A Mike Lux Golden Oldie
From Feb 06, 2010. Original HERE.
Chris Hayes' piece on America's system failure in The Nation on February 3rd is one of the single best posts I've seen in a long time on the long term challenges facing progressive activists in this county. It captures for me that combination of intense discouragement at the problems we've been having getting anything good done in the Obama era so far, with that call for continuing the fight that I think is so important for all of us.
What Chris captured in his diagnosis of the American political system at present was that sense of how broken things are in really fundamental ways. It reminded me of my feelings when old friends from the Clinton administration era read my blog posts and asked if I've moved to the left in the years since I worked in the Clinton White House. My answer is no. I don't think I have, but I do feel that the country is at a much more precarious juncture, and that more fundamental change needs to be pushed right now.
Last night, sitting in for Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes articulated the perfect meme for what the Republican Party is now up to, in sharp contrast to the deluded "center" of Versailles. He described their antics in opposing ratification of START and raising the debt ceiling as ""An entire political party engaged in a dramatic high-stakes game of chicken.... Republicans right now are behaving like adolescent nihilists, willing to drive the family's Country Squire station wagon off the cliff in some negotiation with their parents. Not people interested in the well-being of this country."
One segment on cable tv is not going to change the world all by its lonesome, but it is a striking note of sanity in the midst of a sea of mindless babble. And just to provide some serious reality-based ballast to his rhetorical argument in the first half of the segment, Hayes had Dean Baker and Bernie Sanders on to discuss nitty-grittty facts in the second half:
The role of projection in conservative politics is a theme I've long taken notice of. When conservative try to steal an election, the first thing they do is accuse liberals of trying to steal an election. When they organize a conspiracy to deceive the public about global warming, they accuse the entire world community of climate scientists of forming a conspiracy to deceive the public about global warming. And so it goes. But now we're getting down to the most basic level, where, after decades of attacking liberals for wanting to destroy America, conservatives are now boldly right out there in the open with their own boldly stated plans for destroying America, just like they tried to do before back during the Civil War.
In a way, it's refreshing, really, to have all the pretense stripped away. "Nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists? No, we don't give a damn about that. Let them blow up half of Manhattan, for all we care. Democrats will never win another election again. Drive the US into bankruptcy now to "save" the US from maybe someday going into bankruptcy (which of course it would never do, except for us)? That's our version of "fiscal responsibility!" Bernie Maddoff said it was "genius!"
These are the lunatics running the asylum. Any pretense to the contrary is itself a form of lunacy as well.
(It's not just the M$M, we here in the blogosphere have gotten a pretty distorted view of the electorate this cycle as well. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Project Vote’s new poll, which reveals the “rising electorate” from 2008 has starkly different views about the role of government than Tea Partiers, has inspired some discussion on the mood of voters before the election in November. “What Happened to Hope and Change,” we ask, and several bloggers, columnists, and reporters (sometimes with a combination of relief and frustration) attempt to answer.
"Lorraine C. Minnite, the author of the study, argues that the poll shows that the media is paying too much attention to the concerns of the mostly white and better-off Tea Party," reported Linda Scott at PBS News Hour.
The poll's finding that Tea Partiers only make up 29 percent of 2008 voters, compared to the 32 percent of black, young, and low-income voters, who turned out in droves in 2008 was a "refreshing corrective," wrote The Nation's Chris Hayes.
"We've all spent so much time dwelling on the slights and accusations of the Fox News crowd, there's been shockingly little attention paid to the views, frustrations and convictions of what we might call the forgotten electorate, otherwise known as Obama's base," he wrote.
Chris Hayes' piece on America's system failure in The Nation on February 3rd is one of the single best posts I've seen in a long time on the long term challenges facing progressive activists in this county. It captures for me that combination of intense discouragement at the problems we've been having getting anything good done in the Obama era so far, with that call for continuing the fight that I think is so important for all of us.
What Chris captured in his diagnosis of the American political system at present was that sense of how broken things are in really fundamental ways. It reminded me of my feelings when old friends from the Clinton administration era read my blog posts and asked if I've moved to the left in the years since I worked in the Clinton White House. My answer is no. I don't think I have, but I do feel that the country is at a much more precarious juncture, and that more fundamental change needs to be pushed right now.
Chris Hayes has a superb piece in The Nation about a gentleman named Rick Scott, who is heading up the new right-wing health care industry front group opposing reform, Conservatives for Patients' Rights. As Chris says, Scott "is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition."
I remember Scott well from the 1993-94 battle for health care reform. Along with the Health Insurance Association of America (now named AHIP), he helped lead the fight against universal coverage and cost controls last time. As Chris' article documents, Scott is the guy who helped Columbia/HCA destroy community-based hospitals all across America, and who was the CEO while Columbia/HCA made tens of millions of dollars in pure and simple Medicare/Medicaid fraud. You gotta love the right-wing movement in this country:
They have a guy who made money on Medicare/Medicaid fraud lead their fight against health care reform
Their hero and leader is Rush Limbaugh, who makes his living mocking people trying to make the world better and playing racist songs about President Obama
Their party leader cannot go a day without making some major mistake
Their lead argument as to why government is bad is how incompetently their party's last President handled Katrina
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