I keep getting sucked into stuff at home and at work that's monopolizing my time but don't want to shut this blog down. I'm just going to post less frequently for a while. I assume at some point I'll get back to daily posting or something thereabouts.In the post before last I mentioned that I thought the ignoring politics approach many of my blogger friends were taking was the sane approach to things. I just can't bring myself to do so. I've been a political junkie since I was was fifteen-years old and started reading the paper. It's as coded into my system as drinking coffee.
So I'm a hamster on the wheel.
It really is frustrating. The democrats, including Obama, suck. Sure- they don't suck anywhere near as bad as the GOP. Obama is a light years better president than the chimp who last sat in the Oval Office. But it's not nearly good enough.
Thirty years of conservative rule including a slavish devotion to the Free Market Fairies have taken their toll on this country. Now is not the time for baby steps walking that crap back. Yet baby steps are all Obama is giving us.
Take the health care debate as an example. I think we need a single payer solution. I would go so far as to say we will have a single payer solution at some point and the only question is how much pain we're going to have to work through between then and now to get to that point as the regressive forces in our society including big insurance companies fight such changes tooth and nail.
Yet single payer isn't on the table in Washington as health care reform is discussed. Instead Obama and the democrats punked themselves once again by making concessions before the debate even began in earnest and beginning with the centrist public option solution.
Because the rules that our elites work under insist we always consider the views of the whargarrbbbll right, regardless of what the voters say about those views we're going to get some sort of health care "reform" that's somewhere between the centrist public option and a regressive plan that actually forces the uninsured to by insurance from the crappy private insurers that are slowly choking the country to death. In short: no reform at all.
How are voters going to treat democrats if they not only fail to actually reform health care but make it worse with a market based approach? My guess is that it will be something along the lines of an electoral roundhouse kick to the nuts. A well deserved one at that.
Incidentally; this is why I don't care much about the Franken fight other than the fact he seems to send the Michelle Malkins of the world into a frothing fury. Even with a supermajority in the senate the democrats will be losers.
Steve Benen sums it up well...
After all, American voters gave Democrats a big majority in the House, a big majority in the Senate, and 365 electoral votes to the Democratic president. Obama has a 60% approval rating, and support for Republicans has plummeted.
It's tempting, then, to remind Democratic policymakers, as they negotiate with the shrinking minority party and back down on key priorities, "You won."
All true, but truth be told what really keeps me banging my head on my desk isn't the idea that we have to consider the ideas of republicans in legislation. Just belonging to a political party doesn't automatically make one wrong on the issues. No, what really sets me off is the the GOP as it's currently constituted is functionally batshiat insane. They bring nothing to the table these days besides their raving lunacy.
Why should the country be forced to entertain their angry, incoherent babbling?
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