alias Bruce.

Foamy the Squirrel on Gay Marriage

Foamy the Squirrel shows Barack "now that I've thought about it..." Obama how to grow some, uh, nuts on the issue of gay marriage.

 

Thanks to Tina at The Agonist for sharing Jack Cluth's video. 

The fatal flaw in the Obama health care mandate is not its constitutionality.

Sure, one can argue that it is constitutional on the grounds that mandated health insurance, similarly to mandated car insurance, is necessary to avoid unfair distribution of the cost of illness. Or one can argue that the health mandate is unconstitutional in placing an undue burden on people to buy something, since one can choose not to drive but no one will be exempt from the health law.

But constitutionality is not the real problem.

The real problem is that the Obama health mandate forces people to buy from a completely unworkable private health care system – in a purported attempt to spare people the unworkability of the very same private health care system. It's absurd, of course. But that is how a corporate-financed electoral system works: only ideas considered tolerable by the corporate sector stay on the table. That is why Obama, after arguing eloquently for a public option during his presidential campaign, dropped it and fled the issue after taking office when he met resistance from his sponsors (and from the even more shameless corporate shills across the aisle).

And so our president, under the watchful eye of the health care industry, offers his version of health care reform: force Americans to buy it from the very mechanism that broke it. This at a time when so much of the industrialized world has evolved to the basic realization that public health care is the most economically logical and humanly fair approach.

Yes, there is good in the Affordable Care Act. Expanding eligibility for coverage is good. Forbidding the savage denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is good.

But the entire Act is built upon a flagrant lie: the assumption that the American corporate health insurance system can deliver care affordably and efficiently to all Americans. This is a fantasy that only corporate-financed politicians – and some gullible citizens seduced by the hallucination of mega-corporate market "freedom" – can believe. It has forced Obama into a box where he is staking his claim of full access to health care on the pointless premise of forcing people to buy health coverage in a rapacious private-ruled market. And, ironically, even this laughable version of "reform" may very well be trashed by a Supreme Court that sometimes seems nostalgic for Dickensian capitalism.

So the grand question that the top court in the land will now decide for us is: Shall we remain free to suffer without health insurance, or shall we be required by law to suffer the cruel price of purchasing it from our masters?

So let's say you were super-rich

and you and your buddies controlled the money that controls the American electoral system.

And let's say you needed a way in 2012 to keep voters away from dangerous ideas like nationalizing health care and reining in routine clandestine government snooping on citizens.

What would you do?

One really effective way would be to enable a procession of radical rightie presidential challengers, including a bona-fide religious fascist who wants to criminalize contraception, to shift the entire campaign debate so far to the right that the incumbent president – a guy who supports assassination of U.S. citizens and who has used the Espionage Act to punish government whistleblowers more than all other presidents combined – can pose himself as a centrist.

Pretty nifty. If you wanted to guarantee that whoever is elected in 2012 would be much friendlier to a corporate security state than the wishes voters express in polls, this scheme would be a brilliant way to accomplish that.

Just saying.

The Republican presidential wannabees,

of whom only Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum appear to have survived as real contenders, are interesting solely for what they reveal about the murderous meanness of core Republican voters.

In televised debates, the Republican suitors drew lusty cheers from live G.O.P. audiences for having executed record numbers of prison inmates in Texas, for advocating government control over how American women occupy their bodies, and for calling for ruthless treatment of economic refugees from America's closest neocolonial neighbor to the south.

The only remaining question is whether the Republican Party is terminally short-sighted in its pursuit of the Kill-the-Pig-Drink-Its-Blood vote, or whether the party is betting on some, uh, tragic calamity that would permanently remove Barack Obama from the scene (I think you know what I'm talking about) and would subsequently leave the 2012 election open to the G.O.P.'s brand of raving fascist nationalism, or whether they are patiently building the foundation for what they hope will be a future decisively fascist majority of fearful, resentful voters.

The irony of Newt Gingrich and the Democrats

is that the Dems still don't understand Newt's crystal-clear, in-your-face tutorial about the raw force of audacity.

Gingrich is surely doing his best to teach them. What better lesson could there be than the example of a hamster-faced, philandering, hypocritical ingrate soaring to top-level contention on the mere strength of defiant, eloquent passion?

As I've said before, a core truth of populist electoral power is that voters like a candidate who is unafraid to lose.

A savvy and principled rival candidate's takeaway from The Newt Tutorial would be: "Wow. If a repulsive liar blowing smoke for the most unpopular schemes of the rich can make that ruse work via pure rhetorical fury, imagine what a fearlessly passionate advocate for truly popular causes like expanding health care and reining in corporations could do."

But the Dems, terrified of the class consequences of true populism and schooled in the Democratic Leadership Conference legacy of business-driven lip-synch messaging, are not teachable on the subject of real mass appeal. And so President Irrelevant continues to go robotic on the campaign trail, mouthing tepid generalities and sleepy slogans such as "change will come." And his party remains allergic to the kinds of messages that could electrify voters.

All of this is for a very logical reason: Dems in the service of Wall Street do not want to electrify voters with compelling arguments that undercut the fiscal sponsors of the Dems' political campaigns. Democrats are betting, instead, that they can win in 2012 with lukewarm ad-slogan versions of voter grievances that, like most successful advertising campaigns, imply just enough to make the sale while delivering nothing.

Still, it's an interesting irony: The corporate candidate whose positions are furthest from the public interest makes the most of populist emotion. And the corporate candidate who could come closer to voters' actual passion makes the least of it.

NYC Mayor Bloomberg's recent tantrum at Wall Street protesters is a good example

of how defenders of the nation's unofficial (i.e., corporate) government are at an utter loss to respond to the growing protests with any sensible narrative that ordinary people might be expected to believe.

CNN gives this account of Bloomberg's rant:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a WOR radio appearance that city's labor unions depend on salaries that "come from the taxes paid by the people they're trying to vilify."

Bloomberg did describe the city's unemployment rate as "unacceptably high," and acknowledged that "a lot of people are disaffected."

"Some are legit, some aren't," Bloomberg said, describing the concerns of the demonstrators in Lower Manhattan.

His comments coincided with the city's announcement that 700 education workers will be laid off in an effort to close a budget gap. They also follow recently released census data that shows New York's poverty level has increased to 20.1%, the highest in more than a decade.

'Scuse me, Mr. Mayor? You're saying that the high rollers whose legally-abetted tax evasion blows a Cayman-Islands-sized hole in the national budget, and whose lying thievery took down the economy, are somehow the tax-paying saviors of the perilously-dangling folks still lucky enough to have jobs? That's the best you can do in trying to fend off widespread public loathing of Wall Street? Gee, Your Honor, you're more desperate than I thought. No wonder you can't see the hilarious buffoonery of your presuming to judge which of the protesters' demands are "legit" and which are not.

The same goes for Republican High Hypocrite Eric Cantor, who – in the midst of the G.O.P.'s long-running campaign of class and race warfare to shield the plundering rich and to vilify any brown people they can blame for stealing jobs or building bombs – now rails against what he calls the "growing mobs" of Wall Street protesters who are "pitting ... Americans against Americans." That one's worth a good chuckle, Eric.

Last and least, President Irrelevant mouthed some pretty words about how protesters "are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works," while he then went on to defend Wall Street. Yawn. Nudge me when he says something worth paying attention to.

Here is what matters: Most Americans (including the 75% who favor a tax targeting millionaires) know that the corporate sector is both dishonest and in charge, and their anger as citizens, however lacking in clarity and leadership, is based in reality.

So, Mr. Mayor and Mr. President and Mr. House Majority Leader, you'd better work a little harder at generating excuses and distractions. I know you've got your best minds on it. You're going to need them.

Good bumper sticker.

The farthest back I've been able to trace it online is here.

Here is why the impressive speech on jobs that President Obama gave on Thursday

doesn't mean squat when it comes to addressing the crisis of jobs and the economy:

1.)  As we should all know by now, Obama's beautiful speechifying means nothing when it is followed by his subsequent unwillingness to fight for what the nation needs. Obama's entire campaign for the presidency (which I think he began again on Thursday, by the way) was, in fact, one long and passionate speech -- followed by a stream of timidity and retreat when the time came for actual action as president. His fiery declarations in Thursday's speech, praised by some liberals who hunger for the forceful Obama they thought they voted for, aren't worth a damn if he leaves his passion at the podium and devolves into robotic conciliator mode in the actual policy battles -- as he has on health care, the financial sector, the housing sector, tax reform, the deficit, and the environment. If Obama has taught us anything in the past three years, it is that we must ignore what he says and pay attention to what he does. Let's see how he fights for us ordinary folks when the speeches and the bus tour are over. So far, there is no reason to believe that Obama will be anyone other than the man we have already seen: a strong campaigner and a weak president.

2.) Obama's American Jobs Act, which he pitched in his speech, is nowhere near what is needed to create job growth, stimulate investment, and enable Americans to spend. Its paltry $200 billion in expenditures is a half-drop in the bucket compared with the monstrous scale of today's joblessness and dire public need. Worse, the Act's total package, about $450 billion, is more tax cuts than public investment -- exactly the wrong ratio in an economy in which taxes are not the problem. (For a methodical and thoughtful analysis of the Act's rickety construction, read Ian Welsh's piece here.) Worse yet, the Act is virtually guaranteed to be altered -- in all the wrong ways, favoring the wealthy and the corporate sector -- before it is passed into law by Congress. That is, if any version of it is passed at all. The Act threatens to be a repeat, only worse, of Obama's small-enough-to-fall-short stimulus package.

3.) We got a hint of the unchangeable stripes of this particular presidential zebra when, in Thursday's speech, Obama rhetorically turned to Republicans and said, "I know you guys must be for this" as he introduced one of his proposals. It was a device he used throughout the speech: citing ideas in his Jobs Act that Republicans have supported in the past. It was meant to either make Republicans stop and think, or to rattle them in front of a national TV audience of voters, or both. But it betrays the fundamental weakness in Obama's political approach: he thinks he needs to convince Congress to move in his direction. But he's wrong. What he needs to do is inspire the public to push Congress in his direction. There is a huge difference between those two personas: a President Polite who painstakingly tries to build a logical case for his opponents to follow, versus an effective leader who uses the passionate power of public persuasion and private combat to create a political imperative.

President Obama has spent three years showing us who he is. By now, we should believe what his actions tell us.

Good for Jim Hoffa for telling the Tea Party

where to go, and for refusing to buckle and take back his words when spinners later tried to stretch what he said into a "gotcha."

As you may have heard, as a warm-up speaker for President Obama at a Labor Day rally on Monday, Teamsters President Hoffa told the crowd:

"President Obama, we want one thing, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. That is what we are going to tell him. And when he sees what we are doing here, he will be inspired. But he needs help and you know what, everybody here has got a vote. If we go back and we keep the eye on the prize. Let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong."

Mouthpieces on the right, including the fading carnival attraction who was once the governor of Alaska, seized the opportunity to shriek about what they called Hoffa's threat of violence against Tea Partyers. This claim is worth a good guffaw, and is clearly intended for the thickheaded portion of the rightie TV and Internet audience that will swallow the spoon-fed sound bite "take these son of a bitches out" with no knowledge of the words that surrounded and defined Hoffa's phrase. (Even a mushroom with ears can discern what "everybody here has a got a vote" means.) Even so, the fuss will earn the babblers even less than the usual seven seconds of static for their trouble, and will likely hurt them more than help them with voters because the accusation is so hilariously phony.

For the record, here is CNN's report of some of Hoffa's response to the Tea crock:

In a statement Tuesday, Hoffa said his comments at the event echoed the sentiments of American workers who are "under attack by corporate-funded politicians who want to destroy the middle class. We're tired of seeing good-paying jobs shipped overseas. This fight is about the economy, it's about jobs and it's about rebuilding America. As I said yesterday in Detroit, we all have to vote in order to take these anti-worker politicians out of office."

Hoffa said his entire speech shows he was "referring to voting out the Tea Party politicians in 2012, not inciting violence against members of Tea Party organizations."

Anyway, good for Hoffa. But it's ironic, isn't it, that the warm-up act for the president, when ordered to bow and apologize to a pack of liars, shows more backbone than the commander in chief?

I didn't support Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid

because I didn't trust her. She struck me as cynical, opportunistic, and a pale (no pun intended) second to Barack Obama's apparent passion on issues such as health care and taxing the rich. Of the two flavors of corporate-backed Democratic candidates made available by our money-filtered system, Obama, with his ability to inspire popular political momentum, appeared to me to have much more potential for at least doing some good for we non-rich Americans after the rapacious Bush years. I still believe he had (and has) that potential, but I no longer believe he has the character to rise to it.

You can see where I'm going with this. I don't know that Hillary Clinton would have been any better in the oval office than Obama. But with what we now know about Obama's spinelessness, she certainly couldn't have been any worse. And I think there is a very good chance that her fighting spirit alone would have produced a different political outcome in the Public Option and debt ceiling debates. Say what you like about her calculated political-machine expediency -- and I have! -- it is hard for me to see President Hillary Clinton meekly submitting to the past three years of pistol-whipping Republican extortion as the G.O.P. has held the nation hostage to the crazed priorities of its fascist wing. Sure, hindsight is 20/20. But if there is a Democrat with the steely constitution to spit in the eye of the vilely arrogant John Boehner and to slap down the rabid Michele Bachmann, it is Hillary Clinton.

So: now that we have witnessed the spectacular collapse of Obama, it is time for me and others who cautiously backed Obama to admit that we were suckered by his charisma -- and to ask if we blew it with Hillary. Me, I'm ready to say that if I had it to do over again I'd have chosen Clinton in 2008 -- on the basis that a corporate shill who is willing to rear up and fight when cornered is a better choice than a corporate shill who melts into "bipartisan" pudding. Fact is, when Hillary warned us that this guy was in over his head, she was right.

There is more and more "what about Hillary in 2012" talk these days among left and center-left folks as we head toward the nomination. The murmuring has moved from private conversations -- which I have been having with colleagues and friends for months -- into the public arena, as in a recent "Hillary Told You So" piece by Leslie Bennetts at The Daily Beast. One scenario is that Obama, who is showing signs of fatigue, would opt not to run, freeing himself to kick some ass as a lame duck and freeing Clinton to pursue and gain the nomination. Of course, perhaps poor Obama is incapable of kicking ass under any circumstances (see my immediately preceding post).

But having Obama out of the race could at least be a help.

Thanks to Laurie.