For whatever reason, the occasion of tax and spending cut negotiations has inspired tough-minded liberal thinkers to suggest that there’s virtue to be found in beating up poor people and Medicare-bound older folk. Full disclosure: I benefit from Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the program Nick Kristof hopes will be cut during the negotiations, and . . . → Read More: Shared sacrifice: In which both sides agree to throw some old folks and some poor into the volcano
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My petition requesting the Obama administration to commission a National Intelligence Estimate on climate change is 19 signatures shy of achieving visibility on the White House petitions system, meaning that it’ll start showing up when people search for climate change-related petitions. It is also a mere 24,869 signatures shy of mandating an administration response. . . . → Read More: Soon, my petition will be a real boy, plus: Canadians don’t want Canadians to know what they know about Tommy Douglas BTC News has learned that senior Congressional Democrats are quietly directing staff members to organize an effort to pass Medicare-for-all legislation in the event the Supreme Courts strikes down the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare. The staff members are reaching out to leaders of key advocacy groups for support of the effort. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee official told BTC News that the fight for universal health care in America will play a critical role in the reelection campaign of President Obama, and in the efforts of Democrats to regain control of the House and solidify control of the Senate. Continue reading Democrats agree to push for single-payer health care system if mandate falls Alan Fucking Simpson! is a former Senator from Wyoming. He hates Social Security and the “greedy geezers” who rely on it to sustain them in their later years, and he doesn’t understand why anybody who already gets Social Security cares about preserving the program for younger people when anyone can see that it’s none of their business. He is the co-chair of the current president’s completely gratuitous National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a name that translates to “the National Commission on Cannibalizing Social Insurance and Safety Net Programs.” President Obama created the bipartisan commission when Congress, in an uncharacteristically sensible move involving some characteristically skeezy motives, decided not to. The prospective Congressional commission prefigured the late, unlamented Super Committee, which was designed to do the same thing—produce a list of proposals that Congress would either approve without amendment or disapprove. The president supported the plan, but most Senate Democrats opposed it and it went down when several Republicans who cosponsored the legislation voted against it on the grounds that the commission might somehow do something that could possibly redound to Obama’s benefit. Good for them. Unfortunately, the president then appointed his own commission, but without the legislative imperative. He named Erskine Bowles, a conservative Democrat and wealthy investment banker, to represent liberals and the poor, and to hold down the cannibals’ corner he appointed the aforementioned cannibalistic Republican Alan Fucking Simpson! Continue reading Alan Fucking Simpson! plus: SS v. ACA: comparing apples and a mouthful of tacks The European countries acting on behalf of Greece’s creditors are bullies. Americans are saps. And a group of sane doctors may get the right result for all the wrong reasons. As is the bully’s practice, the more the Greeks concede, the more the bullies demand. To this point the bullying has worked (for the bullies) but now the country’s managers are in fear for their political lives, at least, so the country looks as likely to default on its debts as to accept the latest turn of the screw. Continue reading How the patience of the Greeks spells doom; plus, Crazed Doctors for Sanity In recent years, both the civilian government and the military leadership have made a serious effort to elevate the cultural station of military personnel from that of citizen soldiers to the loftier and more separatist “warrior.” They’re all warriors now, and heroes. The end result is that both soldiers and civilians increasingly view the former as a breed apart. That’s not a good thing. For obvious democratic reasons, one wants the military to identify and empathize with the populations whence they spring. Identifying common experiences is one way to do that, and one experience a lot of military personnel have in common with a lot of civilians is that they’re making crap money and the people signing their paychecks don’t seem to care much about them. Another is that if they lose their jobs, they’re in deep trouble almost instantly. I ran across a couple of items yesterday that suggest an avenue for amplifying the Occupy protests within the U.S. by involving military personnel. One was a comment by my pal Schmutzie over at his place about a plan announced by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain to inflict some serious Bad upon veterans benefits, and the other was the first truly useful Twitter message I’ve received during my limited relationship with the service. I just completed a frank exchange of views with a devout Obama supporter who believes her president is curbing his liberal impulses from respect for the views of the losing voters on the right (they did lose, didn’t they?) and in order to establish a dynamic in which subsequent right-wing presidents will moderate their own ambitions from respect for Obama’s example and the voters who support it. Well. Not exactly her president. She’s Canadian, although also Floridian. Hot Sun Bakes Canadian Brain. In the end we agreed that when Rick Perry invades Iran in five years after taking office by winning 45% of the popular vote, I will deserve to be drafted and sent off to fight and presumably die in that war because I think Democrats should pursue big projects like universal health care, the cramming of which down American throats led George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Damn you, Harry Truman! All of your woes can be traced to that one moment of missed opportunity. President Obama said the day of the 9/11 anniversary that in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, Americans have preserved our values and our character. He’s right. America’s history is of a whiny, over-privileged, self-aggrandizing and self-victimizing bully, and the decade since 9/11 has been clarifying. Thet thar is an actual headline from an actual post at the Atlantic Wire, which has supplanted Slate as the silliest respectable (in the social society sense) daily commentary site of this infant century. Not just Washington, because getting there isn’t practical for a lot of people. State capitols too, and wherever else a lever would do some good. Not too long ago I got an invitation to join an email list of progressive movers and shakers. I am the very definition of not a mover and shaker . . . → Read More: Why I want to rain pissed off people down on Washington |
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