Friday, November 27, 2009

Charlie Pierce leaves the reservation

I promised myself I wouldn't do this anymore. (Talk about politics, and get meself all riled up.)

I lied.

Charlie Pierce on President Obama:

"It is early days, surely, but, at the moment, there is absolutely no way on god's earth that I would vote to re-elect Barack Obama as President of the United States. I always had my DOUBTS. But I was willing to ride the train in order to keep the government out of the hands of a bunch of undereducated paranoid lunatics, which I didn't see as very high a bar, truth be told. I do not underestimate the size of the problems he was handed last January with two badly run wars and one badly run economy. But, all Lilly Ledbetters aside, it is becoming increasingly plain that the man is not up to the most important job he was elected to do--which is to wring the accumulated viciousness, ignorance, and hackery of the past eight years out of the various parts of the United States government--and to do it brutally, if necessary, which it is. One of our two major political parties has completely lost its mind. This should be a political issue. It is incumbent upon the other party to eliminate that party's influence until it purges itself and comes to its senses again. It also scarcely needs to be said that the sane party has to watch its own ranks for people who seem to be enabling and abetting the goals of the crazy party. Otherwise, as Ezra Klein memorably put it this week, every attempt at bipartisanship winds up as "a hostage negotiation." President Obama--and does anyone but me notice that he gets the honorific conspicuously less often on TV than the last guy did?-- not only seems unequal to this task, he doesn't even seem to recognize the task at all. He wasn't elected to change the tone, dammit. He was elected to change everything because everything needed to be changed. So it's a hard goddamn job. So what? He didn't know this coming in? Now we're going to feed 34,000 more American kids into the meat grinder in Afghanistan because we're America and we can do anything we set our minds to? Hell, we can't even keep our own citizens alive by breaking the power of the health-insurance industry. We can't right our economy because it's still in the hands of Wall Street grifters, and the government has fallen into the thrall of a bunch of banker-morons I wouldn't trust with a potato gun. Some people needed to be crushed politically. Some people needed to go to jail. Some people needed to be exiled forever from the serious business of self-government. It's Black Friday, and I'm shopping for another candidate. I'm beating the rush."

10 comments:

  1. I think we now agree on not voting for Obama in 2012. We even agree on "One of our two major political parties has completely lost its mind", even if we disagree on which of the two parties it is.

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  2. "Hell, we can't even keep our own citizens alive by breaking the power of the health-insurance industry."

    One example of the insanity by one of the political parties that really frosts me is the health care bill that contains the threat of jail time or massive fine (tax) if people don't spend large amounts of their money the exact way the government wants them to.

    It's really none of the government's business how people proportion their money between food/shelter/healthcare/etc (that is a choice for families to make!), and certainly not a personal choice that should be disrupted by the current "Gulag Health Care Plan" put forth by Congress.

    Vent-mode off.

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  3. Again, I promised myself I wouldn't say anything. Again, I lied.

    I know you believe this-well, I'm pretty sure, based on the way you phrased this, that you believe this-but I'm still stunned that you think that the party of Beck, and Hannity, and Limbaugh, and Dobbs, and Malkin, and McConnell, and Gingrich, and Palin, and Jindal, and Norquist, and "death panels", and "deficits don't matter", and torture, and falsified intelligence, and tax cuts uber alles, and "ACORN stole the election", and "evolution is just a theory", and "global warming is a plot", and birthers, and "the fundamentals of the economy are sound"-that THESE are the sane ones?

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  4. A fair list, except for "deficits don't matter" (which sticks much more strongly to the Dems, who are increasing the debt at least 8 times faster than Bush did), and "death panels" (which the Republicans oppose).

    "Tax cuts uber alles" is a good one, actually, since we are still badly overtaxed. The overtaxation is pure greed, and Obama is already breaking his promises with several unnecessary tax proposals that hit the poor and middle class.

    And what is worse: being the party that makes exaggerated claims against ACORN, or being the party that is actually allied with ACORN (the Mafia of massive voter fraud?, which also tries to arrange child rape on the side?). I know ACORN didn't steal the election: the number of fake voters is much more than overwhelmed by Obama's strong election victory margin. But it would be wise to imprison ACORN's top brass and bust the organization lest it might throw an election in the future.

    Your names list is a little weak, IMHO: half of them have never held office and aren't running for office. Not much power there. Such a list is at least made up for with names on the other side.

    For example, Tom Daschle the tax criminal, Charlie Rangel and Geitner and the rest of the tax crooks, William Jefferson with the cold cash, Nancy Pelosi with the massive waste of tax dollars on personal perks for her,etc)

    p.s. I'm not sure Dobbs belongs on the list. I can't find anything that pins down his political party. McConnell? I googled him and can't find a scandal.

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  5. And, no, global warming is not a plot. But it is a scam that has been busted wide open now that the secret emails about rigged data have been revealed.

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  6. http://bit.ly/5b9IkE

    Global warming is not a hoax or a sham. Hundreds of studies, and thousands of scientists, say it is real.

    Could you make a similar list of Democrats who have engaged in shameful, occasionally criminal activity? Not as long a one, but yeah, you probably could.

    But Pierce argues that the loony bin right is driving the train in the GOP, and I would tend to agree with him.

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  7. So much for global warming. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet probably had better look for some new snake oil to sell. This one is coming down, just like the "new ice age" craze of the 1970s fell apart. But that silly idea didn't go as spectacularly with this one, with its proof of the leading "scientists" covering up data that does not fit their theories, and intentionally destroying databases.

    As for loony bin people actually driving the train (running the nation), I could quickly come up with a long list of "loony bin" and avaricious Dems who are actually in power, or very recently were. Then we'd probably be back and forth with lists.

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  8. http://bit.ly/EKK7
    http://bit.ly/76aFUE
    http://bit.ly/7TuT8b
    http://bit.ly/87TB7S


    For goodness sake. The evidence is everywhere. Global warming is not a hoax, not a plot, not a scam. It is happening.

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  9. And I can come up with a bunch more links. It's quite controversial. And what those "scientists" did (who were leading climatologists) is worse than a scam.

    They plotted like the middle-ages Vatican or something.

    Don't worry. It will all be over by 2015 or so, when the cycle comes around and the "new ice age" scaremongering of the 1970s comes back in vogue.

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