(10:00PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
(psssst… Cassiodorus read my mind!)
I’m not sure if anyone in my little political junkie clique here comprehends how much I hate hate HATE electoral politics. But I gotta tell ya. My Bullshit Detector has been polished and fine tuned in the past year. I watched only a clip snip of Axelrod on the shows this morning and then I went a-reading / scanning the blogs, and … if these guys spin this HCR POS Reform any harder …. they’re gonna land themselves on the frikkin moon.
Just felt like posting a short one here to vent my frustration at all this. Jon Walker over at FDL has some much more articulate venting with his piece The Insidious Myth Of The Progressive “Bill Killers”.
Until progressives start demanding Democrats in Congress serve us something better than BS sandwiches that will be the only thing we ever get to eat. Those on the “left” who say we should push for the passage of this terrible Senate bill because it is “the best we can get” are lying to you. By being enablers of this myth that Democrats can’t do better, they are, in fact, fighting against long term progressive change.
Things will never get better until you demand they get better. Do not buy the nonsense of those who say you must accept expectations so low that you are practically eating dirt. Do not buy the lie that we need to elect “just a few more Democratic senators,” because the real problem is that the ones we have refuse to do their jobs. We need thousands of voices all calling out the truth that the Democrats in Washington have the tools at their disposal to do much better. This is what it means to speak truth to power.
Progressives need an overhaul. A Makeover. A get down and dirty therapy session or three. Activist Training Boot Camps. Mr. Blades had a good piece yesterday that made some noise in that direction, I hope he keeps this up. It was kind of a pep talk directed at folks who’ve been saying they will stay home in 2010.
Progressives will never get everything we want. We’ve had centuries to get used to that. It’s why we’re never satisfied. It’s not our job to be satisfied. It’s also definitely not our job to go silent, sulk and sit out elections.
The Spinmasters are just gonna keep accelerating and celebrating.
Enough.
I’m dizzy.
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meet the press will repeat in an hour, I missed it this morning. I think Id rather do something more meaningful, though, like … I dunno … go wash my hair.
Interesting idea. But we, as progressives, still have no idea how our system actually works. We still believe (many of us) in American Exceptionalism. If you do then you understand nothing about politics. You also have to understand that our system is completely rigged and gamed so that power has to be grabbed or snatched. Appeals to reason are absurd as can be seen from what has happened.
Most importantly, and here we would lose most people, if we can’t learn to connect the dots (forbidden and Naranja), then we are utter fools that are better off taking anti-depressants and shutting the fuck up. We have to be willing to be clear eyed and willing to see where the evidence leads in company with our deepest intuition.
Then we can get together and plan what to do. Otherwise we would be acting in an imaginary universe which is why, and correct me if I’m wrong, we have been so bloody ineffective despite our considerable economic clout and education.
Yes,if voters stay home as isolated individuals then we have surrendered our voice to the media pundits and corporate party operatives who will then be free to spin low voter turnout in any direction that suits their agenda.
The most likely spin being,opinion polls be damned,that voters rejected Democrats as being too radical and want to move farther to the right.
However If voter dissatisfaction is even loosely organized around the simple truth that the people are not being represented then we send a powerful message that cannot be co-opted.
It seems to me that we have three options.
Minority parties:
There’s some movement there but probably not enough to make a serious impact in the limited time before the mid-terms.
General strike:
A very effective and powerful tool but difficult to organize.It also puts an onerous burden on working families who are barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck.
Election boycott:
It only requires that people stay home and that some sort of organization or figureheads exist to claim victory if voter turnout is significantly below the historical mid-term low.
I don’t advocate election boycott lightly.I haven’t missed an election in 40 years.But the situation as it stands cannot be allowed to continue.Something radical must be done.
This is frustration talking I know.I hope something positive develops in the next few months to change my mind.
Progressive; it’s basic, mainstream thinking IMHO.
If we’re that screwed that we think it’s a Progressive agenda item, then we’re worse than I thought. I would imagine that 90% plus of the people on the planet want it.
Here, it’s probably 2/3 of the people, and it would be more if they weren’t totally brainwashed.
It was Progressive in 1909, not 2009. With the taxes we pay, there is plenty for the welfare of ALL the people, but even the word “welfare” has been bastardized. We need to take control of the English language, but it’s awfully tough when that seems to be the specialty of our govt, corporations and media. Everybody argues from their assumptions and postulates, and that’s nothing but a dead end for real change.
Remember Obama’s first response to single payer? He said it was too disruptive, and that was that! When I first heard that it gave me the chills. Something smelled fishy, and it sure was/is.
They will try to fix this by putting people against others who want big reform.
You want reform, they will give you reform, before 2012 – but not your reform.
And they will do it by pitting social liberals against economic progressives.
The handwriting is on the wall. There are not enough liberals remaining on their side to continue to win elections.
So what they will resort to is social reforms that don’t cost the corporatists money.
DADT, DOMA, ENDA? All that shit is gone, even if people don’t know it yet.
Anti-abortion ephemera people pound the desk on, like the Stupak Amendment?
Oh, it may be being debated, but it is already “gone”. In desperation, the corporatists in Congress will fall back on providing things that don’t cost the big corporations money.
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for the uppage.
…just caught a little sneak preview thing on tv for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, comes out in March 2010. LOL, looks good!
Promise
I will hurt people who don’t accept the fact that my health is mine and not part of the globalist marxist fucking collective. I can and do regularly Google the shit big pharma puts out to see if fucking legal teams are also seeking my fucking corporate peasant status of profit potential. Yaz and Vioxx are perfect current examples. Weapons of mass destruction aside medical martial law and people entering my home is just not by any means acceptable.
http://vactruth.com/2009/12/19…
while the Republicans sit back, screaming their opposition to the Senate HCR bill, but at the same time, are hoping that nothing occurs to prevent its passage.
What’s that, you say?
The reasons provided for this bill’s passage sound plausible, at least on the surface — those with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage, clients cannot be dropped after incurring an illness/injury, etc.
The key is what is missing from this list (unless I’m missing something). The advantages listed in the preceding paragraph are of little use if the coverage is not affordable. You have a pre-existing condition and the insurance company cannot deny coverage, but if they decide to charge you $30,000/year for coverage, can you afford it? Insurance that is available but not affordable is no better than no insurance at all.
I had once thought that when people realize that they are being fleeced for corporate gain, they will turn on the Democrats with a vengeance, and that then the Republicans would offer to come to the rescue and rescind the provisions, returning us back to our current broken system. But, on second thought, I would anticipate that they would pay lip service to the concept in order to get elected, and then offer one excuse after another to explain why they couldn’t rescind this bill.
The reason? Republicans are even more staunch corporatists than the Dems. They wouldn’t dare derail the gravy train enjoyed by Big PhRMA and the health insurance companies. They didn’t outlaw abortion when they controlled the White House, Senate and House. They wouldn’t rescind this legislation if they were to gain control of all three again.
By allowing the electorate to continue suffering under increasing healh care costs, the Repubs can retain a continuing reminder of the horrible train wreck that the Dems visited upon this country, at the same time, to a person, being able to say that they opposed its passage either.
Santa is being very good to the Republicans this year.