Via Democratic Underground, a speech by RFK Jr. at Live Earth:
Now we've all heard the oil industry and the coal industry and their indentured servants in the political process telling us that global climate stability is a luxury that we can't afford. That we have to choose now between economic prosperity on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. And that is a false choice.
In 100% of the situations, good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy --- if we want to measure our economy, and this is how we ought to be measuring it, based upon how it produces jobs and the dignity of jobs over the generations, how it preserves the values of the assets of our community and how it averts the catastrophe of global warming.
If, on the other hand, we want to do what they've been urging us to do on Capitol Hill which is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of pollution based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy. But our children are going to pay for our joyride with denuded landscapes, with poor health, with huge cleanup costs and with climate chaos which is going to amplify over time and that they will never be able to pay.
Environmental injury is deficit spending. It is a way of loading the costs of our generation's prosperity on to the backs of our children. Climate change is upon us. Its impacts are going to be catastrophic and we are causing it. The good news is, we have the scientific and technological capacity to avert its most catastrophic impacts. We only need the political will.
If we raise fuel economy standards in our automobiles by one mile --- we generate twice the amount of oil that is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refugee. If we raise fuel economy standards by 7.6 miles per gallon we yield more oil than we now import from the Persian Gulf. We can eliminate 100% of Persian Gulf oil.
Think about what that would do for our economy, for our foreign policy, for our global leadership, it would dramatically improve our balance of payments, reduce our national debt and make all of us more prosperous and more independent and spare us from wars in the Mid-East that are costing us, already, a trillion dollars and from entanglements with Mid-Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people.
Now you've heard today a lot of people say that there are many little things that you all can do today to avert climate change on your own. But I will tell you this, it is more important than buying compact flourescent light bulbs or than buying a fuel efficient automobile. The most important thing you can do is to get involved in the political process and get rid of all of these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D.C. --
Who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company, these villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity. This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.And they have their slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks in Washington D.C. and their crooked scientists who are lying to the American people day after day after day.
And we have a press that has completely let down American Democracy. That's giving us Ana Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy - like global warming.
And so I am going to tell you this, that the next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity --- these flat-earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist --- you send an email to their advertisers and tell them that you are not going to buy their products anymore.
And I want you to remember this, that we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds, we are protecting it because nature is the infrastructure of our communities. And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity, and enrichment, and good health, and prosperity, and stability as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting our environmental infrastructure.
The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wildlife, the public lands, the things that connect us to our past to our history that provide context to our communities and that are the source, ultimately, of our values and our virtues and our character as a people and the future of our children.
And I will see all of you on the barricades.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
More Quotes~"Health Care Terror" and The Greatest Threat to Capitalism Since the Cold War
Via The Sideshow, News Hounds has "The Outrageous Quote of the Week @ July 7, 2007." Their readers apparently chose Ann Coulter for what she spewed in her latest bout of head spinning. You can check it out if you want, but personally, I think it would be worthy of note if Ann had said something that wasn't outrageous.
Personally, had I voted, my pick would have been this one:
"I think this election poses the greatest threat to capitalism that this country has seen in a long - since the Cold War. I'm really serious. You know, we have candidates on the Democratic side that are saying they're anti-ownership society, they want to raise taxes. I am afraid of what could happen to corporate America, particularly at a time when the rest of the world is much more competitive." - Charles Payne, discussing whether or not a "President" Fred Thompson would be good for stocks. Cavuto on Business, 7/7/07
(Emphasis mine). A few days ago I did a post on Fox News picking up the insane ranting of a conservative blogger and turning his ravings into a discussion that universal healthcare would make us more vulnerable to terrorism. Then I pointed out:
for a lesson in how the insane elements on the right so often influence the news cycle and the debate with their deranged fear-mongering, MSNBC later took the scare tactics and ran with them and, jumping on the bandwagon as well was, not surprisingly, The New York Sun.
I now submit that the above quote from Charles Payne is the real "threat" from Micheal More's new film, the overwhelmingly positive reactions that it has been evoking, and the debate that it is instrumental in furthering. Conservatives, the healthcare industry, and the free market ideologues are freaking out over a threat, yes, but it is to their ideology.
This diary at Daily Kos sums up the tactics employed by CNN's medical expert in a segment prior to Moore's recent appearance on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. This diarist points out that CNN's medical expert falsely accused Moore of omitting facts that are plainly and conspicuoulsy included in Moore's film, tried to twist Moore's arguements by citing only part of the facts, and just plain lied. Moore didn't put up with any of it. Not only did he call out CNN and its expert and correct their errors and misrepresentations, he also immediately followed up with a fact check of CNN's claims including the following:
CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.
THE TRUTH:
This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor's appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc's in, but It'll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260_page_2.htm)
[....]
One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?
For a little more context, Moore also posted an internal, confidential memo sent to him by an employee who works at Capital BlueCross that discusses how to deal with the impact that "Sicko" is going to have. Moore points out some interesting things that the VP of Corporate Communications, Barclay Fitzpatrick stated in the memo:
He then assesses the film's impact: "[T]he impact on small business decision makers, our members, the community, and our employees could be significant. Ignoring its impact might be a successful strategy only if it flops, but that has not been the history of Moore's films ... If popular, the movie will have a negative impact on our image in this community."
[....]
BlueCross V.P. Fitzpatrick seems downright depressed about the movie he just saw. "You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie," he writes. "Sicko" leaves audiences feeling "ashamed to be...a capitalist, and part of a 'me' society instead of a 'we' society."
(Emphasis mine). Here Fitzpatrick is expressing the real "threat" and the source for anxiety behind what we see when the corporate media runs with right-wing ravings, distorts the facts and plays the fear card by trying to associate universal healthcare with terrorism.
In a column yesterday, aptly entitled "Health Care Terror," Paul Krugman sums up perfectly what has been happening:
These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.
“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.
While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens....
What outrages people who see “Sicko” is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can’t pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.
“Sicko” is a powerful call to action — but don’t count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they’re very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.
These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance.
“Sicko” plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly — the program now known as Medicare — would lead to totalitarianism.
Right now, by the way, Medicare — which did enormous good, without leading to a dictatorship — is being undermined by privatization.
Mainly, though, the big-money interests with a stake in the present system want you to believe that universal health care would lead to a crushing tax burden and lousy medical care.
Now, every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of universal care. Citizens of these countries pay extra taxes as a result — but they make up for that through savings on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. The overall cost of health care in countries with universal coverage is much lower than it is here.
(Emphasis mine). Apparently, somewhere between Regan and the current fear-mongering about terrorism, conservatives dropped the ball. Now they have to find a way to connect the terror threat to what corporate interests and conservatives see as the real threat--the threat to their version of capitalism, which should more accuratley be called corporatism.
CNN had previously fact-checked Moore's film and found "surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film" and informed us that "In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film." Despite what the corporate interests, the corporate media and conservatives would like us to believe, this is not an ideological debate (unless they can succeed in scaring us into making it one). The facts are clearly on Moore's side and some kind of universal healthcare is a commen sense reform and, as Krugman points out, a moral issue.
Personally, had I voted, my pick would have been this one:
"I think this election poses the greatest threat to capitalism that this country has seen in a long - since the Cold War. I'm really serious. You know, we have candidates on the Democratic side that are saying they're anti-ownership society, they want to raise taxes. I am afraid of what could happen to corporate America, particularly at a time when the rest of the world is much more competitive." - Charles Payne, discussing whether or not a "President" Fred Thompson would be good for stocks. Cavuto on Business, 7/7/07
(Emphasis mine). A few days ago I did a post on Fox News picking up the insane ranting of a conservative blogger and turning his ravings into a discussion that universal healthcare would make us more vulnerable to terrorism. Then I pointed out:
for a lesson in how the insane elements on the right so often influence the news cycle and the debate with their deranged fear-mongering, MSNBC later took the scare tactics and ran with them and, jumping on the bandwagon as well was, not surprisingly, The New York Sun.
I now submit that the above quote from Charles Payne is the real "threat" from Micheal More's new film, the overwhelmingly positive reactions that it has been evoking, and the debate that it is instrumental in furthering. Conservatives, the healthcare industry, and the free market ideologues are freaking out over a threat, yes, but it is to their ideology.
This diary at Daily Kos sums up the tactics employed by CNN's medical expert in a segment prior to Moore's recent appearance on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. This diarist points out that CNN's medical expert falsely accused Moore of omitting facts that are plainly and conspicuoulsy included in Moore's film, tried to twist Moore's arguements by citing only part of the facts, and just plain lied. Moore didn't put up with any of it. Not only did he call out CNN and its expert and correct their errors and misrepresentations, he also immediately followed up with a fact check of CNN's claims including the following:
CNN: Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures, like hip replacement, cataract surgery, or knee repair.
THE TRUTH:
This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures. Of the six countries surveyed in that study (United States, Canada, New Zealand, UK, Germany, Australia) only Canada had longer waiting times than America for sick adults waiting to schedule a doctor's appointment for a medical problem. 81% of patients in New Zealand got a same or next-day appointment for a non-routine visit, 71% in Britain, 69% in Germany, 66% in Australia, 47% in the U.S., and 36% in Canada. (The Doc's in, but It'll be AWhile. Catherine Arnst, Business Week. June 22, 2007 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070621_716260_page_2.htm)
[....]
One way America is able to achieve decent waiting times is that it leaves 47 million people out of the health care system entirely, unlike any other Western country. When you remove 47 million people from the line, your wait should be shorter. So why is the U.S. second to last in wait times?
For a little more context, Moore also posted an internal, confidential memo sent to him by an employee who works at Capital BlueCross that discusses how to deal with the impact that "Sicko" is going to have. Moore points out some interesting things that the VP of Corporate Communications, Barclay Fitzpatrick stated in the memo:
He then assesses the film's impact: "[T]he impact on small business decision makers, our members, the community, and our employees could be significant. Ignoring its impact might be a successful strategy only if it flops, but that has not been the history of Moore's films ... If popular, the movie will have a negative impact on our image in this community."
[....]
BlueCross V.P. Fitzpatrick seems downright depressed about the movie he just saw. "You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie," he writes. "Sicko" leaves audiences feeling "ashamed to be...a capitalist, and part of a 'me' society instead of a 'we' society."
(Emphasis mine). Here Fitzpatrick is expressing the real "threat" and the source for anxiety behind what we see when the corporate media runs with right-wing ravings, distorts the facts and plays the fear card by trying to associate universal healthcare with terrorism.
In a column yesterday, aptly entitled "Health Care Terror," Paul Krugman sums up perfectly what has been happening:
These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.
“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.
While this was crass even by the standards of Bush-era political discourse, Fox was following in a long tradition. For more than 60 years, the medical-industrial complex and its political allies have used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience and making access to health care a right for all its citizens....
What outrages people who see “Sicko” is the sheer cruelty and injustice of the American health care system — sick people who can’t pay their hospital bills literally dumped on the sidewalk, a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her, hard-working Americans driven into humiliating poverty by medical bills.
“Sicko” is a powerful call to action — but don’t count the defenders of the status quo out. History shows that they’re very good at fending off reform by finding new ways to scare us.
These scare tactics have often included over-the-top claims about the dangers of government insurance.
“Sicko” plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly — the program now known as Medicare — would lead to totalitarianism.
Right now, by the way, Medicare — which did enormous good, without leading to a dictatorship — is being undermined by privatization.
Mainly, though, the big-money interests with a stake in the present system want you to believe that universal health care would lead to a crushing tax burden and lousy medical care.
Now, every wealthy country except the United States already has some form of universal care. Citizens of these countries pay extra taxes as a result — but they make up for that through savings on insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. The overall cost of health care in countries with universal coverage is much lower than it is here.
(Emphasis mine). Apparently, somewhere between Regan and the current fear-mongering about terrorism, conservatives dropped the ball. Now they have to find a way to connect the terror threat to what corporate interests and conservatives see as the real threat--the threat to their version of capitalism, which should more accuratley be called corporatism.
CNN had previously fact-checked Moore's film and found "surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film" and informed us that "In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film." Despite what the corporate interests, the corporate media and conservatives would like us to believe, this is not an ideological debate (unless they can succeed in scaring us into making it one). The facts are clearly on Moore's side and some kind of universal healthcare is a commen sense reform and, as Krugman points out, a moral issue.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Quote of the Day~The Fifth Grade Class at the New York Times
From a post by Scats on a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times entitled "The Road Home" that makes the stunning observation that Bush is absolutely not going to call for or agree to a withdrawal from Iraq:
Now we know the real plan! Now we're all scrubbed and shiny and ready to gradumate to the the fifth fucking grade! Now we know there's a difference between what the Preznit says, and what's in the world outside my cocktail party! And the truth is: he ain't leavin'!Well, you know what that means?
Let's write two whole single-spaced pages on construction paper for our show-and-tell project DEMANDING THAT HE DO WHAT WE'VE JUST REALIZED HE HAS NO INTENTION OF DOING!!!!!
Now we know the real plan! Now we're all scrubbed and shiny and ready to gradumate to the the fifth fucking grade! Now we know there's a difference between what the Preznit says, and what's in the world outside my cocktail party! And the truth is: he ain't leavin'!Well, you know what that means?
Let's write two whole single-spaced pages on construction paper for our show-and-tell project DEMANDING THAT HE DO WHAT WE'VE JUST REALIZED HE HAS NO INTENTION OF DOING!!!!!
Eric also brought up a some good points with regard to my second post from Saturday, my latest "Fuck You King George" rant, that need further discussion. He points out:
What I find interesting is that when the Democrats were in the minority, their supporters claimed that there was nothing that they could do to stop the Republicans because they were the minority, but now that the roles are reversed, the Dems say that the Repub. minority has the ability to stop the majority.By the way, I am not a Repub or Dem. I find both disasteful.
Some of this has to do with which party controls which house, on how those numbers break down, and on the amount of influence that certain sections within each party have over the party as a whole and its leadership. So, when comparing the specific maneuvering of each party while in the minority on specific legislative initiatives etc., the situation gets much more complicated. And each party will of course try to use whatever power and influence they can to block or weaken certain legislation proposed by the majority. That's not a bad thing in itself; it just means there is an opposition, which is good. But, ideally, opposition is a good thing because it should, in most cases, lead to compromise, especially on popular legislation.
I'm afraid I would do a poor a job in doing a comparison on that level of the previous Democratic and Republican minorities in congress because something that extensive would be better handled by an expert, or at least someone with more extensive knowledge, on congressional politics. I do want to bring up, however, this article by Matt Taibbi in which Taibbi does some in depth research and analysis of the previous Republican dominated congress. Taibbi starts out his article by pointing out:
To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.
This blanket criticism applies, of course, to congress in general and thus to whoever is occupying the majority or minority positions. However, the recent 109th congress, dominated by Republicans while their party also controlled the White House, was something altogether different:
But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.
"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."
Taibbi goes on to provide a lengthy examination of how the Republicans, not only abdicated their oversight responsibilities, but actively did everything they could to limit the role of the opposition (which under what had been the overall historical normal run of things in congress should have produced some meaningful compromise and went some way toward performing congress' overall function), and showed nothing but contempt for and often outright violated normal congressional procedure to an extent that has little precedent in congress' history:
It is no big scoop that the majority party in Congress has always found ways of giving the shaft to the minority. But there is a marked difference in the size and the length of the shaft the Republicans have given the Democrats in the past six years. There has been a systematic effort not only to deny the Democrats any kind of power-sharing role in creating or refining legislation but to humiliate them publicly, show them up, pee in their faces. Washington was once a chummy fraternity in which members of both parties golfed together, played in the same pickup basketball games, probably even shared the same mistresses. Now it is a one-party town -- and congressional business is conducted accordingly, as though the half of the country that the Democrats represent simply does not exist.
American government was not designed for one-party rule but for rule by consensus -- so this current batch of Republicans has found a way to work around that product design. They have scuttled both the spirit and the letter of congressional procedure, turning the lawmaking process into a backroom deal, with power concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs behind the scenes. This reduces the legislature to a Belarus-style rubber stamp, where the opposition is just there for show, human pieces of stagecraft -- a fact the Republicans don't even bother to conceal....
Although cooperation between the two parties has ebbed and flowed over the years, historians note that Congress has taken strong bipartisan action in virtually every administration. It was Sen. Harry Truman who instigated investigations of wartime profiteering under FDR, and Republicans Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker Jr. played pivotal roles on the Senate Watergate Committee that nearly led to Nixon's impeachment.
But those days are gone. "We haven't seen any congressional investigations like this during the last six years," says David Mayhew, a professor of political science at Yale who has studied Congress for four decades. "These days, Congress doesn't seem to be capable of doing this sort of thing. Too much nasty partisanship."
One of the most depressing examples of one-party rule is the Patriot Act. The measure was originally crafted in classic bipartisan fashion in the Judiciary Committee, where it passed by a vote of thirty-six to zero, with famed liberals like Barney Frank and Jerrold Nadler saying aye. But when the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, the Republicans simply chucked the approved bill and replaced it with a new, far more repressive version, apparently written at the direction of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.
"They just rewrote the whole bill," says Rep. James McGovern, a minority member of the Rules Committee. "All that committee work was just for show."
To ensure that Democrats can't alter any of the last-minute changes, Republicans have overseen a monstrous increase in the number of "closed" rules -- bills that go to the floor for a vote without any possibility of amendment. This tactic undercuts the very essence of democracy: In a bicameral system, allowing bills to be debated openly is the only way that the minority can have a real impact, by offering amendments to legislation drafted by the majority.
In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."
How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.
In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.
(Emphasis mine). This is just a small excerpt from Taibbi's article, but the whole thing is worth reading for a much more in-depth analysis and for the profiles of the Republican congressmen that were voted out in 2006. In his article he makes a good argument that it has not been business as usual in congress (or in our government overall) since Bush has been in office and since the Republican party has largely been in charge.
Thus, the Republicans' continued obstruction is even worse. The post that I pointed to for further explanation in my original post makes the key point that Republicans are obstructing for the sake obstructing as evidenced by the many legislative initiatives they have held up that are immensely popular across the political spectrum and much needed by any objective and even centrist point of view. Furthermore, Republicans have been obstructing meaningful, popular, and much needed legislation as a political strategy and then bragging that their strategy of obstruction is having the purely political effect that they want. There is simply no excuse for this other than putting party and ideology above what's good for the whole country for no good reason and at a time when these reforms are very much needed. This is the kind of thing that makes the Republican party unique these days.
It is also true that the excuse has been made by Dem supporters that the Democrats were limited in what they could do while in the minority. Progressives and Democratic supporters have lamented the fact that we did not have enough numbers to easily block things in the recent past, such as Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court, Roberts and Alito. This is probably the type of criticism that has often been given as a means of explanation by many of the Dem strategists and pundits on a lot of cable news commentary. However, this type of commentary may be a bit misrepresentative of a good deal of criticsim that that has been leveled at the Democrats by their base in recent years. Thus, while I can't really dispute that this kind of explanation is given as to why Democrats have been unable to provide a more meaningful opposition, I want to point out that the majority of the really strident criticism of the Dem's performance prior to 2006 and currently from the progressive base, which I believe is increasingly representative of the views of many Dem supporters across the country (and which is starting to have some real impact on the Democrats), is that the Dems didn't fight hard enough while in the minority (with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, the Patriot Act, and other legislation) to provide a tough and meaningful opposition, even if their efforts would have ended up failing, and that they aren't fighting hard enough even in the majority.
And despite whatever failures the Democrats should be rightly criticized for, any such criticism coming from the Republican party (with very, very few exceptions), especially from Bush given his and the Republican party's performance as a whole since he has been in office, is nothing short of transparently blatant hypocrisy. Bush and the Republican party have ensured that it hasn't been business as usual in our country for long time now, so for Bush to engage in the usual tactics of accusing the majority of not getting things done because they face stiff opposition at this point in the game is bordering on the absurd.
What I find interesting is that when the Democrats were in the minority, their supporters claimed that there was nothing that they could do to stop the Republicans because they were the minority, but now that the roles are reversed, the Dems say that the Repub. minority has the ability to stop the majority.By the way, I am not a Repub or Dem. I find both disasteful.
Some of this has to do with which party controls which house, on how those numbers break down, and on the amount of influence that certain sections within each party have over the party as a whole and its leadership. So, when comparing the specific maneuvering of each party while in the minority on specific legislative initiatives etc., the situation gets much more complicated. And each party will of course try to use whatever power and influence they can to block or weaken certain legislation proposed by the majority. That's not a bad thing in itself; it just means there is an opposition, which is good. But, ideally, opposition is a good thing because it should, in most cases, lead to compromise, especially on popular legislation.
I'm afraid I would do a poor a job in doing a comparison on that level of the previous Democratic and Republican minorities in congress because something that extensive would be better handled by an expert, or at least someone with more extensive knowledge, on congressional politics. I do want to bring up, however, this article by Matt Taibbi in which Taibbi does some in depth research and analysis of the previous Republican dominated congress. Taibbi starts out his article by pointing out:
To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.
This blanket criticism applies, of course, to congress in general and thus to whoever is occupying the majority or minority positions. However, the recent 109th congress, dominated by Republicans while their party also controlled the White House, was something altogether different:
But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.
"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."
Taibbi goes on to provide a lengthy examination of how the Republicans, not only abdicated their oversight responsibilities, but actively did everything they could to limit the role of the opposition (which under what had been the overall historical normal run of things in congress should have produced some meaningful compromise and went some way toward performing congress' overall function), and showed nothing but contempt for and often outright violated normal congressional procedure to an extent that has little precedent in congress' history:
It is no big scoop that the majority party in Congress has always found ways of giving the shaft to the minority. But there is a marked difference in the size and the length of the shaft the Republicans have given the Democrats in the past six years. There has been a systematic effort not only to deny the Democrats any kind of power-sharing role in creating or refining legislation but to humiliate them publicly, show them up, pee in their faces. Washington was once a chummy fraternity in which members of both parties golfed together, played in the same pickup basketball games, probably even shared the same mistresses. Now it is a one-party town -- and congressional business is conducted accordingly, as though the half of the country that the Democrats represent simply does not exist.
American government was not designed for one-party rule but for rule by consensus -- so this current batch of Republicans has found a way to work around that product design. They have scuttled both the spirit and the letter of congressional procedure, turning the lawmaking process into a backroom deal, with power concentrated in the hands of a few chiefs behind the scenes. This reduces the legislature to a Belarus-style rubber stamp, where the opposition is just there for show, human pieces of stagecraft -- a fact the Republicans don't even bother to conceal....
Although cooperation between the two parties has ebbed and flowed over the years, historians note that Congress has taken strong bipartisan action in virtually every administration. It was Sen. Harry Truman who instigated investigations of wartime profiteering under FDR, and Republicans Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker Jr. played pivotal roles on the Senate Watergate Committee that nearly led to Nixon's impeachment.
But those days are gone. "We haven't seen any congressional investigations like this during the last six years," says David Mayhew, a professor of political science at Yale who has studied Congress for four decades. "These days, Congress doesn't seem to be capable of doing this sort of thing. Too much nasty partisanship."
One of the most depressing examples of one-party rule is the Patriot Act. The measure was originally crafted in classic bipartisan fashion in the Judiciary Committee, where it passed by a vote of thirty-six to zero, with famed liberals like Barney Frank and Jerrold Nadler saying aye. But when the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, the Republicans simply chucked the approved bill and replaced it with a new, far more repressive version, apparently written at the direction of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.
"They just rewrote the whole bill," says Rep. James McGovern, a minority member of the Rules Committee. "All that committee work was just for show."
To ensure that Democrats can't alter any of the last-minute changes, Republicans have overseen a monstrous increase in the number of "closed" rules -- bills that go to the floor for a vote without any possibility of amendment. This tactic undercuts the very essence of democracy: In a bicameral system, allowing bills to be debated openly is the only way that the minority can have a real impact, by offering amendments to legislation drafted by the majority.
In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."
How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.
In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.
(Emphasis mine). This is just a small excerpt from Taibbi's article, but the whole thing is worth reading for a much more in-depth analysis and for the profiles of the Republican congressmen that were voted out in 2006. In his article he makes a good argument that it has not been business as usual in congress (or in our government overall) since Bush has been in office and since the Republican party has largely been in charge.
Thus, the Republicans' continued obstruction is even worse. The post that I pointed to for further explanation in my original post makes the key point that Republicans are obstructing for the sake obstructing as evidenced by the many legislative initiatives they have held up that are immensely popular across the political spectrum and much needed by any objective and even centrist point of view. Furthermore, Republicans have been obstructing meaningful, popular, and much needed legislation as a political strategy and then bragging that their strategy of obstruction is having the purely political effect that they want. There is simply no excuse for this other than putting party and ideology above what's good for the whole country for no good reason and at a time when these reforms are very much needed. This is the kind of thing that makes the Republican party unique these days.
It is also true that the excuse has been made by Dem supporters that the Democrats were limited in what they could do while in the minority. Progressives and Democratic supporters have lamented the fact that we did not have enough numbers to easily block things in the recent past, such as Bush's nominees to the Supreme Court, Roberts and Alito. This is probably the type of criticism that has often been given as a means of explanation by many of the Dem strategists and pundits on a lot of cable news commentary. However, this type of commentary may be a bit misrepresentative of a good deal of criticsim that that has been leveled at the Democrats by their base in recent years. Thus, while I can't really dispute that this kind of explanation is given as to why Democrats have been unable to provide a more meaningful opposition, I want to point out that the majority of the really strident criticism of the Dem's performance prior to 2006 and currently from the progressive base, which I believe is increasingly representative of the views of many Dem supporters across the country (and which is starting to have some real impact on the Democrats), is that the Dems didn't fight hard enough while in the minority (with the Roberts and Alito confirmations, the Patriot Act, and other legislation) to provide a tough and meaningful opposition, even if their efforts would have ended up failing, and that they aren't fighting hard enough even in the majority.
And despite whatever failures the Democrats should be rightly criticized for, any such criticism coming from the Republican party (with very, very few exceptions), especially from Bush given his and the Republican party's performance as a whole since he has been in office, is nothing short of transparently blatant hypocrisy. Bush and the Republican party have ensured that it hasn't been business as usual in our country for long time now, so for Bush to engage in the usual tactics of accusing the majority of not getting things done because they face stiff opposition at this point in the game is bordering on the absurd.
Monday, July 9, 2007
I want to respond to comments left on my previous two posts becuase both comments bring up some valid points.
In response to the first post, "On $400 and Haircuts and Mill Workers" Eric writes:
While I think the media is overplaying Mr. Edward's haircuts, it does seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message. When he rails against the fat cats, it is difficult not to see him as one of them. I personally don't care the gentleman spends to have his hair cared for, it is his hair and his money. He has every right to spend it as he sees fit. There are a lot of rich folks that were born 'poor' and worked there way into money, and here is the shocker, they are on both sides of the aisle.
I have to agree with Eric on not caring how Edwards, or any Republican for that matter, spends their money and whether or not they get expensive haircuts. And he is right to point out that there are examples on both sides of the aisle of individuals who came from modest backgrounds and ended up wealthy. I don't have a problem with that either. There are also individuals on both sides of the aisle that were born into money.
Eric also wrote:
when the Republicans get blasted for being the lackeys for Big Business, I find it funny that no one seems to notice that most of the same Big Business folks donate to the other side and often fund their parties.It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class.
This is also a legitimate point. It's true that a lot of corporate cash flows to both sides. As we saw with the recent K-street incidents and scandals, however, there is a slightly higher amount of money, especially from certain industries, that goes to Republicans (the K-street fiasco was a pretty telling case of how Repubicans were using their ties to big business specifically to keep their party on top and trying to run K-street as a Republican operation using their connections). But the Democrats are also beholden to corporate interests and receive huge amounts of money from big business. That is an issue that is starting to be addressed by many Democrats in congress and one that has been of significant importance to the progressive movement. That is part of the reason that I wanted to highlight Edwards' speech criticizing NAFTA and other Free Trade Deals. Edwards is in the Democratic estabishment, but he is starting to talk seriously about things that need to change, things that, if followed through on by the Democrats in congress and the next president if he or she is a Democrat, would actually help the middle and working classes.
Both parties have been guilty in recent years for doing the bidding of corporate America. We saw this under Bill Clinton and one of the best examples is what Edwards was criticizing--NAFTA. However, there is a movement within the Democratic party and the Democrats in congress to challenge this and make serious reforms. No Republican candidate that I am aware of has made any serious criticisms about corporate money and influence. We are only really beginning to see that on the Democratic side of the aisle.
I pointed out Edwards' recent speech and the field day that the media have been having with his haircut to prove a point. The media doesn't engage in such tactics with respect to Repubicans and yet, not only are none of the Republican candidates proposing any serious reforms vis-a-vis corporate influence, the conservative movement is and always has been about corporate interests, whereas there is a genuine tradition of real populist reforms in the Deomcratic party (FDR being the biggest example). Republicans have also enganged in their own phony populism in the past, and yet, the media seems incapable of challenging the populist image that Republicans have tried to cultivate with the ferocity that they reserve for Democrats. Thus, I don't necessarily agree with Eric's comment that "Mr. Edward's haircuts,...[do] seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message." I think the media would like for people to see it that way. But it doesn't matter how much money any candidate has or what they spend on themselves personally, if that candidate is proposing the right reforms and addressing serious economic issues that affect the middle and working classes and if he or she works with the movement for change in these areas that is starting to take shape and influence the Democratic party.
I more or less agree with Eric's comment that "It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class." Thre is reason to be skeptical of a populist message coming from any source. The Democrats have certainly sold out the working and middle classes in recent decades, so we do have to be careful and increase the pressure on them to match their actions with their words.
However, I pointed out the treatment that Edwards has been receiving to point out that the media wants people to believe that no politician is or can ever be sincere about serious economic reforms. This is self-defeating if we buy into it and it happens again and again with Democrats precisely because, if any serious economic reforms are going to be made, they are going to made by the Democrats and the progressive movment and as a result of the pressure that that movement is putting on the Democrats.
This latest Edwards incident is yet one more example of the media's penchant for going after Democrats in ways they do not go after Republicans, especially when it comes to issues related to economic reforms and to class. Paperwight's Fair Shot describes exactly what is happening here with Edwards and the media in the following post, discussing what is often referred to as the "class traitor" phenomenon, as it has been exemplified in situations involving other Democrats:
According to No More Mister Nice Blog, some wingnuts are now whining about how rich Barack Obama is. I noticed that they did this with Kerry and Edwards, and George Soros, and are doing it with Nancy Pelosi. I continue to be fascinated that they don't whine about how rich the Bushes are, or how rich all of the funders of the Right Wing Noise Machine are, or the eighteen wealthy families who spent millions on tearing down the estate tax to save themselves billions. But I think I understand it: wealthy liberals are class traitors.
See, one has to understand that one of the key characteristics of wingnuttery (and I'm beginning to believe, conservatism in general) is an absolute lack of empathy. So, all of the wingnuts are all cool with the super-rich acting in the most venal and self-interested ways, because that's what all the wingnuts would do....
When someone has a fair bit of money* but actually looks beyond themselves, and worse, might actually engage in some structural change that allows regular people to have decent lives without prostrating themselves before the ruling classes (see, e.g., wingnut welfare), well, those people must be destroyed. They undermine the wingnut worldview of unalloyed 24 carat selfishness as the primary human condition.
They are class traitors.
(Emphasis mine) That pretty much sums up, in my opinion, the central difference between the Democratic party and the progressive movement on one hand and the Republican party and the conservative movement on the other and the respective treatment that candidates in each party receive with regard to the class they belong to and the images the media helps to create v. their actual positions on specific issues. So, while I do agree with Eric that it is niave to believe either party really cares about the middle and working classes (we shouldn't just take the Democrats, or the Republicans for that matter, on their word), but that doesn't mean that we should not believe that there are politicians out there who will, especially if given support and pressured, live up to many of the reforms that are part of that populist message. That's why we have to pay attention to what candidates are saying with regard to specific issues such as Free Trade and, if we vote them into office, hold them accountable if they do not live up to what they say. This is also why we should see the media's obsession with Edwards' haircut and the "elistist" image of the Democrats, an image that the media is always more than happy to reinforce and never question against an examination of the specific issues, for what it is.
In response to the first post, "On $400 and Haircuts and Mill Workers" Eric writes:
While I think the media is overplaying Mr. Edward's haircuts, it does seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message. When he rails against the fat cats, it is difficult not to see him as one of them. I personally don't care the gentleman spends to have his hair cared for, it is his hair and his money. He has every right to spend it as he sees fit. There are a lot of rich folks that were born 'poor' and worked there way into money, and here is the shocker, they are on both sides of the aisle.
I have to agree with Eric on not caring how Edwards, or any Republican for that matter, spends their money and whether or not they get expensive haircuts. And he is right to point out that there are examples on both sides of the aisle of individuals who came from modest backgrounds and ended up wealthy. I don't have a problem with that either. There are also individuals on both sides of the aisle that were born into money.
Eric also wrote:
when the Republicans get blasted for being the lackeys for Big Business, I find it funny that no one seems to notice that most of the same Big Business folks donate to the other side and often fund their parties.It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class.
This is also a legitimate point. It's true that a lot of corporate cash flows to both sides. As we saw with the recent K-street incidents and scandals, however, there is a slightly higher amount of money, especially from certain industries, that goes to Republicans (the K-street fiasco was a pretty telling case of how Repubicans were using their ties to big business specifically to keep their party on top and trying to run K-street as a Republican operation using their connections). But the Democrats are also beholden to corporate interests and receive huge amounts of money from big business. That is an issue that is starting to be addressed by many Democrats in congress and one that has been of significant importance to the progressive movement. That is part of the reason that I wanted to highlight Edwards' speech criticizing NAFTA and other Free Trade Deals. Edwards is in the Democratic estabishment, but he is starting to talk seriously about things that need to change, things that, if followed through on by the Democrats in congress and the next president if he or she is a Democrat, would actually help the middle and working classes.
Both parties have been guilty in recent years for doing the bidding of corporate America. We saw this under Bill Clinton and one of the best examples is what Edwards was criticizing--NAFTA. However, there is a movement within the Democratic party and the Democrats in congress to challenge this and make serious reforms. No Republican candidate that I am aware of has made any serious criticisms about corporate money and influence. We are only really beginning to see that on the Democratic side of the aisle.
I pointed out Edwards' recent speech and the field day that the media have been having with his haircut to prove a point. The media doesn't engage in such tactics with respect to Repubicans and yet, not only are none of the Republican candidates proposing any serious reforms vis-a-vis corporate influence, the conservative movement is and always has been about corporate interests, whereas there is a genuine tradition of real populist reforms in the Deomcratic party (FDR being the biggest example). Republicans have also enganged in their own phony populism in the past, and yet, the media seems incapable of challenging the populist image that Republicans have tried to cultivate with the ferocity that they reserve for Democrats. Thus, I don't necessarily agree with Eric's comment that "Mr. Edward's haircuts,...[do] seem to point to a potential disconnect between his populous message." I think the media would like for people to see it that way. But it doesn't matter how much money any candidate has or what they spend on themselves personally, if that candidate is proposing the right reforms and addressing serious economic issues that affect the middle and working classes and if he or she works with the movement for change in these areas that is starting to take shape and influence the Democratic party.
I more or less agree with Eric's comment that "It is extremely naive to believe that politicians on either side actually care for the poor or the working class." Thre is reason to be skeptical of a populist message coming from any source. The Democrats have certainly sold out the working and middle classes in recent decades, so we do have to be careful and increase the pressure on them to match their actions with their words.
However, I pointed out the treatment that Edwards has been receiving to point out that the media wants people to believe that no politician is or can ever be sincere about serious economic reforms. This is self-defeating if we buy into it and it happens again and again with Democrats precisely because, if any serious economic reforms are going to be made, they are going to made by the Democrats and the progressive movment and as a result of the pressure that that movement is putting on the Democrats.
This latest Edwards incident is yet one more example of the media's penchant for going after Democrats in ways they do not go after Republicans, especially when it comes to issues related to economic reforms and to class. Paperwight's Fair Shot describes exactly what is happening here with Edwards and the media in the following post, discussing what is often referred to as the "class traitor" phenomenon, as it has been exemplified in situations involving other Democrats:
According to No More Mister Nice Blog, some wingnuts are now whining about how rich Barack Obama is. I noticed that they did this with Kerry and Edwards, and George Soros, and are doing it with Nancy Pelosi. I continue to be fascinated that they don't whine about how rich the Bushes are, or how rich all of the funders of the Right Wing Noise Machine are, or the eighteen wealthy families who spent millions on tearing down the estate tax to save themselves billions. But I think I understand it: wealthy liberals are class traitors.
See, one has to understand that one of the key characteristics of wingnuttery (and I'm beginning to believe, conservatism in general) is an absolute lack of empathy. So, all of the wingnuts are all cool with the super-rich acting in the most venal and self-interested ways, because that's what all the wingnuts would do....
When someone has a fair bit of money* but actually looks beyond themselves, and worse, might actually engage in some structural change that allows regular people to have decent lives without prostrating themselves before the ruling classes (see, e.g., wingnut welfare), well, those people must be destroyed. They undermine the wingnut worldview of unalloyed 24 carat selfishness as the primary human condition.
They are class traitors.
(Emphasis mine) That pretty much sums up, in my opinion, the central difference between the Democratic party and the progressive movement on one hand and the Republican party and the conservative movement on the other and the respective treatment that candidates in each party receive with regard to the class they belong to and the images the media helps to create v. their actual positions on specific issues. So, while I do agree with Eric that it is niave to believe either party really cares about the middle and working classes (we shouldn't just take the Democrats, or the Republicans for that matter, on their word), but that doesn't mean that we should not believe that there are politicians out there who will, especially if given support and pressured, live up to many of the reforms that are part of that populist message. That's why we have to pay attention to what candidates are saying with regard to specific issues such as Free Trade and, if we vote them into office, hold them accountable if they do not live up to what they say. This is also why we should see the media's obsession with Edwards' haircut and the "elistist" image of the Democrats, an image that the media is always more than happy to reinforce and never question against an examination of the specific issues, for what it is.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
On $400 Haircuts and Mill Workers
Go check out this video of a presidential candidate slamming Free Trade Deals like NAFTA and the ones that the Republicans and Democratic leadership are trying to pass, against much opposition from rank and file Democratic congressman and the progressive movement. Here's a little excerpt from the speech:
The last thing we need is more trade agreements like NAFTA....No American corporation should be able to lift up, go overseas, and hire children or slave labor to do their work. Nobody should do that. It's not only economically unjust, it's not only unfair, it is immoral....for me this is a very personal issue....my father worked in mills his whole life....and I saw what happened to him and the poeple who worked with him...
This guy is not running for the Republican presidential nomination. What a surprise. But this is the guy that the media keeps implying that you shouldn't vote for becuase he has nice hair and gets $400 haircuts. And becuase he was a lawyer from a modest background who got rich suing the big guys on behalf of little people--you know, one of those elitist trial lawyers--and not a lawyer who was working for the big guys to screw the rest of us. Digby describes this phenomenon in a post about yet another article on the Edwards haircut:
Television gasbags have been gleefully recycling this Edwards nonsense all day, based upon the latest Soloman story and treating it like it's news. Matthews said "sometimes small stories can reveal big things." He pretends he's cleverly pointing out that Edwards is a phony populist for getting expensive haircuts but what he's really doing is pushing GOP propaganda that Edwards is effeminate and soft. Like all Democrats.
You see, if you're a Republican and you've spent your life getting rich, or if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, spent your whole life as a miserable failure and had to have everything handed to you becuase you were incapable of making anything of yourself, all you have to do for the media to fall all over you and christen you "a regular guy" is to spend lots of time dressed in jeans while clearing brush at your ranch, get a fucking pathetic education from all the time your rich connections got you at Harvard, and have a stupid, confused look on your face as you mangle your speeches. The media is too busy inspecting the grooming habbits of Democrats to report on the acutal issues. They continue to do this becuase they think the average American is a boob like the "regular guy" Republican image that they mistake for "authentic." They don't grasp the concept that Americans actually care about things like healthcare and trade policy and so they don't report on actual policies and issues.
The last thing we need is more trade agreements like NAFTA....No American corporation should be able to lift up, go overseas, and hire children or slave labor to do their work. Nobody should do that. It's not only economically unjust, it's not only unfair, it is immoral....for me this is a very personal issue....my father worked in mills his whole life....and I saw what happened to him and the poeple who worked with him...
This guy is not running for the Republican presidential nomination. What a surprise. But this is the guy that the media keeps implying that you shouldn't vote for becuase he has nice hair and gets $400 haircuts. And becuase he was a lawyer from a modest background who got rich suing the big guys on behalf of little people--you know, one of those elitist trial lawyers--and not a lawyer who was working for the big guys to screw the rest of us. Digby describes this phenomenon in a post about yet another article on the Edwards haircut:
Television gasbags have been gleefully recycling this Edwards nonsense all day, based upon the latest Soloman story and treating it like it's news. Matthews said "sometimes small stories can reveal big things." He pretends he's cleverly pointing out that Edwards is a phony populist for getting expensive haircuts but what he's really doing is pushing GOP propaganda that Edwards is effeminate and soft. Like all Democrats.
You see, if you're a Republican and you've spent your life getting rich, or if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, spent your whole life as a miserable failure and had to have everything handed to you becuase you were incapable of making anything of yourself, all you have to do for the media to fall all over you and christen you "a regular guy" is to spend lots of time dressed in jeans while clearing brush at your ranch, get a fucking pathetic education from all the time your rich connections got you at Harvard, and have a stupid, confused look on your face as you mangle your speeches. The media is too busy inspecting the grooming habbits of Democrats to report on the acutal issues. They continue to do this becuase they think the average American is a boob like the "regular guy" Republican image that they mistake for "authentic." They don't grasp the concept that Americans actually care about things like healthcare and trade policy and so they don't report on actual policies and issues.
Once Again, Fuck You King George! You Have Always Been and Always Will Be a Miserable Fucking Failure-At Everything!
This is a classic, textbook case of conservative strategy: fuck everything up and when the Democrats come into power and try to clean up the mess, obstruct the hell out of everything they try to do and then blame the Democrats for not fixing anything.
We all know all the miserable fuckups the Republicans are responsible for. Yes, they have had some help from Democrats in the past six years; however, Republicans are the ones who have pretty much been in charge for the last six years. And now that the public got disgusted and voted them out of power in the 2006 elections (and while Republicans are still being investigated, indicted and convicted left and right for their crimes and corruption) Bush still has the nerve the chastise the Democrats. Via Digby:
President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.
"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."
In the article that Digby excerpts from a spokesman for the White House brings up immigration as one of the Democrats' failures. Of course, the article then goes on to explain that the immigration bill died because of "staunch opposition from Bush's own base--conservatives."
The Democrats can be criticized for many things, as they so often are by their base and by voters in general. However, Republicans, especially the criminals in the Bush White House, have absolutely no right to open their fucking mouths! Robert Borosage reminds us of their continued obstruction and the things the Democrats have been able to accomplish despite these assbags:
Americans elected a new Congress to get things done. But the conservative minority has chosen a strategy of obstruction in the Senate. They have used the threat of a filibuster to delay or block virtually every major initiative. Bills with majority support—raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security—get blocked because they can’t garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
In its first 40 hours, the new majority of the House of Representatives kept their promise to voters and passed legislation—increasing the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, empowering Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, cutting interest rates on student loans in half, revoking big oil subsidies and using the money to invest in renewable energy—that provided a down payment for a new direction for this country.
These bills are overwhelmingly popular, and are simply common sense reforms. Yet every one of them—and many more—got held up in the U.S. Senate.
Conservatives boast about the “success” of their strategy in discrediting the new majority. As Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., put it, “the strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”
How is it working? It’s dragging the reputation of the Congress down to the level of the failed president. Conservatives lie in the road of progress and then complain that nothing is moving.
This values partisan posturing over reforms vital to the country. It must be challenged.
It’s time to take the gloves off.
It's time to start kicking their obstructionist asses!
We all know all the miserable fuckups the Republicans are responsible for. Yes, they have had some help from Democrats in the past six years; however, Republicans are the ones who have pretty much been in charge for the last six years. And now that the public got disgusted and voted them out of power in the 2006 elections (and while Republicans are still being investigated, indicted and convicted left and right for their crimes and corruption) Bush still has the nerve the chastise the Democrats. Via Digby:
President Bush accused Democratic lawmakers on Saturday of being unable to live up to their duties, citing Congress' inability to pass legislation to fund the federal government.
"Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "This moment is a test."
In the article that Digby excerpts from a spokesman for the White House brings up immigration as one of the Democrats' failures. Of course, the article then goes on to explain that the immigration bill died because of "staunch opposition from Bush's own base--conservatives."
The Democrats can be criticized for many things, as they so often are by their base and by voters in general. However, Republicans, especially the criminals in the Bush White House, have absolutely no right to open their fucking mouths! Robert Borosage reminds us of their continued obstruction and the things the Democrats have been able to accomplish despite these assbags:
Americans elected a new Congress to get things done. But the conservative minority has chosen a strategy of obstruction in the Senate. They have used the threat of a filibuster to delay or block virtually every major initiative. Bills with majority support—raising the minimum wage, ethics reform, a date to remove troops from Iraq, revoking oil subsidies and putting the money into renewable energy, fulfilling the 9/11 commission recommendations on homeland security—get blocked because they can’t garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
In its first 40 hours, the new majority of the House of Representatives kept their promise to voters and passed legislation—increasing the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, empowering Medicare to negotiate lower prices on drugs, cutting interest rates on student loans in half, revoking big oil subsidies and using the money to invest in renewable energy—that provided a down payment for a new direction for this country.
These bills are overwhelmingly popular, and are simply common sense reforms. Yet every one of them—and many more—got held up in the U.S. Senate.
Conservatives boast about the “success” of their strategy in discrediting the new majority. As Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., put it, “the strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it’s working for us.”
How is it working? It’s dragging the reputation of the Congress down to the level of the failed president. Conservatives lie in the road of progress and then complain that nothing is moving.
This values partisan posturing over reforms vital to the country. It must be challenged.
It’s time to take the gloves off.
It's time to start kicking their obstructionist asses!
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