14 thoughts on “Fuck.”

  1. Well, I’ll try to hold down the Tourette’s for this. As Jender knows, that didn’t work this morning.

    I’m more & more on-board with the comments Jon Stewart made (referred to here yesterday): the Republicans were able to initiate a lot more legislation without a filibuster-proof majority, why can’t the Democrats?

    In the NYRB recently, there was an article about the ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats–and the author argued that, because it’s enhanced its appeal to the electorate, the Democrats are inherently less unified ideologically than the reduced, and therefore ‘pure’, Republicans.

    Bullshit. In the 1930s, the Democrats had a coalition of broad support: from Deep South racists to very earnest Progressive New Englanders to all shades in between. And they were able to pass lots of important legislation.

    The Democrats simply need a collective spine.

  2. As Schumpeter and others point out, democracy is essentially government by competitive marketing. Health care legislation has been marketed very badly, opposition to it rather well. The lack of forceful leadership to this and other promised changes has various possible explanations. Here’s one:
    http://www.counterpunch.org/mokhiber01152010.html
    Whichever slogans they promote, political parties represent the people who pay for that promotion. And it shows.

  3. are we allowed to scream in despair and rage in this thread? because that is basically what I am feeling.

  4. I accidentally turned on Brown’s acceptance speech. Was I actually hearing what I thought?? His offering his daughters up on national tv? Isn’t that cute and funny?

    It’s the sort of thing those of us in the non-progressive states can too often complain about: they haven’t even gotten the message that you don’t say those things.

  5. mm – should we all scream together or in succession? Maybe both.

    We might examine the idea that this is all due to one woman’s lackluster campaign.

  7. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    MDFS*U$#&*#()@)(_@()_@()_@#()@#()_#@()#)(#()_#) @_+(#

    the things that make so mad are 1) this result was entirely unavoidable, 2) if the democrats weren’t such wimpy pieces of S*#@*#*@#* it wouldn’t even really matter, 3) and what the $#@***@#@#* @((@@(# @(#@( !))!)!_!_!_ were these idiots thinking #*@*@#(* @(_!!++!!+ !!

    sadly, i only feel the slightest bit better by venting. but thanks for giving us a forum

  8. I am deeply depressed by what is happening…….and I had such high hopes for real change in the right direction……..I cannot bear to read/watch/hear the news. Any of it.

  9. Regarding “Health care legislation has been marketed very badly, opposition to it rather well”: this is this undoubtedly true to some extent. However, there is a tendency – more pronounced these days, as we become more obsessed with marketing as a phenomenon – to default to bad marketing or bad marketers as explanations for why “products” doesn’t prosper. At least on the part of those responsible for putting the product out there in the first place, there’s a habitual reluctance – whether we’re talking about a soda pop or a piece of legislation – to revisit critically the merits of the product or of the ideas that went into creating it. Without opining on the answers with regard to the health care bills or any other specific legislative initiative, I’d just note that it would be a shame for Congress to indulge this blind spot.

  11. This is all Obama’s fault. Yes it is. He has broken every campaign promise he made except the one to escalate the war in Afghanistan. He has done nothing to challenge the hegemony of the health insurance industry, nothing to punish the Wall Street gambler barons who wrecked the economy, nothing to slow global warming. And then when the noise machine blames the burgeoning disaster on “liberals”, he just sits there and takes it. When he came to Massachusetts the Sunday before the election, he urged us to be patient. Why didn’t he just say “It’s all the Republicans’ fault”?

    Why should anybody bother to vote for a Democrat? However you vote, you get a Republican.

  12. Throw in a failure to meet his own deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay, while you’re at it. That Nobel Prize is looking more farcical every day.

  13. The excuse sounds less convincing to me every decade, but the justifications that liberals tend to throw around when their own supporters are (VERY understandably) screaming in despair go something like this:

    Change takes time, Anikin ;-) You can’t force “fairness” on people who blindly support a better marketed opposition. That’s what Josef Stalin was about. Newly elected liberal governments have to tap dance around rednecks or risk getting impeached for jerking off in the tenth grade, or some other ridiculous “moral defect”. Or worse– risk dealing with race riots, assassination attempts, and whatever other horrors disgruntled religious freaks can create.

    Change also requires money. In a nation that spends 50% of its money on warfare, is there any other way to shift the balance, besides kissing ass to a different oligarchy? (Watch the implications in that pharmaceutical buddy accusation–it reeks of right-wing post-prohibition rhetoric.)

    My painfully uneducated, wants-to-be-an-American-and-a-god-fearing-republican neighbour spelled out the “selling points” of one particularly absurd Anti-Obama speech he heard last summer: Military spending would be reduced or eliminated because health care would cost 10x as much, in a nutshell. DUH!! (I believe that was Rush Limbaugh, btw)

    I said, “So you would rather pay a $250 tax bill every year to blow up Iraqi civillians, than a $2500 tax bill to deal with your back, eyesight, medication… and pay a hundred bucks a week to a private insurance company instead? You’d have to break your leg every year just to get your money’s worth!” Might I add that dumbass is also living in Canadian subsidized housing and collecting a partial disability check and has no clue what it’s like to work in a freaking coalmine until his lungs give out at the age of 35.

    Sux to be a democrat right now, unfortunately. But what’s the alternative? Just be patient Louise, Roy, J, Mm. If all else fails, you can move north. I hear our immigration people will let just about anybody live here. For a country that’s supposed to be full of Bolsheviks and terrorists, it’s a pretty nice place :-D

  14. Actually, according to Politifact’s analysis of 502 Obama campaign promises at the 1-year mark, he’s fulfilled 91, partially fulfilled another 33, and made progress on more than half. Only 14 of the 502 campaign promises were rated “broken”, while another 87 were rated “stalled”:

    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2010/jan/14/rating-obamas-promises-1-year-mark/

    So Obama clearly hasn’t been breaking anywhere near all of his promises (if this analysis means anything). I’m not absolutely sure if he’d be better or worse off keeping more of his promises, since some people (including a nontrivial number of people who voted for him) would be displeased with the result if certain promised things came to pass. Just for example, Obama never had a clear popular mandate to close Gitmo, and it was reported this week that the anti-closing majority is larger now than in the past.

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