GOP Congressmen to America's 65,000 Unemployed: Stop eating food.

(This item by way of the back-in-business PhuckPolitics.)

On Thursday, the newly emboldened, self-congratulatory, and Wall Street-subsidized House Republicans "torpedoed a bill to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed" (The Washington Post). Just get an eyeful of this Old Boy's (Hair) Club (For Men):

It seems that the $12 billion price tag of intervening on behalf of those teetering on the brink of total bankruptcy and ruin is too steep for these steely-eyed Protectors of Industrial/Financial Interests The American Way. Look at the determination in their, uh, gut. The sense of honor and profundity in their Latte-sipping gait.

They just saved America $12 billion. Phew! I'd be drinking me some coffee, too. It's a tough job, pulling our nation back from the brink of financial apocalypse, but somebody's gotta do it.

Of course, the Bush Tax Cuts for the ultra-wealthy cost the nation $3 trillion (Alexander Stille), and that's only over the first eight years of the cuts' existence! Were those cuts to expire on schedule, as the Dems are apparently going to be too weak-kneed to insist—which, by the way, is insane, depressing and humiliating...if ever there were an issue on which the Dems should refuse to compromise....—"the projected cost of the Bush tax cuts to the federal budget over the next ten years is $3.9 trillion, an average of 1.4 percent of the country’s total economic activity (GDP) per year" (CAP). If the Republicans and their conservative Democrat accomplices succeed in actually extending the the tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, the resulting drain on the US deficit would be an additional $4 million!

But, like I said, the Republicans should be proud of themselves that they've once again succeeded in cynically screwing over the struggling American families that are most vulnerable by sparing the US deficit that whopping $12 billion.

Magnificent speechification: Grayson does it with style.

The bill calling for the much-needed extension of unemployment benefits has finally been passed by both houses of the federal legislature—the Senate passed it on Wednesday and the House got around to doing so yesterday. So I realize that, with respect to the political issue, this post is not exactly timely.

I wish, nevertheless, to share with my enlightened readers this absolute triumph of rhetoric/oratory that was delivered by Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat of Orlando, Florida during the House 'debate' that preceded the bill's passage. Now, we've seen previous examples of Grayson's deadpan wit, his knack for using invective to tasteful and brilliant effect, and his panache and cogency as a debater on substantive issues.

And herewith, the House doth Grayson rock.

But so rousing is the perfect little specimen of succinct speechifying that Grayson brought to the floor last Wednesday that I went and transcribed the whole damn two-minute speech for you. Now you, my readers, can never credibly question my love and devotion to you. Enjoy:

My grandfather, in the 1930s, spent several years of his life, every single day, at the dump, looking for things there that he could sell. Looking for things that he could take to the market and sell, because there was no other way for him to survive the 1930s and the Great Depression.

There was no unemployment insurance back then. There was no state benefits back then. There was no help for the people who had [no] jobs. All they could do, like my grandfather—supporting a family of seven—was to go to the dump and desperately try to find something he could sell.

And that, my friends, is the America that the Republicans are trying to revive. The America of desperate straits and, for them, cheap labor. The America where people have nothing, hope for nothing and are desperate to live for the next day. That is what the Republicans are trying to resurrect—day after day, week after week, and now month after month.

I've got news for my Republican friends: every single person who's going to receive unemployment insurance under this bill is unemployed. Every single one of them doesn't have a job. And that's why they need this money.

Now, I know what the Republicans are thinking:

"Why don't they just sell some stock? If they're in really dire straits, maybe they could take some of their art collection and send it off to the auctioneer. And if they're in deep, deep trouble, maybe these unemployed could sell one of their yachts."

That's what the Republicans are thinking right now.

But that's not the life of ordinary people—the 99 percent of America that actually has to work for a living, that doesn't just clip coupons and live off of interest and dividends, like my Republican friends do.

That's why we need this bill to pass: because of the 99 percent of America that deals with reality everyday. The people who will lose their homes if this doesn't pass. The people who will be living in their cars if this doesn't pass. That's why we need this to pass.

And I will say this to Republicans who have blocked this bill now for months and kept food out of the mouths of children. I say to them now:

May God have mercy on your souls.

I yield back.

Thanks to PhuckPolitics.com for bringing this to my attention. That blog contains a link to a video of the speech, along with its blogger's exuberant commentary.

A lion in lion's clothing: Why Rand Paul's primary victory is a good thing.

I shall attempt to elucidate my view of the results of the recent Republican primary in Kentucky. It's a view that apparently is deemed to be heterodox—if not heretical—among chatterers in progressive-left circles. Specifically, I think that—despite increasingly ugly, politically motivated deviations—Rand Paul is as close to a principled libertarian as we're likely to see as a contender for national office, and that his victory in Kentucky’s May 19 Republican primary for the US Senate is a good thing.

I don't hold this view for political/strategic/operational reasons—i.e.: because Paul's ascendancy might make it easier for some Democratic Party hack to win in the general, or something like that (partly because, in fact, I'm sick of all the DP hacks)—but, rather, because Rand Paul seems for the most part to be an actual libertarian in the mold of his father, Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas. I mean the dude's named after Ayn Rand, for god's sake.

Rand Paul is a lion in lion's clothing, and that's a good thing. What do I mean by this? Well, let me explain. Remember George W. Bush's pre-2000 promises to the effect that he embodied something called "compassionate conservatism"? That's an example of being a lion in lamb's clothing.

See the difference? (And here's an interesting bit of reporting on the unrelated question of where the phrase "compassionate conservatism" comes from.)

Now, before we get into all sorts of metaphysical stuff about lions lying down with lambs, let me just admit up front that my metaphor/comparison doesn't really make sense, once you start thinking about it. So heed this warning and...well, don't. But, anyway.

Give me the Pauls any day. For one thing, it will make for a much better debate. I believe that the US could only benefit from an increased focus upon the tenets of libertarianism. Beyond even its potential impact upon the framing of political discussion, there is a side to libertarianism that should by no means seem to liberals to be entirely unpalatable. For example: what’s wrong with cutting back on the functions of government that exist in practice exclusively to serve the interests of big corporations? While Paul's textbook libertarianism generally causes him to oppose the placing of limitations upon the expenditures of private corporations, his consistent and clearly voiced opposition to our country's reigning, incestuous public-private oligarchy is right on.

From yesterday's Huffington Post:

For all the blaring headlines that Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has attracted for his remarks on the Civil Rights Act and his views on government interference in private enterprise, there is a strand of his libertarianism that -- on occasion -- can be alluring to progressives.

Mainly this is when the discussion turns to foreign policy matters and the Kentucky GOP candidate's skepticism with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and his opposition to the Patriot Act.

Occasionally, however, Paul's domestic politics have a bit of post-ideological resonance. And during a Monday appearance on Rush Limbaugh's radio show, that element of his candidacy was briefly on display. Asked a question about campaign finance reform, Paul offered the traditionally conservative denouncement of laws that curb the amount of money spent during an election. But from there he offered a proposal that would be of similar (if not greater) scope and reach.

"What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won't lobby or give contributions," he said, "because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money."

This type of proposal would seemingly leave good government officials smiling. That it came from the belle of the Tea Party ball makes it all the more powerful -- not because of its unexpectedness (the Tea Party movement is quite clearly wary of the influence of lobbyists), but because Paul is symbolic for many of the future of the GOP.

Now, the question of whether and to whom Paul symbolizes the future of the GOP is open to debate, to say the least. But, isn't his stance on lobbying and government contracts absolutely correct?

Certainly it would be better if such a challenge came from populist progressives of the left, in the Bernie Sanders mold, but this is Kentucky we’re talking about. And I believe that the anti-oligarchic, anti-Fed, pro-personal privacy, anti-torture/surveillance and pro-transparency aspects of the philosophies of Father and Son Paul should be commended by left-progressives. We can still criticize the Pauls for their stances on many other subjects about which we disagree.

I feel the need to point all of this out because of the somewhat hysterical responses of some purportedly left-progressive-types to the Rand Paul phenomenon. I mean, sure, his performance on the Rachel Maddow show was ham-fisted, but, the idea that his take on the Civil Rights Act makes him a racist is really just too much. Those of us who are serious about wanting to improve political discourse should not be demonizing someone for showing intellectual honesty, however impolitic it might be for him to do so. In fact, the more straightforward and lacking in spin his stance, the greater the duty of the left opposition to express its disagreement straightforwardly.

Rand Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act can be—and are—wrong without being racist. This is the kind of debate we should be taking seriously. It's the mainstream Republicans who aren't worth the time and effort, who will misrepresent themselves to get elected and hold onto power. The notion that Rand Paul is somehow worse than the average "machine"-Republican candidate is absolute balderdash.

To the extent to which the likes of middle-aged pseudo-leftists like The Nation's obnoxious Katha Pollitt (May 22) continue to set the terms of what counts as political debate in progressive circles, we'll never get beyond the intellectual bankruptcy and gridlock of the Culture Wars and the 1960s. I'm sorry, but Baby Boomers like Pollitt just get fatter and more full of shit with each passing day.

By contrast, Robert Scheer's May 19 take on the Pauls and libertarianism I find to be coherent and useful. It is, in fact, the article to which—in the wake of Paul's stumble on the Maddow show—Pollitt's shrill statement is apparently aiming to respond. Still better is Scheer's May 26 follow-up, in which he gets down to what should be the business at hand for those of us on the progressive/left:

Where I agree with [Rand Paul] is that with freedom comes responsibility, and when the financial conglomerates abused their freedom, they, and not the victims they swindled, should have borne the consequences. Instead, they were saved by the taxpayers from their near-death experience, reaping enormous profits and bonuses while the fundamentals of the world economy they almost destroyed remain rotten, as attested by the high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment and the tens of millions of newly poor dependent on government food handouts.

But the poor will not find much more than food crumbs from a federal government that, thanks to another one of [President Bill] Clinton’s “reforms,” ended the federal obligation to deal with the welfare of the impoverished. Yes, Clinton, not either Paul, father Ron or son. It was Clinton who campaigned to “end welfare as we know it,” and as a result the federal obligation to end poverty, once fervently embraced by even Richard Nixon, was abandoned.

Concern for the poor was devolved to the state governments, and they in turn are in no mood to honor the injunction of all of the world’s great religions that we be judged by how we treat the least among us. That would be poor children, and it is unconscionable that state governments across the nation are cutting programs as elemental as the child care required when you force single mothers to work.

“Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers” ran the headline in the New York Times on Sunday over a story detailing how in a dozen states there are now sharp cuts in child care for the poor who find jobs, and how there are now long lists of kids needing child care while their mothers work at low-paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart. In Arizona, there is a waiting list of 11,000 kids eligible for child care. That is what passes for success in the welfare reform saga, with mothers forced off the rolls into a workplace bereft of promised child care that the cash-strapped states no longer wish to supply.

Hear, hear. For those of us who believe that what this country desperately needs is a genuine left-populism, shouldn't we be asking: Why don't we hear Democrats articulating a similarly robust critique of ongoing—and grotesquely antidemocratic—lobbying practices?

And, more to the point: instead of playing the politics of personality (and...even ickier..."character"), let's respond to Paul's views on the evils of the welfare state with real arguments. All around us, on the local, national and international levels, we can point to massive, moral, social and practical crises directly attributable to laissez faire economics and neoliberal governance. As Scheer argues, the hullabaloo about Rand Paul is nothing but a cheap distraction from the real questions:

How in the hell can humankind be expected to survive and prosper without a social safety net to protect them against the vicissitudes of a globalized and unregulated market economy? Without such a safety net, how can Western societies ever hope to fulfill their constitutional (little c and big) aspirations of freedom, justice and equality?

And, finally: If the Democratic Party can't be counted upon to take these questions at all seriously, who can?

Harper's piece on "The Vanishing Liberal."

Frequent Harper's contributor Kevin Baker—who, according to his byline, is actually a novelist—has a couple of great things to say in an essay in the magazine's April issue (which non-subscribers like Your Humble Blogger will simply have to go out and buy in order to read). The essay's subtitle—"How the left learned to be helpless."—is somewhat misleading, or in any event insufficiently specific. Let's face it, the contention that the left is helpless can in and of itself be said to be controversial only in the sense that it assumes that the left exists. 

What's important about Baker's argument as regards this helplessness is the comparison he posits between today's thoroughgoingly lost and disillusioned left—a group among which I suppose most normal (or even semi-normal) people under the age of 40 must by definition count ourselves—and its intellectual and spiritual forbears in American history: the Populist and and the Progressive movements. Those movements, for all of their flaws, had gravitas. Vitality. Rocks. You get the picture.

It should not be surprising that contemporary left/liberalism/whatever pales in comparison to those often quite radical historical movements. But what's nice is that Baker's piece offers more than the usual woe-is-us routine.

(Not that it's bad to say "woe is us." It's actually necessary for us to say it. However, the usual plodding, overlong and doom-and-gloom-laden fare does tend to get annoying. For example, see the final rant that now-former Harper's Editor-in-Chief Roger Hodge contributed to the magazine before he was—shockingly, and in an ominous sign for the mag's future, as Hodge was an intelligent and ballsy editor—sacked.)

Instead of simply throwing up his hands in despair (although he does do that), Baker threads together a political-historical narrative that serves as a call for genuine grassroots action of an order that we've not seen in this country in generations. He sets the scene by lamenting the fact that President Barack Obama,

[o]ne of the most charismatic politicians of his time, a man who was able to raise the most money and draw the biggest crowds in American political history has apparently decided that his new job is to fluff up the generals and bankers and politicians who not very long ago were in panicked disarray. Armchair psychologists from the Maureen Dowd school of political commentary like to analyze this conversion in terms of the elusive personality of Obama himself. Others prefer to dwell on the surprising ineptitude of his administration. And some simply accept his about-face in terms of the political exigencies of an essentially conservative nation, concluding wistfully that Obama is confronted by so many barriers to change—Republican obstructionism, the treachery of this or that Democratic senator, the nature of the Constitution itself—that the country is now ungovernable.

All of which may be true. But it only skims the surface of a greater tidal shift, one that has little to do with Obama himself and in fact has inundated the whole of our democratic process. This shift, which is subtle and has been many years in the making, might best be understood by considering a design underlying many of the interrogation techniques we employ at the (still-unclosed) prison at Guantánamo or at the black sites we still maintain, wherever they are. That is, bringing about the state known as learned helplessness.

The expression dates from a famous set of experiments by Martin Seligman some forty years ago, in which he found that dogs exposed to repeated and seemingly random electric shocks eventually stopped trying to escape those shocks, even when they could very easily do so. This insight gave rise to “no touch” torture, pioneered in large part by the CIA, whose efforts to “break” prisoners involved all manner of techniques, from the unsavory to the absurd, such as depriving prisoners of sleep for weeks on end, bombarding them with ear-splitting noises, exposing them to extreme heat and cold, shackling them in “stress positions,” tying bras to their heads, making them bark like dogs, and waterboarding them. There is no evidence that such practices enhance the odds that prisoners will provide more useful information to interrogators. It is well established, though, that they will make prisoners docile, and so the techniques remain popular.

For decades now, as our public discourse in general has become more scattered, random, and irrational, Republicans—funded by corporate and other elites in the private sector—have stunned Democrats with absurdist attacks that have proved to be effective at garnering votes and, more important in the long term, at hampering Democrats even when they hold the majority. Democrats have been reduced to a state of psychological helplessness, one in which any political obstacles—ranging from the prevarications of stalking horses like Senators Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, to the plaintive cries of the tea-baggers out in the streets, to the sterner demands of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Big Pharma—are transformed into insurmountable organic obstacles.

We have learned to be helpless. And in this state of political depression, it no longer matters how many elections liberals win for the Democrats, or how badly Republican, right-wing policies fail or how much damage they do to the country or the world. There is simply no way to do anything differently.

Such hapless fatalism is, of course, in direct opposition to every tenet of American liberalism, which is rooted in the idea that human agency is still possible in the modern world—that democratic action can make a difference when ranged against vast, impersonal forces and supposedly immutable “laws” of human society. Liberalism’s antecedents lie in one nineteenth-century rebellion after another—against laissez-faire capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, Social Darwinism, and other efforts to transmute political dispositions into irrefutable “social science.” American voters of the time were regularly assured by authoritative voices that “hard money” was an indispensable economic principle; that women, people of color, and many varieties of European immigrant were inherently inferior; that any attempts to regulate the “natural” workings of the economy, even private charity, would thwart human progress because they interfered with the culling of those who, in Herbert Spencer’s description, were not “sufficiently complete to live.

[...]

And so we arrive at the present moment, in which the people are not asked to do anything. The fine words and able presentation of Obama, whether delivered at West Point or on Wall Street or in the well of the House of Representatives, obscure the fact that they are subtle parodies of a century of liberal argument. Whereas the Populists’ soapbox lecturers or the Progressives’ magazine exposés or FDR in his radio “fireside chats” explained the way of the world to the people and argued for why and how that way must change, Obama—like most Democratic leaders—concedes that the way of the world is wrong but tells us why it must stay that way because, some time in the past, powerful interests decreed it so.

[...]

Now, to be sure, there are problems with Baker's narrative—especially as regards sympathies within some manifestations of historical Progressivism itself toward Social Darwinism and other 'social scientistic' gobbledygook that he ignores completely—but no matter. It's worth a read. And one of its themes—the notion that human beings can and/or should always work to improve the world in which we live, to make it more fair and just, etc.—is a very interesting one about which I intend to say more in the near future. Specifically, I think there are some important details of this Enlightenment spirit that a rejuvenated left-populism needs to get right intellectually and rhetorically.

Welcome to the New Wedge Politics: A political calculus.

Well, it's here. (Or, rather, it's back.) White, Christianist * Terrorism (yes, terrorism, since the Right has decided to use this term when it's convenient to its purposes). Charged with plotting to kill police officers and civilians and to set in motion a new American Civil War, the aims of these armed Christianist militiamen were entirely politico-religionist and ideological: they have committed treason against the United States government and its people and engaged in seditious activities. In yearning to start the next Civil War, these militiamen stand alongside the tea-bagger rank and file.

 This is a moment in which the bogusness of the Fox News Right's sham claims to consistency, moral authority and—most deliciously ironic of all—patriotism is exposed for all to see. And I mean exposed in a way that forces the old-fashioned Republican base—the suburban, upper-middle class—to confront the chaos, ugliness and violence in which all supporters of the current Republican Party have been complicit.

The wealthier households of the American suburban bourgeoisie, who have long served as the real political base of the Republican Party—and whose defection to Obama in 2008 helped cost McCain the presidency—basically only care about two things:

1. physical security for themselves and their families at all costs, and
   
   
2. low taxes (i.e.: financial security for themselves and their families at all costs).

Whichever party can scare this still-very-powerful echelon of the American citizenry into perceiving** that either (1) or (2)—in that order—or both cannot be trusted in the hands of the other party, wins.

[***]

Consider, for example, Joe Briefcase. Joe is a medium-level Big Shot in the [whatever] business and is a case study in the mentality of this socioeconomic stratum of American society. He typically—before the Iraq War, anyway—falls for, I'd say, at least 75% of neoconservative scare-mongering lies (i.e.: 'An attack on the USA is imminent if we don't do a, b, and c to stop it...') and is also especially easily flattered by Republican laissez-faire & square charm tactics (i.e.: 'You've pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and deserve to hold onto every precious penny you've earned...')... and has voted Republican ever since he graduated from [whatever] school and entered what is known colloquially as "The Real World."

Joe Briefcase doesn't give two shits about the "restoration of American values" or the "maligned legacy of state's rights" that the brainless, fat, racist, uneducated, neo-secessionist, Fox News-watching hordes seem to care so much about. The fact is that Joe Briefcase doesn't want trouble, and trouble is exactly what he has begun to see that he will get if the Republican Party manages to regain control of the country.

Three additional factors shall flesh out my hypothesis of a new electoral alignment that I believe may be a component of the Democratic Party's (and especially Obama's) electoral strategy, which I shall call the New Wedge Politics:

• All of the "tea party" shenanigans during the health care debate managed to poison the well of public discourse to such an extent that most Americans stopped caring about the content of the health care bill a long time ago and simply grew increasingly irritated by the shrill health care bill debate. And it was the Republicans who, after all, vowed over and over and over and over and over again to obstruct the passage of the bill. Thus—irrespective of most people's inclinations as regards the content of the bill (and irrespective of the likelihood that the Obama Administration shrewdly planned to allow the Republican demagogy to meander until it reached the pinnacle of outrageousness)—Obama gets all of the credit for putting the whole miserable display out of its misery with a stroke of his pen. Meet Obama, the restorer of 'law and order' from the clutches of tea-bagger-fueled chaos and anarchy.
  
  
• The Civil War. Don't forget the Civil War. It's very much on the minds—or in the hearts—of many among the tea-bagger faithful, whether they realize it or not. From incumbent Governor Rick Perry's Texas Secession Rallies to the new revelations of Far-Right paramilitary activities to the ugly racism of so much of the redneck sloganeering, the ghost of the Civil War has returned to the national subconscious in a big way. And it just so happens that Joe Briefcase's great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War. And guess whose side Great Great Grandpa Briefcase fought for? That's right, it wasn't for the Confederacy. Joe Briefcase has always taken pride in the fact that he belongs to the Party of Abraham Lincoln. He has no sympathy for protesters of any kind. He wants the secessionist rednecks to get off his TV already. He most certainly does not recognize the current Dixiecrat Shambles as His Republican Party. This 'Party of No' is not the Republican Party as he has known it.
  
  
• The Iraq War. Don't forget the impact of that war either. The minutia of the USA's continued presence in Iraq under the Obama Administration, of course, fail to capture anyone's interest. But the people of the United States have not forgotten the Iraq War, nor its costliness in lives and dollars, nor the sleazy lies that the Bush Administration told in order to sell it. This still stands as a significant betrayal of trust between the Republican Party and its erstwhile supporters.

To close, some caveats: my analysis here is intended to be hypothetical. Furthermore, it's a hypothesis about long-term political and/or electoral strategy—not a prediction of whether or not such a strategy would work. And when I say long-term, I mean that it's not about the vicissitudes of 'cable news' cycles, which Obama has made it his habit to ignore (or at least to appear to ignore)—a way of doing things that has worked well for him in the past and which furthers the impression of his being 'above the fray' of the bullshit.

Lastly, although I dislike the Republican Party something fierce, and although I'm not as critical of Obama as many others on the Left have been (not having expected him to act as a genuinely progressive president in the midst of our current political/economic conditions and ideological alignments), I'm not saying that it is necessarily a good thing that the Democratic Party might be preserving its spot at the Center by pushing the Republican Party ever-farther to the Right. I'd have much preferred it if the health care bill had been more aggressive and radical, etc., etc. And I'd certainly have preferred to see Obama actually take a firm legal position against torturers, liars and manipulators like Dick Cheney, et al.

Anyway, there you have it. If anyone's actually read this far down, I'd love for you to prove it to me by leaving a comment. Heh.

[N.B.: I updated this post (mostly grammar and formatting edits) on the morning of 3/31/10).]

* Note the distinction here, between Christians and Christianists, Christianity and Christianism, religion and Religionism. Each of these dyads comprises:

1. first, a phenomenon that is so heterogeneous and multifarious, and rooted so deeply in our history and society as to resist evaluation in one direction or another, in and of itself, and
   
   
2. second, an extreme politics that enshrouds itself in a rhetoric that has been appropriated from the first, and then manhandled and distorted to accord with tactical or strategic ends.

I am an atheist, but I consider the notion of the 'inherent evil of religion' to be both inherently childish and itself always a cloaked political gesture, every bit as much as Religionism. I suppose I could distinguish my brand of atheism from that of Sam Harris by calling him an 'atheismist,' but I won't. You get my point. (Up.)

---

** This is a not-insignificant component of the process to bear in mind. Perception, that is. Kind of a slippery concept, I know, but sometimes we forget that we're not talking about the unmediated, abstract truth of these things, but rather, the truth of people's perceptions, which—in addition to being very difficult to determine—is frequently unconscious (that is, people don't always perceive the content of their own perceptions). That's one of the reasons why polls are frequently pure garbage. (Up.)

---

*** Notice that the trick that the Republicans have pulled off over the decades—in concert with the enormous interest group it serves, namely the military-industrial complex—is to eliminate any and all cognitive dissonance between (1) and (2), despite the fact that the 'bloated government' and 'proliferating, unaccountable government bureaucracy' that the GOP claims to so oppose are nowhere more strongly in evidence than in unfunded military spending. Remember that the Bush Administration deliberately left the deficit-spending on the Iraq War off of the books! (Up.)

The Baffler is Back!

Being as completely distracted and off the ball as I have been lately as regards politics & journalism & news & culture & whatever, it has only just now come to my attention through a couple of different sources that The Baffler is back!!!

If you've never heard of this kick-ass, unpretentious political/cultural journal thingie and want to know why its revival is a really great thing, read here and especially here. In The Baffler's glory days, during the Clinton era, its editor Thomas Frank and his coterie of South Side Chicago smart-asses provided a sustained critique of a Democratic Party that had transformed itself into a fanatically pro-laissez faire force, a party that turned its back on economic populism, but nevertheless continued -- pathetically -- to compensate for completely selling out its base by signaling its supposed 'leftism' by adopting ludicrously 'tough' postures, which naturally fed right into  the hysterical"Culture Wars"-style paranoia propagated by the A.M. radio demagogues and Think-Tank-Neo-McCarthyists of the Far Right. Furthermore, Frank and Company poked fun at the appropriation by multi-national marketeers of 'oppositional' pop culture tropes and 'attitudes', from the Nirvana-like guitar-crunch sounded by ads selling luxury cars, to Burger King's strategy of hawking burgers and fries with the apothegm: "Sometimes You've Gotta Break the Rules."

The list of contributors to the first issue of The Baffler's "Volume 2" appears to be a bit heavy on academicians. It was not uncommon for the 90s version of the journal to include the occasional professor or Ivory Tower-type -- after all, Frank himself earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago. But in those days, the the lion's share of spineless bimbos putatively positioned on the 'Left', inside and outside of academe, were united -- for either ideological or pragmatic reasons -- in their support for the new and improved neoliberal, "Third Way"-style Democratic Party. Some of the most forceful opposition to Frank's brand of left-populism -- and especially the way in which Frank framed the "Culture Wars" issue -- issued from politically engaged academic-types who really should have known better. Among them, and someone who in most respects I quite like, is the literature and cultural-studies professor Michael Bérubé.

But anyway, I gather that The Baffler has returned in part because the arguments to which it has given voice regarding market fundamentalism -- and the political toxicity of the Democratic Party's continuing institutional (read: $) and ideological allegiance with it -- are now impossible for an intellectually honest person to ignore. The impotence of the Democratic Party, despite enjoying an unprecedented congressional majority, the incoherence of the party's ideological stance as regards big business interests, health care, social justice, and any number of issues, and the Obama Administration's inability and unwillingness to pursue real reforms against an appallingly oligarchic financial sector are the inevitable consequences of thirty-or-more years of cynical market fundamentalism. A fundamentalism against which there is no bulwark in this country -- no checks, no balances. Pretty grim. But at least somebody's pointing it out now.

See also Thomas Frank's great new piece in The Wall Street Journal about the Right-wing Christian Fundamentalists who have hijacked -- with SERIOUSLY SHOCKING results (NY Times) -- the content of the social studies textbooks to be manufactured and distributed throughout Texas and probably throughout many other states.

Eugene Robinson's case for passing the Senate bill.

An excerpt from yesterday's Rachel Maddow Show (a show I've seldom seen since I don't have cable [and I probably wouldn't watch these kinds of shows much if I did] but I must say that last night's episode was good television), in which The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson argues that passing this massively flawed bill is better than not passing anything. I agree with nearly every aspect of his analysis:

Glenn Greenwald: Don't kid yourself; this is the bill Obama wanted all along.

Although I have stated that, lousy as it is, I would prefer that the Senate bill pass -- and although I this is still my position -- I must confess that I have begun to feel increasingly icky about what the bill has lately become. So it goes.

It's an awfully difficult time not to be extremely frustrated by the seeming impotence of the Democratic Party as well as disappointed with Obama. I, for one, never lost sight of the fact that the president is a centrist and a pragmatist and that his attachment to various financial and corporate paymasters is inextricable. It's just that, somehow, I must not have remembered just how far right the putative "center" has become in our corporatist nation state. It's not pretty.

But, more than that, I think I had the feeling that Obama would be able to pull off his role -- precarious and self-contradictory though it may be by definition -- with a bit more...I don't know...panache? I mean, in moments at which he looks like a cynical, calculating servant of corporate interests, he really looks like a cynical, calculating servant of corporate interests. I'm led to wonder why that is. I think it's because of the kinds of posturing that Obama has to do in order to throw bones to the 'progressive' left wing base, while simultaneously keeping the insurance and pharmacological industries happy.

And, as regards this very posturing in application to the matter of a "public option," it looks as if Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald has got Obama's number:

[C]ontrary to Obama's occasional public statements in support of a public option, the White House clearly intended from the start that the final health care reform bill would contain no such provision and was actively and privately participating in efforts to shape a final bill without it.  From the start, assuaging the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries was a central preoccupation of the White House -- hence the deal negotiated in strict secrecy with Pharma to ban bulk price negotiations and drug reimportation, a blatant violation of both Obama's campaign positions on those issues and his promise to conduct all negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN).  Indeed, Democrats led the way yesterday in killing drug re-importation, which they endlessly claimed to support back when they couldn't pass it.  The administration wants not only to prevent industry money from funding an anti-health-care-reform campaign, but also wants to ensure that the Democratic Party -- rather than the GOP -- will continue to be the prime recipient of industry largesse. As was painfully predictable all along, the final bill will not have any form of public option, nor will it include the wildly popular expansion of Medicare coverage.  Obama supporters are eager to depict the White House as nothing more than a helpless victim in all of this -- the President so deeply wanted a more progressive bill but was sadly thwarted in his noble efforts by those inhumane, corrupt Congressional "centrists."  Right.  The evidence was overwhelming from the start that the White House was not only indifferent, but opposed, to the provisions most important to progressives.  The administration is getting the bill which they, more or less, wanted from the start -- the one that is a huge boon to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry.

Greenwald praises Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold for pointing this out:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

"This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth," said Feingold. "I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect."

Seems convincing to me, and if it's true, it isn't all that surprising. But it's still dismaying to see how hamfistedly the Obama administration seems to be in dealing with this stuff. What a mess.....

As matters stand, I still think the bill in its present decimated form is better than no bill and here's why: In almost all of the complaints from the so-called 'progressive' left about this bill, I have not heard a single serious reference to the impact of this law upon poor people. Where are the anti-poverty advocates, and why shouldn't a serious discussion of the problems with his bill include a discussion of poverty? Almost all of the criticism has to do with middle-class concerns and middle-class problems.

Doesn't this bill still help people who can't currently afford ANY health insurance, and shouldn't that be the main priority? Please, if anyone knows more about this angle, fill me in. Nobody seems to be talking about it.

Okay, this means war. Public Enemy #1: the elitist plutocrats of the US Chamber of Commerce.

At least the Dems -- in contrast to the members of the GOP -- in Congress aren't readily and openly whoring themselves out to the US Chamber of Commerce.

From AP News, by way of Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan coalition in the House voted late Thursday to make it easier for corporations to engage in complex derivatives trades without government restrictions, eroding the reach of proposed regulations to govern Wall Street.

Democratic attempts to toughen the legislation failed.

Though not major setbacks, the votes illustrated the difficulties facing House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and the Obama administration as they seek to pass legislation aimed at preventing a recurrence of last year's Wall Street crisis.

Key votes loomed ahead, with a final vote on the sweeping legislation scheduled Friday.

Democrats hoped to fend off an amendment Friday that would eliminate the creation of an independent Consumer Finance Protection Agency. The agency is a central element of the Democrats' legislation and the Obama administration's proposed regulatory changes.

The amendment was offered by Rep. Walt Minnick, a conservative Democrat from Idaho, and seven other centrist Democrats. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been running national television ads against the creation of a consumer agency, said it would base its support for lawmakers in next year's elections, in part, on how they voted on the amendment.

"I think we're going to beat the Minnick amendment, but it's a real test," Frank, D-Mass., said Thursday. Creating a consumer agency is a top priority for consumer groups and for labor organizations such as the AFL-CIO.

Democratic leaders also were pushing changes that would add further restrictions on banks and financial institutions. One, vigorously opposed by banks, would let bankruptcy judges rewrite mortgages to lower homeowners' monthly payments.

A coalition of banking organizations on Thursday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to vote against the amendment. The House previously passed bankruptcy-mortgage legislation, but it failed in the Senate.

The legislation imposes new regulations on derivatives, aiming to prevent manipulation in and bring transparency to a $600 trillion global market. But an amendment by New York Democrat Scott Murphy, adopted 304-124 Thursday night, exempted businesses that trade in derivatives, not as financial speculators, but to hedge against market fluctuations such as currency rates or gasoline prices. The amendment also provided an exception for businesses that are not considered too big to be a risk to the financial system.

A Democratic effort to make more companies subject to derivatives regulation failed 279-150.

The Chamber of Commerce circulated a letter Thursday urging lawmakers to vote for the Murphy amendment and against the broader regulation. [...]

If ever there was an entity that is contemptuous of the basic, day-to-day existence of the ordinary, middle class American citizen and family in 2009 (and there was/is!), it is the US Chamber of Commerce. It is a truly despicable assemblage of liars and crooks, an organization of cigar-chomping Mr. Spacely-type Captains of Oligarchy.

Of course the US Chamber of Commerce is against the regulation and oversight! I mean, weren't excessive market regulation/oversight and rampant consumer protections the things that plunged us into this economic crisis in the first place?? Oh, wait.....

Anyway, what do you expect from an organization that opposes the prosecution of private contractors in Iraq who gang-raped American and Iraqi women?.

The history books of the future shall surely look back on this moment as the finest hour of laissez faire capitalism and its apologists.....

"Bias" = BS.

Would everyone just shut up with all of the shit about "bias"? Please? From a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (by way of a recent item in FiveThirtyEight.com):

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. . . . Republicans continue to be highly critical of the news media in nearly all respects. However, much of the growth in negative attitudes toward the news media over the last two years is driven by increasingly unfavorable evaluations by Democrats. . . . The partisan gaps in several of these opinions, which had widened considerably over the past decade, have narrowed.

Okay, let me make clear that I'm not criticizing the notion that calculating such figures can be useful or informative. What I despise, however, is the utter lack of contextualization, theoretical apparatus or coherent interpretation to accompany these data.

Here are some questions that come to mind -- variations of which suggest themselves more or less every time statistics are presented in popular news reporting and that are never accorded so much as lip-service -- with these empty data:

1. Is there really something lurking in the concept of "bias" that retains its meaning and/or coherence when abstracted from specific contexts and conceptualizations?
2. What is the difference between news coverage with a "bias" and news coverage that evidences advocacy of a particular point of view or that privileges certain points of view over others?
3. To what extent can "bias," as it's used in this study, be said to mean, "advocacy of particular persons, groups, values or interests that cloaks itself as impartial or objective," and to what extent can it be said to mean, "a shift in the nature or purpose of 'media' from a model that operates under the pretense of impartiality to a model that sheds this pretense in favor of partisan advocacy?"
4. To what extent can the "Democrats" and "Republicans" cited in the study be said to conceptualize the relation between the putative "[in]accuracy" of media and the putative "bias" of media?
5. Doesn't the question of whether news media are "biased" skip over the essential contextual issue, which is: To what extent does (or had previously) each respondent expect media to be something other than "biased"?
6. How can a figure representing perceived "bias" mean anything at all if it is not calibrated with painstaking attention to the fact that, in addition to being a term that means different things to different people in different contexts, the term "bias" is necessarily relative and can only mean anything by way of its relation to constellations of variables?
   

Obama: the bargain, the moment of truth and health care.

I've been asked by one of our favorite readers if I might weigh in as to my thoughts on President Obama's health care speech of last Wednesday. Here's my long-winded (but I hope not pedantic or, uh, boring...) reply.

In approaching the health care address, as in approaching all things Obama-related, I divide my assessments into two distinct categories: (1) substantive and (2) operational.

By the first category, I mean, you know, the content: What does it say as a matter of pure policy?, etc., etc. By the second, I refer to the impact and significance that the speech would appear to have operationally, specifically with respect to its embeddedness within salient and underlying political contingencies and discourses.

Some background for my thinking:

Obama differs from other presidents of my lifetime in that he has, in fact, managed to surprise me by occasionally saying something so smart and incisive that it strikes me as something more than simply operational or tactical. In fact, I'm convinced that that's what made Obama appealing to people on the left in the first place: At his best, he offers us much-needed relief from the interminable Samuel Beckett-speak of 20th Century Presidential Personae -- cant that has been particularly excruciating over the course of the previous four presidencies.

Obama speaks and thinks in a way that makes sense to us: It's partly a generational/demographic thing, and it's partly a matter of sheer charisma. It's could even be bollocks: he's got them. (Bollocks are testicles, kiddies.) Not compared to Theodore Roosevelt, maybe, but compared to pretty much any president since JFK. Of course, considering the competition, that's maybe not saying a whole lot...

I remember during the presidential primaries or something, I was explaining to my friend what I thought was actually potentially fresh and worthwhile about Obama, and I phrased it this way:

If you're not going to go out there and actively work to usher in The Revolution, then Obama's your man. In other words: OK, if you want to vote for Kucinich, do it. if you want to vote for Nader, do it. (I did that once and have no regrets.) I applaud you. If you want to start a new, intelligent leftish political movement, then go for it. God knows, we could use something like that. These are worthwhile and commendable projects.

But, I continued, if not -- i.e., if you're going to participate in the political system, warts (of which there are many) and all -- then Obama represents the closest thing to a genuinely progressive force that the political system can in fact, in this moment and time, successfully produce. Vote for Obama, and you'll know that at least you're supporting without a doubt the best thing that our tattered, and bought-and-sold-many-times-over political system can deliver.

Obama was and is NOT Dennis Kucinich. He's not Ralph Nader, and he's not Jimmy Carter. That is part of the point of Obama being Obama: He's not a lost cause and doesn't represent lost causes. He's a winner. He's one of the Beautiful People, with all of the good and bad that comes along with that.

Obama can and does play ball with the big boys. He is and always has been a political realist, and he sold himself to us as a political realist. He beat the Clintons not just because he represented a superior political vision (which he did, by an infinitesimal degree of difference), but because he out-smarted the Clintons.

It wasn't just luck that turned John McCain's campaign into such a disaster: It was the Obama campaign's tactical superiority: Out-flanking your opponent, faking him out, making him sweat over -- and waste money in -- the wrong state at the wrong time, by deliberately sending misleading signals about your own campaign's concerns.

Within a day of the McCain campaign's having trotted out Sarah Palin (as I remarked on that occasion), it dawned upon me: the Republicans are throwing the election.

In retrospect, it seems clear to me that part of the reason this happened is because the Obama campaign forced them into retreating. And: prevailing rhetoric and received wisdom aside, the GOP is still in retreat, if not chaos.

The trouble is that Obama's victory meant -- and means -- that those of us on the left who brought him to office would have to come face-to-face with the limitations of our screwed up and corrupt system, limitations that we didn't really have to face up to in the same way when we were toiling under the tyranny of the Bush/Cheney cabal. With those guys, we could take out our frustration on the other side, for stealing elections. We could decry the stupidity and self-centeredness of the idiots who actually preferred those asshole to Gore or Kerry (not that we loved those guys either...), who at least could speak in complete sentences.

It seems perverse to put it this way, but in Bush/Cheney, we had on our hands a fine distraction that was from the real culprits of the demise of the United States: our nightmare of a de-funded public infrastructure, the menace of neoliberalism and public-private partnerships, a completely unregulated financial sector, masses of political and economic capital concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people, the deterioration of the trustworthy news and information (not that we ever had much of that...), the calcification of class, status and racial divisions, a powerful neoconservative lobby, etc., etc., etc....

And so, entirely contrary to the conventional wisdom about Obama being a man who delivers pretty speeches, all form and no substance, for the first time in a long time we have a president who -- for better and, undoubtedly, for worse -- is something more than merely a symbol: He embodies the limited reach of the political left. Or, rather: Obama is the closest thing we have and can have to left-minded president.

And the ugly thing that nobody wants to face up to is that "the left" by this definition -- that is, the left, insofar as the left subsists in the realm of the possible -- is not very damn far left. It is to this phenomenon that I am referring with the titular "moment of truth."

It is this structural limitation that we see embodied in Obama. For a president is more than merely a man: he is a nexus of powerful political and financial interests. Just look at how people become president, what processes make it possible.

Presidents must, of necessity, be products of the status quo. Whether or not they are able (like the aforementioned Teddy Roosevelt and a few others), over the course of their tenure in the Oval Office, to become an active force in transcending or transforming the very status quo that produced them is a function of innumerable factors that lie outside of the control of a single man, and even outside of the control -- contrary to the view favored by conspiracy theorists -- of any single group of interested parties.

In any event, it is the left of -- appallingly -- Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, of Arne Duncan and the Clintons and Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. I mean, that's what passes for the left.

But people who get mad at Obama for this fact -- as we all do -- are wasting their energy, and they are pointing their finger at the wrong person. Obama is exactly what he said he was and exactly what we knew he would be. Even if we didn't know we knew it.

Sometimes it's not an easy thing to digest. Obama's not a hypocrite. To the extent that anyone has expected Obama's political program to be genuinely progressive, she has been kidding herself.

And so, anyway, that brings us back to Wednesday's health care speech. Here's what I thought: Substantively, it contained the inevitable disappointments and a few very positive developments. On the disappointment side, it seemed pretty eager to chuck the so-called "public option," but that was all but sure to happen. And anyway, I'm not all that convinced it makes much of a difference, considering that the government already owns all sorts of stuff that it doesn't own "on paper," like the big banks and the auto industry. So, when it comes down to it, what difference does it make what it's "called"? Now, being the tenacious opponent of neoliberalism that I am, I reserve the right to change my mind on that one, if, let's say, all health care is going to end up being "left to the market to...urm...solve." But even were that the case it wouldn't be anything new: It describes precisely the horrible non- system that we have now. Other substantive disappointments include Obama's continued pandering to senior citizens -- although somewhat less shamelessly than on previous occasions -- and that inevitable fact that Obama had to make a point of declaring a policy of 'fiscal prudence', especially as regards the federal deficit, which was politically a necessary move, but is also as far as I'm concerned completely bogus (like all claims within the bogus field of economics).

Substantively speaking, the best -- or most encouraging -- thing about the speech in my opinion had to do with the fact that it went some way toward framing health insurance reform in moral terms, which, as far as I'm concerned, is the Alpha and Omega of the health care issue. But, hey, that's me.

More important was that the speech was, operationally speaking, a bit of a masterstroke, as far as I'm concerned. As I've mentioned in the past, I'm fairly certain that the whole right-wing circus show of last month -- a.k.a., neo-Nazis at town hall meetings -- was something that the Obama administration and the Dems generally not only welcomed but allowed to crest (and then some!).

In the grand scheme of things, this 'August strategy' has served Obama and the Dems well in that it has:

1. linked perceptions of any putative 'Republican position' on health care to the handiwork of the Southern Racist Right,
   
   
2. galvanized the Democratic base through its visceral, disgusted reaction to the aforementioned SRR, and
   
   
3. fostered the commonsense presumption among 'mainstream Americans' (read: the upper-middle class suburban people who voted Obama into office in the first place and on whose support his health care agenda turns) that opposition to any moderate-yet-ambitious (read: Obamian) reform measure is identified primarily with people who are 'outside the mainstream' (read: poor, uneducated white trash, with whom upper-middle class suburbanites do not wish to be identified [and who pay their high property taxes for this very reason!]).

Therefore, the reason I think Obama's speech was an operational masterstroke has a great deal to do with its timing. The right-wing cant had escalated marvelously. A healthcare reform opponent performed a Heil Hitler salute in response to an Israeli man's impassioned advocacy of reform. Banners displaying images of Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache superimposed upon his upper-lip. The (hilarious) Barney Frank thing. Anti-reform protesters wielding loaded firearms in the vicinity of the President of the United States.

It had all lingered just long enough at its vomit-inducing stage, and Obama, who has been holding back and eluding the spotlight -- "But, Mr. President: your poll numbers!" -- and at the perfect moment, does a commendable job of delivering what might stand as among the skilled rhetorician's most-impressive-yet feats of oratory:

That large-heartedness -- that concern and regard for the plight of others -- is not a partisan feeling. It's not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character -- our ability to stand in other people's shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

This has always been the history of our progress. In 1935, when over half of our seniors could not support themselves and millions had seen their savings wiped away, there were those who argued that Social Security would lead to socialism, but the men and women of Congress stood fast, and we are all the better for it. In 1965, when some argued that Medicare represented a government takeover of health care, members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- did not back down. They joined together so that all of us could enter our golden years with some basic peace of mind.

You see, our predecessors understood that government could not, and should not, solve every problem. They understood that there are instances when the gains in security from government action are not worth the added constraints on our freedom. But they also understood that the danger of too much government is matched by the perils of too little; that without the leavening hand of wise policy, markets can crash, monopolies can stifle competition, the vulnerable can be exploited. And they knew that when any government measure, no matter how carefully crafted or beneficial, is subject to scorn; when any efforts to help people in need are attacked as un-American; when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter -- that at that point we don't merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

That was true then. It remains true today. I understand how difficult this health care debate has been. I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them. I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road -- to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term.

But that is not what the moment calls for. That's not what we came here to do. We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it. I still believe we can act even when it's hard. (Applause.) I still believe -- I still believe that we can act when it's hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history's test.

Because that's who we are. That is our calling. That is our character. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

I'm just as cynical as the next man, but I must say, this is some quality stuff.

If nothing else, it makes the Fox News thugs look one-foot-tall.*


________________
* In addition, that is, to sounding -- and being -- dumb.

Analysis of Obama's health care address.

I've been laboring over a couple of posts that will probably never see the light of day because they're too meandering and/or abstruse (even by my usual standards). So that's why I haven't posted anything in a few days. Anyway. So,

Sean Quinn of FiveThirtyEight.com has written a cogent analysis of President Obama's Wednesday night address before a joint session of Congress on the subject of new health care legislation:

My initial reaction to reading and then watching President Obama’s speech last night was that it was a very strong speech, one even more effectively delivered than written. There were two notable “show, don’t tell” moments that I thought were particularly helpful on the President’s behalf.

First was the high-profile, notorious Joe Wilson moment, a serious breach of decorum (in the U.S.) that served to underscore the exact point Obama had been making: we’d like to have a substantive contribution from Republicans, not the lying – his word – histrionic nihilism we’ve been seeing. Cue Joe Wilson with lying histrionics. Well done, Joe. It pissed people off, made a money-bomb for his opponent Ron Miller, and was similar to the way Dems (although certainly not Republicans) reacted to Sarah Palin’s acid floor speech at the convention on Sept 2, 2008. We saw the few Republicans who were in field offices last year motivated by Palin’s presence on the ticket but not McCain’s; we also saw many more people showing up to Obama offices in part galvanized by opposition to her sneering speech (and overall Palinosity).

The second “show, don’t tell” moment was the one on the issue of tort reform that Republicans hold dear. When Obama mentioned this subject and suggested a practical approach that accounted for across-the-aisle concerns, Republicans cheered. Obama continued, engaged by their cheering, and within his body language and tone of voice it struck me that he seemed to have shifted into live negotiation rather than a one-way speech. Optically, it was a show of good faith that seemed to give truth to his offer of open-doorism. It was a visceral, good guy, higher ground moment.

Read the rest of Quinn's piece here.

And here's a decent reflection in Salon.com.

Robert Reich poses a very good question about health care reform.

Why is the so-called "Gang of Six" -- a group of six senators, three Democrats and three Republicans (two of whom are on the extreme/fringe Right) who sit on a committee devoted not to health care but to finance -- deciding the fate of health reform for the entire country? Is "bipartisanship" that important? Don't the Dems, uh, have a majority in both houses and control the White House? Is it just the power of lobbyists, or have the Republican Brownshirts succeed utterly and finally in poisoning the well of civil discourse? Thomas Jefferson would be proud of you, Rush Limbaugh. Jolly good show...

Why the Gang of Six is Deciding Health Care for Three Hundred Million of Us

Continuing the Iran discussion.

The following is a response that the Blogger had attempted to post in response to the most recent comment from "DMA" in an ongoing conversation on the Iran protests and its political ramifications domestically and internationally, and other matters about which neither party has expertise or insight.

Do you mean the first "I" in "situation"?

Anyway, let's take a step back from the goings-on in Iran and consider the political positioning that is going on domestically: the GOP is -- as is to be expected -- attempting to capitalize on our visceral reaction to the repugnance of the absurdly titled "Supreme Leader" and regime. Particularly before the SL's Friday speech, which threatened the protesters with violent government retribution, the line was: "Well, Obama needs to stand up more for the people," etc.

Now, this is a familiar dynamic: Obama's initial expressed reaction, as you and I discussed previously, was in fact pitch-perfect. Not because it somehow eschewed expressing solidarity with the protesters' cause, but because it honored their cause, in its independence, the fact that it is rooted within Iranian society and not imposed (or 'rigged') by external ideological forces and because a more robust reaction would have ham-fistedly undermined the expressed purpose and function of his massively successful Cairo speech. Which, by the way, almost certainly had a galvanizing effect on the Iranians' perceptions of their own capacity for self-assertion and self-governance from within.

The Republicans, by contrast, wanted to come across as "heroes" of freedom and democracy, replicating -- as is to be expected -- the tenor and rhetoric of the Cold War and applying it to a situation to which it is inapplicable. Specifically, the posture that McCain would advocate that the president adopt is to in essence underestimate and misconstrue the very autonomy that the protesters are expressing in their demand for political and social emancipation. McCain's and Company's is the old-fashioned, patting-ourselves-on-the-back version of international policy, in which we appropriate the courage and hard work of movements in other countries -- even educated ones like Iran -- and decide that it's suddenly all about the United States. That the United States should somehow be in the spotlight, in essence, playing the tough guy and speaking on behalf of those who know perfectly well how to speak for themselves. The GOP, as always, embodies the seediest combination of paternalism, braggadocio, myopia and ignorance of historicity.

Part of your post, DMA, reminds me of why the Republicans are so willing to display these traits, flaws and all:

I saw in the paper today the Supreme Allah-Prophet Douchebag Over-Religious Cocksucking Bearded Motherfucking Shi'ite Jizz-Guzzling Leader said something threatening a crackdown on the protests.

I'm not singling DMA out, because this formulation could as easily have been my own -- well, minus the weird anti-Islam slurs and probably without the knock against beards, which I find to be a perfectly acceptable and at times exceedingly tasteful fashion as regards facial hair...

Anyway, the point is that Americans are right to experience seething rage against something or someone on the international scene who is perpetrating injustice. However, when we are in John Wayne mode, we're not always doing our best thinking. And I don't mean this in the way it might seem: I'm not suggesting that it is problematic for us to feel pangs of moral indignation. Quite the opposite: I think that the kind of thinking that this reaction beclouds is precisely our moral thinking.

In what ways? For one thing, we'll often end up feeling moral outrage vicariously and as though on behalf of a foreign population. In other words, we'll start seething so much against the foreign despot that we forget entirely about the REAL cause for celebration, which is the courage of the protesters. In essence, we let our hatred for the despot occlude the actual stars of the show altogether. This is more than simply hazy moral thinking. This kind of myopia in American discourse lies at the root of the most appalling and immoral actions our government has perpetrated in its interactions with the international world.

For example: think about Iraq. We had to make Saddam Hussein into our enemy. That he was an enemy to his own people was pure afterthought (and anyway, implicates the USA for having installed him and armed him in the first place). Anybody who thinks otherwise should ask himself: how many Americans have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war? I bet you have a rough estimate in your head. For the record, it turns out that the current number is 4,316, each and every one a tragedy. Now, ask yourself: how many Iraqis have died in the war? Admit it: you have no idea. I sure don't. In contradistinction to its familiarity with the American death toll figure, even Google News is apparently stumped by the Iraqi death toll question. Still think the Iraq War is all about the Iraqi people? To point out that most Iraqis are better off now than under Saddam is a spineless and patronizing evasion of the question.

Now, having said all of this, I think that after Friday's demagogic speech on the part of the "SL," it's probably a brand new situation that is poised to get really ugly really quickly. If the logic of the punditocracy is sound (a big if), the whole idea of negotiating over the nuclear program is basically off the table now, one way or the other, and, according to this thinking, Obama is apparently already transitioning to his, as it were, liberation theology mode, wherein celebrating the cause of the protesters and exposing as much as possible the thug-like brutality of the authoritarian regime are the orders of the day. Could be interesting.

The GOP fraternity's quandary:What to do about Rush?

The New York Times's Timothy Egan weighed in a couple of days ago on the apparent non-news story of the moment: a game of 'hot potato' being played among various factions of the Republican Party. The hot potato they're tossing back and forth is the grotesque, meaty melon of Rush Limbaugh. Below is excerpted Egan's blog entry on the subject, titled Fears of a Clown:

Once upon a time, you could drive to the most remote reaches of the United States and escape Rush Limbaugh. But from the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota, where only the delicious twang of a country tune or the high-pitched pleadings of a lone lunatic came over the AM dial, there is now the Mighty El Rushbo.

As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, I used to find Limbaugh to be an obnoxious but entertaining companion, his eruptions more reliable than Old Faithful. But now that Limbaugh has become something else — the face of the Republican Party, by a White House that has played him brilliantly — he has been transformed into car-wreck-quality spectacle, at once scary and sad.

Behold:

The sweaty, swollen man in the black, half-buttoned shirt who ranted for nearly 90 minutes Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He reiterated his desire to see the president of his country fail. He misstated the Constitution’s intent while accusing President Obama of “bastardizing” the document. He made fun of one man’s service in Vietnam, to laughter.

David Letterman compared him to an Eastern European gangster. But he looked more like a bouncer at a strip club who spent all his tips on one bad outfit. And for the Republican Party, Limbaugh has become very much a vice.

Smarter Republicans know he is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum[*] said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

Apart from a couple of unconvincing conclusions that Egan reaches later in the piece, this seems a pretty decent analysis of a current political/media sideshow (that I confess I haven't been following very closely). Egan correctly identifies the 'straw-man' technique that has for the last 20 years or longer been one of the GOP's most consistent and elegantly executed tactics. The key to pulling it off -- and the reason why the Democrats hadn't been any good at it in the pre-Obama era -- is doing it with a sense of humor. Why is a sense of humor so important?

Consider that in the past, Limbaugh-hatred was either (1) shrill and way too earnest or (2) holier-than-thou and self-congratulatory. The first tendency had the effect of expanding Limbaugh's power and influence because it rewarded him for cloaking his run-of-the-mill intellectual dishonesty in an aura of mischief and insouciance. This insouciance, at once contagious and 'empowering' to his audience, was applied to the task of caricaturing ever-more-outrageously various Democratic Party sacred cows (feminism, multiculturalism, political correctness etc.). This seemed a particular thorn in the side of the Democratic Party throughout much of the 90s (in fact, perhaps beginning with Michael Dukakis's failed 1988 presidential bid): the Dems were the squares, who -- in the eyes of many a country bumpkin and many a Wall Street trader alike -- didn't "get" it. In that era, the Dems allowed Rush to frame discourses in his own increasingly ludicrous (and, spiritually, racist and fascistic) terms. The Dems lacked the savvy to respond in a way that is disposed structurally to draw attention to the very 'straw man'-ness of his 'straw man' criticisms.
Circumstances have changed. It is this very savvy that the intuitive politician Barack Obama possesses in spades. Our new president wields this powerful weapon deftly, and thus, he exposes convincingly the hysterical patchiness of the rantings of Limbaugh and ilk, and he manages to do so in such a way as to charm your mother's pants off! The talent of the Republican Party for 'messaging' and propaganda has long been superior to that of the Democrats. But, ever since the majority of the public turned against the Iraq War, it's been painfully clear that its effectiveness has run its course.

The GOP sloganeering- and outrage-machine is fueled not on ideas but on sound-bites that serve as stand-ins for ideas. Once its pattern of rhetorical brinkmanship is exposed in all of its fraudulence -- as was done spectacularly in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq -- there's no recourse to a coherent set of underlying principles or ideas. In other words, it, like Fox News, is all smoke-and-mirrors.

Obama knows how to deal with smoke-and-mirrors. All you have to do is pucker up and blow the smoke away. The Elephant will then see its own naked reflection. And it will be ashamed.

The second tendency that I outline above -- that of self-righteousness -- made the Democrats fall into the trap that their antagonist had set for them: that of embodying the very caricature that America's favorite squishy-necked pill-popper had spent all of his hate-energy expounding. This not only appeared to Limbaugh's audience to confirm the validity of what he was saying, but it simultaneously further endeared him to his fanatical audience. Remember: this is an audience that has lived through its Savior vicariously. Rush's audience couldn't help but take personally any and all insults/slights that were directed against him. His not inconsiderable talent is that of making his devoted listener feel that he has something at stake in Limbaugh's treatment among the chattering classes. The egomaniac's egomaniac, el Rushbo beckons his avid listener to see the world through Rush's beady eyes. As Limbaugh would have it, the politician or journalist who behaves dismissively toward Rush is, in fact, behaving dismissively toward them and 'their kind', however narrowly circumscribed this category (racially, for instance) might be.

Even worse for the Dems of the 90s: self-righteousness is the character flaw that conditions the ugly act of scolding, and the best way to provoke somebody's irrational fury against an amorphous 'enemy' -- especially when the somebody in question has an inferiority complex to begin with -- is to scold him.**

Now the GOP is at last forced to come to terms with its ideological incoherence, the fracturing of the myriad marriages of convenience that were holding together its recent political alliances. Inevitably, this involves lots of finger-pointing. And, sure enough, it is not now the Democratic Party, but indeed Rush Limbaugh who comes across both as shrill and as taking himself way too seriously. As Egan observes correctly, the Dems have done a masterful job of exploiting this situation, and are reaping considerable benefit. The vast majority of voters identify the Democratic Party as the party of competent adults.

True, it is primarily Obama's administration -- and not Congressional Dems -- that enjoys this deserved reputation. But with George W. Bush's parting gift, the economy, in a free-fall -- the unemployment rate, an astounding 8.1 percent, is the highest it's been in twenty-five years --, all of these idiotic "no" votes among Republicans on any and all Obama-sponsored stimulus or spending packages are likely to come back to bite the GOP in the ass.

The continuing series of callow, nakedly partisan whine-fests from the likes of House Majority Leader John "Indignant Hillbilly" Boehner contribute to the stiff scent that's in the air: that of a major political party marginalizing itself seemingly out of existence... The Democrats, as long as they don't fall back into the traps of moral righteousness, multiculturalism as practiced in the early 90s,*** and so-called political correctness, will continue to reap benefits from turning the spotlight in the direction of the GOP airing its own dirty-laundry.

Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, like him or hate him (why bother choosing?), is a good mouthpiece for talking trash about Limbaugh precisely because Emanuel's a dick and doesn't pretend otherwise. Counterintuitive as it might seem, the fact that there is obviously something calculated behind the Dems' going after Limbaugh is actually what makes it work so well. This is because it is precisely the interaction between calculation and execution that makes this and any non-news story so damned entertaining. It's like watching a baseball team pull off a sacrifice fly to score an RBI.

A brief note on moral righteousness. It is true that certain species of moral righteousness play a role in Obama's shtick, but that's not the part of his shtick that is in any way partisan. Obama reserves this righteousness for affirming values about which there is near-unanimity -- values that are no less significant for their universality.

Obama will denounce torture, for instance, but opposition to torture is still -- THANK GOD -- a defining moral principle held among the vast majority of Americans, the exceptions including some truly slimy, invidious creeps like William Kristol and Alan Dershowitz. Anyway, as long as Dems don't start to press so hard as to actually create sympathy for Limbaugh, they'll benefit from this approach.

Actually, I take that back. It occurs to me that as soon as things get to the point at which Limbaugh becomes an object of sympathy, his relevance is at that moment forever demolished.

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* For the record, while I'll concede that David Frum is probably a little bit smarter than Rush Limbaugh (although certainly nowhere near as successful -- by any measure), in no way should this be confused with acceptance of the completely fallacious notion that David Frum is smart.

** See Hitler, Adolph.

*** Mind you, I'm not against multiculturalism as such. I simply dislike some of the idiotic excesses that came along with it when middle school principals, etc., started getting their unenlightened paws on it. Uh, if that sounds a little wooden, I'll just say that I do actually espouse a principled criticism, but I'm not in the mood right now to go into the details of it.