I was a Right Wing Anarchist
But the politics weren’t inconvenient enough.
Christopher Chantrill, American Anarchist:
There Has to be a System
So the Republican Party has decided to bring out their chain-store bought Che Guevara/Dead Kennedys shirt and play at being a totally kickass anarchist and bring down the man, man by enacting a government shutdown over a last ditch effort to literally whine an inconvenient law (politically) into no longer being a law. Because, who fucking cares about all the people like counting on shit actually running in this country, which would be everyone when one can air out their Brooks Brothers white polo tees and play at being the rampaging hordes they piss on the other 364 days out of the year.
So of course, given this demonstration of how the Republican Party are at this point, literally a band of terroristic nihilists willing to blow up everything if they don’t get their way, no matter what the pesky people say, it’s only natural that the wingnuts would take this time to show their solidarity and support taking down the system, privileged white douchebag pretending he understands oppression style.
Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):
- ~Kill kill kill kill kill the poor!~ Also, I’m not a part of your system!
Cause hey, why not take the one redeeming aspect of anarchism (a recognition of the way hierarchical structures often entrench bigotry and oppression at the expense of those beneath and the way the status quo often only benefits those who have always benefitted) and just rip its spine out Mortal Kombat style so that rich white fuckwads can pretend their real-people-harming temper tantrum is some kind of principled stance against some nebulous “system”.
Some years ago I was discussing conservative health care ideas with a liberal ex-pat Brit. This was when Obamacare was just a gleam in Obama’s eye. Her comeback was that “there has to be a system.”
Yes. There in fact does need to be a system. And in the absence of a system, then systems will coalesce, often in even more abusive ways to marginalized members because they make convenient scapegoats/targets for exploitation. Just look at Somalia. Remove the “system” and it doesn’t free the people, just leaves them at the mercy of smaller more abusive systems of warlords and profiteers who use the lack of protection for their victims to institute a system where the most sociopathic and cruel win. Now, yes, systems like our own in the States or authoritarian systems around the globe reveal you can set up the same thing with rules and laws, but it’s not those rules and laws in and of themselves that are manufacturing the problem.
And with something like health care, there is always going to be a system in place. It may be shitty with you going to the local woman with the biggest herb garden who hasn’t been killed as a witch yet and begging her to treat your syphilis, but it’ll be a system. I know Chris is a robot with no need for organic health care, but us fleshy mortals are not so lucky.
Though I understand exactly why Chris and the other wingnuts only want to focus on how they made Obamacare less perfect, I mean, why it’s not flawless, I mean, why it must suck so bad and it’s a system and blah blah blah. Because it sounds way less noble when they have to mention that they are fighting to the death to keep us shackled to the current system which everybody is already more than aware sucks great big donkey balls.
I mentioned that to Lady Marjorie, who is blasting into orbit right now that her individual health insurance plan has been terminated and replaced with a plan that costs 30 percent more with higher deductibles.
It’s amazing how much they are flogging these scare stories about the scam coverages getting cancelled. Oh noes, you can’t have the health plans where you paid an insurance company money and in exchange they didn’t give you any real health coverage anymore. Oh, what has this world come to?!?
She retorted that most people think that a “big thing” like health care or education just has to be done by the government.
In other words, there has to be a system.
Well, yeah, if you want it to not suck, it can be done by the government. If you want it to completely suck, only provide reasonable service for the richest 1% and cost about a bajillion times more, then sure, open it up to the “alternatives”.
Which yes, is indeed the three-card-monte that the Republicans have been playing all along the boulevards of Fuck the Government, Individual Liberty, and Faux-Anarchism. Pretending that the government exists as an entity unto itself, both unconnected to the people who make it up, have direct power over it, and benefit from it as well as the rest of the fucking world. As if getting rid of government somehow meant that you had a spare health care just chilling in your living room fetching you brewskis.
When you remove the government, there’s a vacuum and where there’s a vacuum, the parasites descend and since they aren’t chartered to put the needs of their beneficiaries first, it ends up bad for all. We see it in America with us paying way more for our internet, electricity, health care, etc… while getting less and less in return (but making a small group of parasites very very wealthy).
Which to be fair to the right-wing ghouls, is in fact their goal as they are directly employed by said parasites to protect the scam, but still.
No there doesn’t.
Aw, you mean we can just Fuck the System and boom, the man will be gone! Whoa! Like pass the hashish bro.
And we know that liberals know this because of their professed love of Darwinian evolution.
… No, I want to see where he goes with this.
Liberals love evolution because it neuters the notion that God organized and created everything everything from scratch, that God created a top-down “system” and said that it was good.
Hierarchy uber alles!
Wow, way to fuck up your first taste of anarchism bro, worshiping the iron bootheel of a hierarchy. There’s a reason the chant goes “No Gods, No Masters!”
On the contrary, evolution by natural selection says that the living organisms that adapt best to their environment get to survive and breed successfully and the others don’t. There’s no system except the DNA and sexual reproduction, and all that is a product of evolution too.
Um, first off, no. Second off, you just noted that it’s a system. Not a terribly kind system to a species entering into an extinction event or to the individuals who end up dying off through a major environmental shift, but a system nonetheless. Which brings up third, yeah, there’s a reason why “social Darwinism”, that brain-dead conservative fart bubble of an “idea” has always been a rancid excuse for greed and lack of empathy rather than an actual “philosophy”.
Letting people die because you don’t understand what “fittest” means in an evolutionary biological capacity (hint: it doesn’t mean the species or individuals that are the “best” succeed) is not how we want to emulate our system, especially if said people we are leaving out in the cold are sentient enough to notice that they are literally being left out to die.
That sort of no-hope, you might as well go down swinging shit is what brings out the real anarchy and revolutions that make rich douchebags living large on the protections of the system break out into a cold sweat.
But health care without a system? That’s Social Darwinism! That means leaving the poor and the helpless to go without! There’s no hope of getting affordable health care without a system, a government system run by large-minded liberals and their expert-led supporters.
This is correct. Without a system to deliver healthcare, then most will go without and die of easily preventable diseases.
Thank you for correctly identifying the problem.
(Watch him deliver absolutely no rebuttal of this in the paragraphs to follow)
So Obama created Obamacare and said that it was good.
And Obama is rival God, aka the Antichrist dog whistle quotient fulfilled. Check.
This would normally be the point to insert stuff about the Smith’s Invisible Hand, Burke’s “sophisters, economists, and calculators,” Spencer’s idea of society as an unconscious organism, Mises on prices, Hayek on bureaucracy, public choice, famines under socialism. Settled science, don’t you know.
MAKING ARGUMENTS IS HARD!
But Daniel Henninger makes the point that facts and theories don’t matter when it comes to political ideas like Obamacare.
An established political idea is like a vampire. Facts, opinions, votes, garlic: Nothing can make it die.
But there is one thing that can kill an established political idea. It will die if the public that embraced it abandons it.
Uh huh, yup. Totes impossible to end an established political idea, yup. Which is why we are still a royal colony of Britain, segregation and slavery are still the law of the land in the South, women are still legally chattel, it is still legal to beat one’s wives and property (including children) if they prove uppity, and fags and trannies are still imprisoned when they are caught out in their mockeries of all mighty Jesus.
Or maybe it’s fucking hard as shit and leaves it’s share of corpses and battered lives in the road, but people aren’t actually at the mercy of entrenched status quo but can actually resist with a revolution of thought turning to revolution of deeds turning to revolution of ideas to revolution of laws. Which, yeah, would be where I tend to have respect for anarchism, real anarchism, for generally being pretty damn good at the beginning, where all one sees is a fucked up system and people just sort of accepting it because “what are you going to do”, and calling that shit out and taking the first punches to allow others to really start going “oh yeah, that system really is fucked up, ain’t it?”
Good try Danny boy, but I got a better one. It comes from NYT science editor Nicholas Wade in his Faith Instinct, a book all about religion considered as natural selection. He writes:
Gods die when people no longer worship them.
Man, the existence of atheists in HIS PERFECT WORLD is just burning his chaps, ain’t it? Yeah, good luck with that anarchistic movement when you can’t even get through a single fucking post without itching to bust heads with the power of a coercive state.
Since we are full of Darwin today, I think we can include the secular gods in this maxim too. Marxism will die when people stop worshipping Marx.
Should I tell him, or do you want to?
Big government will die when people stop worshipping the system.
All you gotta do is take down the man, man, and then all the shit gets better.
Psst, Chris, there’s a reason no one likes that douchebag. Hint, it’s not because he’s so right and his parents and friends just don’t understand him.
But there is another way that the world changes. It’s when people just give up. Here is the incomparable Willa Cather describing in Death Comes to the Archbishop the Navajos giving up after Kit Carson had invaded their tribal sanctuary, the Canyon de Chelly.
Carson followed them down into the hidden world between those towering walls of red sandstone, destroyed their stores, laid waste to their deep-sheltered corn-fields, cut down the terraced peach orchards to dear to them. When they saw all that was sacred to them laid waste, the Navajos lost heart. They did not surrender, they simply ceased to fight, and were taken.
You can see what is going on right now in the Obamacare wars.
Fuck you.
Some racist ass myth about the Native Americans deserving their subjugation and the repeated lies and broken deals we threw their way because they supposedly “gave up” on themselves does not fucking say anything, much less anything about your sad little self-serving crusade to deny the scary black man any “wins” and prevent Democrats from improving society in ways that could negatively affect the ability of Republicans to reliably steal elections in the future.
Sane people are giving up on your crusade and viewing you as exactly the same sore losers who have spent the last 150 years trying to refight the treasonous war you lost in no uncertain terms, because it’s a pointless fucking fight willing to sacrifice lives for no more noble reason than to aid election prospects for a gang of thieves and sociopaths.
You want to rip off the bandaids, “start” the Obamacare Wars you’ve been losing for the last four years and blame it on the middle class? And then whine when people notice that the quagmire ain’t bringing the boys back home? Well, sorry, Sally, but no.
You decided to ruin everyone’s lives shutting everyone’s lives down because once again you don’t have the self-respect to admit that you’ve lost, again. That’s not nobility, that’s not surrender, that’s acceptance.
What you are doing is the same reality denial shit you’ve been trying to pull ever since the first peasant said “hey, fuck this oppression shit”.
The Democrats are telling us that resistance is futile: it’s the Law, etc.
Yes, the war is over, and your entrenched band of neo-nazis is still pretending the German Panzers are right over the hill to bail your asses out.
Why not just give up, you extremist anarchist Republicans?
A damn good question seeing as how nobody, and I mean nobody asked you to destroy our country to prevent the barest of incremental changes from having the tiniest of impacts.
And the Republican establishment seems to be going along, offering merely mild objections.
Which is why they’ve gone all in on Operation Give the Anarchist a Cigarette.
But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is offering an alternative. That is the strategic meaning of his tactically meaningless non-filibuster. He is saying “Nuts!” He is proposing to lead conservatives and Republicans out of the land of Egypt into the Promised Land. He is saying that we have not yet begun to fight. He is suggesting that with Obamacare the Democrats have gone a bridge too far, and that now is the time to strike back. He is calling on us “boldly [to] outdare / The dangers of the time.”
So… wait, you’re actually admitting that your religious heroes were anarchist rabble-rousers (Jesus was a terrorist)? Huh. Wasn’t expecting that.
For this is our creed, the creed of the People of the Responsible Self. There can be no system for us, for free men and women, because system is domination.
This reminds me of that brand of douchebag faux-anarchists who say that we shouldn’t fight hierarchical oppressions because recognizing hierarchies exist is acknowledging a system of division and “anarchists don’t believe in systems, man” so of course the white rich men who just want to rebel against their parents should lead over the black trans* lesbian with the history of actual political success and scars from the front lines.
We responsible individuals, joined in voluntary cooperation under a limited government, make and unmake such systems as we want and need according to our responsibilities to ourselves and to our families and to society at large.
And do you know what that is called, kiddies?
That’s right.
GOVERNMENT!
You ignorant mark!
And we know that “system” is an illusion, for life on this planet Earth is a ceaseless effort to adapt to its challenges and its changes. There is no fixed and immutable system except in the Hereafter.
You just can’t have heaven on earth.
Hey, remember that joke I posted about giving a man a fish and then giving a man a bible from a couple of posts ago?
Apparently, it wasn’t satire, enough.
Overall, though, fuck the goddamn anarchist for sale shtick. I mean, the one good thing anarchists have going for them is that they are, for the most part, empathetic people who try and stand up for the lowliest, most downtrodden fuckers and take stands against the most seemingly overpowering systems. They are often the front line in moving something from an intractable system to something that bigots find themselves clinging to as it slowly fades away. The beginnings of movements such as disability rights, worker’s rights, women’s rights, queer rights, all began often with anarchists being the only ones willing to speak up.
Remove all that and you just have the fundamental problem with the goals of anarchism. What to do after the revolution. If you shut it all down, what next?
And sadly, we know that answer all too well and we see it again with this form of totalitarianism minority rule trying to pose as anarchism. Shutting down the system because everybody didn’t let you get your way even though you lost in the hopes that enough “little” people will suffer, entrenching old broken hierarchies with underhanded tactics and attempts to spoil anything the minority could win. These are the painful lessons that train the next generation of snarky anarchist bastards who take no shit.
And if the Republicans want to rally to that A flag like it somehow makes them the real true rebels, then fuck them and their brand of “anarchism”.
I’ll be down in the pit rocking out to Laura Jane Grace.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. The revolution was a lie! We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
And for additional palate cleansing, here’s Joan Jett and Laura Jane Grace singing some Replacements.
Present and slogging
Present and slogging!
1
Oops, oops…
Okay, dibs on second! Another classic Cerb. Righteous rage.
Okay, Wuups. Sorry Mr. Limpet, sir. Imma gonna find the Teach a Man to Fish joke and refresh people’s memories. I loved it the first time. It’s so killer in the context of THIS post.
(Wow. Great typo that I caught: ‘in the context of THIS pist.’ I’m pist too!)
Here ya go….
These fuckwads try to appropriate anything and everything. They’re MLK and the victims of racism because they get called on their racism. Now this jerkwad assumes the mantle of heroic and radical 1905 bombthrower against the Romanovs. (Well, those blackety-black Black Romanovs.)
When in fact he’s nothing more than a self-absorbed greedhead dressing up for Halloween.
You’ve done yer job, Cerb: I’m boiling with rage at this arrogant asshole. I want tsam to Throw him on the ground! (Hey, I can’t bodyslam with the force this prick deserves.)
I love it* that these jokers completely elide over the fact that “Obamacare” is “Romneycare” when it’s at home, and (my biggest objection) that it’s a big fat sloppy not at all disguised gift to the health insurance companies. You know – the very same outfits that anyone paying attention (and many who aren’t, it’s that bad) knows are causing so much unhappiness, poverty, ill health, and death in the US.
Because if they admitted it’s really Romneycare, and (almost) all their stated objections are purest bullshit, they’d also have to admit they do’ wanna because they’re still having a tantrum about a (nominal) Democrat/scaryscary black man in the White House.
And the fact that every news source claiming to be superior because they have real “journalists” on their payroll isn’t prefacing every report of the GOP’s shameful, gleeful shitting all over federal employees and the people who depend on them with this fact is just another indication that the “press” abandoned their jobs back in Reagan’s day.
*In the sense of “it makes me incandescent with rage.”
Also thanx for the palate-cleanser, Cerb. I mellowed down. (Also some plum wine and sweet smoke helped….)
The entire “business model” of the so-called Healthcare Industry is denying healthcare.
Because of the VA healtcare SYSTEM , I know single-payer works, and it’s good, patient-centered care, too. (I’ve transitioned into the NM system, and it seems to have the same high standards as the Maryland system.)
But the Preznit took it off the table before even starting his ‘negotiation’. Mighty big bargaining chip to throw away, huh? And somehow the Public Option evaporated, too. And that was when the Democrats controlled the HOUSE … the SENATE (w/ the Almighty 60) … and the WHITE HOUSE, in the flush of a near-landslide victory. But the Preznit DID accomplish some negotiations objectives: He handed enough to Big Pharma to get some Big Bucks for selling his weak-tea version to the public.
Look, I’ve got no skin in the game (VA, after all)–and I know the weak-tea version accomplishes some laudable things–but the Preznit (and the Congressional Democrats) seriously botched the whole thing from the very start. People deserved so much better…and I believe they expected better.
But I voted for Bernie Sanders–twice–so what do I know?
– – – – – – – –
VCarl: I share your contempt for the Press. Like you, I remember when there actually WAS a ‘watchdog’ press (both print and televised) back in Cretaceous.
– – – – – – – – –
I think I need some more plum wine. Then I’m going to read High Wind In Jamaica) until sweet slumber overtakes me….
Big government will die when people stop worshipping the system
Support the troops. The Bible tells you so. It is the Law of Supply and Demand. As the Framers originally intended.
And I was so looking forward to being denied insurance because that sniffle I had when I was 5 years old counts as a pre-existing condition.
Seriously you dumb lie-berals! Why you trying to look after the poor and downtrodden? Where does the Bible say that? It’s a dog eat dog world, man. Except when it’s not because No Rules, man. Life is tough. Electric word, “life”. It means forever and that is a mighty long time – but I’m here to tell you that there’s something else. The Afterlife.
A world of Neverending Happiness. You can always see the sun, day or night.
So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know the one – Dr. Everything’s Gonna Be Alright – instead of asking him how much time you’ve got left, ask him how much of your mind.
Because in THIS life, things are much harder than in the Afterlife.
In THIS life, you are on your own.
And if the elevator tried to bring you down, punch a higher floor.
Sorry, troll, you can’t use Starbucks as a signifier of the white upper class because everyone goes there these days and if they don’t they get lattes and coffee milkshakes at Dunkin Donuts instead.
I’m thinking that if the House sends another CR to the Senate with anything about the ACA in it then the Senate should send back to the house a CR with an amendment calling for universal health care.Which is what they should have done in the first place. Then they can “negotiate” down to a clean CR with no mention of health care in it.
After a year-plus sabbatical, Assclowns of the Week roars back with a 94th edition. On the spit this week: The Republican Party, Ted Cruz, Guido Barilla, John Boehner, Sarah Palin and much, much more!
Um, I’m all confused on Chris’ argument.
There doesn’t “have to be a system” because noble white Christians will organically assemble their own noble white systems to aid each other, like the way animals didn’t evolve under the false Democrat religion of evolution, so there doesn’t need to be a “system” imposed top-down like God created all life and assigned it its proper places?
BTW, more of my obsession:
CAPERCAILLIE LAMMERGEYR CASSOWARY
Obviously, the first thing they should do is disband the Republican Party “system” , then work their way up from there.
OK, want to send a hit squad on the pseudo-anarchist now. Grrrr. That dicknozzle wipes his ass on the black flag. Emma Goldman should raise from her grave and kick his ass across the continent. This is the most facile, bullshitty “argument” I’ve seen in years. It does however demonstrate why legit anarchists (of the feminist, green, or syndicalist schools) somehow find themselves hanging with liberals, socialists, and even communists more than their alleged ideological kin among the libertarians. Asshole, asshole, asshole.
Shorter Chris Trill Chanter (and most libertarians):
There should be anarchy!!! And I should be KING!!!
There is no fixed and immutable system except in the Hereafter.
You’ll get pie in the sky, by and by, when you die!
Oh, and I’ll just leave this here as well, because we need some real weirdness at the moment.
Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger WIth A Side Of Aircraft Noise And You’ll Be Gary Indiana
The Democrats are telling us that resistance is futile: it’s the Law, etc.
No, the Democrats are telling you to change the law if you’ve got the votes. Just because you don’t have the votes doesn’t prove “The System” doesn’t work, though the fact you want to tear it down regardless does prove you’re an anti-democratic asshole.
Now that I got that out of the way, on to craptastical American history 101. The Navajo did not surrender because Carson violated their sanctum sanctorum at Cayon de Cheilly. They surrendered for the same reason the Lakota, the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, and the Commanche (to name 4) did. White assholes destroyed all of their food and they were on the brink of complete starvation.
And the Navajo in particular didn’t just give up. They protested their removal and not that long after their removal, they returned to their homeland, where they still are.
Chantrill seems to be defying the law of averages/broken clock rule. You’d think he could be right about something even by accident.
[ must a lot of bandwagons dictate lovingly and dully? ]
I’m from the Republican Party and I’m here to help myself.
I feel guilty that I didn’t do more to help McCain get elected, but walking out of my house was a bit problematic after I had the starburst realization.
Wait, is this deluded fuckbucket seriously trying to push some sort of Christian-based anarchy?
Could he be slightly dyslexic and reading it as Anachrist? Because sometimes that happens to me, but not being a complete dipshit, I realize it is my dyslexia and laugh it off. I also (because I am not a complete dipshit) do not write an laughably ignorant screed about how we don’t need systems, we just need Jesus, because fight the power.
[Trollenabling]
Shakezula,
This deluded fuckbucket is trying to push some corporate-worshipping, Christianity-as-opiate pseudo-anarchism. I clarifying only because there are legit Christian anarchists out there (Zapata being one notable example) who are in the Jesus-as-bro, share-all-things, live-in-commune school.
Not that plenty of other anarchists don’t question their commitment to the ideals of the movement, but they deserve better than a Republican fuckbucket who calls himself an anarchist.
This deluded fuckbucket is laying out the governmental system of the Taliban and other oppressive theocracies. That’s all he’s doing.
I keep reading the title of this post as “I was a Right Wing Antichrist.” Because, really, that makes much more sense. Especially in recent context.
And, Fenwick, when the Obama administration, with all the advantages you cited (controlling both houses of Congress, with a “filibuster” proof majority in the Senate), pre-conceded single payer, then went on to a really poor version of the public option as his “bargaining” chip – well, that’s when he lost me. I’d been dubious before (Senate FISA vote, my perception of his attitude towards women) but that was a big sign for me.
Obama would have had a lot less trouble defending his “signature” legislation if it had been simpler (Medicare for all) and less of an obvious gift to the “healthcare” industry. I’m beginning to think it might be eleventy dimensional chess after all, and his true hearts desire legislation is really the destruction if the tattered remnants of the New Deal left us. He certainly keeps going back to it.
Obama would have had a lot less trouble defending his “signature” legislation if it had been simpler (Medicare for all) and less of an obvious gift to the “healthcare” industry.
i really like how these people show their true colors:
single payer system: NO!!! DO YOU REALLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT GETTING BETWEEN YOU AND YOU’RE DOCTOR?!?!?! DEATH PANELS!!!!
current system: YAY!!! BIG INSURANCE COMPANY COMES BETWEEN ME & MY DOCTOR!!!
i don’t get it…you know they only truly hate the government only when they are not getting subsidies or disaster aid from it…
Which can easily be distinguished from regular organized religion Christianity by … Um … Hang on, I’m going to need my electron microscope for this one.
I don’t know this guy from a low-IQ hole in the wall, but it sounds like he had a cunning plan that involves saying right wingers are the real anarchists so the dirty hippies will vote for them. Because you know, that worked out so well for rebRAND PAUL (TM) Super Libertarian.
It’s also wonderful the way they fervently oppose something they imagine happening with government healthcare in favor of the death panels that truly do happen with our current system.
Maybe it’s a failure of imagination – they cannot conceive of a healthcare system that isn’t the fucked up version we have here, so they assume any government-run system would be the same, but bigger. And yes, I know we have actual examples of government-run healthcare working pretty well here in the US and in the rest of the world. They just don’t wanna, because their Masters told ’em no.
i must say, if you want to cheer yerself up with a good laff, just head over to the stinker and read the comments…they truly do not disappoint…among the many examples of false equivalencies, double-standards, projection, improper word usage and racism, i did finally find one mango that tickled me so that it has become my favorite
oh…and i forgot condescension…
Shakezula,
First, touchee.
Second, I’m not sure he really cares about the dirty hippies join in (except maybe some of the women). All right-wing d-bags these days see themselves as rebels against the world. Ted Cruz sounds like he’s theeees close to dying on the barricades. They’re melodrama addicts of the highest order, which would be fine except that they insist on bringing the rest of us along. Like cosplay is fine unless some asshole starts ripping into bystanders with his sword.
Present for Josh St. Lawrence: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-not-simpler/2013/10/01/why-bigfoot-is-unlikely-only-if-you-know-what-unlikely-means/
Maybe it’s a failure of imagination – they cannot conceive of a healthcare system […]
Nope. They’re against it because Obama is for it. It’s that simple. The ACA closely resembles Romneycare which itself closely resembles the GOP health care plan of the 90s. They were for it before they were against it.
I know.
Plus, it’s a handy tool in their continuing, mostly successful (thanks, DNC) efforts to make the government ever more completely the property of the 1%.
Fedsters believe, incoherently, that there has to be topdown elitist despotic manmade comprehensive design of human systems, but that there cannot be feedback from a guiding Reconciler, held in the sacred republican heart of every person. Go figure.
I’ve got to admit that does sound incoherent. Go figure.
Ted Cruz sounds like he’s theeees close to dying on the barricades.
A benevolent God would give the man what he so obviously wants. Damn non-existent gods.
corporate-worshipping, Christianity-as-opiate pseudo-anarchism
Because nothing says “anarchist” like hierarchical systems like Christianity and the corporation.
Derp.
Agreed about the melodrama, but to me it is more histrionics. Most of these assholes know there are no jackbooted thugs coming for them. They just get off on screaming about how dreadfully daring they are for defying the Great Evil Tyrant Obama who overthrew the rightful PotUS by the underhanded and nefarious tactic of winning elections.
But this simp is even funnier because he can’t bear to write an allegedly anti-establishment screed without making sure everyone knows he believes in Yahweh. WTF? It’s like Katherine Lopez tried to pretend she’s completely down with people expressing their sexuality with as many consenting adults as they can find but had to stick a reminder to pray the rosary and go to mass in there as well.
So why don’t they just let this imperfect, illusory, ungodly, etc. system take its course and fail? That should win them every election for at least the next 20 years.
It’s almost as if, deep in some corner of their unevolved brains, they realize that being known as the party that denies food and medicine to people is not a long-term winning strategy.
being known as the party that denies food and medicine to people is not a long-term winning strategy.
But it’s so Christ-like!
Most of these assholes know there are no jackbooted thugs coming for them.
No, but most of them dream of being the jack booted thugs who rid our society of the undesirables. They fear their own imaginations more than anything.
Same principle as a cheating spouse being absolutely convinced the innocent spouse is cheating…
Say it together, kids. It’s all………………………………..
PROJECTION.
Yeah, Dennis, folks hate it so much that they’re overloading the servers trying to access it.
If the Democrats had pulled a stunt like this over, say, the Bush tax cuts they’d have been screaming for them to be shot as traitors – which they’d pretty much want to do anyways.
“Most people don’t like”.
WRNOG!
Oops.
Obamacare = Romneycare (pretty much) is something that bears repeating. The fact that it isn’t (just write a script! -oh, wait – does M$ Word do scripts?) shows how bought and paid for the “news” media are.
the Bush tax cuts
Or maybe the Iraq war…oh wait…most of them signed that blank check.
You’re right, of course, tsam.
I don’t know if that means the Dems wanted the war just as badly or they were just political cowards. I personally tend to think it’s the latter.
As I recall, it didn’t require an actual stunt. Any hesitation to embraced BushMin’s psychotic schemes triggered accusations of smuggling Osama bin Laden into the NICU so he could suffocate the babies.
embrace
I personally tend to think it’s the latter
Oh, so do I. That prompted the one and only time I ever agreed with Pat Buchanan. When Hilary’s campaign scumbags were trying to justify her war vote (and subsequent TV appearances with Joe Weaselman to pimp further involvement) with her being the senator from New York cuz that’s where 9/11 happened, ya know…Political pressure, blah blah blah.
Buchanan responded by saying that if she couldn’t stand up to that kind of pressure, how in the hell does she deserve to be POTUS?? I have to agree. But then we didn’t do any better, did we?
Ted Cruz sounds like he’s theeees close to dying on the barricades.
If life gives you barracks…
Come to think of it, “Barack-ade” should be a thing.
I’m continually annoyed as hell at the perception of inevitability that Hilary will clear the primary field next time around. I don’t want her and I don’t want the Clinton crony network to spend any more time in the fucking White House. Between The Clenis and Obummer, they’ve had just about enough time in control of the government.
I just saw this over at Crooks and Liars. In it, some Christianist TV host named Rick Joyner accidentally told the truth:
I’m pretty sure I can make a good guess as to which people he thinks are the ones who are “not always right.”
BTW, this joker is apparently asking for a military takeover of the US, because. Also, he seems ro be against elections if they don’t go the way he wants. If it weren’t for opening the way for all kinds of tyranny, I might consider agitating for legislation to deport folks like him to places that seem to be more in line with what they say they want. Somalia, perhaps.
“If life gives you Baracks, make Barack-ade?”
I think that’s what they’re doing.
BTW, this joker is apparently asking for a military takeover of the US, because.
So we’d all get subsidized housing, government-run health care, full pensions, free college education, plus extra pay based on how many dependents we have?
Sign me up comrades!
The people are not always right, it depends on what people they are.
Sometimes they need to be dissolved and replaced with a new one.
Sometimes they need to be dissolved and replaced with a new one.
Yeah, but all that acid is expensive.
No, no Kong.
We won’t all be in the military with all those benefits. We’ll just be ruled by benevolent pro-capitalist autocrats who can see our best interests come from ruthless purges of dissent. Like that nice Pinochet fellow.
as always, jesse’s keepin’ it real…
Yeah, but all that acid is expensive.
Memories.
According to George Bernard Shaw, a religion dies when it is proved to be true.
Oh yeah, he’s just SAYING “Nuts!”
Yeah, but all that acid is expensive.
Usually worth it though.
Yes, yes. And didn’t his, er, “cleanups” often wind up serving the interests of some US corporation or another? Purely coincidentally, of course. Anyway, since “capitalism” and the “free market” (for certain values of each), are the true gods of many of these oeople, everything should be fine. Because only the right people are ever rounded up and dispised of. Isn’t that in teh Holy Book of Rand, or something?
huh…
He is saying “Nuts!”
We all know he’s popular with the teabaggers.
Oh I dunno, acid gave an outsized bang-for-ol’-buck. Nobody disputes that.
Sorry Chris. That may have seemed original to Wade, but Gygax, Arneson, Greenwood, et al postulated this around, oh, 1972… (and I daresay it had been previously suggested by someone else, but I was a lazy student of philosophy).
Recycling Dungeons and Dragons theology into a half-assed corporatist libertarian argument disguised as anarcho-nihilism — and based on multiple bullshit premises — makes you into a kobold zombie of an intellectual…
Versus Cerb’s 12th-level half-elven fighter-cleric, the kobold zombie (with 1/4 of a hit die) stands no chance.
Of course, as we’ve seen time and again, the kobold zombies generally attack in packs.
What we need is a political version of the 1st edition sweep rule.
I don’t think unworshipped gods die, they just become less and less godly. They tend to have residual powers in places of previous influence.
A kobold zombie should not have any fewer hit dice than a kobold (0.5), and possibly more (1?). It should be slower and dumber, etc.
you know they only truly hate the government only when they are not getting subsidies or disaster aid from it…
Or planes stop flying to the Congresscritters’ local airports because the sequester’s furlough of traffic controllers has personally inconvenienced them….
I don’t think unworshipped gods die, they just become less and less godly.
Neglect is next to ungodliness.
Jean Ray was on the case in 1943.
VCarl: He lost me after his treachery on the so-called FISA ‘reform’ vote. After he had the nomination in hand, we was willing to shitcan all his explicit ‘filibuster’ promises of the primary season.
And Good Progressive Democrats are surprised and dismayed that the National Security and Surveillance State has expanded during Obama’s administration? (After it regularly pissed on the hippies and the Prog Caucus.)
I’m sure that Clinton will be s-o-o much better….. [/dripping sarcasm]
read ‘he’
Histogeek nails it.
Me too, Major. Invertebrates.
A kobold zombie should not have any fewer hit dice than a kobold (0.5), and possibly more (1?). It should be slower and dumber, etc.
Such as.
“Barack-ade” should be a thing.
I think Clyde is onto something. (In any event, he’s as clever as ever.)
What we need is a political version of the 1st edition sweep rule.
Feat: Great Political Cleave
Ted Cruz sounds like he’s theeees close to dying on the barricades.
Aux armes, shityoens!
Playing catch up;
Just look at Somalia. Remove the “system” and it doesn’t free the people, just leaves them at the mercy of smaller more abusive systems of warlords and profiteers who use the lack of protection for their victims to institute a system where the most sociopathic and cruel win. Now, yes, systems like our own in the States or authoritarian systems around the globe reveal you can set up the same thing with rules and laws,
Having a government with regulations and people to enforce them doesn’t guarantee you justice, but not having these things does guarantee that you won’t get it.
Having a government with regulations and people to enforce them doesn’t guarantee you justice, but not having these things does guarantee that you won’t get it.
let’s have robyn, a commenter at murkin stinker, have a crack at that, chris:
Free people do not need systems, they just need free markets.
ha! there you go…can’t argue with that certitude!
from now on, that’s how i’m answering everything…
And do you know what that is called, kiddies?
That’s right.
GOVERNMENT!
You ignorant mark!
Every time a libertarian starts to describe what life would look like in their happy, post-government utopia, it always reminds me of the South Park hippie episode (substitute “government” for “corporations” as needed);
Hippie: Right now we’re proving we don’t need corporations. We don’t need money. This can become a commune where everyone just helps each other.
Hippie: Yeah, we’ll have one guy who like, who like, makes bread. A-and one guy who like, l-looks out for other people’s safety.
Stan: You mean like a baker and a cop?
Hippie: No no, can’t you imagine a place where people live together and like, provide services for each other in exchange for their services?
Kyle: Yeah, it’s called a town.
(Yes, I’m aware that Stone and Parker are libertarians, which makes that dialogue a magnificent self-awareness fail wrapped in hippie-punching projection. And yes, I’m aware that that describes pretty much the entire show).
Free people do not need systems, they just need free markets.
Christ Almighty, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve read all day, and I read logorrhea from Sarah Palin AND Michele Bachmann.
Remember: technically, it’s only euphemism until we repeat it often enough!
But the Preznit took it off the table before even starting his ‘negotiation’. Mighty big bargaining chip to throw away, huh? And somehow the Public Option evaporated, too. And that was when the Democrats controlled the HOUSE … the SENATE (w/ the Almighty 60) … and the WHITE HOUSE, in the flush of a near-landslide victory. But the Preznit DID accomplish some negotiations objectives: He handed enough to Big Pharma to get some Big Bucks for selling his weak-tea version to the public.
That irritated the shit out of me too.
Not least because even if single payer and the public option hadn’t passed and we’d still ended up with the current bill… every time a problem with the ACA cropped up, he could’ve said “just remember this isn’t what we wanted. This is what we accepted because you rocket scientists wouldn’t let anything else through, and it was better than nothing. Now are you going to listen?” Throwing the narrative away completely has allowed the idea of “Obamacare is the most radical socialist socialism that ever socialist’d! This is socialized medicine, this is what they wanted, and we were told it would solve all our problems! Why should we trust them now?” narrative to take hold, not just among the 27% nutjobs but plenty of the regular public too.
That and any idiot knows that you always start negotiations by asking for more than you actually want. That way when you get down to negotiations, you have things to give away that you didn’t really want anyway. He should’ve started at single payer simply for the sake of having more ground to give up.
They practically had to be bludgeoned into asking for that weak-tea Public Option, too, and scuttled it as quick as they could. For a smart guy, Obama’s made a lot of stupid mistakes. Pity, too – I think he had/has the potential to have been a really good President, who also happened to be our first black one. I don’t know if it’s political inexperience, or just not having the heart for a populist fight.
At the time, I was afraid that what we wound up with, labeled as it is as “pure soshulism,” would wind up being the death knell for any true health insurance reform, whether it works or doesn’t (it could still fail, what with the raving loonies attacking it constantly. The health insurance companies wouldn’t thank the loonies for losing them the business, but I think the whirlwind is beyond their control now).
And Good Progressive Democrats are surprised and dismayed that the National Security and Surveillance State has expanded during Obama’s administration? (After it regularly pissed on the hippies and the Prog Caucus.)
The thing that’s kept me from being as disappointed as other liberals have been about Obama’s record on the security state, personally, has been remembering that trying to close Guantanamo Bay (a far more egregious offense, IMO) was one of the very first things he did while in office, even before getting to health care. And I remember that he was immediately shut down by the entire political establishment, Republicans and Democrats alike (in a knee-jerk about-face from the consensus of the previous few years, where even McCain had been admitting that Gitmo wasn’t such a good idea), at some political cost. Given that, I really can’t blame him if he concluded “fine, the security state is untouchable, at least for now – let’s leave that alone and concentrate on what I can change.” (Which is par for the course in liberal history; FDR refusing to touch civil rights being the classic example. At least Obama made an honest attempt before declaring it untouchable).
It’s also why the entire fake outrage at the NSA “revelations” over the summer made me violently angry – not at the liberals, or even the few Paultard honest fools, who’ve been opposing it for years, but at the entire chattering class of Official Washington that suddenly sat up and pretended to notice and be shocked by those illegal surveillance programs that we’d all known (in their case, actually defended) since well into the Bush years. You don’t get to defend the system for an entire decade and then wring your hands about one of the few politicians in Washington who’s actually taken a swipe at reining it in.
For a smart guy, Obama’s made a lot of stupid mistakes. Pity, too – I think he had/has the potential to have been a really good President, who also happened to be our first black one. I don’t know if it’s political inexperience, or just not having the heart for a populist fight.
It’s also why the entire fake outrage at the NSA “revelations” over the summer made me violently angry – not at the liberals, or even the few Paultard honest fools, who’ve been opposing it for years, but at the entire chattering class of Official Washington that suddenly sat up and pretended to notice and be shocked by those illegal surveillance programs that we’d all known (in their case, actually defended) since well into the Bush years. You don’t get to defend the system for an entire decade and then wring your hands about one of the few politicians in Washington who’s actually taken a swipe at reining it in.
glad i can always rely on y’all to articulate for me…
Since we are full of Darwin today, I think we can include the secular gods in this maxim too. Marxism will die when people stop worshipping Marx.
They’ll have to pry Das Kapital from my cold, dead fingers!
Seriously, the only folks who worship Marx nowadays are the reverse-Marxist one percenters…
Marxism will die when people stop worshipping Marx.
capitalism will die when people stop worshipping capital…
metabolism will die when people stop worshipping metabo…
game on…
Antidisestablishmentarianism will die when people stop worshiping long words.
nihilism will die when people stop worshiping nothing…
Neologism will die when people stop making up new words.
this game is hard…
Malapropism will die when people stop deranging epitaphs.
when people stop worshiping nothing…
Is nothing sacred?
autoeroticism will die when people stop loving themselves…
“Remove the “system” and it doesn’t free the people, just leaves them at the mercy of smaller more abusive systems of warlords and profiteers who use the lack of protection for their victims to institute a system where the most sociopathic and cruel win. ”
Sounds like the average RWers wettest of dreams. No wonder they’re so eager to burn the whole thing down…
Right now, Doug Henwood would probably remind us that, yes, he was a teenage reactionary:
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1998/36/henwood.html
Yale’s “Party of the Right”, 1972.
Neologism will die when people stop making up new words.
Syllogisms will die when syllogisms are a thing since all things die.
T-shirts will die when people stop settling for just white ones.
T-shirts will die when people stop settling for just white ones.
as will racism…
cubism will die when people stop being so square, man…
Vegetarianism will die when we finally succeed in killing the ecosphere.
Impressionism will die when people stop Thinking With The Gut…
T-shirts will
dietie-dye when people stop settling for just white ones.Fixxorated.
Prism will die when people stop worshiping cats?
Die will Marxism when people stop Marxing die.
One form of birth control is to stop worshiping J.
PATRIOTism will finally die
whenif they finally repeal that misbegotten Act.At least Obama made an honest attempt before declaring it untouchable
Chris: I agree, if ‘it’ is a reference to Guantanamo. However, if ‘it’ is a reference to the Security/Surveillance State, then Obama’s not off the hook, imo. He was full of pre-November ‘accountability’ for torturers–at least investigation of such–then became all ‘let’s Look Forward, Not Back’ after the inaugeration. (Same with Pelosi, who stomped out House investigations after the ‘Justice’ Department declined to even investigate–much less indict or prosecute–war criminals.)
Also the Obama Administration claimed WIDER executive powers than even Addington and Yoo had asserted. [In the brief defending against plaintiffs injured by the private-communications hoovering by BushCo.] The Obama administration has fought FOI requests with a tenacity unequaled by previous administrations (including BushCo). http://presstv.com/detail/2013/03/13/293379/obama-sets-record-for-rejections-of-freedom-of-information-requests/
Instead of rolling back the Security/Surveillance State, Obama has cemented it into place. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, it won’t be undone. The Fourth Amendment is pretty much a hollow shell now.
Btw, I totes agree with your observations about the lapdog sNooz media in the NSA revelations. Actually, they were even more negligent and compliant (if that is possible): They mostly framed the story about Snowden rather than the NSA. Infuriated me, too.
Baptism will die if only they hold their heads underwater for long enough.
Sadism will die when people turn their frowns upside-down.
bbkf: Thanx for the link to Jesse’s comments. I’m tempted to go back and paste some excerpts in here, for folks who may have missed it or skipped it. I was delighted that Minnesotans elected him, of course.
Important to my mind: He has never–to my knowledge–spoken in favor of Third Parties. Instead he has spoken in favor of Independent (or non-affiliated) candidates. I’m sorta whiittled off the same stick: My model for breaking the stranglehold of the Two Parties doesn’t include a Third Party at all. Perhaps I’ll elaborate in the next electoral cycle….
Orgasm will die when people become hyper-religious.
Priapism will finally die when insurance no longer covers those pills.
Priapism will finally die when insurance no longer covers those pills.
damn your hide! i’ve been trying to think of something clever for the four+ hour boner! oh well, now i can at least get some sleep…
bbkf: Thanx for the link to Jesse’s comments. I’m tempted to go back and paste some excerpts in here, for folks who may have missed it or skipped it. I was delighted that Minnesotans elected him, of course
ahhhhh, the reign of jesse…good times…goooood times…
in other creepy minnesota wrassler news
dude has been trying to sell his stuff by running an ‘estate’ sale which he advertises on a bedsheet and spray paint draped across a sawhorse…all appearances show he has yet to sell anything…
Ick. ‘Creepy’ is too mild a modifier…
I was actually sort of sad when that idiotic Republican tanked in Clinton’s first Senate race. It seemed to me not too high a price to pay to get the Clintons out of America’s political life altogether. Stay tuned for “But…but…but…Cruz (or Whoever) is so much worse…” Also with regard to Friends Of Bill: Stay tuned to Terry McAulife’s apologists in Virginia. “But…but…but Cuccinelli is so much worse…”
Leprosy.
Excerpts from bbkf’s Ventura link:
Two wings of the Corporate Party. Which wing will you waste your vote on?
Sitting on the sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Listen to the candidates debate.
Laugh about it, shout about when you have to choose.
Everyway you look at it you loose.
(Except, course, there will be only a Republican and a Democrat behind the podiums….)
I think it’s time for me to retire to some plum wine and sweet smoke. Also I’ve got some furniture painting to work on. Sadlytown is SO much more fun than slapping on primer….
‘lose’
(Pat, pat) Yes, dear, we know.
And I like Jesse’s point (thanks bbkf & Fenwick) about how much money we’d have to spend on social support if we weren’t spending so much blood and treasure showing the world what a giant dick we
haveare.Solipsism will die when I do.
This comment will die whe
Dying will die when death is no more
and the universe doesn’t expand anymore
atoms will cease in big cosmic freeze
an eternal nothing that nobody sees
Cripes, “more” and “more.” SLOPPY.
Maybe change “anymore” to “as before?”
Old soldiers will die when they stop fading away.
And with strange aeons even death may die
Schism will die when we close the gap.
Jism will die when eroticism thrives.
This thread will die when I post on it.
CNC machines will die when supplied with stock material and turned on.
Two wings of the Corporate Party. Which wing will you waste your vote on?
I was always a straight Kang ticket vote. However, that Kodos has been making much more sense lately. I’m thinking of switching.
Hey did someone mention Virginia? Where Gov. Colonblow gleefully signs off on disenfranchisement and anti-abortion bills and his refusal to except the Medicaid expansion is going to hurt minorities and the working poor?
Yeah, let’s put that state in the hands of an even more bent Republican shitbird. I mean, what’s a little more human suffering when all is said and done? There are principles to be defended and grubby-faced waifs wistfully chewing a crust of bread, along with the tragic story tearfully narrated by the parents of a woman who died during an attempt to abort an unwanted pregnancy will make for some super footage for the next election where a guy or gal who meets The Standard runs against Ken Doll.
And people who are really unhappy can, like one woman is contemplating, move to Maryland and live in their cars!
Two wings of the Corporate Party. Which wing will you waste your vote on?
Hmmm, that IS a tough one: the Insane Corporate Party, or the Sane Corporate Party?
So far I’ve always voted for the Sane gang, though I’ve often regretted it.
But probably not a fraction as much as I’d regret voting for the Insane gang…
Those damn hippie, communist moochers!!!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atlasshrugged/atlas-shrugged-movie-who-is-john-galt
Is that Gov. Rape-with-an-object? Rachel Maddow calls him Gov. Ultrasound, but I say call it what it is.
[ your inability to act freely reveals the universe ]
I saw the eternal nothing. It’s where I went to high school.
VC – That’s even better.
Colonblow refers to the state money he spent on high colonics. Because, you know, tax payer money is precious.
Look, what’s up with Ted Cruz? This is really fucking bothering me. First of all, I haven’t caught him saying “aboot” yet, but he doesn’t have a Texan accent. He sounds like a f*cking Canadian, which really breaks my conception of how Tejano/as vote. Seriously, a carpetbagger? In Texas? How’d they get away with that? Princeton? Harvard? Ugh. Okay, moving on, truly, it’s his face that kills me.
He looks like a Frenchie. No, really. He doesn’t look like an American white person. He looks like a white person from continental Europe. Southern France would fit with that little soupçon of mediterranean phenotype he has going on.
I’m convinced that facial shape is related to childhood diet. I refuse to believe that when you cross the border from Bavaria to Moravia that the people suddenly look different because Czechs are so genetically distinct from Germans–bullshit, Czechoslovakia was chock full o’ ethnic Germans until 1945.
Cruz looks like he belongs in some other country’s parliament or perhaps some other country’s foreign affairs tv program(me).
He’s not orange
He’s not fat
He’s entirely too pale period
The hair. What’s up with that (eyebrows included)
He has no charisma
I don’t fucking get it.
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2013/10/2/142750/172/Front_Page/Republican_Linked_Religious_Right_Leader_Calls_For_quot_Military_Takeover_quot_
Yep, openly called for a military coup. Good friend of Sara Palin, surprise surprise.
Oh, snap.
Right. Isn’t it funny how the people so fond of moralizing on behalf of other people (especially when those others are women and The Poor) so often turn out to be crooks, and pretty obvious ones, at that?
Little Ricky Santorum springs to mind, for some reason.
Also with regard to Friends Of Bill: Stay tuned to Terry McAulife’s apologists in Virginia. “But…but…but Cuccinelli is so much worse…”
But he is so much worse. Lemme see: corporate whore, or corporate whore who’s coming at me with a vaginal ultrasound. Decisions, decisions.
Right on, daddy-o.
That and any idiot knows that you always start negotiations by asking for more than you actually want. That way when you get down to negotiations, you have things to give away that you didn’t really want anyway. He should’ve started at single payer simply for the sake of having more ground to give up.
If Obama’s so fecking stupid, how is it that he got health care reform passed, something every Congress and President since the 1960s has failed to do?
Obama didn’t go to the press playing games during that fight, which seems to be a lot of what people are pissed about. He was a legislator and he worked with the legislature and they did their sausage making and it was ugly. But they got something that was worth something in the end.
And look at what happened with SCOTUS. Medicaid is a public option, and look at what’s happening: states are refusing to take the money, then coming back and saying we’ll take Medicaid exemption IF we can make it managed care and our campaign donors get a cut of poor people’s misery.
You can’t get what you want with a simple majority, America. You need a Cali-style supermajority. Well, where is it?
So I guess that makes me an Obot. I do believe that politics is the art of the possible. Until Snowden there was no great hue and cry about what the NSA and FISC were up to and while the Village can go fuck itself, I guess by being a self-serving narcissistic anarchist nut he accomplished something that all those boring lawyer ACLU types never did, which was to make this surveillance thing sexy by exaggerating and mangling the facts, so, go team Griftwald? What I’m saying is that without activism, and without mobilization, politicians in our system can accomplish nothing. It’s not over when the election’s over. That’s the biggest mistake liberals in general make. Right wingers? Oh hell no. They’re on those pols like sugar ants on a sucker.
Not stupid. A bad negotiator, or a deceptive one. The ACA squeaked through on maneuvering (necessitated by the horses asses in the GOP not playing by the rules in the first place), and he had to spend a lot of time selling his crap Romneycare “reform” to his own side. If he’d started at Medicare for all (or, my preference, “we’re gonna nationalize Big Insurance,” which might then have been bargained down to Medicare for all-I can dream, can’t I?), and eventually had to settle for Romneycare, he’d probably have had more people behind him. But we’ll never know, because he went straight to Romneycare with a side of hippie-punching.
Since I have a nasty, suspicious mind, I’m inclined to think he didn’t try for Medicare for all because he was afraid it might have passed. But we’ll never know, because he didn’t try.
I don’t think you’re an Obot, not a gator. We just disagree on what was possible in 2009-2010.
I’m grateful to Snowden for blowing the top off the NSA, though I will say that knowing the boring ACLU types would have his back might have helped him in his decision (I’m a card-carrying member of the ACLU, btw, have been since Padilla, and sorry I was so late with it).
I’m just a little tired of the Democratic PTB defining “the possible” as something that looks remarkably like Reaganism. It’s how we’ve “lesser evil”-ed our way to the Democratic version of an “acceptable” budget slashes more of the safety net than the Republican version of a year or so ago did.
This is what the Republicans are scared of.
The ACA isn’t perfect, but it’s going to help a lot of people. Yes, I’d love “medicare for all” but it was never, ever going to happen, regardless of good or bad negotiating strategy. We still don’t have sparkleponies either, stupid Obama.
We have something better than we did, and lots of people will not die and not go bankrupt not dying. That’s a big fucking deal.
But yeah, something something, obot, bothsides.
What. The. Fuck. Ever.
And that was addressed at Fenwickian-style a-pox-on-both-their-houses shit, not VCarlson.
Minnesotans elected a joke governor to show their disgust with the established parties. Now Jesse wants to extend that upwards and become a joke President.
Oh why the hell not. If this country survived that B-movie actor, it can survive him.
OBS: Yes. You got it.
Old but still-relevant health-care blogwhoring.
Old but still-relevant health-care blogwhoring.
also with a nice little rant about the ‘system’ thrown in that chantshrill and his followers should take a gander at…
I’m glad we have Obamacare, and hope it saves a lot of lives and a lot of money. I hope it’s embarrassingly (to the TPers, though that’s probably not possible, as they have no shame) successful, so successful it can be used as a next step to something better. I think the people who advocate single payer or nothing (and I’m sure they exist, because people are weird) need to grow the fuck up, but I do resent it when people take my “I think we can do better, and hope we will some day” and turn it into “I’m OK with people dying because I hate Obamacare so much.” Which I don’t see on this blog, but I have seen elsewhere.
I’m just a little tired of the Democratic PTB defining “the possible” as something that looks remarkably like Reaganism.
You’re right of course. But imagine a Ted Cruz/Liz Cheney administration with majorities in both houses of congress, sending a bunch of Scalia clones to the supreme court.
If we sit on our hands waiting for the perfect progressive candidates to come along that’s what we’re going to get.
Things are never so bad they can’t be made worse, much worse.
New one up…
…
Oh goody. Shooting on Capitol Hill. Is it wrong to hope someone decided to sort out that polecat Cruz?
I don’t think you’re an Obot, not a gator. We just disagree on what was possible in 2009-2010.
Not even what’s possible so much as the optics of the whole thing, because yes, loathe as the policy wonks are to admit it, rhetoric does matter in politics. Like I said – if he’d at least made a case for single payer, then even if he’d accepted Romneycare, it would’ve provided a goal to keep moving towards after the ACA, but since he got essentially what he asked for, whenever we try to build on it I can now see tons of people (and not just wingnuts) responding with “hey, what’re you trying to push on us? You told us Obamacare was the solution to our broken system. Now you’re telling us it’s not enough and we need to let you reshuffle the health care system some more? Why should we trust you this time?” I suppose it ultimately depends on how much will be left to do after the ACA, so I’m open to being proven wrong, but my distrust for American corporate culture has me thinking that “market based insurance” will in fact need to be fixed/built on in a major way at some point down the line.
And yes, the ACA is a huge step forward regardless. It is possible to acknowledge that and to be glad it passed and still ask questions about “what’s next?” and whether more could have been done.
(Leaving the optical/political thing aside to ask whether or not more could in fact have been done – I leave it to VCarlson. We’ll never know. He didn’t try).
That is the stuff of nightmares. And, sadly, quite possible. If there’d been a chance in hell that my state was even close, I’d have voted for Obama rather than Stein in 2012. I did vote for Obama in 2008, as I was living in PA at the time, despite my reservations about him. I might have been wrong, and he was, after all, the lesser evil.
Given the power that has been acquired by the Presidency, and the way our process has become structured, the only candidates running with any chance of success will be the kind of people who want that kind of power, and are prepared to use it. So we now have an office with the acknowledged, excercised power to decide that an individual person is to be killed, purely on the President’s say-so, no trial, no nothing, and it’s done. All future Presidents now have that power, and some will use it, and it will get expanded. Because no one successfully running for that office will be the kind of person to not want and use that kind of power. I hope I’m wrong.
And we have gotten to this state because the Democratic party has been content to run as the lesser evil, for fear of being called soft on
communismterrorism if it actually stood for ordinary folk. Which never stopped the GOP from doing it anyway. Also, all that sweetsweet money.Oh goody. Shooting on Capitol Hill. Is it wrong to hope someone decided to sort out that polecat Cruz?
No.
I understand your concern, but I’ll just note that your local cops have that power too. And it’s been that way for a long fucking time. And don’t get me started on states with “Stand Your Ground” laws. Life isn’t valued here. Sadly, that’s not gonna change.
The point is that you DON’T have to vote for either gang. You can withold your vote until they earn it.
Never sit out an election! Cast a vote on every office and ballot question. Vote for an Independent. Vote for a third party. Select from anybody else on the ballot. If there is none you like, write-in someone you admire. (Personally, I research to make sure my write-in is eligible for the office; lives in the appropriate councilmanic district; if required, is a member of the bar, etc.)
There’s always the argument that “MY Democritic congresscritter is okay.” Or “But it’s only for city council; work for local change.” Here’s the problem: That ‘okay’ city councilcritter usually has ambititions to swim in a wider pool. Wants to be Mayor or State Representive. Wants to move up to State Senator. Wants to move up to U.S. congresscritter, then Governor or Senator or–dare I dream?–Preznit!
You see it all the time. At each jump upward, the ‘okay’ person becomes more wrapped in the coils of corporate and Richie Rich Person financing, more dependent on the good will of the Party’s committees that sprinkle the bucks, more cautious, more equivocal.
(((God, I could tell you a story about Okay city councilwoman–and ‘liberal’ icon–Barb Mikulski who ended up a complete lapdog of the Intelligence-Corporate Complex. (Hey, Fort Meade is in Maryland, y’know.) Her time on the Select Intelligence Committee was every bit as corrupt as Feinstein’s. )))
It’s almost inevitable: Move up the Party heirarchy and endorse blanditude, speak out of both sides of the mouth, trim and trim, toe the “Leadership’s” line…and you end up with the Democratic Party of today, which has abandoned its legacy. It began with the Democratic Leadership Council and Clinton, has accellerated ever since, and has resulted in the invertabrates we have today.
As long as you reward them with your votes, the Democrats will piss on the hippies and ignore the Progressive Caucus. They will assume they’ve automatically got your vote because ‘where else can you go’?. The Democrats will never pay the slightest attention to you until they discover that they DON’T automatically have your vote (or your donations)!!! So even if you still believe in the Democratic Party, it makes strategic sense to wake the fuckers up by withholding your vote. You CAN go elsewhere!
And what IS the Democratic Party? What does it stand for? It’s an empty vessel (vassal?) that means whatever you want it to mean. It is a Big Tent, with plenty of room for Max Baucus, would-be VP Joe Lieberman, Billy Tauzin, Blanche Lincoln, every Blue Dog that’s ever breathed. It won’t even change the filibuster rules, for Pete’s sake: Its spinelessness created the circumstances that permit the Republicans to filibuster fucking everything. It is Leprosy: Not gonna kill the U.S. quickly and painfully like the Plague party … but it disfigures and, in the end, is just as fatal.
As we get closer to 2016, perhaps I’ll lay out the Fenwick Model for breaking the Two-Party stranglehold. Doesn’t involve Third Parties, btw.
Good for you VCarl! I’ve been a card-carring ACLU commie rat-bastard since 1993. (God, hard to believe its been 20 years!) Got the ACLU bumpersticker on my car to annoy right-wing relatives.
This. There would be no Bush tax-cuts without the votes of some so-called ‘Democrats’. How many Democratic Senators cast their votes for AUMF and helped cheerlead the Iraq war? Remember that Glass-Steagall was repealed while Clinton was in office. So it wasn’t all Phil Gramm. Remember who led the the WH lobbying on the Hill? Larry Summers…the guy Obama chose as his transition economic guru, who he installed in the West Wing as his chief economic advisor, who he wanted to nominate for take the Federal Reserve. The Democratic Party is riddled with corporate tools like Larry Summers and Terry McAullife. Hell, they’re in the goddam saddle.
Btw, I used to be a Democratic voter. To my eternal shame, I voted for Bill Clinton. Two years into his presidency, I finally saw through him and the ‘business-friendly’ DLC, realized what was happening to the Party–let’s get some of that Good Corporate Cash–and recognized that the Leprosy was irreversible.
Sorry but these came to me late last night, long after the thread was dead:
– Onanism will dies when people stop worshipping Onan.
– Right triangles will die when people stop worshipping Pythagorus.
– Corporate taxation wil die when corporations have bought all the politicians.
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