Rare glimpse of the truth
Every once in awhile, if one pays close attention, Republicans give us a glimpse of the truth in terms of their ultimate motivation. And it has nothing to do with core principles, or philosophical differences, or what they truly believe to be the best governance, or what they believe to be best for the American people.
It's about power, folks. Just power. Keeping it and wielding it on behalf of those they serve -- who are not the bulk of citizens of this country. From U.S. New and World Report:
Daschle and the Obamacrats certainly have the momentum: a near-landslide presidential election victory, at least 58 Democratic votes in the Senate, and a nasty recession that will make many Americans yearn for economic security. Already the health insurance companies seem set back on their heels. The industry's trade organization now says it would accept new rules requiring them to cover pre-existing conditions as long as there was a universal mandate for all Americans to have health insurance. On top of all that, Obama clearly wants to make healthcare reform a priority in his first term, as evidenced by the selection of a heavy hitter like Daschle. And even if he wasn't interested, Congress sure is, with Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy readying a plan in the Senate. A few observations:
1) Passage would be a political gamechanger. Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."
Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama's health plan is key to the GOP's survival."
Got that? No debate about the impact on the uninsured or the insured -- just a fight to protect the power base of the GOP.
It was ever thus.
Final FUs
Having already shredded the Constitution, destroyed the U.S. reputation in the world, and decimated our economy, the Bush Administration continues its scorched earth strategy to cement its reputation: a little midnight rulemaking. Propublica has set up a page to track the damage.
It starts
Let us not forget what our President-elect is up against. Via Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
AN ADVANCE LOOK AT THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION.... It's only been a couple of days since Barack Obama was declared the president-elect, but it's hard not to notice that congressional Republicans are already striking a confrontational pose. Take these ridiculous comments from Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R).
Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.
Kyl, Arizona's junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.
"He believes in justices that have empathy," said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.
Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.
Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven't been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don't exist.
What the hell.
Finally
I haven't written because I couldn't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said by someone else better (and sooner!) about Obama's victory. I smile every time I here someone say "President-Elect Obama"; MY faith in the American people (which was virtually non-existent) has been restored (mostly), and I don't have to pick out somewhere in Europe or Canada to live.
This, finally, was something I hadn't seen before, something worth passing along that says it all. Once again, my friend Mary gets the best stuff from her circle!
Relax
Relax. Any polls that tell you this election is going to be anything other than a blow-out for Obama are fixed and purposefully misleading. If you want to know why and how, check out Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com
Instead, let's all have another laugh on the moosehunter in chief before she slinks her expensively-wardrobed self back to Alaska.... hopefully never to be seen again:
It's Enough
My oldest daughter challenged me the last time we discussed her reactions to this blog: "You spend a lot of time shooting down the McCain campaign, Mom," she said, "But I almost never see you write positive things about Obama."
She is right, of course. Truth told those who have read this blog from the beginning know that I have deeply ambivalent feelings about Obama. And not for any of the reasons given my McSamiacs or false independents, but because of my deeply leftist mistrust of anyone who claims to be avowedly anti-partisan in his approach. I fell out with Bill Clinton when he played conservative animosity toward the poor to his advantage (read: welfare reform), and when he reversed himself to pander to conservative hatred of gays and lesbians through DOMA.
Obama lost me early in the primary season when he hosted the cancerous Donnie McClurkin as his front early in N.C., and it is not lost on me and other gay and lesbian commentors that he has studiously avoided weighing in on Proposition 8 right now in California.
Make no mistake, people: Obama is in it to win it and if you happen to be one of the people thrown under the bus in the process you are supposed to understand and forgive.
Civil rights? FISA? Not so important until maybe after the election, when we may or may not have energy for a defense of the constitution. There will no no one held to account for the complete lawlessness of the Bush Administration. That cancer will lie dormant until some future President or Supreme Court is forced to confront it.
And still, Esquire makes its first endorsement in 75 years, and speaks in the voice of many of us as it does so:
In truth, though, Senator Obama is the only one of the two candidates who seems to believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, that there are those things -- be they the guarantees in the Bill of Rights or mountains in Alaska -- that we own together. Barack Obama stands, however inchoately and however diffidently, for the notion that a common purpose is necessary for common problems, that "government," as it is designed in our founding documents, is our collective responsibility. It is this collective responsibility that built America into a great power without peer in the history of the world. And it is this collective responsibility that has succumbed to nearly thirty years of phony rightist populism, corporate brigandage, and the wildly cheered abandonment of a common American civic purpose.
It is shocking that in America an argument for salvaging the common good is regarded as a radical notion by anyone, but that is where we are. And that is what Barack Obama seems to stand for.
After all, as a young man with his potential, he could have headed straight to midtown Manhattan and made a fortune. Instead, he took a church job working for poor people in Chicago, and for his troubles, he and those poor people have been viciously jeered by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin.
Such is their regard for the common good. And such is Obama's promise. And in that, however inchoately and however diffidently, Obama stands not only against Bushism, but against Reaganism, which gave it birth. And that is more than enough.
Barack will not spend a penny of political capital indicting the war criminals, nor may he succeed in effecting meaningful healthcare reform, but he will return dignity and grace to the Oval Office, and to America's standing in the world and, today, that is enough.
The REAL Redistributors in Chief
John McCain is a firm believer in a philosophy of governance that's been responsible for the most dramatic redistribution of American income and wealth since the New Deal. For the past 30 years, the conservative movement has focused relentlessly on redistributing income, but always upward, toward the top. It's a great irony of the 2008 campaign: Nobody is more dedicated to redistributing wealth than adherents of the ideology that McCain represents.
Read it in AlterNet.
Then send it to any wingnuts you know.
Since Nixon or Before?
John Dean (remember him?) has made courageous and insightful statements regarding the
Bush administration's unconstitutional assumption of near-authoritarian power vis-a-vis the division of power between branches of government, the tension between civil liberties and national security, etc. He has also written two books on the subject:
Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.
Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.
Read the whole thing.
Batterers Anonymous
This is a post I should have written a long time ago, and the fact that I didn't stands as embarrassing evidence that I have tried too hard to keep my own background and experience somehow separate from the political perspective I reveal in this blog.
John McCain is a batterer. I know that in every fiber of my being because I worked around batterers -- and their victims -- for twenty some odd years. I don't have to see bruises on Cindy McCain to know it (although the evidence that he called her a "cunt" in front of numerous reporters who didn't know how to report it is ample evidence in and of itself: You can bet your house that a man who would say something like this in public is WAY WORSE in private.)
No, it is this line, which McCain has repeated every single time he is confronted about how slimy and negative his campaign has become:
"Look, I asked Senator Obama to come with me around this country to have Town Hall events in front of the people. If he had agreed to do this, we would have had a very different kind of campaign."
Tonight, on Larry King, he repeated the same justification for the slime, and I finally decided to respond:
Only batterers reason this way. And all batterers reason this way:
"If you had only listened to me.... If you had only done what I wanted you to do... If you only hadn't defied me the way you did....... I wouldn't have had to beat you."
So you see, it's never the responsibility of the person wielding the weapon or the fist or the slime..... the responsibility lies elsewhere...... in the person who, by their defiance, "forced" the batterer to become physical.
John McCain is a batterer. It's as simple as that.
WTF
The right-leaning media has gone bat-shit crazy. Now they're quoting "Joe the Plumber" on Foreign Policy and Economics! One can only conclude that no rational or credible person will any longer associate themselves with this campaign, so they have resorted to trying to burnish their support with the testimony of a small-time, unlicensed plumber from Florida.
This is beyond parody, and I can hear the writers from SNL sharpening their pencils as I type.
This is a "cleansed" screen shot taken tonight from a section on Memorandum. I've actually removed the links because I refuse to give these people any oxygen or traffic. But look at the sources: This is Fox and AP -- which has dramatically damaged its brand with the new editor's obvious bias toward McNasty.
Fox News: ‘Joe the Plumber’ Backs Claim That Obama Would Bring ‘Death to Israel’ — Joe Wurzelbacher, on his first campaign trail appearance for John McCain, says he agrees that a vote for Barack Obama would be “a vote for the death to Israel.”
Discussion: The Reaction, Political Machine, Early Returns, Political Radar and Atlas Shrugs,
Philip Elliott / Associated Press:
Joe the Plumber says Obama would make US socialist — COLUMBUS, OHIO (AP) - “Joe the Plumber,” the small business aspirant and overnight media sensation, endorsed John McCain's presidential campaign Tuesday and said Barack Obama would make America a socialist nation.
Discussion: Tom Watson, Gateway Pundit, The Heretik, Washington Times and Hot Air
This is hysterically funny, the natural, logical sequence of nominating the First Moosehunter of Alaska to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. Why not? Let's put Joe in charge of Foreign Policy, and Tito the builder over HUD. Tammy the child-care worker can be put in charge of Education, and Fred the Farmer can have the Agriculture Department!
BTW -- Memeorandum is a site that tracks link traffic as a way to measure whatever topics are "the buzz" on the net. They over-sample the right, and typically only make discussion links to any blogs on the left (TPM seems to be an exception.) Their bias is clear. Yet it's a perfect way to keep track of the insanity on the right without actually having to read any of the garbage.
Everything that could go wrong
The new cover story on Time is a pretty comprehensive examination of how this coming election could wind up being a complete clusterf*ck.
I can only pin my hopes on the ability of our side to turn out such a landslide that even the most insane of Repukes won't dare to be so brazen as to steal yet another election.
But if it happens, it will be a clear lesson about accountability. We all should have been in the streets when the Supreme Court handed Bush the election the first time, and -- short of putting in a Democratic Secr of State in Ohio -- nothing was done to address the obvious manipulation and suppression that took place in '04 and stole the election again.
Dems keep trying to rise above my NOT making an issue out of what is ACTUALLY a threat to the democracy, and if it comes back to bite us this time there will be no one to blame but ourselves.
Character
A beautiful piece in the NYT about Obama's trip to see his grandmother:
She underwent a corneal transplant to see him on television. She reluctantly agreed to film a political ad when he needed to urgently reassure the voters about his distinctive American roots. She told him during one of their frequent telephone conversations that it might not hurt if he smiled a bit more.
And on Friday, Senator Barack Obama spent the day saying goodbye.
Mr. Obama came to the Punahou Circle Apartments here, a place of his own childhood, where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lay gravely ill. For weeks, he has talked to doctors and tracked her condition. After she was released from the hospital last week, he received word that he should not wait until after the election to make what he believes could be his last visit.
Having said too many goodbyes myself recently, I want to comment here on what extraordinary emotional grit and courage this man is showing with his return to the campaign trail so quickly after this one. Of course he doesn't have a choice, but this display of character -- both in the leaving and in the return -- is something that should be noted more and isn't.
Speechless
But, of course, the tone of the McCain campaign is in no way responsible for this, right?
