A fairy tale mashup

You and I live in the same town. You're the biggest tycoon in the neighborhood, loved and feared by all. I live in a dinky shack on the wrong side of the tracks. But one day I happen upon a goose that lays golden eggs. I've struck it rich, but as it turns out the elves who make your widgets can only subsist on golden eggs. So instead of negotiating a fair price for my eggs, you decide to start stealing them. I can never catch you in the act, as it happens, because you have a magical cloak which makes you invisible.

Now everyone in the town knows it's you, because you make a big show of proudly giving me useless things I'll never need as supposed compensation for stealing my eggs, like a blender that turns rocks into boll weevils. And you've got the police and the judges in your back pocket, so there's no hope of going to the authorities. So one day after months and months of you stealing my golden eggs while I still live in poverty, I finally lose it. I take a machete, go to your house, and brutally hack up your spouse and children.

Of course, I've overreacted. Worse, my retaliation is worthless because I've punished innocent people who had nothing to do with you stealing my eggs.

On the other hand, you still stole my eggs.

QOTD

Doug Henwood, liveblogging Wednesday night's presidential address.

“I want to speak to seniors”: Medicare is pretty great, isn’t it? But we can’t let the rest of the population have it, because that would be Canadian or something.

This is the million-dollar question, isn't it? Why aren't all these old farts sputtering around town hall meetings screaming OMG GUMMIT TAKEOVER spending more energy complaining about te network of crate warehouses they are housed in as a result of being on Medicare.

(Full disclosure: As I'm legally blind I'm covered by Medicare. And it's quite useful, though I've never had any health problems to speak of. Perhaps this will be the in the Democrats' final compromise bill; all the uninsured can just put their eyes out.)

Money money money money!

But, but, but," the teabaggers whine "healthcare costs mooooooney!" Yes, all upon fall, there's no such thing as a free lunch. If we're going to decide that lacking cash is not a good reason to let people rot in the gutter, then someone's going to have to pay for it.

So.

What we've got here is a fundamental question of whether or not those people who are Not Me are actual human beings or a collection of ideas that we sometimes have to pay attention to because they seem to be existing in the same universe as I do.

Boo hoo, we can't paaaaaaaay for it!

The people who face financial and/or physical ruin from our delightful Free Market health insurance industry are already paying for it. It's not a matter of whether health care will be paid for, but who will be doing the paying. Cold cash ain't the only kind of capital.

But I am my own man! I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps! I wear bootstraps! Whatever pantywaist commie said you should love your neighbor as yourself obviously didn't believe in the American Dream. Freedom! Freedom means I can punch someone else's nose and laugh because they can't afford to pay for it!

Sane countries admit that they are nations of communities as well as individuals, and so every individual acknowledges hir responsibility to pay a little extra so individuals aren't destroyed by events out of their control. This is not a sane country. This is a country of cruel, savage individuals driven to sociopathic lengths to annihilate everyone save our own bloodline. I am surprised we manage to keep the polite veneer.

I am a little sad that I was not around to hear the teabaggers debate the introduction of socialized fire departments. "Forsooth," our hypothetical teabagger must have said, "we just don't have enough water to put out a house that can't afford a proper central heating system." It is to chuckle.

Are you being served?

Van Jones is a longtime activist for environmental and prison reform causes, and, up until yesterday, was brought in to be Obama's "green jobs" czar. The trouble with having activists near the White House, though, is that they often say true things which are Not Serious. Jones apparently signed in a petition in 2004 which may have had a loose connection to 9/11 Trooferism. Given Jones long history in activism, this seems like a marginal offense, and he has denied ever being a Troofer. Nonetheless, he's been purged, because liberals are disposable.

Soon after the election, the Administration began corralling the big liberal DC interest groups into a variety of organizations and communication networks through which they telegraphed their wishes -- into a virtual veal pen. The 8:45 am morning call co-hosted by the "liberal" Center for American Progress, Unity 09, and Common Purpose are just a few of the overt ways that the White House controls its left flank and maintains discipline.

My own experience with the Veal Pen came indirectly, when some of them had the temerity to launch a campaign against Blue Dogs. They were rebuked and humiliated in front of their peers as a lesson to them all at a Common Purpose meeting, which is run by lobbyist Erik Smith. White House communications director Ellen Moran attends. It isn't an arms-length relationship between these groups and the administration.

A few weeks ago, Rahm Emanuel showed up at a Common Purpose meeting and called these liberal groups "fucking stupid" for going after Blue Dogs on health care and ordered them not to do so any more. Since that time, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have.

Ah, I knew Rahm Emanuel would be delightful to have around. And to think, some people believed he might occasionally turn that hard-assedness on Republicans!

LMAO

School speech backlash builds

OK, I admit, I can see a situation where people might have been exercised if Bush had given a similar address. If he didn't; it seems like such a banal thing for the president to do that I can't imagine each of them hasn't done similar. And American party politics has a ridiculous my-team-versus-your-team streak where no one actually cares if what you're screaming about now matches what you were saying five years ago. So now Republicans think it's trendy and cool to be out on the street protestin' against the man and tyranny by the Gummit.

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The key difference in any kind of equivalency formula, though, is that one can readily find the stupid emanating from the official channels of the Republican Party. Here's Florida Republican chairman Jim Greer.

As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power

Greer may be a little confused because he doesn't mention where Obama's socialist ideology will put the means of production in the hands of workers. But no matter. Can you imagine any official Democrat issuing a statement about "President Bush's fascist ideology?" S/he wouldn't remain in the party much longer.

Once again, we have conservatives allegedly outraged that their chillens' is gonna be indoctrinated upon leaving the immediate supervision of an Approved Authority. Righties must be terribly afraid of being lousy parents, given how little faith they seem to have in their children resisting any and all ideas they might randomly encounter.

UPDATE: Found this great bit of business in the LGM comments. It's worth it to post the whole thing.

Here's part of my imaginary Obama speech to the little ones:

First, don’t pay attention in class. Daydream instead. The way this country is going, those dreams are the only things you’re ever going to have.

Second, don’t listen to your parents and teachers -- you should know why not by now. Geez, just look at ‘em.

They voted for George W. Bush twice! They think Sarah Palin is smart! They still believe Saddam Hussein destroyed the Twin Towers! They all refinanced into interest-only option ARMs 6 months before the real estate market crashed! They didn’t diversify their 401k’s!

Sorry, kids, those are grown-up concerns. Got off target there.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. When you’re old enough, quit school. Really, there’s no reason to stay beyond age 15 or 16 because you’ll be able to hook and to cook by then, and that’s pretty much all the skilz you’ll be needing in 21st- century America.

Just don’t come crying to me when your meth-rotted teeth fall out during some domestic dispute. I tried to get you some healthcare but your parents and your teachers… well, Christ, go ask them. They still think Marx, Lenin, and Stalin are hiding under their bunk beds.

Look, I only have a few minutes so I have to wrap this up fast.

First, evolution is real. Don’t go believing all that creationism crap.

Second, abstinence doesn’t work. Use a condom. Each… and… every… time.

Third, if the hooking and cooking don’t work out, try to marry a Canadian.

Remember, if your parents and teachers ask, we talked about studying hard and making the honor roll and Japanese crap like that.

The Preacher and the Slave

IWW songwriters like Joe Hill and T-Bone Slim would often steal the tunes of Christian hymns and rewrite the lyrics. This was done for two reasons. 1) The tune would already be familiar to many in the intended audience who could then sing along which was particularly useful for 2) disrupting Salvation Army rallies (the Wobblies called it "Starvation Army,") by singing along with..rather different lyrics. This song--written by Hill to the tune of "In the Sweet By and By"--also introduced the saying "pie in the sky" into popular parlance.

Ho-hum

This may slide under the radar, but it's quite important to point it out. The NYT today reports that Tom Ridge is claiming in a tell-all book that the Bushies pressured him to raise the turr'st Threat-O-Meter in the days immediately preceding the 2004 election. This basically establishes what most Unserious people already suspected; the color-coded nonsense was little more than a political tool which could be raised and lowered whenever the GOP needed a boost.

Yup

Again, it's difficult to disagree with anything Glennzilla sez.

The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.

Much has been made of the wide berth given by Democrats to the screaming, occasionally armed, town hall nutters when Bush and Co. would have anyone with a disagreeable t-shirt sent to the penalty box. Because, quite unintentionally, the crazies are doing the White House a favor by acting as a determined if deranged popular opposition--much out of proportion to the general public, of course--to any kind of public plan. "This is why they started from "public option" rather than "single payer;" they knew when the inevitable Broderist demands for bipartisanship came and they were forced to make concessions, they would already be much closer to the right.

By getting a bill that includes mandatory handouts to the insurance industry, Obama and Emmanuel get the best of all possible worlds. They please their Big Bidness sponsors and, in 2010, Democrats can go home claiming to have passed the promised Health Care Reform, and that will be the end of that for the next 20 years.

Hold on to the water

Just saw this Tweet from Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.

Baseball fans: Wash Nats just hours away from NOT signing top pick Strasburg. MLB's lack of economic parity pitiful.

"Economic parity" in sports sounds nice and socialistic on the surface, but in practice inevitably means artificially reduced salaries and resultant increased profits for management. Which is likely why so many people who would run screaming at any mention of socialism support the idea so uncritically. There's no reason to cry any tears for the Nationals who may be making the smartest move in franchise history so far--given the track record of previous "can't miss" pitchers in the draft--by not succumbing to Boras' ridiculous demands. On the other hand, they knew the risk when they drafted him, so as ever the Nationals can only lose by winning.

How I know there is a common ancestor

Why do primates have the irresistible urge to throw things?

As part of a promotional night to debut the new "Reggie Bar", a candy bar named after Reggie Jackson, fans at Yankee Stadium received free samples. The marketing scheme backfired though as fans threw hundreds of them back onto the field forcing the game to be halted until the ground crew was able to clear them away.

The only reason humans no longer throw our own dung is that no one will conveniently hand it to us.

Naked shilling for the rich

I have to admit I was wrong. I felt the political shit-storm of 2009 would be over Employee Free Choice, but that bill has already undergone a mercy killing by corporate Democrats. But it doesn't matter; the same fundamental dispute is at the heart of the health-care fracas namely, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the right of the fortunate to not be restrained in exercising tyranny over the unfortunate.

In fact, it may be a blessing that the ruling class has chosen this particular battlefield given the absolute ridiculousness of their position is visible to anyone halfway conscious. Claiming ostrich-like that the 'Murican health care system is da best in the world while Europe and Canada keep the elderly in pens fed with gruel is now roughly the equivalent of saying that Jesus is green unicorn cheese. Yet they push on, feeding their paranoid authoritarian followers with even more absurd hysterics: "Obama gon' kill yo' granny!" Now, apparently, the Gummit is going to going to control all of your bank accounts! This is 9/11 Trooferism elevated to the status of essential debate.

Ah, the Gummit, the Gummit. I've noticed the Gummit started being the bad guy again on or about January 20, 2009. Which is odd, because Obama has never really stopped doing any of the things right-wingers want the Gummit to do; kill Muslims, spend on "defense," eavesdrop wantonly, and erect a wall around information in the name of national security. Suggest that the Gummit could serve the interest of someone other than American business and wealthy straight white men and suddenly you've got a bona fide leeee-getimiate revolution on your hands. Let freedom ring! And such. What is it about the Gummit that makes it so much more ominous and malicious, even when private industry is already doing the very things that hysterics believe are imminent with Gummitcare?

Of course, freedom isn't working out so well for the 50 million citizens without health insurance. But no matter, they deserve it for being poor. And if Jesusamerica decided they deserved to have health insurance, then they would. They certainly shouldn't use their voting rights to elect a government to give them healthcare; that would be voting themselves money they didn't earn. After all, the moneyed classes never vote in their own economic interest; that would just be class warfare, comrade.

Not only that, why, those longsuffering Americans would rather die than have Gummit interference in their health care! What patriots! Now, it's true that their house is burned down, the mail hasn't come in years, and they can't drive on a public highway or take public transit, so it's not likely they've got much of a life left. But they died free, and with their hands off of my money, so we should salute them.

Today in teh stooopid

As far as I care to tell, the Investor's Business Daily is a Serious, well-respected informant for the nation's ruling classes. As such, you'd expect them to be impeccably honest and accurate and those other things our moneyed classes demand of their news sources. Ahem.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Stephen Hawking is British, and was living in the UK, under the iron-toed boot of the NHS, when his disease was diagnosed.

Belief

Continuing the new bizaro-world right-wing embrace of protesting, the teabaggers have taken to taken to healthcare town hall meetings across the country to read aloud from their inbox and talk-radio script. In a not-quite-revelatory discovery, I've noticed that these self-styled glibertarians who squeal on and on about the Constitution tend to have the same predilections that befall another group of people who claim to take their scriptures literally.

Both Biblical and Constitutional literalists have a fun way of ignoring or creatively interpreting sectoins of the holy book which don't reinforce their prefabricated worldview.

Which is irrelevant because the reason people appeal to scriptures in the first place is to obfuscate the fact that their beliefs--in the case of the teabaggers, opposition to universal health care--can't be defended by appeals to common reason.

(This is especially peculiar for Constitutional literalists, since the document was never meant to be permanently inerrant. So who knows why they cling to the idea.)

Can't imagine why

So apparently the sterling, seminal argument being pushed by right-wingers, including preeminent "Christian" toolbag Tony Perkins, is that government-run health care will lead to a grimy dystopia where the elderly are euthanized to save money, which is borne out by the horror stories of gulag hospitals in Great Britain and Canida. Because, you know, the government doesn't already pay for the health care of citiznes over 65, and 29 other countries--most with national health care--don't have longer life expectancies than the United States.

I'm beginning to think people are kind of gullible.

A long way between horizons

Paul Krugman wonders:

When I saw that Michelle Malkin will be on the Stephanopoulos panel this week, my first thought was that nobody as far to the left as she is to the right would ever appear on such a panel. But then I started to wonder (a) what I mean by that (b) if it’s true.

Well of course it's true. Regardless of whether one finds him agreeable, Noam Chomsky is one of the country's great academics and extremely popular, yet will never appear on a Sunday talk show panel. Partially because the people who would read a Gnome Chomsky book aren't going to watch This Week with George Whoever. Conservatives, for all of their obstinate kvetching about lib'rul media, will gladly flock to whatever corporate outlet genuflects to them. Generally, the only place on television one can find actual lefty or anti-imperialist libertarian voices are on Bill Maher's show or occasionally the Stewart/Colbert hour (such as whenever Lewis Black is on The Daily Show). Turns out not only do you get better news from comedy, but a wider range of opinions, too.

Government

Matt Taibbi:

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing.

Indeed. Greenwald specifically points to the first poll on that sheet, but really all of them show solid support for guaranteed health coverage. 55 percent believe guaranteeing coverage for everyone is more important than containing cost. Yes, the number has been slipping, thanks to the one-sided propaganda war waged by Serious People and their corporate media lackeys, but it remains positive. That's not nothing.

Liberals, of course, are barely much help. Smoky, backroom debating among intellectual philosopher-kings is just how they imagine government working; it's only a matter of finding that elusive combination. They paid for that education. Surely it ought to give them some special clout. Populism? Let's not be uncivilized here!

The first epistle of Apostle Milton to the Suckers

Yes, we are near the blessed end of the Sarah Palin era in American politics, but one more before we go.

She also attacked Hollywood, which enlists "delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets" in their "anti-Second Amendment causes," against which "patriots will protect our individual guaranteed right to bear arms." She warned against "enslavement to big central government," because "it can't make you happy or healthy or wealthy or wise," which comes instead from "God's grace helping those who help themselves."

I am curious as to where this theological tradition comes from. It seems to have become part of the canon of Free Market Christianity. Apparently, when John the Baptist said "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same," he forgot to add "but only when he is satisfied that the man with none has worked hard enough to earn one."

Resolve

Statement A: Government-run enterprises are bulkier and more inefficient than privately-owned business.

Statement B: Government cannot be allowed to run a health care program because it will compete out the more-efficient private insurance in the "free market."

Hypothesis: People who reflexively claim Statement A don't actually believe it.

Uniquely American

An email from my esteemed representative.

There are many parts of our health care system that are the envy of the world, but the parts that aren’t working threaten to bankrupt families, businesses and government alike. We literally cannot afford to not address this challenge head-on. As we move forward, our goal should be protecting what works and fixing what doesn’t.

Only a uniquely American solution will fix the weaknesses in the current system, and any solution must first start with an honest and open conversation. I’ve always said we will never achieve real health care reform without giving all of the stakeholders in this debate a seat at the table. That includes you.

I've figured it out. The United States is like the aging hipster of the world community; the kind of person who won't listen to a band if their entire fanbase can't fit in his closet. Why can't we learn anything from other industrialized democracies who have faced similar challenges and...really don't envy all that much about our health care system? Because we're just that special, that's why.

Things I remember happening

The National League winning the All-Star Game.