls that I can help. Even with my focus being to some wrongheaded, my circumstances are far more fortunate, more forgiving than those I know. Still, in some ways I know this behavior is self-destructive. I know that better than anyone.
If I am to be "dragged down" into the murky waters between failure and success, then so be it. I will do what is right, as long as I am able, as long as I can do good. I will do no less.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, April 11th, 2009
| |
11:21 am - Apparently
|
there is an email circulating amongst the tea party wingnuts that basically claims that ACORN agents/stormtroopers will be trying to get information on the people attending these tea parties.
The purported purpose? To report dissenters to Obama. That's right, ACORN brown-shirts are going to be laying the foundation for the presumably inevitable roundup and incarceration/elimination of True Patriots.
Wow, folks.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Friday, April 3rd, 2009
| |
3:29 pm - Items
|
1) A death curse placed on the next person to lament the travails of poor ted stevens. Holder dropped the case because of prosecutorial misconduct, most notably the withholding from defense attorneys of a critical piece of evidence. He did NOT drop the case because stevens was innocent. Stevens merely caught an undeserved lucky break in the form of incompetence from those charged with prosecuting him. He remains as guilty as can be.
2) Reverse props to Rush Limbaugh for sticking up for the elites instead of the little guy when he argued that no one thinks of the masses. Referring to the masses as "faceless dorks who can't fend for themselves" is pretty ballsy when you are essentially employed as a demagogue whose audience is made up of know-nothing ditto-heads. Of course, someone who constantly lambastes the government and government programs that he has taken advantage of can be reliably blind to the contradiction.
3) One has to love JMcCain. He runs on a platform of nativism to appease the increasingly crazy republican base, apparently expecting Hispanics to see through the charade. When this predictably doesn't happen, he becomes a bitter and resentful old man: "You people—you people made your choice. You made your choice during the election." The previous was said during a meeting with Hispanic business leaders, in reference to the seeming lack of urgency with which Obama is tackling immigration issues.
4) The latest concession given to banks in trouble (the rescinding of mark-to-market rules) is the latest evidence that people in power are still not taking this crisis seriously. Letting banks fluff up their books with pretend assets will not solve the problem any more than ignoring it will.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
| |
4:58 am - a terrible realization
|
|
| Friday, March 27th, 2009
| |
12:10 pm - About fucking time
|
|
| Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
| |
3:05 pm - Oh Arlen
|
It is a shame that you have decided to lose your upcoming reelection battle. You barely beat Toomey in the primary last time around, and you're not at all loved by the raging bizarro people that make up the Republican base. Voting against cloture for EFCA and in so doing slapping away the hand of labor is effectively sealing your own fate. You could've flipped parties and easily won re-election, but instead the seat will now go to a presumably liberal Democrat!
For that, you have my thanks.
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, March 5th, 2009
| |
4:24 pm
|
Because no one fucking understands how a modern income tax works, here is a simple example. Let's say you live in a country with two tax brackets: $1-10,000 pays 0% in taxes, and $10,001 and above pays 15%. If I am making $10,000, there is no fucking way that I will end up having less money if my income goes up by a dollar.
I will, if I suddenly get a raise of a dollar, take home $10,000.85. I will not have any reason in the entire world to find a way to stay below the second tax bracket. Consequently, all these people are actually too stupid to be making the money that they are making, and should feel free to gift me any excess money that they are trying to shed.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Thursday, February 26th, 2009
| |
5:04 pm
|
I'm sure that these people were all irresponsible and therefore deserve a retirement mired in poverty and want.
Funny how the advocates of privatized or gutted social security never address market downturns.
-Paul
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, February 15th, 2009
| |
12:11 pm
|
every so often, I succumb to boredom and reread the posts of random people, myself included. the enormity of the mistakes I've made, opportunities I've squandered, and people I have left behind cannot be overstated. i've tried to learn from these experiences, emerge a stronger person, and to some degree i have.
in order to make sure that I have a well-rounded sense of regret, even those lessons I have learned and applied lead to new and horrible situations, where i am caught between doing what is good for me and what i think is good for the people in my life. i suppose that the fact that what good for me frequently means is "cut ties with the 'problem' person" says a number of unkind things about me. and, in all fairness, the number of people I have actively distanced myself from pales compared to the friends with whom i shared mutual neglect. even now, as always, i try to master my emotions in order to serve a greater good, albeit on a small scale that does not merit lofty phrasing. in this particular instance I have not yet found an opening to drop contact and emerge weaker and less sure, but it is only a matter of time. the council i have solicited from the friends i bother with my nonsense has largely been useless, though this is no fault of theirs. i know the course that I will inevitably have to take. it is curious to me how obvious this path is to everyone else, particularly to the other players. my guess is that a stunning lack of awareness is the likeliest answer. the evidence for said naiveté is vast and unending, and may be due in large part to my stony demeanor and resolve in not broaching any uncomfortable subjects; still, I think and believe that more than a little of the ignorance can be described as "willful."
i will continue to languish, both better off and infinitely less lucky than the people I know. shambling ever forward, I will hope to make progress in those realms that mean something to me, and to the people I care about. foremost of those areas is my guilt, my regret. though it be little more than shouting into the dispassionate and empty darkness, know that, those of you i let slip away, i mean and meant no ill will. know i will always treasure the time we did share. for those i leave soon, know that i am truly sorry that i could not do more.
for now, i go. moving ever forward, i will take what i can and do my very best to not fall short as i so often have these last ten years. i am hopeful, and though my regrets grow ever heavier, that hope lightens my burden and gives me the strength to strive wearily onward.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tefari's journal