debate » My Take

Abdication of Democracy

debate, GOP, government, Hypocrisy, Obama, Politics, Taxes, Teaparty, Truth 1 Response »

Jul 262011

This is a very simple concept, and only a simple explanation will suffice… I pondered trying to write this post using only fifty unique words but I am not sufficiently talented to make “I do not like the righties plan I do not like it Sam I am” adequately detail what I mean…

Our democracy is based on co-equal branches of government, when those branches are held by different parties the government cannot enact new legislation unless the parties can reach a compromise that satisfies both sides. In such a case new legislation might not be possible, too bad, deal with it.

The problem comes when action MUST be taken by the legislative branch to continue the basic functions of the government that these disparate players are supposed to be serving. If inaction is not an option than compromise isn’t just an unpleasant reality it is an absolute necessity. The government of the United States of America cannot be shredded by the refusal of elected representatives to participate. The business of the United States requires that those who would pretend to be worthy of inclusion could put aside ego and ideology for the greater good of the nation, those unwilling to do so prove themselves unworthy of their post… period.

Democracy is not unlike herding kittens, progress is never going to be simple or direct, but there are times that all hands must come together to accomplish that which must be accomplished. Refusing to acknowledge that divided government requires compromise is tantamount to abdication of the concept of Democracy. If you have no use for our government, get the hell out of the way, the citizens of this country require more. A government of, by and for the people can only be hijacked for a limited time, when that time is up the pushback will be swift and harsh.

I could not, would not, ever vote.
For taxes on a great big boat.
I will not vote to raise a tax.
balance on the seniors backs!
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
We do not like them on the rich.
We do not like them silly bitch.
We will not raise a single tax.
Despite all of your stupid facts.
We do not like them here or there.
We do not like them ANYWHERE!

Seriously, this is the level of discourse from the right, and the country deserves better.

Why Wisconsin Matters

debate, GOP, government, Hypocrisy, Politics, Taxes, Teaparty, The Economy, Truth 1 Response »

Feb 172011

We see a very dangerous dynamic going on in the state of Wisconsin, and the state of Ohio, and the state of Florida and, and…

The GOP is selling the meme that hard working Americans should be outraged that hard working Americans have a tiny bit more than they do…

The Governor of Wisconsin proposes to strip all state workers the right of collective bargaining under the guise of a state budget crisis. The fact is that Wisconsin was projected to have a surplus this year before Gov. Walker cut taxes, additionally stripping workers of their bargaining rights will have little to no impact in the short term.

The Republicans have spent 30 years engineering the largest concentration of wealth that has been experienced in this country since the 1920′s and now they want those that have been decimated, stagnated, downsized and degraded to rip each other to shreds for the scraps left over…

Think about this for just a moment.

The median weekly wage for a non union worker is $717

The median weekly wage for a union worker is $917

The median weekly income for the top 1.5% is $4,807

The median weekly income for the top .1% is $30760

So logically the GOP would like to see those at the bottom of the earnings scale angry and outraged at those barely higher on the scale… oh and while they are at it outrage at the unemployed and those crushed by the housing crisis would very effectively control the 98% of this country that is being fleeced by unmitigated greed.

Now that the GOP have come completely out into the open to blatantly advocate for only the richest and most powerful we had better be prepared to go to the mat because if we can’t beat them when they behave like this there is very little hope.

Don’t You Wish?

debate, Gun Control, Lawrence, Politics, Truth 1 Response »

Jan 202011

I have always been fond of saying that intellectual curiosity is the difference between fact informing opinion and opinion filtering fact. Lawrence O’Donnell exposes the effect with Rep. Trent Franks, ideology renders him incapable of responding to the actual question asked… Watch all the way to the end, it is worth it.

Is it really such a blow to freedom to have to reload after ten shots?

Taxing Credulity

debate, GOP, government, Hypocrisy, Politics, Taxes, Truth Comments Off

Dec 052010

The tax cut debate, er, hypocrisy, um, extortion has according to “conventional wisdom” lead to the complete capitulation of the Democratic party to the party that no longer even bothers to try to justify the gulf between what they say they stand for and what they stand for every day of the world.

First let us deal with cold, hard, facts… Small businesses, who the GOP claim are the sole reason for their vehement support for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 do NOT BASE THEIR DECISIONS ABOUT HIRING ON TAX RATES!

Small business owners base their hiring decisions on a calculation that the profit to be realized from the employee will exceed the expense of that employee (an expense that is tax deductable). Small business that do otherwise do not survive to reap the fantasy benefit that the Republicans pretend to provide. Tax cuts will not stimulate the creation of jobs, claim if you will that rich people will spend more of their expendable income than the unemployed trying to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, it won’t be true but at least we would be debating reality.

The tax cut debate is like everything else the Republicans have done for the last thirty years, a lie designed to enrich the few while creating the conditions to decimate the social safety net that they have always despised.

Not kidding…

Don’t Shoot the Messenger Pt. 2

debate, GOP, government, media, Politics, Truth Comments Off

Nov 292010

So we have been over how the approach to messaging creates a clearer path to unity for the right than the left but beyond unity, what advantage does the right glean from their rigid adherence to doctrine? Understanding… The right has been running on a few established memes for better than three decades, it is these memes that allow them to communicate whole belief structures in few words.

First a brief discussion of memes; A meme is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena (Wikipedia definition).

Memes like;

“small government”

“the sanctity of life”

“lower taxes creates jobs”

“free markets”

“tax and spend liberals”

“right of center country”

“let you keep more of your own money”

“we trust the American people with their money”

“patriotism”

These memes have been repeated and ingrained for the better part of thirty years, there is an agreed upon definition that is built into the hearing of the audience making it possible for complete idiots to communicate to their audience even when they are barely able to communicate at all. Seriously, look at the last election and tell me without the heavy use of these memes people like Sharron Angle, Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell could possibly make a coherent argument for their candidacy (and I realize we are only talking coherent to those who buy into the meme). So the right can field any old idiot and as long as they keep hammering the memes, their base nods in agreement and the media buys into their credibility.

At times it truly feels like the invasion of the Borg, resistance IS futile they just keep coming, or even more apt, it feels like zombies, it’s exhausting they just keep on coming and even when you completely eviscerate them in a debate, they come back to life blurting a thirty year old meme that still manages to net them a large portion of “likely” voters. What can be done? How do you combat the stupid when it has been institutionalized?

Don’t Shoot the Messenger…

I don’t mean me, don’t shoot the messenger in this case means that you can take out candidate after candidate, you win some and you lose some but we will never achieve enough traction on the strength of facts to change the tide as long as we allow the right to play the game by their rules…

What makes the right so effective at communicating a unified message? Their memes…

Don’t shoot the messenger, dismantle the message. Trying to kill every zombie that can repeat a talking point is tedious, time consuming, expensive and ultimately futile. Only by tearing down the meme will we accomplish long term gains in political discourse in this country so desperately needs.

Don’t shoot the messenger, dismantle the message, because until we can tear down these memes and make the right run on their ideas as they relate to the real world the sheer effort to overcome the zombies will sap our strength, fracture our coalitions and damage our democracy.

Progressives, tear down these memes!

Don’t Shoot the Messenger Pt. 1

debate, Global Warming, GOP, government, Hypocrisy, Politics, Religion, Truth 1 Response »

Nov 282010

In politics there is what you say and there is what you do… what you do could justifiably be called policy, what you “say” about what you are doing, have done or will do, well that’s the “message”.

The” message” is the daily scorecard of politics in this country. Success or failure of the “message” wins and loses elections far more frequently than policy even though it has no actual impact and policy bears directly on our lives and livelihoods. Success of a “message” often depends on widespread adoption by the talking heads and endless repetition, even in the face of facts that clearly refute the so called “message”, and this is where we find the vast difference between the left and the right the effectiveness of their “messaging” and why we will never be able to beat them if we keep playing their game.

The main difference between the left and the right boils down to approach. It is the approach that amplifies the “message” and the fact is that the rights “message” will always be louder and more cohesive than the left and there is not one damn thing that we can do about it.

The right has a world view built around ideology. Facts that don’t fit into that ideology are discarded without a second thought while facts that fit are paraded as proof positive of their point. It is this approach that makes it possible to ignore centuries of geological science and profess a belief that the earth is six thousand years old or to find a few dubious emails proof positive that more than two thousand scientists with the IPCC are lying about climate change. It is not difficult to understand how this approach lends itself to unified voices and consistent “messaging”, something happens that fits into the overall ideology and the whole chorus starts singing the same tune.

The left by and large have a world view that is shaped by fact, as more information becomes available we are willing to change our minds. Being able to let go of a previously held belief in the face of new facts is a natural process for those who share this world view. Not that we don’t get invested in our beliefs, far from it, we will fight tooth and nail to try to convince each other we have the right read on the facts, that we understand what it means. The “messaging” from the left therefore is nuanced, there are flavors of an overall theme, and when the information changes, the “message” shifts, amplification is lost, consistency broken, repetition impossible.

The upshot is that while the right is focused on black and white the left is painting with a thousand shades of gray, and we’ll fight about every bit of it, including how to spell grey. It is our nature, it informs our approach and though it seems at times to be the worst kind of political liability, it only truly is if we limit ourselves to playing their game with their rules.

So since “messaging” has gotten so important in politics, how are we to overcome this “messaging” Achilles heel? I shall attempt an answer to that in my next post…

Like you MEAN it!

Anthony Weiner, debate, government, Hypocrisy, Politics, Truth 1 Response »

Jul 302010

If Democrats would draft legislation that they REALLY believed in, brought it to the floor because is was right as opposed to politically possible and fought for it with this kind of passion, the Republicans would cease to be a factor in modern politics… Really.

Anthony Weiner D-NY slapping down the GOP for obstructionism.

Anthony Weiner D-NY continuing the GOP bitch slap with Peter King R-NY on Faux News.

He is the very model of a modern major Democrat.

An Open Letter to AG Holder

debate, government, Hypocrisy, Justice, Politics, terror, Torture 2 Responses »

May 092010

Attorney General Holder;

I watched your appearance on Meet the Press today and openly admit that I was shocked and disappointed with your seeming acquiescence to the chattering idiots who advocate the application of justice by the wholesale destruction of the justice system.

When I hear that the lesson from this latest brush with terrorism on our shores is that we should rethink the provisions of Miranda I am flabbergasted.

When George Tiller gunned down a physician for performing legal operations was there a rethinking of our gun laws?

Should we let a terrorist, so incompetent that he left the keys to his get away car in a Pathfinder shaped smoke bomb, force us to change the very rights and protections that the American justice system affords all its citizens?

Should we let a terrorist, who only really managed to scorch his genitals, cause us to abandon our ideals about torture?

Are we so timid that we would let these clowns dictate our behavior?

Are we so frightened that we would allow these events to tear at our values?

The “war on terror” is an idiotic concept, articulated by an intellectually challenged moron for the justification of an insane policy that does nothing to augment our safety or our freedom.

Terror is an emotion. Terror is the reaction to an event that has been perpetrated by those who don’t care about the action, only the reaction. We reacted to the third degree burns of a moron’s scrotum by whipping up the actual terror that the perpetrator was seeking. We are now reacting to an idiot that built a smoke bomb and wasn’t bright enough to even take the keys to his get away vehicle along with him.

Terrorists will do the things that they do for the reasons that make sense to them. We can choose to deal with the situation with the clear eyes of fact and law, or we can descend into the panic that accompanies terror, torture, suspension of habeas corpus and rethinking of Miranda… Where exactly on this path are we to declare the terrorists victorious? If we let them terrorize us into abandoning the best of what we are they drive us closer to the caricature that they create of us to justify their actions. Making their actions ever easier to justify…

Extremists attack and extremists react, please don’t let the principles upon which our nation are founded be the victims in the equation.

You cannot make the American people safer by removing the legal protections that our system provides them. One innocent man that is denied due process represents an unimaginable loss to all Americans.

Justice must not be swayed by political hyperbole. The founders of our nation understood the brilliance of creating a society in which all are equal before the law. Please don’t allow fear and the promotion of fear to diminish the heart of what ultimately allows us to declare our nation… Just.

Respectfully,

Frankly, we DO give a damn!

debate, government, Hypocrisy, Obama, Politics, Truth, War 3 Responses »

Apr 072010

The Republican Governor of VA Robert F. McDonnell has declared the month of April to be Confederate History Month as though that history could possibly be worthy of commemoration.

I in no way want to suggest that the Civil War and its history should not be remembered and studied, but the concept that month should be proclaimed to the history of the “Confederacy” glorifies a movement that should be remembered for the shame its very existence should evoke.

The Confederacy would never have existed but for the desire of the Southern States to continue the practice of slavery which everyone acknowledges was a heinous, reprehensible violation of human rights. The stains of slavery for the first century of our history should be remembered for the injustice in humility and shame, never pride or bluster.

If you want to honor the people who fought and died in the Confederacy, so be it, but do not for one solitary moment honor the cause for which they fought or died. The problem is to celebrate the Confederacy you must acknowledge that the only reason there was a Confederacy was a deadly attempt to fracture the country and preserve the practice of slavery. At no other time in our history has the very existence of the nation ever, truly been in question.

The greatest threat to this nation in its relatively brief history was not Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, it was not Hitler’s Germany, it was not HiroHito’s Japan it was, in fact, Robert E. Lee’s version of America.

World War II total military deaths – 416,800

The Civil War total military deaths – 620,000

If you want to remember the past, look to it with truth and honesty… The Confederacy existed to preserve a practice that our nation remembers with shame, honor the people who died, not the cause, the flag or the movement that ground them up in a desperate attempt to prolong the stain that enslavement of human beings in this country represented.