Obama Draws A Line, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #217
April 11, 2011 Mike Gold 0 Comments
As we continue to live under our Chinese curse, it is amusing to note that for several days last week the entire budget battle came down to women and the environment.
Make no mistake about it – both Barack Obama and John Boehner came away with significant wins. The budget was cut by less than three-tenths of one percent and Obama got to shore up his support with his Base by actually taking a stand in favor of women and air. This is what we in the History-Based-Cynicism racket refer to as “a deal.”
Mountains of rhetoric aside, both parties were on the same page when it came to budget cuts. Democrats caved in to cuts of more than $38.5 billion. Republicans wanted $40 billion. Of course $1.5 billion is more than I can lay my hands on, but compared to the total deficit of more than $14 trillion it doesn’t mean shit to a tree. Congress is looking at cutting about one million jobs directly and crack-of-the-whip, and of course then the Republicans can blame President Obama for the rising unemployment rate. But at least both sides understood the effect shutting down the government would have cost our slowly recovering economy a lot more than that.
So the Republicans made their stand on social issues. They wanted to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing anti-pollution regulations, including those that affect the operation of coal mines. Essentially, they wanted the EPA to drop the “P” from their agenda. Confirming their reputation on the Left for sheer malevolence, Republicans wanted to deny support for health care services. They wanted to make it harder for women to get cancer screenings. They wanted to close down the women’s health clinics. They wanted to close down those socialist, Muslim-sponsored Kenyan-run women’s health clinics.
They wanted to demonize Planned Parenthood, to paint it as an organization that only supplied abortions and paid for those abortions with tax dollars. The former part of that phrase is a gross distortion; the latter an outright lie. Planned Parenthood, as a matter of law, does not spend a single federal dollar on abortion services, no matter what the Tea Baggers tell you. Planned Parenthood primarily provides birth control services (“planning”); you’d think the anti-abortionists would be behind that.
When it comes to family planning, a part – a small part, but a part nonetheless – of some such programs is providing access to safe abortions and the Religious Right is devoted to stopping this at any cost, sadistically outsourcing abortion services to the manufactures of wire clothes hangers.
You might say you do not want your tax dollars to go to pay for hooking women up with abortions. I understand this all too well. I do not want my tax dollars to go to paying for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. I do not want my tax dollars to line the pockets of filthy rich fat cats. I can empathize. I feel your pain.
And I laugh and I laugh and I laugh.
Obnoxious speed-rapper and www.ComicMix.com editor-in-Chief Mike Gold plays a lot of troubling rock and blues on his weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind radio show on America’s pop culture channel The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his hilariously offensive Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants are unleashed every day at the same venue.
R. Maheras
April 11, 2011 - 11:23 am
Mike — The Tea Party’s claim that federal funds for Planned Parenthood supports abortions is not a “lie.”
It’s simple accounting. PPFA gets dough from Uncle Sam which is puts in its operations kitty to funds PPFA’s entire infrastructure. And since part of that infrastructure also includes a very robust abortion service, conservatives are not “lying.” They are just pointing out the obvious.
Looking at this another way, let’s pretend there is an organization called Compassionate American Federation for Families, and this organization’s main mission was helping families in a myriad of ways. But, since the organization was created by a collective of Zoroastrian priests, let’s say that one of CAFF’s many, many services was to provide spiritual counseling for families. However, knowing the sensitivities of some towards religious organizations, CAFF vows to Congress that it will partition any federal funds it receives so “not one dollar” funds the religious counseling portion.
Do you think that would fly among liberals and the ACLU?
Nahhhhh.
Because, the fact is, liberals and the ACLU are already fighting religion-affiliated organizations receiving federal funds for the exact same reason conservatives are fighting PPFA’s federal funding: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/02/when_government_enlists_the_salvation_army.html
In short, it’s hard to call one side a schmuck if your side is doing the same schmucky stuff.
In both cases, ideology – not compassion – is ruling the day.
JosephW
April 11, 2011 - 12:03 pm
@R Maheras: Keep swallowing that right-wing BS–one of these days they’ll shove just a bit too much for you to swallow and you’ll purge yourself of the whole menu.
Planned Parenthood (unlike the faith-based schemes) doesn’t seek to foist an ideology on anyone who makes use of their services. They don’t refuse to give birth control to Roman Catholics; they don’t vilify and moralize against a young unmarried woman who comes in for a free check-up (quite possibly the ONLY way she can ever get medical attention) only to learn she’s got a problem (either an STD or a “bun in the oven”); they don’t publicize how the “star football player” was treated for anal gonorrhea. More importantly, they don’t force their patients/clients to listen to harangues about how they’ve failed Jesus and need to repent of their sins nor have they historically forced a woman needing an abortion to view an ultrasound of the fetus or read some pamphlet or watch some movie “detailing” the development. People who work for PP aren’t required to belong to one particular denomination or hold one set ideology beyond that of wanting to serve the health concerns of the mostly poor and mostly young people of their community.
The REAL reason that the Right wants to shutter PP? The Right HATES the poor. The Right WANTS millions of poor and unwanted babies to more fully realize the Right’s dream of a 19th Century America where only a small, privileged few had any rights and the rest of the country was too overworked and too underfed to do anything to change things. (Why else did so many of the real reformers in the 19th Century come from the ranks of the “idle rich”?)
Bill Mulligan
April 11, 2011 - 12:17 pm
Joseph–you write that and actually accuse Mr. Maheras of swallowing BS? Please. If you’re going to demonize your opposition it’s best not to even engage in discussions with those who take a saner approach. Makes for a bad contrast.
obviously the republicans won this round. the fact that Obama went from wanting more spending to touting “the biggest spending cut in history” like that was a good idea that he’d had all along tells you that. But the man may still manage to make lemon-aid out of lemons–it isn’t like the left is going to be able to mount any kind of alternative candidate against him so they will take what he gives and damn well better like it. The Ryan proposal is gutsy but too focused on spending cuts to be viable. If Obama now counters with a long term plan that raises taxes moderately and attacks spending with at least some level of aggression he may get credit with actually staving off the whole country becoming California for the foreseeable future and he’ll probably get my vote again.
Or the republicans may have just figured out a way to get most of what they want–propose something Harry Reid derides as outrageous, extreme and unacceptable, then raise that proposal and include cuts to NPR and Planned Parenthood and at the last minute agree to roll those back in exchange for the rest. Then watch Reid proclaim victory. This is negotiating 101 but that’s about 100 more than Harry seems to be able to grasp.
R. Maheras
April 11, 2011 - 1:49 pm
JosephW — Please don’t use the “us vs. them” rhetoric with me. I’ve been listening to and filtering through ideological BS from both sides since the 1970s, so you’re wasting your time. When I was younger, I initially swallowed the liberal mantra hook line and sinker (after all, I lived in the Democratic bastion of Chicago, knew nothing about politics, and, being a compassionate and fair-minded person, I wanted to be on the side that I thought was “more righteous”). But when I started following issues closely in an attempt to be more objective, I found an ethical and ideological house of cards on the Democratic side.
Finally, after Jimmy Carter showed me how badly I wasted my vote in 1976, I vowed never to back one extreme or the other again unless, after doing my own research, I decided they were right (or at least “more right”) on a particular issue.
Your “ideological” argument about faith-based organizations — if you really believe it — is silly, since there are plenty of ideologies that faith-free organizations “foist” on people. In the case of PPFA, you merely happen to agree with their ideology regarding “morality” and abortion.
And your statement that the “real” reason the right wants to de-fund PPFA is simply because “The Right HATES the poor” is liberal propaganda in its purist form. Don’t shoot the messenger, but the fact is, there are plenty of poor people of all races who have conservative values on certain issues, and many of the “rich” people on the right started out poor themselves.
When you look at the passage of Proposition 8 in California, was it rich, white Republicans voters who made the difference? Not really. Exit polls indicate that it was Blacks and Hispanics at all economic levels who voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8 that turned the tide.
And are all of those conservative “Good Ol’ Boys” in Middle America (that Hollywood loves to parody) rich? Hell no. Nor are the more than one million members of the U.S. military who tend to vote conservatively.
The fact is, throwing a blanket stereotype on one party or the other may make partisans feel good and make for great indignant political conversation at partisan social events, but in reality, life just ain’t so simple.
But what really cracks me up is when someone like John Kerry or Ted Kennedy tries to distance themselves from the likes of George W. Bush or Steve Forbes, when they are essentially cut from the same privileged class.
Marc Fishman
April 11, 2011 - 8:24 pm
I’m not taking part of this amazing debate. Suffice to say every time the right talk, I’m too busy laughing to care anyways. I had little to no fear at all the government would shut down. I guffawed at the facebook polls that implied if the gov’t shut down then our congressmen should not be paid.
But then again, I think congressmen should all take a paycut, along with every pro athlete and CFO. A million a piece and we might have a little money to do important stuff… like cure disease and help those living paycheck to paycheck, or worse… are without a home or food at all.
But that might just make me a socialist pinko commie.
R. Maheras
April 12, 2011 - 1:58 am
Marc — I’d stack my independent voting record against yours any day. If you think I’m a rightist, then that merely means you are way left of center.
I’ve voted for Democrats that would make a real conservative’s head explode. And on the very same ticket, I’ve voted for Republicans that would make a liberal’s head explode.
I had a long discussion with a lefty once on “The Comics Journal” message board, and he kept telling me how I was a biased right-winger who watched Glenn Beck and recited Limbaugh talking points, yadda, yadda, yadda. So I shared some of my voting record. Still, he kept on throwing out all of the stereotypes. So I asked him if he had ever voted for a Republican. His answer? He said he could NEVER vote for a Republican — EVER. And yet he had the freakin’ gall to be lecturing ME about being closed-minded?
Bill Mulligan
April 12, 2011 - 4:23 am
But…but…if you aren’t just automatically EVIL how is he supposed to be able to know what’s good? Thinking is hard!
Martha Thomases
April 12, 2011 - 6:43 am
@R.Maheras. Not only have I never voted for a Republican, but I have never knowingly slept with one.
And proud of it.
R. Maheras
April 12, 2011 - 8:39 am
Martha — I guess that’s why there is no “D” in “teamwork”
mike weber
April 12, 2011 - 1:01 pm
This is an amazing discussion. Pretty much nothing but cliche talking-point sound-bite half-truths from the anti-PP side and snotty playground rhetoric from everyone.
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No wonder our country is in such good shape.
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And about the “cuts” – a very large part of it was simply returning unspent appropriations/funds to the General Fund.
R. Maheras
April 12, 2011 - 3:53 pm
Mike — First of all, if you were referring to my comments, name one “half truth” I stated.
Second, I have no problem with some of the PPFA services, but they, like faith-based social service organizations, have set themselves up so that federal funds support their basic infrastructure in an effort to skirt the issue of how such federal funds are used. PPFA does abortions on the side, and faith-based organizations proselytize on the side.
So, since everyone seems to be playing fast and loose with the spirit of the law, I say cut off all federal funding every last one of them. That way, atheists don’t have to worry about the down-trodden masses being “corrupted” by religious organizations giving them food and shelter; and conservatives can’t complain that federal funds are helping underwrite an infrastructure that supports abortions and that turns a blind eye towards fake pimps and fake underage exploited women.
It’s a solution only King Solomon could have loved.
John Tebbel
April 13, 2011 - 7:46 am
Ah, a purist. Enjoy the clear view from your mountaintop while the rest of us shuffle in the valley dealing with the ambiguity of real life, where “cut off all” and King Solomon’s solutions are unworkable fantasies.
R. Maheras
April 13, 2011 - 9:01 am
John — My “view from the top” is not an unworkable fantasy — it’s a realist viewpoint I actually employ in my personal microeconomy. If I have the money, I spend it. If I don’t, I cut back. If I REALLY don’t have the money, my cutbacks are unapologetically draconian.
R. Maheras
April 13, 2011 - 9:21 am
And there is a practical side to my ecomomic philosophy as well. For example, I COULD afford to own and drive a car in L.A., but I have opted not to. And speaking of vehicles, despite being able to now afford bigger and much more expensive cars than in my younger days, to date my wife and I have never spent more than $20,000 on a vehicle (the average is close to $17,000 I think), and almost all of the cars I’ve owned over the years have been of the four-cylinder variety. I leased a six-banger van in the 1990s, and in the 1980s I briefly owned as a second “commute-to-work-only” 8-cylinder car: A 1970 AMC Ambassador (which I got for $300 bucks). Our primary car at the time was a 1982 Plymouth Horizon Miser — which got great gas mileage, but whose engine was apparently so underpowered we couldn’t order ours with factory-installed air-conditioning.