How many of you think that things are so bad that the safest thing to do is to let them get a whole lot worse really quickly so that things come to a head and we don’t delude ourselves that we can get by with small changes?
And how many of you think things are so bad that the safest thing to do is have the Democrats win the White House and sweeping victories in both Houses of Congress so that we can emphatically reject the Bush administration and get headed as soon as possible in a better direction?
I would say “Yes” to both questions.
I would add that I think the economy is beyond patching. This thing has got to run itself out, and it’s a lot better for truth, justice, and the American way if it runs itself out on the watch of the persons who are responsible for it.
And without solid Democratic majorities (that means “veto proof”) in both houses, but especially in the Senate, where nobody really has to filibuster anything any more–all they have to do is whisper the word–progress will not be made.
“I would add that I think the economy is beyond patching. This thing has got to run itself out, and it’s a lot better for truth, justice, and the American way if it runs itself out on the watch of the persons who are responsible for it.”
The current occupant at 1600 will do his all to have the fallout happen on the next president’s watch. Wall Street is calling for another stimulus check. Won’t help. GM is on the ropes with talk of bankruptcy. Where’s that old powerline: Whatever is good for GM is good for America? GM is broke and so is Anerica.
Everywhere, It’s doom and gloom out there. Wear a hard hat near any building with a financial institution.
Before he takes office, Obama needs to tell Americans the whole truth on: inflation, the credit crisis, oil and the dollar just like Gordon Brown did months ago; he told the Brits the future is bleak…it will take several years.
Unlike Carlin, I will vote. Just not contributing to the wool collection.
It’s like you didn’t get Carlin’s core message.
It’s our problem that our politicians suck and its up to us to improve the situation.
You don’t see Carlin telling the activists that they’re a bunch of dopes.
The Editors put it best:
They’re talking about you.
That’s just a silly tautology — it’s up to us to improve the situation? Duh. Which leaves the question entirely unanswered. How is that to be done? By continuing a half-century tradition of being betrayed by Dems, or by trying to break the system at its root and start over? Or something else?
And for the simple-minded aka The Editors, we do not live in a democracy. These people sound like Friedman (you choose which one) rather than anyone intelligent, so I have to wonder why they think the ancient cliches they spew that they evidently mistake for thought has any value to anyone. I would dearly love to still believe that Obama might do more than slow down the death throes some, but I have yet to hear cogent evidence or logic that would lead one to expect that, given the experience so far. Enough of this shit indeed.
slow down, avert, or avoid?
“It’s our problem that our politicians suck and its up to us to improve the situation.”
That’s right. And every time I read a comment saying how upset that some Obama supporter (or for that matter any supporter of new democrats, blue dog democrats, so called progressives only to later turn rightward and disappoint democrats, which is just about 90% of them,) wailing away at the disillusionment, only to then end the comment by saying something to the effect of: of course I’ll vote for him in November but he’s really let me down, I’m thinking, yeah Carlin’s right, dumb fucking public. They can’t even grasp the basic notion that if you keep voting for politicians that let you down or stab you in the back without fail you will never give that politician any incentive to change. And goddamn if it isn’t happening all over again.
This election initially provided a lot of amusement for me. Hey, anything to shut out the truth for a few minutes here and there, but now I’m just disgusted with the complete lack of courage to walk away from an abusive relationship. BooMan, even John fucking Conyers has been silent. You get that? You see a problem here? The problem isn’t a few rotten apples here and there. The whole goddamn bunch of them has turned corrupt. How are you going to remedy that? Especially when the few new democrats you’ve hustled into service as progressives have also turned and are poised to vote away your basic Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights. If your way and your allies could show some success I could be a little more open minded, a little, maybe. But no success is evident nor is any forthcoming. If you can’t see that then I dion’t know what to tell you.
Regardless, this corrupt system is going to collapse one way or another. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I’m not particularly looking forward to the hardships that that collapse will unleash, but it’s the quickest and cleanest way to get to the other side.
” if you keep voting for politicians that let you down or stab you in the back without fail you will never give that politician any incentive to change.”
You nailed it there, Super!!!!
You don’t really think they can take away any more of our civil rights, do you?
cruz, l don’t know where you live, but l suspect there’s a program just like this happening already:
terrorism liason officer:
and just who are TLO’s? in colorado they’re policemen, firefighters, paramedics, and corporate employees…ie: xcel energy line men, qwest phone personnel, railroad officials, etc. recently they acknowledged that there are “officially” 181 TLO’s operating here…snooping everytime they’re in the neighborhood.
big brother is here.
I live in Obama’s back yard (or maybe it is his front yard, not sure) so I must be safe. For the next year or so…
We’re in danger of entering a deep depression. Good public policy can only go so far in preventing this.
I’ll be honest: A big – BIG – part of me does think that things are so far gone that there’s no saving it. Best to bring on disaster as soon as possible so we can get it sorted one way or the other.
That’s what I think.
But…even if I’m right that’s an awfully flippant (and hurtful) approach so [sigh] let’s elect Democrats, put pressure on them, and hope for the best.
And maybe things will work out.
.
I’m giving you a 4 solely on the basis of your moniker… 🙂
Why, thank you, sir!
I haven’t a clue what this “4” rating is but I’ll wager it’s good.
Let us now praise praise famous men.
.
You pose an interesting question, which would seem to explain you bending over backwards to defend Barack on all kinds of things. You’re in favor of two, right? You’re okay with gradual change and don’t buy into any of that “heightening of the extremes” nonsense. I can see your point and Obama is still a much much better candidate than John McCain.
Yet I think the more important question is: why do we vote? When we got a democratic majority back in 2006 what did you think would happen? I thought, quite naively, that we would end the war. It’s not just the war of course, the democratic party has folded on just about every single issue of importance. They don’t fight for anything. They don’t filibuster any issue, except for Chris Dodd for a day or two, all by himself. I mean, you might not like Nader but his argument about two factions of the business party sounds true. Looks true too.
I mean, let’s say your hoped for Roger Maris 61 senate seat dnc majority comes about. You know what happens then? The republicans, down a man or two, simply get two to five to 10 democrats to fillibuster with them procedurely. Therefore, they still run the country. I have a theory that if it was 95 to 5, those same republican senators would still run the country. I can see Harry Reid backing down to the old fashioned Dodd style fillibuster.
There’s something deeply wrong with the Democratic Party. Here’s something you could do: if you’re sticking with option two could you make sure the DLC/AIPAC duopoly that undermines the dems and handles recruitment, or the Rahm/Schumer connection, is challenged at every turn. They picked the democratic majority that fights for nothing. That didn’t happen accidently and if you really really like a proxy war for Israel and being the Republican lite party then things are working fine. It just seems to me that if those guys back somebody the netroots should look very carefully at that resume and if they see something they don’t like (Altmire was a health insurance lobbyist. Should have smelled a rat there…)pick option two and raise money for him or her.
Could we agree on that?
It’s hard for to even answer broad questions like this in a comment. I have to truncate and it hurts my argument. So, I’ll just focus on a couple of narrow points. First, let me point out what bothers me in your otherwise well reasoned comment.
Politely, this is total, complete, horseshit. You were okay until you got to the ‘therefore’. First of all, even if we only get 55 senators, what’s your point? That none of this makes any remote difference? Either politics matters or it doesn’t. If it does, it matters whether Barbara Boxer chairs the Environmental & Public Works Committee or whether James Inhofe does. It matters whether our government is staffed with mineral extraction lobbyists or environmentalist activists. Who appoints and who confirms judges matters. And with Barack Obama nominating judges and Patrick Leahy confirming them, you bet it makes a difference. If we 61 senators we can have pretty much any judge that Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu say we can have.
One more thing. Yes, I agree that the blogosphere needs to carefully vet the candidates they support. This is not really important because we have a big house majority and we need better Democrats now more than sheer numbers.
We do have a couple of things to be grateful for, however. This year’s recruitments are better than ’06’s, because Van Hollen has better standards than Rahm Emanuel did. We picked most of the low hanging fruit last go round, so you’d expect this class to be all Blue Dogs all the time going after ever more conservative seats.
And there are plenty of potential Blue Dogs in this class. But they are almost all, even in conservative districts, unapologetically against the war, against torture, and pro women’s rights, pro gay rights, etc. There are a few exceptions. But culturally, the new class of Democrats are just anti-Bush, and they are fighters, not triangulators. Rahm recruited more triangulators.
In any case, yes, they need to be vetted. I agree completely. And not, as OpenLeft is doing, for their stance on Net Neutrality. That standard turns the Blogosphere into a mere interest group rather than a movement.
Correction: should say
Any judge that Ben Nelson or Mary Landrieu wants? You’re being sarcastic right?
But let’s get to the heart of the matter. You’re saying we get over 60 and the republican filibusters end. And I know you’re doing a lot of rebutting right now, but you didn’t really answer the assertion. I’m saying that 39 republicans combined with 10 t0 20 DNC millionaires/DLC members continue the fillibuster. That means, in reality, all meaningful change in the US can and probably will be stopped. Look at how hard dems fought for FISA as opposed to anything that you and I care about, whether its real cafe standards, or a real alt fuel plan…I mean, as pacino said to keaton in the first godfather movie, “Are you that naive booman?”
And I really hope you’re right about better recruitment this year.
No, I’m not being sarcastic about Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. If Obama nominates a judge that the Republicans unanimously oppose (not hard to imagine) then it will come down (in the 61 seat majority scenario) to whether all the Democrats hold firm. I probably should have said Ben Nelson and Ronnie Musgrove, as they will be the two most anti-choice and conservative members of the caucus. Of course, one can worry about others, like Bob Casey Jr.
But even if we don’t get every judge we want, we’ll get decent judges. And even if the Republicans can join with a few conservative Dems to stop some legislation, most of it will get through.
You know the most important thing to remember is that if the Republicans take the kind of whipping we’re describing here, they’ll start taking on some of the battered-wife deference we’re accustomed to seeing from Democrats.
You realize that this is every single issue and not just judges? The republican fillibuster will live. Now, an aggressive and forceful president that actually believed in things might change that. He or she could play some hardball. Whatever. I haven’t seen that from Barry so far.
I’m looking into the future now and here’s Barry’s press conference right after his medicaid expansion to everyone who needs it bill failed because of 39 unified republicans and our usual sellout DLC suspects: “Well, we won’t give up. Give hope a chance. I understand that my good friend Joe Leiberman and Mary Landrieu have this great plan to make health insurance just like auto insurance where you pay whatever they tell you to pay and we don’t do any monitoring of the insurance industry…sounds like a plan to me. Give hope a chance or whatever.”
Not to thrilled about the Barry’s Harold Ford run toward the presidency either…didn’t work well for Harry.
That could happen on a few things. I don’t dispute that.
But not much. The class of ’10 includes Snowe, Gregg, Specter, Voinovich, etc. Plus, as I said, when Republicans see safe Republicans going down to defeat in places like Mississippi, Texas, and Alaska, it is going to change behavior. The same thing happened to arrogant Dems that had ruled DC for fifty years and thought they do whatever they wanted.
First we have to remove the malignant tumor from the body politic, namely throwing the neocon ideology on to the trash heap of failed and destructive, disreputable fantasies like feudalism, fascism and communism.
Then we can decide what kind of head-scarf to wear while we go about the long healing process to bring this nation back to the ideal for which she once stood.
FISA was wrong, despicable, and for that Obama crushed my enthusiasm and lost what little chance he had for getting a small donation from me. But McCain would be a disaster, and we’ve had enough of that. It’s going to be hard enough to clean up the current mess. The sooner we get started, the less chance it will get any worse.
Think about this. It’s March, 2009 and Senator Dodd introduces a new resolution calling for an independent counsel to investigate KBR and Halliburton and some others for fraud and waste. How does President Obama respond? What would McCain do.
Who do you want deciding if and how forcefully we go after the current crime syndicate running the nation and raping the world? Will Obama go after them with the same zeal we know President Dodd or President Edwards would have done it? Doubtful.
Would McCain even let his Attorney General consider it? Based on his record going after Abramoff, maybe. Based on his pathetic political pandering, forsaking everything that made his “maverick” reputation, no way.
If you keep up with Nouriel Roubini or James Kunstler you might have some idea of just well and truly we are fucked.
We need the strong voices that argue for standing firm on principles just as much as we need the voices that argue for the value of strategies that involve compromise.
But strategic compromise should always remain a reluctant course of action rather than one resorted to because its easier or more convenient. Once compromise becomes its own end, once it becomes institutionalized as an essential ingredient in all instances of political maneuvering, once it becomes seen as always preferable to losing, then it becomes inherently destructive, sort of like how casino gambling, if one engages in it enough, one winds up inevitably losing everything. Sometimes voting for the lesser of 2 evils is a good thing; sometimes it leads inexorably to larger disasters.
Completely refusing to negotiate and reach deals through compromise is often like cutting off ones nose to spite ones face. Here too, however, sometimes an uncompromising position on important issues is called for; other times this stalwart inflexibility leads to bigger tragedy.
A well informed electorate has a far better chance of developing realistic priorities as to where and to bend and where and when to stand firm. A ow information electorate that is so much more easily manipulated by clever rhetoric and propaganda almost always makes their choices based on sentiment, on fear, and above all, based in the emotional plane. This is why almost all political rhetoric is designed to deceive; because a misdirected public is more easily manipulated.
It’s a tragedy that standing on principle is seen as a ‘radical’ thing for a politician to do, while their cleverness in outmaneuvering the truth with spin is lauded openly. It’s no wonder the people with the best ideas hardly ever rise to prominence in the political arena. Our political system is broken, severely broken, and probably needs at minimum of a generations worth of years to be restored to meaningful functionality. Do we the people have the attention span for such a long term endeavor? Are we willing to purge the malefactors, (bluedogs, etc), along the way even if it threatens short term partisan advantage?
These are my questions
If we continue our international economic imperialist policies then we will be taken down by our rapidly strengthening opponents. Our ex-slave states, to put it bluntly. The Third World.
But…the alternative to continuing those polices would be a SCREECHING halt to the economy as it now stands until long-term adjustments could be made. Energy needs would have to be drastically altered; the ongoing gluttonous overconsumption of all things by Americans would need to be seriously reduced, etc. Given that the hypnomedia have done such a good job of convincing Americans that it is not only their right but their duty to overconsume in order to feed the consumerism-fueled engine of American business, it is very doubtful that Americans would go for such belt tightening voluntarily. No politician worth the name would even think of suggesting such a thing. Not if they wanted to win they wouldn’t. And should one actually try to do something about the problem after being elected he or she would meet with such opposition from other politicians hungry for votes that nothing much would get done. Except of course that any pol who did seriously try to do such a thing would get de-elected the next time around.
So it’s ’round and ’round the tubes we go. Headed down in a rapidly accelerating inflationary spiral. ‘Round and’ round and ’round we go. Where we stop? Nobody knows.
So it goes.
See ya at the exit.
I’l be there, waiting.
Later…
AG
“How many of you think that things are so bad that the safest thing to do is to let them get a whole lot worse really quickly so that things come to a head and we don’t delude ourselves that we can get by with small changes?“
I remember that in 2004 there were a whole lot of people who believed that Bush should be reelected so that things would get bad enough to wake America up and force it to choose a different direction. Are things bad enough now, or not yet? Does American need another four years to be ready to wake up?
“And how many of you think things are so bad that the safest thing to do is have the Democrats win the White House and sweeping victories in both Houses of Congress so that we can emphatically reject the Bush administration and get headed as soon as possible in a better direction?“
What makes you so sure that having the Democrats in the White House and dominating Congress will necessarily head America in that much of a better direction? Certainly the Democrat legislative victory in 2006 has not resulted in very much change for the better even cosmetically. Certainly candidate Obama is not displaying a whole lot of courage of our convictions (who knows what his true convictions actually are, other than the politician’s perpetual goal of winning and staying in power at any cost?).
After so recently singing the praises of Booman Tribune—and Obama—I suddenly find myself in an about-face saying: What the fuck is this shit?
I’ve found myself in Bizarro World.
Yes, let us take our lead foot off the centrism time-warp particle accelerator.
My glasses are very dark. The naton’s moral, diplomatic, physical, and financial capital have been so completely run down over the past quarter century of Republican rule that only a strong and progressive Democratic majority can stem if not reverse the decline. Anyone who thinks things should be allowed to get a whole lot worse hasn’t the faintest sense of how much worse things can get.
Our job is to defeat Barack Obama in order to save Wesley Clark.
Why I should care about Wesley Clark, a Hillary surragate that ripped Obama every chance he got in the primaries, I am not sure.
But I have my marching orders from the lords of blogs.
Defeat Obama and elect McCain.
So economy gets worse, heath care remains the same, and more lives and money die in Iraq. I made a statement to protect some idiot General that never did a thing for me.
Or do I vote for Nader this year to help defeat Obama.
Help me out here.
cut off your nose to spite your face. How’s that for advice?
Yes, Booman. That’s what my mother always said. She’s dead now.
Actually, Skeeter, at this point—given our choices—it won’t really matter what we do. A perfect storm is approaching. Can’t you feel it?
Some things are worthy of being saved. Some things are not.
The road that leads to destruction is wide, and many are on it. Leading the merry crowd is George W. Bush, and his ilk. O’bama is starting to look like him, smell like him, and act like him. I don’t much care for it.
But, whatever.
This makes me laugh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2rXiBM-qY