Quo Vadis?

O, Obama, wither goest thou?

And thou, O Liberal, who followeth thy shepherd?

There is a tale from the Acts of Peter which has Saint Peter fleeing from Rome and his own likely crucifixion. When he encounters a resurrected Jesus on the road, Peter asks, “Whither goest thou?” ("Quo vadis" in Latin.) 

Jesus replies, “I am going back to Rome to be crucified again.” Thus, Peter gains the courage to return to Rome himself and continue his ministry--at least until he is indeed finally crucified, upside-down.

And as the media try to make sense of Obama’s proposed budget, which sells out seniors, not to mention 70 years of Democrats fighting to protect Social Security, liberals find themselves encountering Obama on the road to Rome.

Are we going to follow him back to the Eternal City to be crucified ourselves, ass pointed toward the sky, head full of blood--and very likely, regret? Will he be your resurrection? Or could it be possible that Obama is--gasp--selling out his base? As unimaginable as this may seem?

Well, an adorable little article that appears today in politicsusa suggests that there is no such crucifixion in the offing. That in fact, what is actually happening is that that clever Obama is at it again, playing 11-dimensional chess and whooping everyone’s ass in the process, only no one else knows it yet.

via

Well, the article would be adorable if it weren’t so hopelessly naïve and so typical of the contortions that liberals will put themselves through in order to find a way to keep supporting this president, even after he has proven  himself over and over to be nothing but a less-abrasive, English-speaking version of George W. Bush.

In the piece, the author, one Jason Easley pushes the notion that Obama’s embrace of chained-CPI social security “reform” is in fact a setup:

The truth is that outside of the right wing ideologues, many Republicans see real political danger in messing with Social Security. In plain English, Republicans will get nothing on Social Security unless they agree to raise taxes.

He suggests that Republicans have three choices: allow tax increases in order to get chained-CPI passed (and get savaged by their tax-hatin’ base), argue for chained-CPI without tax increases (and get nothing, because Obama and the Senate have proven so very formidable when it comes to negotiations) or reject chained-CPI altogether (resulting in a party divided and nothing getting passed at all.)

Well, first of all the premise that Obama might stand tall in negotiations with Republicans in order to secure a deal that he “really wants” is...well, it’s sweet. That's so cute. I wish I could meet Mr. Easley so I could pat him on his widdle head.

via

As is apparent to anyone with a pulse, this flies in the face of all available evidence. Given any opportunity to cave to Republican wishes or to the received wisdom of the Beltway in order to fulfill his weird fetish for so-called “bi-partisanship,” this president has done so.

via

One might be prompted to imagine--if one were of a cynical bent--that with this nearly unbroken string of concessions, Obama has in fact been getting what he wants all along. That perhaps his stated goals aren’t in sync with his actual goals. One might imagine that if there is a game being played, it isn’t being run on the Republicans, but rather on Obama’s liberal base. (See: closure, Guantanamo; reform, Wall Street; health care, single-payer; withdrawal, Iraq; Patriot Act, renewal; torture, non-prosecution of; etc., etc., ad infinitum.)

But enough heresy.

Mr. Easley goes on to say:

Democrats have constructed an elaborate political trap for Republicans. If they go on record as supporting Social Security cuts, President Obama his party will snap it closed. (sic)

Yes, because that’s what Democrats are good at, snapping traps.

Note that within hours of Obama’s budget proposal going public, Republicans were already accusing him of selling out seniors. 

That’s some fine trap-snappin’ there, Lou.

Obama:   Good luck in 2014 and 2016, fellow Dems! Did I mention I won’t have to run again? Ever?

Dem politicians:   0_o

Perhaps the most infuriating piece of this liberal head-in-the-sand routine as demonstrated by Mr. Easley’s article is the notion that anyone who argues against Obama’s policies from the left is somehow actually the one who is ignorant or naïve:

While the activists on the left continue to completely ignore the political realities unfolding before them, it is looking more and more like Obama’s Chained CPI offer was designed to call the Republican bluff on Social Security.

Here’s the thing: the “political realities” are a result of what the president wants them to be. They are not entirely his doing, obviously, but the president has the largest, loudest, biggest, baddest bully pulpit on the planet. If he wanted to change the conversation--or even make an ATTEMPT to change the conversation, he could do so. He could have done so, over and over again. He has had countless opportunities to try and shift the conversation--ANY conversation--more toward something resembling the progressive platforms on which he ran.

He has not done so.

And here’s where the intransigent Obama cheerleaders are completely self-defeating: the conversation desperately needs to be changed. I AGREE with them, for fuck's sake, that this country is fast steamrolling toward an unshakeable oligarchy run by and for the plutocrats, and there will come a point--if we haven’t passed it already--at which no amount of howling from us plebeians will have any effect.

And if Obama won’t change the conversation, we need to call him out on it. If we continue to support him no matter what shitty, anti-democratic, anti-human policies he supports, we are complicit. Why isn’t he (and Mr. Easley, for that matter) saying things like:

-the cut-off for social security contributions is $113,000. Any money a person makes over that amount is exempt from the SS tax. You want to “save” social security? Raise that limit a few thousand dollars and it can last as long as this country does.

-Social Security is not insolvent, nor is it about to be.

-Social Security does not add to the deficit.

-the deficit is actually dropping.

-the deficit is actually a good thing right now, according to some economists.

-tax rates are at their lowest in ___ years (depends who you ask).

My point is that left and right, blue and red are no longer relevant arguments to be having, not when all of the people we’re arguing about, left or right, are supporting the position of big money, either tacitly or overtly. If anyone or anything is threatening the destruction of this country, it is wealth disparity, political corruption, and revenue shortfalls.

So who’s being naïve again? The people who think Obama is pulling some elaborate con while only appearing to sell out his base? Or those who think that he really is selling out his base, as he has so many times before?

O, liberal, wither goest thou,

Now that thy shepherd has proven a wolf?

--kjb

(by the way, if you haven't clicked on the last two "via" links I posted, go immediately to this guy's tumblr. It is awesome and hilarious. :-)

Disaster and Apocalypse

The car is on fire, and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a cold wind blows

--Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Dead Flag Blues"

We Modern Americans love our disasters. We adore movies featuring asteroids bearing down on us, zombies trying to eat us, Mayan prophecies trying to Cusack us to death.

There’s also a strong argument to be made that we love actual disasters: killer storms, tsunamis, tornadoes, lunatic shooters. There are primal, visceral notes within us that are evoked when trouble occurs, when the world looks apocalyptic for a moment. 

It’s rubbernecking on a grand scale. It’s seeing a live performance of an edgy, confrontational play or band. It’s riding a roller coaster: we realize we’re not in any actual danger ourselves, but we get to feel as though we are. From a place of safety, we empathize with the victims and vicariously become them. It’s the uncertainty of life, the “That could have been me,” moment where--and no shame or judgment--but we get a perverse, voyeuristic thrill deep in our bowels.

We do. Deal with it. We just do, as much as we might like to deny it. We do, because we are creatures of imagination and empathy. We are smart enough to realize that life does end. Or maybe it’s that we are still so deeply connected with our animal selves, the ancestral place where we are forever on the knife-edge of life and death.

This uncertainty is what perks up our ears at the sound of impending doom, even if it’s someone else’s doom--or better yet, the doom of the species or even the planet as a whole.

And it’s uncertainty that I think is at the heart of why modern Americans are so enamored of disaster, whether in movie form or reality. As random as the world is, we humans want and crave order, even when it comes to the apocalypse. When things are going to shit, we want proof positive that this is so. We want to be certain that it’s time to hole up in the hills with cases of Ensure and bottled water and take multiple wives and shoot interlopers on sight. That’s not something you want to do prematurely.

But the collapse of civilization doesn’t necessarily have to be apocalyptic. Maybe it can be more uncertain than that, more incremental and insidious. Maybe it can be more like the unmoving frog in a pan of water slowly brought to a boil. Maybe if things get bad enough slowly enough, we don’t necessarily get to see the moment when civilized society ended.

We are given a date in A.D. 476--September 4, to be precise--when the Roman Empire is purported to have “fallen.” But modern scholars agree that there was a period possibly as long as hundreds of years prior to this during which things got steadily worse for the general populace in terms of foreign invasions, loss of territory, and reduction in creature comforts. In the meantime, the elites increasingly holed up in their villas in the country with their servants and the trappings of their wealth and avoided the mess their misrule had created.

Sound familiar?

The collapse of civilization may very well look like the weeds growing from the cracks in the pavement on the shoulder of US 36 to Boulder. It may look like unrepaired bridges and crumbling schools and hospitals shutting down. It may look like the angry and beaten-down faces of the people at the bus stop waiting to go to their second or third or fourth job. It may look like foreclosed houses and broken windows and shuttered factories and glass on the sidewalk that never gets cleaned up.

What if apocalypse is gradual, not, well, apocalyptic?

I’m not the first to say it, and I won't be the last: The end of civilization may look like today. It may look like right now.

The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn

--Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Dead Flag Blues"

So, Obama and Romney bicker for our amusement over who makes for a bigger bogeyman, an out-of-touch, robotic billionaire corporate raider with unknowable offshore wealth, or a socialist/communist/nazi/Kenyan-Hawaiian. And while they distract a deeply troubled nation with fatuous prophecies about who would more quickly destroy the republic, I would argue that it’s too late. The republic is already gone.

Romney and Obama are flip sides of the same coin, just as the people who run things want them to be. Not even flip sides; they’re both heads, because heads always wins these days: heads they win, tails you lose. Romney and Obama are like a Janus head, one facing forward, one backward, but both part of the same entity. (This may be an especially apt metaphor in that Janus was considered to have “two faces,” although between them Obama and Romney have four, at least...but never mind.)

The entity both these men represent is the machine that is stealing not only this country, and our freedoms and our future, but also the future of the entire planet, all in the name of making those with the most wealth even wealthier.

As Chris Hedges puts it in an excellent article found on Alternet

Those who exploit do so through layers of deceit. They hire charming and eloquent interlocutors. How many more times do you want to be lied to by Barack Obama? What is this penchant for self-delusion that makes us unable to see that we are being sold into bondage? Why do we trust those who do not deserve our trust? Why are we repeatedly seduced? The promised closure of Guantanamo. The public option in health care. Reforming the Patriot Act. Environmental protection. Restoring habeas corpus. Regulating Wall Street. Ending the wars. Jobs. Defending labor rights. I could go on.

Oh, let me: the continued and useless drug war, stepped up to include legal marijuana dispensaries; the knee-jerk law and order reaction to Occupy, during which the administration either stood by and watched silently or actively abetted the crackdown; the continued expansion of NSA spying on US citizens; the shameful prosecution of Wikileaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning; and giving torturers and war criminals from the Bush Administration a free pass.

Hedges touches it with a needle. The thing is, Obama too is a tool of the corporations. And the corporations for all intents and purposes are now firmly in control of the levers of government. All of the levers. Our votes are bought and sold on a scale unprecedented. We are propagandized so thoroughly and ubiquitously that there is no escape; Hitler, Stalin and Mao couldn’t even conceive of the level of control of information currently held by the elites in this country. And not just by Fox News; the thin slices of the far left and right that actually ask the right questions, questions outside of the strict parameters and framing laid down by corporate power are marginalized at best, if not outright destroyed.

Our court decisions have become products like any other in this commodified system, to be packaged and purchased by those who can afford them. (“Here’s that Bush v. Gore you ordered, sir--would you like to super-size with a Citizens United?”) Our justice system is neither just nor really a system any longer, certainly not one that operates by any logic or fairness.

America as it was meant to be is pretty much over. We are just watching the slow crumbling of what public edifices remain as the rest of the nation’s wealth is sliced and diced and distributed upward to the puppet-masters in charge.

Obama and his cohort in Congress may publicly plea for consensus and admonish the other side for blocking legislation, but the fact is, Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have gotten done exactly as much as they wanted to get done. With Obama’s political capital in 2008, he could easily have gotten a better healthcare plan through, one that didn't cater so massively to big pharma and the insurance giants. And the rest of the laundry list Hedges cited--Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, habeus corpus, the environment, labor laws, Iraq, Afghanistan--all of these are hideous crimes of omission and commission for which we should all be holding the administration’s feet to the fire, not congratulating them because they are not quite as blatantly pro-business and pro-money and pro-power as Daddy ‘Mittens’ Warbucks.

The left in this country today is like a victim of domestic abuse. The beatings continue apace, but when they do stop for a second, and Obama says something hopeful about gay marriage or vague promises of other reforms, we applaud and say, "See? He really does love us!"

But the one crime that we cannot forgive is that Obama did nothing to reform Wall Street after the crash in 2008. With some effort--any effort--he could have passed some new re-cobbling of Glass-Steagall with judicious use of the bully pulpit and the properly stirred-up ire of the populace, outraged as each new malfeasance of the banks came to light. With the carrot of billions of dollars in bailouts and the stick of an irate public, it could have been done. Easily.

But he didn’t want to. And that’s because he owes his presidency and the possibility of a second term--not to mention a very wealthy post-presidential life indeed; just ask Bill Clinton--to the same bankers and financiers who are today right back at the same tricks they pulled prior to 2008.

And what this should illustrate is that democracy in America is essentially finished. Justice as a broad concept that encompasses all Americans is over. The banks and bankers--and just as importantly, the people who own a great deal of the money in those banks, which is all of the wealthy class, essentially--are thoroughly in charge. They are above the law, because they make the law. They are the law. There is no oversight, there is no counterweight to their control.

There is no one left who has the power or even inclination to slap down big money. What this means in terms of our day-to-day reality should be apparent: weeds on the side of the highway, unemployment with no end in sight, crumbling infrastructure, environmental catastrophes unpunished, financial ruin for all but the very top while the entire house of cards crumbles and crushes us all.

We're all trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death

--Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Dead Flag Blues" 

But even with the propaganda machine firing on all cylinders, cracks begin to show. We can see the system is a not a fair or just system. We can see that no one got punished for Wall Street’s crimes. We can see the oil companies continuing to get taxpayer dollars even as they poison our water and land and air and children. We can see through the increasingly obvious and blatant lies the politicians and the media throw at us as they cease to really give a shit whether we believe them anymore.

This is where the angry faces originate. This is where petty crime and nasty discourse in the street and irate traffic and selfishness and a thousand irritated slights between people come from. We want to blame someone, and we are frustrated enough sometimes to take it out on someone nearby. But people aren’t stupid, not completely. Even us rubes walking down the midway of America, reaching into our empty pockets having just thrown three rings in exchange for our last dollar can sense when something about the game isn’t quite right.

We can see that things are getting shittier and shittier around us. We can also see that those who are to blame go unpunished, while petty, minor criminals--that is, the poor--go to prison at unprecedented rates.

And what is becoming increasingly clear is that part of the game right now includes expanding the police state apparatus as quickly and quietly as possible, because those at the top realize that people won’t tolerate this forever. As the mass of people are squeezed into ever more untenable positions, the machine cracks down on the tools and means of protest that a free people should and always have been able to use--by right, not by fiat. Remember that: these tools of protest--free speech, freedom of assembly--are not gifts to be taken away on a whim by any president, not even one you kind of like. That’s why they are called “inalienable rights.”

Even as they slowly strangle us and our children and destroy any kind of chance at a decent future, along with the means to live and survive on the only planet on which anyone now living will ever reside, they simultaneously take away our means to fight back against the crush of corporate power and wealth.

The sun has fallen down

And the billboards are all leering

And the flags are all dead

--Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Dead Flag Blues"

What’s hilarious is that the Teabaggers had it right, sort of. There is indeed a plan in place to take our country away from us and rob us of our freedoms--only it’s coming from the same corporate power structure that financed and built the Tea Party.

Perhaps this is what the end of civilization looks like: the end of civilized discourse between the leaders of a nation and its people. Leaders who no longer have to bother listening to their people. In our case, this is not only because of the influence of money in our elections, but also because the real leaders of our nation are no longer the ones we elect. Rather, the true leaders are a select few who have never been answerable to voters, but who nonetheless control the future. And the ones we do elect are easily bought off with flattery and trinkets and a taste of wealth of their own. It is too easy to incorporate them into part of the machine that is devouring the world. Far from offering even token resistance, they are downright eager to be assimilated.

I'm not the first to say it, and I won't be the last. Every generation has had people crying out that they were witnessing the end--of the world, humankind, civilization, something. We are a dramatic species.

But for the first time we can see an endgame, a place where there is unchecked--and ultimately uncheckable--power in the hands of a very few very powerful people, people who have shown no inclination to give up any of that power, not without a fight.

And we've seen very few people with the means to fight stepping up to do so.

I'm not saying the world's going to end on our watch, or even that America will. But I think we're seeing the beginning of the end of something.

Maybe civilization ends because humans, when given enough unchecked power over one another, are, in the final analysis, incapable of behaving in a civilized manner.

--kjb

###

Here's the song in full:




Here is some further reading, just a few articles I've run across lately, not all of which directly correspond to what I've written here, but which I find relevant nonetheless.

"Rules of American Justice," Glenn Greenwald, Salon

"How America's Surveillance State Breeds Conformity and Fear," Glenn Greenwald, Alternet

"How Whole Regions of America Have Been Destroyed in the Name of Quarterly Profits" Bill Moyers and Chris Hedges, Alternet

And here's a piece in New York magazine by one of my favorite writers, Frank  Rich, "Mayberry, R.I.P.," in which he notes that people from all points on the political spectrum are crying that it's all over.

EDIT: I trimmed and altered parts of the opening this morning, a few hours after I posted this, to try to clarify and home in on what I was going after a bit more clearly.

And here's another Moyers piece.

We eat horses, don't we?

Well, now we do.

There are so many levels of mistaken assumption to point out in association with this story that I almost don’t know where to begin.

It started for me when I saw a post by a distant FB friend who said ‘[Obama] needs to be out of here!’ based on her anger at horse slaughter becoming legal again.

First there’s the ignorance of basic civics, and how laws are made--that is, Congress writes laws, meaning a shitload of Republicans AND Democrats agreed to pass this shite bill before it ever made it to Obama’s desk. (I think she may have unfriended me after I gently pointed this out to her...she definitely pulled her post.)

It’s pretty funny how predisposed dislikes create a bad guy instantly in people’s minds before they even know what it is they’re mad about.

But anyway. Putting aside Fox News-educated understanding of how the world works for a moment, what is really irksome about this is the dumbness and hypocrisy of saying one animal is verboten for human consumption while any number of other animals are perfectly acceptable. It’s the Dennis Leary ‘otters are cute’ argument, and it makes just as much sense.



As Jonathan Safran Foer pointed out in ‘Eating Animals’ (and in an excellent ‘Modest Proposal’) if the issue is whether dogs--or in this case horses--are intelligent, feeling, playful, sensitive, companion animals, then we should not only not kill and eat horses and dogs and cats. We should stop killing pigs immediately, and probably cows and possibly even chickens as well.

So for the same people who natter on about how great bacon is or who play the chest-thumping ‘I’m a carnivore’ card to get all weepy about Nugget or Fido ending up in someone’s stewpot demonstrates a tremendous disconnect and failure to think through the entirety of the problem.

SIDEBAR: By the way, how tough do you have to be to slaughter an animal that has no idea what you’re up to and no way to fight back? Kill and eat a human and I might respect your bad-assery, tough guy.

So, yes, Obama signed an odious bill into law allowing the slaughter of horses for human consumption, a law passed by (Republican- or at least Money-controlled) Congress, a bill that was pushed by pro-horse slaughter forces in red states like Wyoming. And, no, we shouldn’t eat horses, for the same reasons we don’t eat dogs or cats, because they are smart, loving, intelligent, playful animals with apparently rich emotional lives that we can never truly understand. But by that logic neither should we eat pigs or cows. At the very least, people should be aware of the hypocrisy of eating one type of animal that possesses these qualities while being appalled at the notion of eating another.

Obama is the best Republican President since Lincoln

O my yes. This is an outstanding screed by Tina Dupuy pointing out just how badly Obama and his corporate whore advisers have screwed the progressives who put them in office. Favorite passage:

President Obama has managed to quell all anti-war protests and even start a new conflict. That is surely to be the envy of any Republican president who’s ever served.

Guantanamo Bay? Still open. Osama bin Laden? Shot in the head.

Talk about getting 98 percent of what they wanted. If the GOP didn’t have to change their goal post so Obama could never score in their view – Republicans could be dumping Gatorade on Rush Limbaugh by now.

Read it--it sums it all up perfectly. As she says, given that the greatest Republican President since Lincoln is in the White House now, chances are a Republican will win in 2012.

via

the problem with obama

When I was in Ohio for a mini-family reunion a few weeks back, my dad baited me into discussing politics.

This was after I told him and Cheryl that really, these days I don't even read the newspaper--at least not like I used to; the Washington Post was once my home page; I still have 30 or 40 political site bookmarks on my Firefox, all unused--and that I don't think about politics very much.

But my dad has been ripping through book after book on the economy's implosion, dissections by economists and the like explaining just what happened, who screwed who, and who got away with economic murder. So he was really into talking about all that; I was not.

I'm aware that we got fucked, and that the big banks did the fucking.

I am also aware that nothing changed. They are lubing us up again for another rogering, with virtually nothing and no one lining up to stop them, left or right.

What ensued demonstrated that I do know a lot about politics; I am not uninformed. I just refuse to waste any more brain power than absolutely necessary thinking about or battling over or struggling against the facts: the game is rigged. There can be no real, useful political discussion without overturning the way things are now, as it has become apparent that Obama and his promise of change has been subsumed by the relentless power of money.

He works for--and not coincidentally, has hired to implement his policies--the people with money or the people who work for the people with money. He has demonstrated himself incapable or unwilling to aggressively go after those who profited and continue to profit spectacularly while the rest of the country comes to resemble Rome circa 400 AD, just before the barbarian hordes destroyed the remnants of a mighty empire.

So it's not that I'm apolitical, or disinterested, or uninformed. It's rather that I refuse to participate in a shell game that always turns up the same winner, no matter if the apparent victor is wearing a D or an R next to his name. As Noam Chomsky observed, we spend all our time arguing 'Pepsi or Coke?' When what we should be discussing is whether spending our money on brown sugar water is really a good idea in the first place.

Thus I was really pleased to see someone lay it all out in the New York Times today (found via reddit). Drew Westen is a professor of psychology who consults for politicians, and he frames his article in terms of story-telling. He talks of the troubling signs even from Obama's inauguration onward, when we needed a leader who would lay out the story in honest terms, who's the bad guy, and how are we going to make certain this isn't going to happen again, much less let the same people pull off the same crime again. This story, had it been properly told:

...would have offered a clear, compelling alternative to the dominant narrative of the right, that our problem is not due to spending on things like the pensions of firefighters, but to the fact that those who can afford to buy influence are rewriting the rules so they can cut themselves progressively larger slices of the American pie while paying less of their fair share for it.

But there was no story — and there has been none since.

He points out that, unlike either Roosevelt:

...when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it.

And here's the real problem with Obama: his failure to do anything to help, and in fact his deliberate muddying of the waters--especially given a historic level of support and potential for real change. That's why I don't do politics anymore: if Obama couldn't or wouldn't pull it off then, with the support he had and the mandate he had and the historic immolation of the economy just behind him and thus a public hungry for change, then no one, ever will be able to overcome the moneyed powers who run things. Not without something that would look very much like a revolution, some change in the way things are done that is drastic and radical.

Read the entire article. It is illuminating, and cuts through the essentially useless and retrograde left-right dialogue and shouting that litters our airwaves.

sadly, a little close to home

A little on the nose, no?

via

Possum or Pussy?

In the short time we’ve had to digest the results of the mid-term elections, we’ve been told the widely predicted Republican gains in the Senate and takeover of the House represent a tsunami, a tidal wave, a juggernaut--a paradigm shift of epic proportions that indicates the end of Obama’s presidency and almost certainly the end of liberalism.

The White House will fly the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag, Ayn Rand will be enshrined as a national saint, and the repeal of the 20th century can begin in earnest. Say goodbye to the 40-hour workweek, civil rights protections, minimum wage laws, social security, Medicare, and all regulations ever on all industry and banking. We will invade Iran, North Korea and China, and make America great again.

Hell, we might even bring back Prohibition.

Come to think of it, women have been mighty uppity since they got the right to vote. Lots of them broads voted for the black guy in 2008. Might have to look into that whole 19th Amendment thingee while we’re at it.

But let’s set aside for a moment the hyperbole and empty, triumphalist, wish-fulfillment horseshit coming from formerly down-and-out Red-Staters--white guys who felt humiliated and threatened by a black man in 2008. Also, for now, let’s ignore sober analysis by political science types who say that, given all the negatives the Dems were fighting against, historically the Republicans should have done much better. If it weren’t for the fact that they too are in utter disarray and have no actual plan for improving the state of the union, and if it weren’t for Sarah Proud and Dumb anointing several thugs and lunatics as candidates of choice for the discerning teabagger, they could have taken the Senate too.

So, given all that, what could the bright lights inside the Obama administration be thinking?

What’s next for Team Bobo?

Convincing this...woman?...that's he's not the anti-christ.

It's not cuz he's black. It's cuz he's a mooslim.

Obviously for teabagger types and other Astroturf-blinded ‘populists,’ those poor spellers inexplicably screaming for tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year and the end of government--all while they tool around on Medicaid-provided Rascal scooters--the answer to that question would involve some mass suicide pact wherein all Democrats and other filthy librul types repented the error of their ways and decided to end their shame in a massive conflagration, a biblically appropriate cleansing by fire:

Led by Jon Stewart, all those fake Americans--the ones who voted for Democrats--would gather on the White House lawn and pray to the god of Abraham for forgiveness while holding hands and singing one last round of Kumbayah beneath the drawn, quartered, and hanged corpses of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, their viscera dangling gently in the breeze. Then the stoning would commence, obese teabaggers bussed in by Fox News from the hinterlands scooching their Rascals closer to get a better view of the slaughter, drool trickling from their mouths as they wheeze and pant, struggling to heave even small pebbles with their flabby, useless arms, conditioned only by masturbation and clicking back and forth from Fox News to the home shopping channel. Finally, a moat of BP oil surrounding the sinners--purchased at full price on the open market, naturally--is ignited from a torch held by Glenn Beck and a Fox News contest winner.

Looks like the rapture happened. At least it'll be quieter around here.

But barring that--and it is my hope that if any conservative types ever read this, the spontaneous orgasm that the above graf will have ignited in their withered, underused genitalia will so alarm them they will be prevented from reading any further--an interesting question arises, especially when one understands that, historically, a party winning the presidency almost always loses seats in the House and Senate in the following mid-term:

Is Obama playing possum? Or has he simply bent over so many times for big money at the behest of Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod that he’s grown Chicago-sized calluses in and around his asshole?

Because here’s the thing: strictly from a political perspective, this mid-term loss might be the best thing that’s happened to him since the inauguration. Simply in terms of Obama’s potential to get re-elected, this mid-term result could be a good thing.

Notwithstanding what the point of his re-election might be from a progressive perspective.

But given his track record, running in 2012 against whomever the Repubs might nominate--and given their recent bent for placating the crazies, it could be pretty much anyone--Obama is going to look downright statesmanlike.

Maybe they'll nominate this...woman?

Democrats are drooling at the thought that the teabaggers who will now wish to be taken seriously by the establishment Republicans (they won’t be) will insist on nominating some fiery, family values lunatic from whom moderates will flee. As retarded as many of my fellow Americans seem to have become lately, even we wouldn’t put an idiot and a quitter and a white-trash, charlatan grifter like Sarah Palin in charge.

For chrissakes, tell me that’s true.

Also, Americans love an underdog. A couple years of Republican arrogance and overreach (as if THAT ever happens) might just be what Obama needs to get people behind him again.

The other set of potentials this election ‘defeat’ sets up for the dems is running against two years of bad management of the House in 2012. John Boehner, the HOLIC (that’s Head Oompa-Loopa In Charge; Snookie can be his Number Two; Tila Tequila a mini-Oompa Loompa mascot he keeps on a thin, golden chain) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of big money. There is no way he can grant the teabaggers even a tiny portion of their wish list, not really, not more than crumbs. Expect to see lots of sturm und drang, many, many subpoenas flying about and empty hearings on all sorts of bullshit (please o please o please hold a hearing on Obama’s birth certificate, please?) but when it comes to actual legislation, the House isn’t going to be able to pass jack shit, nothing of import. Certainly not anything that will get through the Senate.

John Boehner and friends.

And speaking of the Senate. Senators have to play ball even more closely with big money if they want to hold on to their seats and get plum committee assignments. Rand Paul is a perfect of example of this transformation, though his was incredibly rapid: suddenly earmarks are acceptable. Raising the debt ceiling might be okay. (And of course, don’t forget that despite all his anti-gubbmint rhetoric, Mr. Paul is a huge fan of government handouts, in the form of Medicaid payments to opthamologists.) Now a part of government, he’s a big-government guy all the way.

As to whether street-level anti-government activist types--the ones who hate America so much they want to change the Constitution or spark a revolt against its democratically elected leaders--whether they will see through the smoke and mirrors, that’s another question. But the biggest challenge is going to be getting the Obama White House to see that playing footsie with the Republicans gets them nowhere--unless playing concubine to the big, big money had been their desired address all along.

In which case an added benefit of the Republican gains is that now the Dems can point to the House as the reason they can’t fulfill the liberal wish list they promised in 2008. Meanwhile they can continue to give the healthcare, financial, pharmaceutical, military and oil industries everything they want while dangling another round of empty promises for liberals:

‘...but if you re-elect me in 2012, and we take back the House, I promise, really, really promise, and I mean it this time, no fooling, pinky-swear, that this time around I really will shut down Guantanamo, and end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and rein in the bankers, and watch closely for oil spills...besides, look at the alternative!’

And on the other side of the aisle, envision two years of teabagger disillusionment when Boehner, who is already downplaying the significance of the mid-terms, can’t get anything done, and spins away from truly embracing teabagger ideals. Imagine the internal Republican wars over who gets the nod in 2012. Imagine Obama standing above all that as all the hatred and frustration and ugliness erupts and the Republicans turn on one another.

I'm not saying Obama's people planned it this way, but there are worse places for an incumbent president to be.

All of this may very well just be liberal wish-fulfillment, a fantasy in which I hope that the man who fired up so many people two years ago with talk of change hasn’t been completely co-opted by the money machine that runs Washington. Maybe I am foolishly hoping against hope that the Harvard-educated lawyer isn’t somehow so stupid that he thinks that every first date with the Republicans ought to end with him dropping to his knees for a goodnight blowjob, in the hopes that they might really, really like him:

Boehner guiltily looks up and down the street as he puts away his gnarled, orange Cheeto of a penis, already disgusted with himself.

‘Um, thanks, uh...” he pretends to pat Obama on the shoulder, but covertly wipes his hand on the president’s jacket. ‘Look, uh, I gotta split. Got a prayer breakfast with Billy Graham’s kid in the morning...um...yeah. So...see ya around!’

‘Gosh,’ says a smiling Obama, wiping John Boehner’s rancid, tobacco-reeking jizz from his chin as the limo pulls away from the curb. ‘He really likes me! He’s sure to call again now!’

So here’s hoping Obama is a better tactician than a high school sophomore--although he sure hasn’t proven it yet.

But, Christ, any little sliver of hope looks pretty good right about now.

Maybe dinosaur-riding Jesus can save us.
Nah, probably not even him.

###

reasonable assertion

via

Ya know, this actually does sound reasonable.

healthcare: diisillusion

Is disillusionment a pre-existing condition?

As the healthcare debate grinds on, it is becoming increasingly apparent even to people who haven’t been paying close attention that those on the right who are strongly anti-reform are not engaged in serious discussion of the merits of the Senate bill. They are motivated by a desire to simply stop the bill from passing--no matter what, no matter who it might hurt or who it might help.

Some oppose the bill simply out of spite--or to put it in politer terms, to prevent Obama from succeeding at anything, and thus neuter his presidency. Others are clearly in opposition due to their financial and political ties to the healthcare industry. Others are both spiteful and financially rewarded.

As usual, the mainstream media is the last to get the memo. They persist in fawning over the tea-partiers every time these troglodytes scrabble out into the sunlight from their bunkers and panic rooms, ignoring the glaring, obvious lies the shock troops have swallowed whole, simply because shouting idiots make for good television. (See “Jersey Shore,” “For the Love of Ray J,” ad infinitum.)

Plus, inside the Beltway it is considered impolite to openly discuss the legalized system of bribery that actually runs this country. It’s easier to focus on the focus-grouped gibberish that the wealthy insiders pass along to the rubes who carry their water as if these words had any truth or even actual meaning.

They almost certainly don’t mean anything to the pundits and politicians who invent them--aside from lining their own pockets. As Peggy Noonan demonstrated so plainly during the 2008 campaign, these Terribly Smart People will spew out utter bullshit that they don’t believe at all, simply because they know they are expected to perpetuate the accepted narrative (i.e. the narrative that best avoids uncomfortable questions of who is really running things. Preferably a narrative with a very narrow focus and simple horse-race numbers.)

To paraphrase Chomsky, the MSM says: Which do you prefer--Coke or Pepsi? As if those are the only two possible choices. How about some juice instead? Or a beer maybe?

And of course it’s to be expected that the media, a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business and the current system as it (dys)functions today would play its usual dishonest games. It isn’t at all surprising that they grant frothing morons who spew disinformation (see Bachmann, Michelle; Grassley, Charles) the same weight as thoughtful, earnest people on both the left and right who are trying to get at the parts of the healthcare debate that exist in reality and what the real-world consequences might be if they were enacted into law.



So, these are the things we knew. These are perhaps the things that are not so shocking. What I think the real problem today is for many on the left who supported Obama is that what is new, what has been revealed in recent weeks is that Obama and his people are also a part of that same machine.

Whoa, big surprise, O starry-eyed idealist, O dumb-ass worshipper of Obama, O Obamamaniac. Right?

But no, I am none of the above. I am aware that the same political system that created Obama also created Joe Lieberman. Both are beholden to interests outside of the ones they talk about publicly.

But what I think pragmatic people hoped for with the election of Obama was that grown-ups would be in charge again, finally. That there would be some swing of the pendulum back toward sanity, and responsibility, and reality in the way that our government ran things. That is, sure, things swing rightward--deregulation, chest-pounding idiotic wars, tax cuts for the wealthy--that’s just the way politics works, if you take the long view. But then someday, the pendulum usually swings back, or at least that’s how it usually works.

That hasn’t happened this time around. What I am saying is that what we have seen this administration do every time it has been confronted with an entrenched power is to go along with what that power wanted. And I am saying that perhaps this isn’t the result of weakness, or indecision, or even dithering, but rather just a calculated capitulation to the status quo (read: big money) that was planned all along.

What if Obama never seriously intended to fight? To wit:

-- in the way the administration bailed out Wall Street with virtually no restrictions and certainly no strong reform of the catastrophic ways in which they do business.

-- in granting General McChrystal (he of Pat Tillman cover-up infamy) virtual carte blanche to run Afghanistan for the next decade or more.

-- by quietly working behind the scenes to ensure that Big Pharma wasn’t threatened, killing legislation that would have made it easier to buy pharmaceuticals abroad.

-- and finally, perhaps most telling, by taking himself and the bully pulpit of the White House and his formerly massive store of political capital virtually out of the healthcare debate.

When people say, Where O Where has Obama been? Why hasn’t he been working harder to twist arms? Why didn’t he fight for the public option? Etc., etc., perhaps it’s because there never was any serious intention to challenge any of these powerful entities, despite stirring, bold campaign rhetoric. Perhaps, after all, this is a sort of Waterloo--not for Obama, but for American democracy.

The plutocrats are firmly at the helm. In every important debate the will of the people doesn’t mean shit--unless those people happen to be bank presidents or major stockholders of defense companies or pharmaceuticals.

Much as it was when the last guy was president. It just seems a lot more disturbing now.

###

Seriously, read that Chomsky article I linked to. Here it is again.

no, he sure can't.

via neatorama.

this guy created this design, and apparently he's going to sell them as t-shirts. :)

torture memos

Apologies in advance for including disturbing photos with this post. Don't scroll down if you have a weak stomach. (You can click on other entries to the left if you want to skip this one.)

But it's a disturbing fucking topic, and frankly, I think it's a bit too easy to intellectualize and compartmentalize the word 'torture' without fully understanding what it means. Not that you or I or anyone who hasn't undergone torture will ever fully understand what it means. But closing our eyes to it, literally, is another cheap way out to me, another way to absolve ourselves of its frankly gruesome reality.

I’m sure by now everyone has heard about the Bush-era torture memos that were just released, and Obama being either praised or vilified for releasing them. (As Howard Rodman points out in Huffington Post, he did something “which is now thought of as optional for high officials...he obeyed the law” by releasing the documents after an ACLU lawsuit.)

And if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve heard that Obama is playing down any possibility of bringing the perpetrators of these acts--acts that were performed in our name--to justice. The logic seems to be that, since there were legal opinions written that justified these acts, the torturers shouldn’t be prosecuted, since they thought they were obeying the law. (‘Just following orders’ anyone?)



But Obama’s stance has the hair-splitting political calculation that demonstrates to me what drove some of his opponents insane during the campaign: by essentially exonerating the torturers, he has exonerated everyone. You would have a really hard time prosecuting a lawyer who merely wrote an opinion as part of his job, however heinous that opinion was, unless he did the waterboarding himself. So, in his haste to have us look forward, not back, Obama is essentially saying, just let it go. Move on, people. Nothing to see here.

Well, bullshit. I’m sure the political tenor of Wingnuttia these days has something to do with the decision to play it this way--Obama doesn’t want to give them fuel for their nutty, delicious fires by opening a criminal investigation on Bush officials. On the other hand, while moving forward is indeed an essential part of the make-up of the United States, doing so without examining our mistakes fully and exacting a price for them is not possible. (See Olbermann’s special comment on this from last night.)



Not only that, Obama has painted himself into a logically untenable, if politically safe position here: Torture is wrong, he says. It is illegal. We have changed the directives to make this clear. We won’t do it under this administration. However, we also won’t prosecute those who have done it in the past, those who have committed clearly illegal acts.

Huh? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t take the pious high ground and proclaim (which I agree with) that torture is an illegal, inhumane, inhuman and ultimately self-defeating and useless practice, and then refuse to do anything about those who have done it, no matter how many legal opinions have been written supporting it.

And what I find most disturbing about this stance is that, when you think about it, isn’t Obama taking an eerily similar position to presidential usurpers of Constitutional powers we are all-too familiar with from our (very) recent past? By saying, 'I as president choose not to prosecute illegal acts,' is Obama not placing himself above the law much as Bush and Nixon did?

A final note: what I found most disturbing about the memos themselves was the clinical, almost instruction-manual tone they took. The word 'Nazi' gets thrown around a lot, and far too cavalierly, but, sorry, these documents are something you could see as having come out of Nazi Germany, for their precision, their dispassionate nature, and their utter cold inhumanity.



This is not us. This is not America. And by placing both the torturers and the architects of torture safely out of the way of prosecution, Obama is essentially laying out a blueprint for how future presidents can basically do anything they want without fear of consequences:

Lawyer writes memo. Operatives perform as memo states. Future president says: for operatives, acts were legal. And lawyers didn’t actually commit any crime, therefore:

Sweep under rug. Rinse, repeat.

Terribly Smart People

Here we go again. Here’s another Terribly Smart Person lecturing about how Obama should be careful how he spends his political capital--or if he even has any. Michael Gerson in the WashPost tells us:

“Obama's election was a tremendous, historic achievement, but it was not an ideological revolution.”

Oh, how badly these guys want things to stay the same. Despite Gerson’s acknowledgment that Obama put together an impressive coalition including independents, low-income people, the affluent, Catholics, and suburbanites--and, not incidentally, in the process won 54 percent of the popular vote--Gerson still thinks there is somehow NOT a tectonic shift happening around him. He goes on to cite the same statistics Bill Kristol used in the article I cited yesterday:

“In the 2004 election, according to the Associated Press, 21 percent of Americans called themselves liberal, 45 percent moderate and 34 percent conservative. In this election, 22 percent described themselves as liberal, 44 percent as moderate and 34 percent as conservative.”

But here’s the problem with the assessment. What it doesn’t take into account is the relentless demonization of the term ‘liberal’ over the past 20 years or so.

Now, personally, I am proud to be one of the filthy librul, hedonistic, elitist, godless, baby-killing horde. I think I may even control the media. I’ll have to check my mail and see if I paid my club dues last month.

There’s more honesty in that position -- that people should be able to do basically what they want as long as they don’t harm others, that the government isn’t some mythological beast looking to eat us and our income, but rather ‘We the People’ and that it should function as such -- than there is in the phony ‘libertarian’ canard you hear tossed about by conservatives. In fact, there’s more libertarianism in my stance, and that of most unwashed libruls I know than there is among alleged libertarians I speak with. (To wit: why is it so important to go-along/get-along Fox News acolytes disguised as libertarians to keep the big bad gubbmint out of our lives when it comes to taxes and guns, but not when it comes to the bedroom? Or reproductive choices? Food for thought...)

But to a lot of people, calling themselves a ‘liberal’ would be akin to publicly saying, ‘I worship Satan.’ It’s just not gonna happen.

The way people label themselves is really immaterial. Hell, even Bill O’Reilly makes a big stink about calling himself an ‘independent.’ Anyone buying that? From either side of the aisle?

But with the results of this election, it’s not plausible to say that the country hasn’t taken a mighty swing of the pendulum away from the so-called conservatism of lowering taxes for the new Gilded Class and dumping money into abstinence programs at the expense of actual, useful sex-ed, and sending our soldiers overseas on dubious if not downright false information. Even if you don’t want to call it by name, even if people don’t want to call themselves by that name, liberalism has spoken at the polls, and the results are in. That’s what the majority of people want.

Even if they’re not Terribly Smart People like Michael Gerson.

fear

this is hilarious. thanks to tomas for pointing it out. a short, funny vid about the fears of the republitards in the wake of the election. :)
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