Debris
«chaque notaire porte en soi les débris d’un poète.»Archive for politics
Health Care Refauxrm: Good for insurance corporations; not-so-good for health care
The stock market appears to be drawing the appropriate conclusions from the misbegotten health care finance bill:
Insurance corporation share prices are up this week. Prospects for actually ensuring that everyone in the U.S. has access to adequate health care, not so much.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party Border Collie Patrol are working overtime trying to herd recalcitrant sheep into line. “Be patient”, they bark, “this is just a first step. Once the Democrats have 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 votes in the Senate, they’ll pass something even better.” And ponies unicorns!
The next time I hear some crackpot realist try to justify this crap with the old saws about “the perfect is the enemy of the good” and “politics is the art of the possible”, I might hit them in the face with a shovel. What the health care legislation fiasco illustrates is the greater risk of allowing the horrible to be the enemy of the acceptable. As Gramsci (among many others) taught, “the possible” is always contested terrain, and politics is precisely a struggle about redefining its bounds.
Remember: It was never about change. It is always about power.
UPDATE: Another lapdog sheepdog yelps.
Remember Fred Hampton & Mark Clark
Murdered by the Chicago Police Department, December 4, 1969
Was Mark Sanford unavailable?
The John Locke Foundation (which proclaims itself a “think tank” but is really more of a septic tank of warmed-over reactionary nostrums) will celebrate its 20th anniversary in January with a dinner featuring Newt Gingrich as keynote speaker. Gingrich–a serial liar and adulterer who notoriously pressed his cancer-stricken wife to sign divorce papers as she lay in her hospital bed–seems an ironic choice for an outfit that characterizes its mission as “Fighting for Freedom, Truth, Responsibility”. But not at all an ironic choice for an outfit as bereft of intellectual seriousness and integrity as the JLF.
Intercessionary Prayer as Hate Speech
This morning, I saw a car with two bumper stickers. One was a McCain 2008 campaign sticker. The other had a picture of President Obama and the message, “Pray for Obama Psalm 109:8″. I thought it was very nice that a McCain supporter would be urging prayer on behalf of Obama.
Then, out of curiosity (not being especially versed in biblical verses), I looked up Psalm 109:8. According to the King James translation (the one so beloved among book-burning fundamentalists), here’s what it says: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”
Lest anyone imagine or contend that the sentiment expressed is merely a benign wish that Obama not win a second term, consider what some biblical commentaries popular among Christian conservatives have to say about this particular verse:
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (“Long considered one of the best conservative commentaries on the entire Bible“): “The opposite blessing is long life (Ps 91:16; Pr 3:2). The last clause is quoted as to Judas by Peter (Ac 1:20).”
Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary: ”The Lord Jesus may speak here as a Judge, denouncing sentence on some of his enemies, to warn others. When men reject the salvation of Christ, even their prayers are numbered among their sins. See what hurries some to shameful deaths, and brings the families and estates of others to ruin; makes them and theirs despicable and hateful, and brings poverty, shame, and misery upon their posterity: it is sin, that mischievous, destructive thing. And what will be the effect of the sentence, Go, ye cursed, upon the bodies and souls of the wicked! How it will affect the senses of the body, and the powers of the soul, with pain, anguish, horror, and despair! Think on these things, sinners, tremble and repent.”
So there you have it. Someone is distributing bumper stickers urging people to pray for the President of the United States to die an early and shameful death, and for his family to be met with poverty, shame and misery. And people–presumably people who believe themselves to be good, god-fearing, patriotic Americans–are putting these stickers on their cars to help spread the word.
Would you like some crackers with your soup?
This evening, while eating dinner at a local restaurant, I overheard a discussion among three men at the next table. The men appeared perfectly normal, and their conversation (about their respective past vacations in Las Vegas) was at first hardly noteworthy.
Then, all of a sudden, the topic shifted. One of the men said that he’d received an email saying that, in January, “they” would be “going after Obama for not being a citizen.” It wasn’t at all clear who “they” were: Congress? Orly Taitz? Interpol? The Knights Templar?
The man went to to explain that, “I used to think everything in email was true”, but acknowledged that this latest revelation might not be. Instead, he opined that “the Democrats” were pushing the birther rumors (or at least this latest iteration) as a way of getting Obama out of office and replacing him with Biden, “so they can stay in control”. The other two men nodded in agreement.
I repeat that these men did not appear obviously deranged. They sounded perfectly intelligent. None of them were drinking alcohol. Yet, there they were, calmly discussing, as a serious proposition, the notion that the President of the United States either is not a U.S. citizen or is the victim of a conspiracy by members of his own party to make it appear that he is not a U.S. citizen.
It would be comforting to believe that this sort of crackpottery is limited to a drooling, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, know-nothing lunatic fringe. These three men, who probably live in my neighborhood and live respectable lives, stand as evidence that the dementia is more widespread.
Speaking figuratively, of course
Amusingly-named Utah State Senator Chris Buttars (pity his forebears left off the final “e”), who sponsored an anti-Gay marriage amendment to the state constitution, now says he might sponsor legislation to prohibit housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Explaining his position, Buttars said, “I don’t mind gays. But I don’t want ‘em stuffing it down my throat all the time.”
(Thanks to GFA51 for the tip.)
Sowing rogue quotes
It appears that among the great many things Sarah Palin does not know is the difference between former UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden and former Cheyenne Indian tribal leader John Wooden Legs. Her (poorly ghostwritten and apparently unedited) book, Going Rogue, erroneously attributes this quote to the college hoops legend:
Our land is everything to us…. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember than our grandfathers paid for it — with their lives.
In fact, the quote is from the tribal leader–which gives the words a rather different significance than Palin (or her hired hands) intended. If her teabagger supporters ever cotton on to the fact that her book approvingly quotes a critic of European-American land-grabbing imperialism, things could get really interesting.
Bow wow wow
The brouhaha over President Obama’s bowing to the Japanese Emperor reminded me of my own encounter with foreign royalty. When I received my graduate degree from London University, the ceremony, at the Royal Albert Hall, involved a stream of graduates passing before Princess Anne (Chancellor of the University) to bow or curtsy. As a staunch anti-monarchist, I didn’t care for the ritual. But, seeing no actual harm and not wishing to make a scene, I went along with it–a small, painless, and pointless gesture.
Of course, I was just a private citizen, not the elected leader of a republic. I don’t think a U.S. President should bow before a foreign head of state. Nor do I think a U.S. President should kiss a foreign dictator on the mouth, as George W. Bush did to Saudi King Abdullah. But neither gesture poses any real threat to democracy or our nation’s standing in the world. Obama’s bow was silly. The attempt to manufacture a political controversy is even sillier.
Hey, we know how to play softball!
The best comment I’ve seen concerning the atrocity of a health care “reform” bill passed by the House comes from comment to this post at Lawyers, Guns & Money. Speaking about the way Nancy Pelosi was snookered into allowing anti-choice Democrats to make an already bad bill even worse with the Stupak amendment, commenter Aimai quips:
the entire thing was like watching a game of prisoner’s dilemma played by very stupid cops
The analogy is arguably unfair to stupid cops, but otherwise it is perfectly apt.
