Politics
The Civil War at Home
Sep 1st
Glenn Greenwald’s recent post regarding the lack of media skepticism leading up to the invasion of Iraq, reminds me of the lead-up to another invasion — that is, the planned Republican take-over of the House and Senate in November. Since August 2009, the media has been breathlessly reporting on the Tea Party movement, a party re-branding effort by Republican operatives like Dick Armey — we are told how these are “real Americans,” who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. It’s like the “angry white male” that ushered in the Gingrich revolution back in 1994 only intensified a thousand times. Any bit of Tea Party bullshit is reported without skepticism — the President’s supposed foreign birth, his secret Muslim agenda, the Health Care Reform “death panels,” etc. It all helps intensify the echo chamber effect of the inevitability of Republican victory, much as the Iraq victory followed a wave of unsubstantiated claims regarding Saddam Hussein’s supposed ties to Al Qaeda, the infinite stores of “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” as well as the Iraqi government’s secret nuclear program.
“Saddam will give his WMD’s to the terrorists if we don’t invade!” cried the neocons. “Knock of the head of Iraq, and an era of prosperity and democracy will flood the Middle East.”
“Why, Iraq will even be a staunch ally of Israel!”
And so it went. With the Iraq invasion, we would be all better off. Anyone who even suggest the similarities to Vietnam – another occupation based on faulty evidence (the Gulf of Tonkin “incident,”) driven by the flawed calculus that if the communists weren’t stopped in Southeast Asia, they would spread their ideology to all four corners of the globe, terminating in the American heartland city of Boise, Idaho — was a traitor, an east coast elitist and out of touch with “reality.” Of course, we lost the Vietnam war quite decisively, dumping equipment and Huey helicopters into the ocean as we retreated from that morass. And yet, communism didn’t spread — it ended up falling some twenty years later. So much for the prognosticators on the right. The same was true for Iraq — no weapons of mass destruction or nuclear devices were found. Yet Americans bled on the soil of Mesopotamia for seven years for those lies. And the people who spoke them will never be held to account.
Which brings me back to the American Civil War, a cold war yes, but one that has recently grown hotter. Obama’s legislative successes — perhaps the greatest for Democrats since Lyndon Johnson — are widely ignored in favor of the Tea Party story, Glenn Beck’s speech on the national mall, and the notion that 25% of the population somehow constitutes an overwhelming majority. Forgotten is recent history — the unfunded invasion of Iraq, the decimation of Hurricane Katrina, the deregulation spree in the 1990′s that lead to the real estate bubble and financial collapse. These were all failures of Republican policy, yet the president is blamed for them as if he created them himself. There is some genuine disappointment in regards to the extent of the reforms he’s managed, as well as his attempts to work with the Republicans, weakening progressive legislation with their compromises, only to be beaten over the head time and again by Republicans who never negotiate with Democrats in good faith. The evidence of what will happen if the Republicans come to power again is right there, and yet the media somehow acts as though they are going to be saving the country for the “real Americans,” which is just code for white conservative evangelical Christians. Anyone who does not exist in those three categories simultaneously will never be accepted as an American by these people.
How many times does ideology need to fail before the media will step up and call bullshit? Trickle down economics and excessive tax cuts for the rich ultimately lead to the decimation of the American middle class. Deregulation which allowed companies to “offshore” their manufacturing and service sector jobs lead to the massive unemployment of today. The Republicans promise more of that, and no one calls them out on their failures. They can relentlessly shout lies into their cameras and microphones (“I take the president at his word that he’s a Christian!” “Health reform is fascism!” “the President is a racist who hates white people!”) and the media reports it without presenting any evidence to the contrary. One would think they have a vested interest in the restoration of the Republican party to “permanent majority” status.
And the Democrats, even after 16 years of dealing with the bullshit, seem absolutely feckless in their inability to recognize that the Republicans have declared war on them. Rather than fight, they choose the high ground, trying to seem bipartisan while the Republicans say that they are power mad socialists who want to destroy the country. Howard Dean may have been an inartful guy, but he knew how to fight the Republicans on their own turf (though his recent comments about the proposed Muslim community center in southern Manhattan have diminished him a bit). I’ve been wrong about Obama, before, but I get the sense that he lives inside an insulated bubble that keeps him free of understanding what’s really going on. The Republicans are going to regain power, and they will grind all government to a halt — they will refuse to pass budgets, block political appointees from moving out of committee and will generally stop the work of Washington. This will lead, no doubt, to another decade or so of Republican rule and the further destruction of government institutions, pushing Americans deeper down the third world hole we now find ourselves in. And when middle America wakes up to further devastation, they will blame the Democrats, as the media will be right there with their megaphones, screaming that it was all Obama’s fault. And no one will question the truth of it.
And if the Democrats, by some crazy stroke of luck, regain the majority and the Presidency, they will fall to the same Republican tactics that have sunk them since Nixon was president. And so it goes and goes and goes.
What was the point in giving the Democrats a majority if the Republicans will just dismantle what they’ve done? For god’s sake people, stand up and fight! You’ve had war declared on you for the past 30 years. It’s time to show up on the field with guns instead of forfeiting any chance of winning.
A Better Approach for Israel
Jun 9th
Look, I’m not going too get to far into my views on Israel and Palestine — they’re complicated, and quite frankly I can see both sides of the argument. I believe that the right thing to do would be for all of them to live together in one secular multicultural state and let democracy decides who leads the country. I know this isn’t likely to ever happen, but that would be my utopian hope.
In regards to the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound flotilla, it does behoove the anti-Israeli forces of the world to remember that Turkey’s hands are just as stained as Israel’s in regards to human rights. Think of the Kurds, disenfranchised and constantly under the yoke of the Turkish military, denied their own homeland, or occupied Cyprus. Ask any Greek Cypriot about their thoughts on Turkish democracy, and you’re bound to get a view quite dissimilar from the the views of the flotilla’s supporters.
So my point is, although I don’t approve of Israel’s treatment of Gaza, I also don’t approve of Turkey, either. Both countries are ethnic-religious states that claim to be secular, but are driven by religious and ethnic forces. Both states are primarily supportive of democracy for particular ethnic groups, and in the case of Israel, the Israeli’s have a much better record on Arab rights than Turkey has on their minorities.
A group in Israel is organizing an alternative flotilla in the name of bringing supplies to the Kurds in an effort to shed light Turkey’s own human rights abuses. As Andrew Sullivan has said, this would be a smarter path for Israel to take. It doesn’t necessarily negate Israel’s own issues with the Palestinians, but it does prove that Turkey is no moral authority in the world, either. And the flotilla was a cynical PR stunt driven by the Middle Eastern ethnic conflict and not genuine philanthropy.
The BP Apocalypse
May 25th
I’ve been wondering why there’s been few images of the so-called “oil-spill” coming out of the Gulf of Mexico — apparently BP is keeping the whole area on lock down, with the local police helping to keep the cameras out. I know this not because of national news coverage (which some days appears to have forgotten about what’s happened), but because of a Mother Jones article my friend Chris tweeted about. We truly are living in a William Gibson future, with evil corporations running everything. I type the words “evil corporations” without a hint of irony, secure in my understanding that BP is indeed evil.
The scale of what’s happened in the Gulf — the environmental consequences of the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig — boggles the mind. The national press calls it a “leak” or “spill,” but the reality is that a fissure has opened on the ocean floor, and millions of gallons of oil are spewing out into the water from ancient deposits deep in the earth. I suspect the language used by the media was actually suggested to them by BP PR flaks — if you minimize the damage with language that suggests just a little problem, the public will completely ignore it. The reality is that the seabed is literally erupting petroleum into the ocean, so much that the ocean doesn’t seem so vast that it can’t be irreparably harmed by it. And even as BP goes through the motions of cleaning up the “spill,” they are also trying to recover the oil they collect and process it and sell it to us so we can drive our cars to Walmart.
The oil was unleashed by criminal negligence on the part of BP, formerly the British Petroleum company, a transnational oil giant with a great branding campaign that just a few years ago tried to sell itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” a green energy company. I used to feel good about buying my gas at BP stations, knowing that BP — run by enlightened British executives — was working on getting us weaned off oil. Now I drive out of my way to avoid BP stations, preferring the low-rent chains that proliferate throughout the District of Columbia with their watered-down gas and clusters of panhandling homeless people. It’s my own little act of civil disobedience against a corporate giant, although I’m well aware that the little chains probably buy their gas from BP, anyway. Such is life in the postmodern era.
Who knows the extent of destruction in the gulf that has now been unleashed? It’s like an apocalyptic scenario straight from science fiction, a disaster that mankind cannot overcome. Will the gulf coast even be habitable after this, especially since BP is incapable of stopping the oil from being released into the water? And will anyone be held responsible for what happened?
And does anyone even care?
Ulysses S. Grant Addresses the Tea Party Movement (Well, Not Really)
Apr 16th
Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of my favorite bloggers, is reading the Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant. Now, many of my friends aren’t aware of this, but Grant is my favorite President, as well as my favorite American of all time. I read his memoirs several years ago and was greatly moved by it. Lincoln gets all the credit, but it was Grant who won the Civil War — and he genuinely did try to offer freed blacks a fair deal during Reconstruction. He would hardly be a progressive in our time, but in his own era he was. Not to mention the fact that he was an incredible general — Robert E. Lee gets a lot of credit from the confederate sympathizers due to his “courtly” and “gentle” manner, but Ulysses S. Grant invented modern warfare and kicked that aristocratic white supremacist’s ass. He may have been a plain-spoken man, an alcoholic who didn’t put on airs, but he was called to greatness and seized it with humility and honor.
In any event, Coates excerpts a piece from Grant’s memoir, an allegory that rightly acknowledges a certain human tendency that I think quite accurately describes the Tea Party Movement. It’s worth a read.
The Face of the Tea Party
Apr 14th
Ever wonder what the Tea Party really is? Take a look:
Neoconfederate, racist and anti-democratic. This is the face of the conservative movement.
A Gentle Reminder About President Obama
Mar 22nd
To those of you out there who were convinced that health reform would fail — that Obama wouldn’t have the votes, that the Democrats would break, that a new Tea Bag Era is inevitable, I offer this from the 2008 campaign:
Suck it, bitches.
Time and again, the media tells us that the Obama administration is finished. Beltway conventional wisdom insists that he’s a failure, that he’s Jimmy Carter’s bastard son, that he’s a useless one-term president. But what they don’t seem to grasp is that Obama is a man who knows how to win. He does it with tenacity, determination and an unwavering focus on his final goal. He is unconcerned with short-term political losses, of the GOP game of scoring points on the cable chat shows. He could give a shit about any of that. He fights a long war — he knows that skirmishes will be lost, but at the end of the day, all that matters is the final win.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are incapable of seeing the big picture. They see the short term victories — the tea party rallies, Glenn Beck’s ratings and red state rage — as an enduring path to electoral success. And they don’t mind lying for short term gain — for calling a modest reform of the health insurance system a socialist take-over. They dip into hopeless and extreme hyperbole in an attempt to scare voters. John Boehner certainly gave it his best shot last night during the final debate on reconciliation – but unlike his predecessors, Obama fucking gets it.
He’s damned if he does, and he’s damned if he doesn’t. If he succeeds, then he’s a socialist traitor Kenyan-born Satan-fucking Islam-loving failure. And if he fails, he’s a socialist traitor Kenyan-born Satan-fucking Islam-loving failure. Both outcomes lead to the same thing — Republicans hitting him on the same point, as well as tying Democrats to him. So why not do what you said you were going to do — if you’re going to lose anyway, then why not go down fighting?
And that’s how Obama wins. He beat Hillary Clinton with this approach — and then he took it to John McCain and Sarah Palin. Remember the triumphalism of the Republican National Convention — the belief that Obama was toast? Yeah, that turned out well for McCain. And again, with health care reform, the Republicans believed their own propaganda — that he was weak, that a lightweight who couldn’t accomplish health care reform. But they missed all the evidence from recent history — that Obama doesn’t lose. The man had majorities in the Senate and the House. All he had to do was bring those majorities together to get the votes he needed.
So now what will the Republicans do? Will they fight to repeal a bill that ends the coverage ban on pre-existing conditions, that kills the caps on health coverage that sick people like me face, the same caps that left my mother millions in debt after my father died of cancer? It seems like a political loser to me.
To all the Republicans who are saddened by their loss last night, you really ought to rethink why you were against this bill. Every single one of you was basically telling sick people like me that our deaths are necessary. The message I got from the teabaggers is that the chronically ill deserve to lose our health coverage — and that our families should be bankrupted by our diseases. I used to try to be “reasonable” when debating Republicans, but no more. You guys want me to die, but you lost. I won. Maybe some day you’ll get sick, too, and realize just how important health care is. When all the stands between you and death is a $150,000 implant and several thousands of dollars a month worth of medication and your coverage can be taken away at the whim of an insurance executive, then you’ll know just how precious and tenuous human life can be.
And Bart Stupak has proven himself to be the principled, tragic hero of this affair. The man put his political career on the line to pass health reform — he’s facing slander and worse for his position. Progressives have an obligation to support this brave man who fought for his principles and ultimately made it possible to pass the bill. You may disagree with his position on abortion, but 35 million Americans are going to get coverage now, and many of us will have better coverage thanks to him. So let me say, thank you Congressman Stupak. You are a hero.
Conservative Health Reform Myths Debunked for Just $5
Mar 21st
These people want sick people like me to die due to lack of coverage. Fuck them.
Okay, so there are three basic ideas Republicans have about reforming health care. I’m going to go one by one and explain why they’re delusional. When I’m done, feel free to PayPal me $5.
1) What people really need are health care savings accounts. See, the idea is that if you let people save some of their pre-tax income in a health care savings account that is in turn invested in the stock market, they will have enough money to pay their medical bills. George W. Bush particularly liked this “solution.”
Here’s an example from my own life: My defibrillator cost $150,000. My household income is less than half of that. How many years would it have taken me to save up enough money just to cover the cost of my defibrillator? A fucking shit ton.
Now, if I was a millionaire Republican politician such as George W. Bush or John McCain (oh wait, it’s McCain’s wife that’s the millionaire, sorry about that error), just putting a small amount of my monthly income into such a savings account would have worked out just fine. But I’m not — I work for a University. Oh wait, according to the Republicans, it’s my fault I’m not rich. Should have worked harder to make more money. Guess I don’t deserve that defibrillator.
And as for the investing in the stock market part to make my health care savings grow, I ask you how you did in the stock market over the past five years? How does your 401K look right now?
Don’t want to answer? Things look pretty fucked up. I rest my case.
2) Letting people purchase health care across state lines will enable them to buy health care at a lower cost. This is a classic Republican argument — a freer market lowers prices always! This may be the case. I could buy some shitty health insurance from the state of West Virginia, or maybe Utah, but here’s the rub — medical professionals don’t typically accept out of state insurance. Will the medical industry just change how it does business and open up a thousand different business arrangements with regional insurance companies outside their regions? Probably not. This means, patients will have to go the “reimbursement” route with their insurance companies. And how well does that work out? Well, I can’t get my insurance company to pay for my therapist, even though technically mental health is covered by my insurance. Why — she’s out of network. They’re supposed to pay 70%, but they always fuck up the paperwork.
3) The real reason why health care prices are so high is because of medical malpractice lawsuits. If people were barred from suing doctors who made them sicker or killed members of their family, then prices would go down, because doctors wouldn’t have to pay for expensive malpractice insurance. Kids, get your tea bags out of your mouths for a second and think about this. Health care is a business. When businesses suddenly find that their costs are lower, do they pass on those savings to the consumer? No — they pocket the extra income and call it a win. Sure, you might see a slightly lower price, but at the end of the day, a piece of medical electronics like my $150,000 defibrillator isn’t going to come down in price because of “tort reform.” Television prices may go down as they become cheaper to make, because electronics companies in China want to sell more TV’s, but health care doesn’t work that way. It’s not a business based on competition — it’s based on a basic need: survival. It’s not like a great doctor is going to lower his prices because some shitty back alley surgeon is lowering his. People will always go for the best quality care. It’s not like you’re going to buy the equivalent of a Vizio television over a Samsung just because you want to save a few bucks. Patients are always going to go to the best doctors and hospitals, and the best care will always cost a lot of money, tort reform or not. Their lives depend on it.
We’re not going to suddenly go back to 19th Century prices, just because tort reform is eliminated. You’re not going to be able to bargain some eggs for the local sawbones to come by to see why your daughter has pink eye.
You know what will really lower health care prices? Nothing. Yup, with health care you get what you pay for. And you get a lot of care for the money you pay. It’s health insurance that needs to be reformed — and greedy executives that take profits over peoples’ lives.
My father’s health insurance was dropped while he was dying of cancer, leaving my mother millions in debt to hospitals. None of the three Republican “fixes” would have helped him. And this was in 1993, when health care was cheaper. The only thing that would have helped my family is health insurance reform as represented by the bill going before congress today.
If you want to see this bill die, then you’re supporting the deaths of millions of innocent people because you prefer the current system. You want 35 million Americans to remain uninsured. You want people like me to die and our families to be destitute due to medical bankruptcy. You may not believe that’s the case, but that’s the outcome of of your decision to support the status quo. And none of the magical thinking as embodied by the three proposals above will solve the problem of greater coverage. The only hope people like me have right now is the current bill. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than the status quo.
You are, in simple terms, a motherfucker. I hope you get herpes from all your teabagging.
Happy Sunday.
The Closing Hours of Health Care Reform
Mar 20th
My heart versus a normal heart.
Only a few hours to go before final voting begins on the health reform bill. To all the tea baggers out there who have fought to kill the bill with lies about a socialist takeover of medicine, I say this: go fuck yourselves.
No wait, maybe I didn’t type it so you could understand me. Let’s try it again: GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
And if the bill fails, if you win the battle and spray tears of joy on the mall of my beloved home city of Washington, D.C., firm in your belief that you have won a great battle against the progressive Satan, I say this: I hope you and every member of your family gets cancer. Or better yet, I hope you all get what I have – idiopathic cardiomyopathy. I hope you learn what it means to be sick and what you’ve destroyed for those of us who are chronically ill. This bill is my last hope for a normal life.
Oh Jeff the Zombie, you undead fool, what could you possibly mean? Well, let me make a few points:
- In 2009 I was diagnosed with idiopathic cardiomyopathy, a cardiac disease defined by an enlarged left ventricle. Incurable, treatable with a large regimen of medication, which, when it fails, is replaced by something called a Left Ventricular Assist Device, or LVAD, that requires plugging yourself into a wall outlet andcarrying heavy battery-laden vests to stay alive. And once this starts to fail, your only hope is that some person who is a match for you has an accident in which they become brain dead just so doctors can replace your heart with their heart. A procedure, which ultimately requires a regimen of cancer-causing immunosuppresants to prevent your body from rejecting the donor heart.
- The survival rate for my disease is 7% — which is lower than those who have late-stage cancer.
- If I were to ever leave my employer, I will never, ever be able to get health coverage.
- Once I hit a payout cap of $1,000,000 my health care goes away. Forever.
What this bill does for me and people like me is gives us a new lease on life. I can change jobs — I can change insurance. They can no longer deny me coverage for my pre-existing condition. And should I need an LVAD, or a heart transplant, or cancer treatment for complications due to my medication, my health insurance company can’t deny me coverage. Imagine the peace of mind this will give me — not having to worry about bankrupting my wife and twin daughters. It’s extraordinary.
And yet you — the tea party activists, the anti-government libertarians, the evangelical Christians, the conservative Catholics, the right-wing nutbags — would deny me this peace of mind and security. You have no trouble at all with spending billions of dollars on an abstract war in the Middle East to bring democracy to the region, or gutting the government to provide tax cuts to the super rich, but the very real crisis my family faces means nothing to you at all. When I hear you prattle on about socialism and big government, all I can think about is how you want me to die. That’s what you want — you want to sentence me to death, and you want to bankrupt my family. That’s what you’re protesting against. You’re protesting in favor of a denial of health care to people like me — to sick people, to sick children.
It’s not a perfect bill — it doesn’t do what I really want, which is single payer. We’ll never see that in America — I’ve resigned myself to that fact. But a rational reform of the insurance industry is necessary to save the lives of millions of Americans like me.
So let me say it again — if you win tomorrow, I hope you get what I have and lose your health insurance.
And if I win tomorrow — well, you can go fuck yourself.
Happy Saturday.
