Tag: Democrats

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It is so obvious it makes me sick

Like dragging ones feet across the carpet on a cold dry day and then getting a jolt when touching anything, I get to a point where some things in life and the world become so obvious to me I wonder why it seems I am the only one who sees it and why can’t I get others to see it too. When others get that way they get ulcers or fly into a rage – me? I beat my head on a wall and write about it in my blog. Here is the latest obvious crap flaking my pie crust.

1. Where’s the change I voted for? It seems even with a new administration in Washington and the bullies out of power in Congress, we were to see actual real change. I’m still waiting. The Health Care reform debate is a prime example. It’s been obvious for years that we must end the monopoly by private insurance companies who profit from the pain and suffering of their customers. We don’t tolerate it for any other industry except health insurance.

Now it seems both spineless Democrats and the GOP bullies are planning a big wet kiss to the insurance companies along the same lines as we saw when the Medicare D pharmacy plan came out – huge payments to big insurance companies for crappy coverage for those least able to afford any medical bills in the first place. Can you say Donut hole?

Republicans have lied about the reform from the beginning – just plain lied – and our fourth estate and even Democrats just let them do it.

Here are the facts 40 MILLION people have NO insurance and approx 40,000 DIE each year because of having NO insurance.

What kind of human would allow that to happen? Republicans for one and Democrats who accept money from the insurance industry.

Polls show overwhelming public support for reform and a public option, yet some in Congress let the money do their thinking for them. SHAME ON THEM!!!!

2. Passing off “talking points” as news. What boils my blood almost as much as the GOP lies about health care reform that go unchallenged is the general incest that goes on within the Washington DC media complex.

We had an election in November and the Democrats won handy majorities in both houses and have the White House but you wouldn’t know it if you watch or read the mainstream media that comes out of DC.

It seems that the Sunday talk shows and political news in print supposedly needs to have a 1 to 1 “balance” of left and right views. While it seemed on some Sundays, former VP Dick Cheney, or for some odd reason, his daughter, was allowed to basically give a monologue about his version of events when he was President and approved of the criminal torturing of human beings among other GOP centric discussions.

Do you remember tug-of-wars from your childhood? I remember the adult in charge lining up us kids by height and then going down the line, alternating which team we would be on, to ensure that neither side was unfairly stacked. That notion of balancing the sides to make things fair has morphed in modern media to this simplistic binary equation of Republican vs. Democrat. But it’s a false equivalence, because it assumes a completely valid argument on both sides, and as we chronicle daily here at C&L, rarely do we see sensible, much less valid, arguments coming from the right to make the “balance” actually informative. Instead we get death panels, socialicommunistmarxism, concern trollism over deficit spending and the Olympic Games.

Sunday Morning Bobblehead Thread

The point again is this assumes that both sides have equally valid arguments and in some cases, like the health care debate, this is not even close. The lies about death panels, lack of public support for a public option, and “socialized medicine” told by the right are lies. Lies are not valid arguments.

Only a few years ago if you dissented against the President your words were treasonous and you should be “sent to Gitmo” or worse, where regular people wearing T-shirts saying “Bush Sucks” were detained by police when they showed up to protest Bush in public. Since November if you bring a gun to an event the President is appearing, it’s called “free speech” and you want to “take back your country” from a black guy and his uppity ways.

It kind of has an Orwellian “doubleplusgood” ring to it all.

3 Finally, who the hell is Kim Kardashian? What has she done to merit any mention in the press? I had to look her up in Wikipedia and just as I guessed she is famous for no real reason. She didn’t land a plane in the Hudson, she didn’t cure a disease, and she doesn’t contribute to society in any memorable way.

If she was someone of substance I could see why she would be newsworthy but unless I missed her winning an Oscar recently then her celebrity worth is very small compared to the amount of press she gets.

I’m just fed up with narcissism being passed out as something important. I don’t care about her or any other “celebutante” and I’ll now have to spend time scrubbing the taint from this blog. UGH!

And THAT is this edition of my Obvious rant….

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Defending government is easier today

The one thing about current political debate or any kind of debate is the need for “talking points”. These are buzzwords or short phrases that quickly make a point and say more than the number of words used. Usually the person or group who come up with the quickest talking points can frame the debate. It is kind of like a gun fight – the quickest draw wins. Some of my conservative friends have told me during the current health care reform debate that “Obamcare is socialized medicine” or “Medicare is clogged with waste and fraud”. I needed some place to go to rebut some of the classic “government is bad” arguments from the right and I think I found it.

Some years ago on an e-mail list I use to be on, a guy came on spouting Libertarian arguments hard and fast. Many times I didn’t have a quick way of refuting the classic arguments even though I knew he was wrong. Then I found the A Non-Libertarian FAQ which allowed me in some cases to cut and paste answers to his arguments like “Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract. ” etc….

With the right media bias currently, the political arguments today get framed by conservative talking heads with little to no counter arguments from people on the left side of the spectrum. Most times the host – like David Gregory of Meet the Press – just lets the conservative spew their talking points like it was a press conference rather than a political show.

I needed a place that had some good rebuttals I could use when I had my own debates with friends who like to parrot talk radio.

Government is Good is recent addition to my bookmarks as it offers a quick way to answer the arguments from the right about how bad government is. For example:

When the Republicans took over Congress in the mid-1990s, one of their first priorities was to “reform welfare” along these lines. In a landmark 1996 bill, welfare was declared to be no longer an entitlement, and strict time limits and work requirements were imposed on recipients – all designed to discourage people from staying on welfare and forcing them onto the job market. This legislation has come to be celebrated by conservatives as one of the most successful policies coming out of that period. They point out that between 1996 and 2003, the number of people on the welfare rolls dropped by over 60%.

This is pretty impressive. But unfortunately, the effect of this reduction of the welfare rolls on the poverty level was not what Republicans had predicted. If welfare was actually a major cause of persistent poverty, then we should have also seen a dramatic decrease in poverty as millions of people were forced off welfare and onto the job market. But this is precisely what did not happen. The poverty rate did not fall by 60% or 50%. Not even by 40% or 30%. Not by 20%, nor even by 10%. It fell by a measly 8% — from 13.7% to 12.5% from 1996 to 2003.

How can this be explained? It is simple. Conservatives were wrong about poverty being largely caused by government welfare programs. First, they ignored the fact that most poor people aren’t even on welfare – and that many of them work already. Second, as many scholars of poverty have pointed out, the major causes of poverty in this country are mostly in the economic system. Most people are poor for two reasons: (1) there is a chronic lack of jobs, and (2) many low-level jobs pay wages below the poverty level.

Why Government Becomes the Scapegoat

So if you are looking for some backup in your own debates with people who claim government is bad for us then check out the website.

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Republican Treason?

How come when people on the left side of the aisle even questioned Bush policies the Republicans and their pundit class complained it was treason – with full coverage from the media, yet when certain Republicans and their pundit class are calling for the overthrow of the government – the media class is very silent?

Who is really treasonous?

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Internal division at Buckeye State Blog same old same old

I don’t declare myself for any political party as I find the organized parties – mainly the GOP and Democrats – actually hurt democracy through all the various election laws they have enacted in order to protect their hold on the offices of government. However, reading my blog, one should see where my political stances are. I just avoid official parties. I do read Democratic leaning blogs including Ohio’s Buckeye State Blog. A recent dust up over an interview with a potential candidate for the soon to be open US Senate seat just reaffirms my bias against parties.

It seems one of the admins and “front pagers” at BSB interviewed Lt Governor Lee Fisher and asked about a pledge issued by Ohio Democratic Party chair Chris Redfern that none of the people who wanted the soon-to-be vacant Senate seat, ask for their ODP endorsement for the primary.

The problem was the interviewer gave the Fisher people a chance to review the video and asked that question and answer about the endorsement pledge be removed.

This led to incriminations that the interviewer was “in the tank” for Fisher by even considering letting his people suggest edits. Words like “objective” and “journalism” were thrown around. There were a bantering of nasty comments made by each side and in the end the interviewer quit the blog and one of the people upset about the incident seem to also quit.

*SIGH*

This is a perfect example why a pledge against getting a pre-primary endorsement is a good idea.

Even in a political party you have people with different views and who support different people in the party. If the ODP endorses a single candidate for an office before the members of the party have a chance to decided who they want then you have the same kind of nasty dust up the Fisher interview caused.

You also get some who take their ball and go home because they didn’t get their way etc….

The sad part is the BSB seems to have this kind of thing happen more often than it should. There have been 3 administrators of the blog in 3 years and with each change has come a change in content focus and some behind the scenes dust up with hurt feelings and people quitting.

Why am I writing about it?

One reason is because I think the rules forcing an endorsement before the primary is plain stupid. If a person gets the endorsement then it makes it very hard for any other potential candidate to have a chance to win the primary because an endorsement forces the party to steer resources to the endorsed candidate. Some people only support endorsed candidates.

Think of it this way. If the national Democratic party had a stupid rule like the Ohio party we may or may not be discussing or hearing about President Hillary Clinton’s plans to deal with the economic melt down. When President Obama started his campaign most Democrats assumed Hillary was going to be their candidate for the national election and she might have gotten the endorsement if one was forced to be made before the primaries. Why a state party wants to make the primary moot is beyond me.

Another reason to write about the issue at BSB is to lament the almost narcissistic obsession with the operation of a blog. If I were in charge the issue would never be public and I wouldn’t have allowed the kiss off posts by the offended parties. It was more an internal dispute and the fact that it was on the front page when other issues are more important is a bit amateurish. And any one not in the loop would be confused about what was going on.

The person who was most offended by the interview and called the interviewer “in the tank” for Fisher has had some strong views both for and against certain Democratic candidates and office holders. In fact he called for Dennis Kucinich to be voted out of Congress on the front page of BSB for what appeared to be personal reasons – he just didn’t like him running for President all the time?

Of course I’m not looking for total objectivity at BSB since it supports Ohio Democrats but the admins should decide if they are going to let candidates to control the info posted about them and at least that hasn’t happened. The interview in question was not initially posted on BSB, which was the interviewer’s prerogative since it wasn’t for BSB, and the admin who is now left to administer the blog alone said it won’t happen ever. The blog should be a place to talk about and debate the merits of potential candidates and then when one is picked in the primary, then it should support that person.

So in conclusion, the issue of a party pre-primary endorsement is a big deal but the dust up at BSB over an interview including a question about the pledge is not and should have been dealt with in private.

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Why do Congressional Republicans hate America?

Well we know from their “leader” and gas bag Rush Limbaugh that he wants President Obama to fail. Now we find out that Congressional Republicans are being jackasses about the proposed stimulus bill. The question is why? It’s because the 2010 elections are coming up and Republicans think they can get elected again if the attempt to save America is defeated or damaged enough not to work. They want President Obama to fail too. I think it is nothing but petty bullshit from a party that has no idea how to help the struggling economy and were in fact responsible for screwing the hooch in the first place.

The Republican playbook is about standing in opposition, knowing full well that the Democratic Congress is going to pass a stimulus package. Their next step is to go home and sell to what’s left of their constituencies the notion that if we had listened to them, things would be far rosier. As a minority, a control group is unlikely to emerge that can disprove false numbers based on false rhetoric. They can go back and campaign in two years whether or not Obama’s plan creates anywhere close to the number he hopes and tell the world, and claim that their plan would have provided double the number.

The minority role in government should be about balancing the need of their constituencies with real ideas that create a stronger way of finding a solution. In the modern era of politics Rush Limbaugh style, it is all about spewing hate and misinformation in the guise of governing for the good of the people. The very people that the Obama plan will help most, are the very same people that are being preached to by the likes of Limbaugh and his puppets in Congress.

Republicans Clearly Are Willing to Let This Country Collapse if They Think it Will Win Them Elections

And the media – also known as the Villagers – come along for the fire sale because…. well because they are so insulated in their little GOP controlled bubbles, they think spewing discredited GOP talking points is being objective.

The networks like to have the same tired debate format with the same hired analysts debating with “sound and fury” that usually “signifies nothing” to most of America. Last week the media chose to have Republicans like John Boehner, who helped create the situation we’re in, dominate the airwaves, which does nothing but muddy up the discussion on our rapidly failing economy. And which leads Villagers like Chuck Todd to proclaim that Republicans have won the spin wars. It’s a “spending bill” now.

Why is it called a “spending bill”? Because the Villagers have decided that the Republicans have won the PR war over the stimulus package. How does that tired argument help this country in a time of crisis? I know the spin wars play a role when messaging is concerned because Americans get a lot of their news through the TV and the elitists get aroused by all this nonsense, but it’s killing us. Please Stop It. C&L has often documented how the media tries to elect our politicians, (They chose Bush over Gore, How did that work out?) but now they are trying to decide how this very important stimulus package will be dealt with.

Please, where’s the meat? Stop playing games with our lives. Put people on who can explain it coherently. Economics is complicated. Sound bites aren’t enough. Obama was elected to bring change to the economy, not to debate the merits of tax cuts all over again. We had that discussion for 18 months and Obama won. Tax cuts lost. Why is the media ignoring that fact? John McCain ran on tax cuts to save us and he lost. Now he’s telling his supporters that he’s going to vote NO on the stimulus plan and wants them to sign a petition. You lost the election badly. Democrats have solid majorities everywhere you look, but not when it comes to the media that is supposed to inform us and not play “spin wars’ with the country.

Why aren’t there hundreds of economists on my TV explaining the stimulus package?

So how does that go again – the media has a liberal bias???? Excuse me while I laugh.

The fact is 1 or 2% of the proposed plan might be considered “pork” – that is not directly related to stimulus spending – yet that tiny portion of an 800 billion plus bill is getting 90% of the focus along with more talk about a worse plan like more tax cuts.

At least there is one Democrat with a spine to tell the truth and get airtime at the same time:

In the past few days, I’ve heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place, the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care, that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

President Obama

I know we will have a stimulus bill passed but I fear it might be watered down too much because the Dems missed the PR boat.

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