critical thinking

now we're talking

If you are of the opinion that government exists to improve the lives of its people, acting in the best interests of the majority, not just in the present but into the indefinite future (and I most certainly am) then you must, as a rational human being, be utterly at a loss as to why the Republican party and conservatives in general are so blindly and ignorantly opposed to public health care and literally everything else Obama and his administration have tried to move forward with in the past year. It smacks of childish obstinacy. Whiny spoiled brat tantrums and pouty stubbornness. Or worse — Old Guard cronyism and immensely powerful insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies. The truth is somewhere in the middle, I’m sure.

Democracy fails if one side of a two party system opposes progress simply to make the administration look impotent. It falls to the leading party to flex its muscle to continue serving its people. The simple fact is that somebody has to be the grownup. The interests of the public have to supersede political manoeuvring. The elected have a job to do.

So I applaud Obama for making 15 appointments while Senate was out. It saves untold truckloads of time and tax money that otherwise would have been wasted in political posturing and pointless bickering.

A year ago Obama’s approval rating was effectively near 80%. Now it’s about 52%. His administration has been besieged by an opposition bent on nothing more than taking the wind out of those sails. They have been effective in just that. And nothing more. Which is to say that the Republicans continue to beat the fuck out of a country that really doesn’t need it, rather than get on with their duty of helping America get back on its feet.

Those that disagree (but can still legitimately claim to have any understanding of the issue at all) will argue that Obama’s path gives too much power to the government. Too much regulation leads to a police state, or worse. We risk the freedoms we fought so hard for, and so forth.

It’s my personal belief that “freedom” means a certain level of protection from corporations that would otherwise cheerfully take every dime — and you know they would. “Freedom” also means safety from bankruptcy if I get sick — that’s not the case elsewhere in the world, but any country claiming to be “the best” should base that claim in the care it takes of its own, or so it seems to me. “Freedom” means confidence that if I pay into a system, that system will not fail me when I need it most. That means if I pay somebody for health insurance, they should not base their business model on denying my claim.

America has to become aware of the irony in resisting public health care while bailing out Wall Street and by proxy the insurers, in continuing to defend a system that will chew us up and look for more. Surely there has to be some way of waking everyone up to the fact that if we all agree to pay a little bit into a system that works for us, we will no longer have to pay a lot into a system designed to fail us, and it’s okay to give the government the power to mandate this on our behalf.

It is not in our best interest to let our vote be swayed by a very loud, very vocal minority party of very rich private citizens who represent very rich insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It does not make you a commie pinko to resist them. It makes you a sensible citizen. A Real American, if you like.

As far as I’m concerned, you stop being a sucker when you start thinking for yourself. And as soon as you do, you start wondering what the hell is up with the Republicans and why we put up with it at all.

Obama will not come out of this as a darling of the press. Fox will see to that. But he’s getting the job done, whatever it takes, and doing it well. I approve. Keep it up.

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ataverner

Quoting from TPM: An Open Letter to Conservatives:

Dear Conservative Americans,

The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home, so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now.  You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America.  Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.

First, the invitation:  Come back to us.

Now the advice.  You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from your own; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more.  But you have work to do even before you take on that task.

Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum have become irresponsible and irrational.  Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred.  Let me provide some examples — by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.

If you’re going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you’ll have to start by draining this swamp:

Hypocrisy

You can’t flip out — and threaten impeachment – when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that’s centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.

You can’t vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it’s done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against, is especially ugly) —  114 of you (at last count) did just that — and it’s even worse when you secretly beg for more.

You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.

You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.

Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.

You can’t refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn’t meet with you.

You can’t rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.

You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.

You can’t be for immigration reform, then against it .

You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.

You can’t flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent about white presidents doing the same.  Bush.  Ford.

You can’t complain that the president hasn’t closed Gitmo yet when you’ve campaigned to keep Gitmo open.

You can’t flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush.  Nixon. Ike. You didn’t even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed (on the mouth) leaders of countries that are not on “kissing terms” with the US.

You can’t complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent.  (And, no, Newt — the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)

You can’t attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn’t issue any condemnation).  *Obama administration did the day of the event.

You can’t throw a hissy fitsound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when — in fact — only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.

You can’t condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.

You can’t mount a boycott against singers who say they’re ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he’s ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.

You can’t cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it’s too short.

You can’t support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.

You can’t demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it.  Repeatedly.

You can’t praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it “treasonous” under a Dem president.

You can’t propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.

You can’t be both pro-choice and anti-choice.

You can’t damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you’ve paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.

You can’t condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harms way, then attack the president when US troops are in harms way , the only difference being the president’s party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).

You can’t be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.

You can’t vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of  ‘open debate’.

If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it’s 2004 or 2010.  This is true, too, if you’re taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN.  Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution.  This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God’s stand, too.

When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can’t send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).

You can’t criticize Dems for not doing something you didn’t do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.

You can’t decry “name calling” when you’ve been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.

You can’t spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare

You can’t praise the Congressional Budget Office when it’s analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it’s unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don’t.

You can’t vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president.  Either you support X or you don’t. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.

You can’t call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.

You can’t spend taxpayer money on ads against spending taxpayer money.

You can’t condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.

You can’t demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don’t.

You can’t whine that it’s unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party’s former leader admits you’ve been doing it for decades.

You can’t portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.

You can’t complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you’ve routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain — threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it.  Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.

You can’t question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn’t object when your own Republican president appointed them.

You can’t preach and try to legislate “Family Values” when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer’s wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife’s mother;

Hyperbole

You really need to disassociate with those among you who:

History

If you’re going to use words like socialismcommunism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they’re NOT synonymous!)

You can’t cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you’ve decided you don’t like his ideas.

You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word “terrorism” or say we’re at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.

If you’re going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.

You can’t just pretend historical events didn’t happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn’t make it better.)

You can’t say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from “socialist utopia”; health care reform is not “reparations”; nor does health care reform create “death panels”.

Hatred

You have to condemn those among you who:

Oh, and I’m not alone:  One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.

So, dear conservatives, get to work.  Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bold-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred.  Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America.  We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we’ll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms.  We need you.

(Anticipating your initial response:  No there is nothing that even comes close to this level of wingnuttery on the American Left.)

Written by Russell King

Update: removed the mouth kissing reference and tried to clean up spelling

Unquote. Wow.

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the Olympic scandal that is our own damned self-righteousness

In Monday’s Globe and Mail, Roy MacGregor judges us for judging the Canadian Womens Hockey team for their quiet Olympic victory celebration on home ice last week.

The ladies waited until the arena was empty, and wandered back out on to the ice, still in skates, still in uniform, still wearing their gold medals. They had a bottle of champagne to share. There was no screaming, no bouncing off the boards, no breaking of glass or even any drunken singing. According to someone who actually saw the spectacle, “I do not know if I have seen anything so sweet and so very, very, very Canadian.”

My hat is off to all the ladies, especially the so called “offending” 18 year old who had a beer, who just so happened to score both goals that brought them the gold.

In Europe (remember the other half of the world?), you’re pretty much old enough to drink when you say you are, and that extended trust leads to a much more mature attitude when it comes to alcohol. So, if your gripe is with the actual drinking, grow up. If your issue is with the tarnishing of the Olympics and Canada, then maybe you should remember that the Olympics is about the triumph of the human spirit, and these girls did just that, on home ice no less, for the first time in all of history. And the beer? This IS Canada, isn’t it?

Nobody got hurt. Nobody got rowdy. Nothing got broken. They were celebrating with pride at the site of their historic victory. Just as I would.

Maybe you wouldn’t. Your loss. Don’t make it theirs.

P.S. Congratulations to the fine men & women of the Olympic Canadian Hockey teams for bringing home the gold. Well played.

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