Republicans are already selling access to government in order to raise money!

[Tiassa]

Don't worry about it.

I am not getting that comment at all.

Don't worry about it. You're not supposed to.

 

[Jack_]

As to the stimulus, the problem was that the injection was too small:

The good news is that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the Obama stimulus plan, is working just about the way textbook macroeconomics said it would. But that's also the bad news — because the same textbook analysis says that the stimulus was far too small given the scale of our economic problems. Unless something changes drastically, we're looking at many years of high unemployment.

And the really bad news is that "centrists" in Congress aren't able or willing to draw the obvious conclusion, which is that we need a lot more federal spending on job creation.

(Krugman)​

Or, to reiterate a point:

Once again, Americans see that compromising with conservative interests only gets them bitten in the ass.​

Right now, unfortunately, the only real cost controls in the bill appear to be subsidies and mandates. This is why the Left is frustrated with the current effort, such as we might call it.

And, unfortunately, the Republicans are attempting a variation on their anti-stimulus strategy. By playing an obstructionist role, they are achieving an allegedly centrist compromise. After all, more important than delivering health care to the nation is protecting excessive profits in the health care industry. As such, the public option is not going to happen; no industry-based cost controls are included in the bill; what is emerging is, as Bill Maher once described the reform effort, "a watered-down, ineffectual blow job to the health insurance industry".

To the other, sixteen years ago, this would have been a forty-year gamble. Right now the question is whether Americans are comfortable enough to be simplistic at best, or oblivious most days. The GOP's obstructionist strategy could easily blow up in their faces if the sleeping electoral giant known as The People actually comes awake. If the simplistic days of, "His watch, his fault," continue, then yes, the Democrats are in trouble no matter what they do. If, however, people actually pay attention, it's the GOP that will suffer, because the problem isn't the idea of health care, or economic stimulus, but rather the compromise with a dishonest, calculating, exploitative, obstructionist opposition that is banking on people being stupid enough to elect them as a reward for making sure nothing works.

The problem "my folks" face is whether or not it's worth sacrificing the Democratic Party at the altar of American idiocy in order to get a genuine, prominent liberal voice in Washington. The Democrats can certainly blow this, and cost themselves the next few cycles. The great tragedy there is that the nation will continue to spiral into easily-digested conservative nonsense philosophies, and thus flush itself away like so much dirty bathwater. Reid and Pelosi are hardly liberal saviors. Hell, they're hardly liberal at all. And the nature of gravity is that things tend to fall a lot faster than they climb. Americans can either wake up and seek progress, or they can continue to tumble off the mountain and comfort themselves by saying, "But look at how fast we're going! It's like we're going to Hell in a Lamborghini!"

And then one day, some stupid, middle-aged woman can be videotaped at a local town hall meeting, wailing loudly about how she wants her country back, and this time she'll actually have a point. Except, of course, for the pesky question of why she pitched it to the rubbish tip in the first place.
____________________

Notes:

Krugman, Paul. "Too Little of a Good Thing". The New York Times. November 2, 2009; page A21. NYTimes.com. March 17, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02krugman.html

"Maher Rips Baucus Bill: 'I'm Going To Start Going To Town Halls And Screaming Now'". The Huffington Post. September 19, 2009. HuffingtonPost.com. March 17, 2010. March 17, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/19/maher-rips-baucus-bill-im_n_292134.html

Like Greece, you feel govt spending should increase to the point of destroying the country.

Is this correct?

 

[Tiassa]

Non sequitur?

Like Greece, you feel govt spending should increase to the point of destroying the country.

Is this correct?

Against my better instincts, I'll ask whence comes that particular notion.

 

[C-Moon]

I am not getting that comment at all.

It's simple if you check the link. The [psychotic] Tea Party agrees with your view of Republican scare tactics.

 

[iceaura]

This has been sitting around for a while, after being timed out of its posting, but it seems OK to throw in after the health care bill vote - which illuminated it, on my TV, so:

This time I was laughed because your statement about "no systematic liars with established access to major media pulpits" is patently absurd

When you regard simple and important factual observations, easily verified, as "absurd", you have a problem.

Or name the counterexamples. You have the entire Republican leadership and media representation that's all over my TV every day to match, and so far you haven't even found one person. If you want absurd, look at your attempt to equate, in their presentation of blatant falsehoods, Ed schultz and Rush Limbaugh, or Al Gore and Ben Stein, or Michael Moore and Glen Beck.

They are not blatant lies.
”
I just said that.

From Limbaugh, Beck, and Stein, we get blatant lies - and major media repetition of them, continual.

You've got this opinion, this view of the media as somehow balanced in its partisan presentation of falsehood, and it has no basis in reality. Where did it come from?

I disagree with basically everything in this paragraph.

So: got an argument? Some kind of example to match, say, Karl Rove? Sarah Palin? John McCain? Joe Lieberman, who got an every day gig on national TV after leaving the Dem Party?

Last time, you handed us Acorn and Greenpeace as your candidates for Dems using their 24/7 major media access to tell blatant lies. They don't have a single representative on major media TV even one night a week, or hired as a pundit by any major newspaper. And they aren't Democrats, nor are they getting their talking points from Dem Party media strategists.

So you are obviously having trouble getting a grip on the situation.

Actually, I find the idiotic nut-job lies far less harmful because they are so damn obvious.

Take it from someone who remembers the selling of the Iraq invasion: they aren't. Not when they have constant major media repetition.

It's not difficult to ascertain there are no "Death Panels" in the health care legislation and if a handful of boisterous morons believe there are it's not going to do much damage.

A handful of boisterous morons that are at least a third of the electorate nationally, and capable of removing from office at least half of the current sitting Congressmen, at the ballot box, if they turn out.

You don't have to be Republican to distrust Democratic politicians.

You have to be a sucker for Republican spin to believe that "both sides" are equivalent, and doing the same kind of lying with the same media representation and repetition.

your counter argument boils down to sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting "Democrats don't lie."

The fact that you think I, or anyone, is saying anything even remotely resembling that is very revealing. You are deaf, in a particular and specific and commonly encountered way that is a major goal of the Republican spin machine.

I understand that you're handicapped by your emotional investment in partisan ideology but maybe, just maybe, everything that's being told to you isn't quite as honest as you would like to believe even when it allows you to feel morally and intellectually superior. Because if you don't realize that the politicians know damn well that this appeals to affluent young progressives you're in serious trouble.

Free advice: don't try to guess and tell people about themselves, when you don't know them. You won't always miss as wildly as you just did there, but you are unlikely to improve your credibility, at all.

btw: the people who try that on me around here seem to have a lot in common, politically. That entire political group, the faux cynic de facto authoritarian righty, seems to have screw loose in the "what other people are like" department. I've had them tell me what position I played in football, where I lived, how old I was, what I did for a living, what kind of place I lived in, my religion, my favorite books or political theories, all kinds of shit, and all of it wrong. The motive for this tactic seems unworthy, so I hesitate to ascribe it too dogmatically, but c'mon guys - it's a goofy way to debate in an anonymous forum.