Time Is Not On Our Side, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #345 | @MDWorld
October 14, 2013 Mike Gold 6 Comments
The clock on the floor tells me it’s 7 PM Sunday night. Reuters tells me the government remains shutdown by the Republicans. The head of the J. P. Morgan Chase bank tells me if our nation defaults on its loans Thursday, “you don’t want to know” what will happen. Senator Rob Portman (Republican, Ohio) tells me there will be a deal before Thursday. But Senator Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) said Portman’s full of shit.
Meanwhile, Friday I was told my Obamacare application was accepted. I made it a week ago today after logging on to the Connecticut state website the first time I tried and spending a total of 12 minutes online (yep, I clocked it). Turns out I’ll be getting real health care – right now, I’ve got prescription and catastrophic care, which means if Telstar fell on my head, I’m partially covered. Oh, and it’ll be priced reasonably and affordably.
It’s impossible to perceive responsible Americans would let this nation sink. But it’s been quite a while since Republicans have acted responsibly. They prefer to be defectively childish when there’s a Democrat in the White House, and they are completely hysterical when there’s a black man at 1600 Pennsylvania… at least one who doesn’t look like Forest Whitaker and act like Stepin Fetchit.
The Republicans say President Obama won’t negotiate. To show you how stupid that is, let me offer up a hypothetical.
Let us say 80 Democratic congressmen are angry with all the state laws that have been passed that limit or terminate a woman’s right to abortion. Let’s say they propose a federal law that wipes away these oppressive laws. And, further, let’s say they promise a primary fight against any Democratic congressman who oppose the law. Their new law doesn’t pass, so the Democratic congressmen decide to hold our nation hostage by shutting down the government until they get their way. They want to “negotiate.”
This could happen. There are more than 80 congressmen who would back such a bill.
Wait. Excuse me. I’m mistaken.
This cannot happen because, as a group, the Democratic congressmen are not a gaggle of emotionally deprived totalitarian childish brats whose temper tantrums are better suited for the supermarket cereal aisle. The Democratic congressmen are more mature and more responsible than the Republicans.
And that’s such a low bar.
Will this week be America’s last as the world’s leading superpower?
This is entirely up to all those nine year-olds on the Republican side of the aisle in the United States House of Representatives.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com and on iNetRadio, www.iNetRadio.com every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check www.getthepointradio.com above for times and on-demand streaming information. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
Rick Oliver
October 14, 2013 - 8:57 am
The last time this happened, it was the “Democrats” who were pissed off that Lincoln won the election. They decided to take their ball and go home. Now a group of representatives from a remarkably similar group of states (plus the certifiably insane Michelle Bachmann from MN), now calling themselves Republicans, are trying to do something remarkably similar. We really should have let the South secede.
Mike Gold
October 14, 2013 - 9:21 am
Hindsight is 20-20.
We’re certainly drifting apart, and I understand why some rubes can’t keep up. They’d rather live with their hatred of blacks, gays, the poor, the non-Christian. Let those people go.
R. Maheras
October 15, 2013 - 9:47 am
Mike — C’mon. Be honest. Democrats were also hysterical the entire time Bush the Younger was in office. They were hysterical about not just Bush, but everyone in his administration. Race or gender didn’t matter, either. If one of Bush’s appointees was a minority or a female, they were attacked mercilessly anyway — and called all sorts of racist names in the process.
So when Democrats cite similar Republican excesses now, all I can say is what the hell do you expect? You reap what you sow.
I remember after reading, circa 2007, yet another anti-Bush administration column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, I decided to look at Krugman’s column archive dating back to when Bush first took office to the present. The bulk of his columns were about contemporary political issues — many having nothing to do with his economics area of expertise — and ALL were critical of Bush or his an his administration. At that point, I said to myself, “Fuck you, Paul Krugman, and your Nobel Prize. You’re so far in the anti-Republican tank, you wouldn’t say a kind word about Bush if he single-handedly carried you and your family out of a burning building. Your column the next day would probably criticize him for not saving the cat, too.”
Personally, I think extremists on both sides are the problem — and neither party has the moral high ground in that regards.
Are some of the Republicans now in Congress acting like obstructionist babies? Sure. But so are many Dems. If we’d had a budget, there would have been no shutdown. But Dems in Congress have avoided budgets to keep from embarrassing the president, because the presidents budgets were so fanciful, even many Dems would have balked at voting for them. So Reid obstructed any budget votes, and instead opted for only focusing on the politically safer continuing resolutions.
Budgets were something that used to be an annual event that was part of Congress’ routine duties, but Dems stopped the process when it became a political liability. And now it’s been nearly five frickin’ years!!! Where’s the frickin’ outrage? Did you know that the ONLY budget Obama has signed since he took office was Bush’s last budget? He has yet to get one of his own passed — even when the Dems had a super-majority in Congress.
George Haberberger
October 16, 2013 - 11:19 am
…and they are completely hysterical when there’s a black man at 1600 Pennsylvania…
Really? That’s your claim. That any criticism of the president can have no other reason than racism? That is a cowardly argument. Any political position is going have critics. If you were confident in your position you wouldn’t need to ascribe internal motivations to me that do not exist simply so you do not have to pay attention to the argument.
The House of Representatives is tasked by the constitution with appropriations. They are required to oversee how the country’s money is spent. Apparently you would have them be negligent in their duty and simply give the administration a blank check. If they don’t, it’s because they are racist.
Your hypothetical of Democrats shutting down the government in order to undue Pro-Life legislation is flawed. For one thing, the debt ceiling is the reason the government is shut down. The House is trying to get a handle on spending. How would Pro-Life legislation cost the government more money?
A few years ago when Bush was in office, MoveOn.org had a video that featured young children working jobs – washing dishes, hauling trash, repairing tires, cleaning offices, assembly-line processing and grocery checking – followed by the line: “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?”
Hah! One trillion dollar deficit? I wish!
Doug Abramson
October 16, 2013 - 7:34 pm
George and Russ: You find when a group of Congressional Democrats attempted to crash the economy unless the Republican majority agreed to kill a program for them. A program that they had no numerical chance of killing themselves. Once you do that, get back to me. This “but the Democrats do it too” false equivalency has grown tiresome.
R. Maheras
October 17, 2013 - 4:40 am
Doug — I note you, as usual, ignore every single fact I cite, cross your arms in a huff, and say, “My guys have the moral high ground. Nyah, nyh, nyah.” The fact is, extremist Democrats are ruining this country because, like their extremist Republican counterparts, they always put politics above everything else. The hard-core Democrats refuse to address the budget, the deficit, and entitlement reform, because it is politically toxic — despite the fact that doing nothing is extremely wasteful, leads to stuff like paralyzed government, and fails to solve a looming fiscal problem that could destroy this country. So, in my opinion,extreme Democrats are just as much a threat to the future of this country as is the most extreme Republican.
George Haberberger
October 17, 2013 - 9:48 am
The point was not to crash the economy. The point was to get spending under control. If anything will crash the economy, it’s the ever-expanding deficit. As Russ said, congress hasn’t passed a budget in five years. If there were a budget, the debt ceiling would have been addressed long before the deadline. The Republicans wanted to delay the employee mandate for health care the same way that the president unilaterally delayed the mandate for employers. Yes, Cruz spoke for a day about defunding the whole program, but you know that shooting high so that your final settlement seems more acceptable is a timeworn tactic.
When he was running for president, Obama called George Bush’s deficit treasonous and a failure of leadership. Based on that rhetoric, how much of a failure is Obama?
Rick Oliver
October 17, 2013 - 10:53 am
So…the way to address the deficit is to hold the country hostage until we get rid of one particular program that we don’t like. Got it.
Delaying the mandate was one of a number of counter-offers the Republicans made after their initial demand to completely de-fund the program — and it doesn’t take a political genius to understand that they wanted to stall the program another year so they could continue to try to get rid of it entirely before people started signing up for it and might discover they liked it.
Mike Gold
October 17, 2013 - 11:07 am
Too late, Rick. I signed up for it. I like it.
They elected a new senator in New Jersey yesterday. You know, the state that gave us Chris Christie, the man opposed to health care, gay marriage, and much of the rest of the right wing agenda. The guy they elected is a liberal black man Yale Law graduate who’s mayor of one of the shittiest cities in the nation. High crime, high deficit, all the stuff the Republicans use to decertify a candidate. And the choice was clear, as this guy ran against a genuine Tea Party loudmouth with impeccable right wing cred.
Well, it turns out Wednesday October 16th was a lousy day for the Tea Party to try to seize a Senate seat. The liberal dreamer beat the loudmouth fascist by 11 points — a huge margin in statewide elections. You’d think with Christie so popular, their guy would have done better.
Will people remember the Republicans’ Folly in 2014?
I can think of 24 billion reasons why a great many will. The first one is mammoth, self-serving hypocrisy: they claim they want the budget slashed, and then they throw a mindless and politically damaging temper tantrum that costs the United States of America $24,000,000,000.
Rick Oliver
October 17, 2013 - 2:23 pm
BTW: The “mandate” is based on standard insurance practices. Group policies that don’t require pre-qualification typically require 100% participation or proof of equivalent coverage elsewhere and/or and opt-out fee. If you later decide to join, you have to pre-qualify. This is to avoid adverse selection: people only joining (and only paying) when they’re sick. To reiterate: This is standard insurance practice. Without the mandate, the ACA would almost certainly fail; so if the Republicans were looking for a way to make it fail, they couldn’t find a better place to start.
Mike Gold
October 17, 2013 - 2:26 pm
Rick, you worked in both the Big Pharm and the health care insurance fields, as I recall, right? So you’re expressing an informed opinion.
Doug Abramson
October 17, 2013 - 2:51 pm
George and Russ: Glad to see both of you being consistent. I asked you to give me one example of the Democrats threatening to crash the economy over an issue that they had lost on three times. What did I get? The same issues that you bring up every time politics take off here. All of your issues have been debated and by multiple people. Nobody’s gonna change their mind here, why constantly bring them up? I asked one question. I’m guessing that neither of you can give me an answer that you like.
Doug Abramson
October 17, 2013 - 2:52 pm
Mike,
An informed opinion? We can’t have that. Get him to Dick Armey for re-education!
George Haberberger
October 17, 2013 - 3:10 pm
I didn’t give you an example of the Democrats threatening to crash the economy because that would be an acknowledgment that that is what the Republicans were trying to do. And that is NOT what the Republicans were trying to do, Quite the opposite in fact.
Obama’s policies will crash the economy unless they are reigned in.
And if you want to call me out on not responding the way you want me to, there’s the whole “Obama called George Bush’s deficit treasonous and a failure of leadership. Based on that rhetoric, how much of a failure is Obama?” meme is still unanswered.
Doug Abramson
October 17, 2013 - 3:19 pm
George,
Intentional or not. The Tea Party wing of the GOP WAS threatening to crash the economy. Dress it up any way you like, they came close to causing a global depression. Saying that it wasn’t their intent, implies that they’re too stupid to understand the ramifications of their actions.
Doug Abramson
October 17, 2013 - 3:25 pm
As for Obama’s policies: 1. It had nothing to do with my question. 2. The budget deficit has been shrinking. Eventually we’ll have a surplus, again. Like we did before two unfunded wars.
Rick Oliver
October 17, 2013 - 8:59 pm
Mike: Nah, I’m just making this shit up.
Just kidding.
I worked for Abbott Labs and Blue Cross, and I’ve spent the last 20 years in the number crunching business, developing the kind of software they use to generate actuarial tables and other statistics that they use to determine stuff like insurance rates.
George Haberberger
October 18, 2013 - 9:59 am
The same issues that you bring up every time politics take off here. All of your issues have been debated and by multiple people. Nobody’s gonna change their mind here, why constantly bring them up?
Oh, I know no one’s going to change their mind. But political posts usually only “take off” here when someone dares to post something other than, “Wow! Great column! I couldn’t agree more!!!!” If no one posts a dissenting opinion, the columns get about decidedly less responses. Maybe that’s what is preferred. If so, I can waste my time reading something else.
On the other hand sometimes I feel compelled to at least dissuade the sycophants of the notion that everyone agrees with them. God knows, that is a lesson I’ve had to learn. In those cases I am reminded of a quote by William F. Buckley, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
Neil C.
October 18, 2013 - 2:04 pm
Why bother with facts when they don’t jibe with your reality:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/18/inside_the_fox_news_lie_machine_i_fact_checked_sean_hannity_on_obamacare/
Rick Oliver
October 20, 2013 - 7:47 am
I, for one, welcome dissenting opinions from people like George and Russ. It makes me think, and it makes me do my homework. However, quotes from William F. Buckley dismissing liberals do not advance the discussion.
Mike Gold
October 20, 2013 - 8:13 am
I agree with Rick’s comment, on both counts. Buckley could think and he brought reason to the conservative movement of his time, which is quite different from today’s so-called conservative movement that’s burdened by self-righteousness and invasion into other people’s business. But Buckley constantly ran up against the brick wall of his religious convictions, which are counter to reason.
Rene
October 20, 2013 - 8:43 am
“C’mon. Be honest. Democrats were also hysterical the entire time Bush the Younger was in office.”
Sorry Russ, but no. The Democrats rolled over when Bush said roll over, jumped when he said jump. They supported Bush’s wars, as you (or George) said a couple of months ago. The Democrats, spineless as they are, were incredibly compliant when Bush was in office.
What you really mean by “Democrat extremists” is guys like Paul Krugman. Krugman is a commentator in a newspaper with no executive or legislative power. Likewise, MoveOn.Org is an advocacy group.
Now, the Republican extremists are IN POWER. They are ellected officials, not just commentators or support groups like the so-called Democrat extremists.
Whitney
October 20, 2013 - 1:23 pm
Golden Boy –
Glad you have health insurance now. It will be nice to have you around and vitally pissy for at least four score. And that’s the point.
George Haberberger
October 20, 2013 - 2:10 pm
“However, quotes from William F. Buckley dismissing liberals do not advance the discussion.”
I don’t think that quote from William F. Buckley dismisses Liberals. It’s just a friendly little jab at the idea that political advocates often live in a bubble.
George Haberberger
October 20, 2013 - 2:12 pm
“However, quotes from William F. Buckley dismissing liberals do not advance the discussion.”
I don’t think that quote from William F. Buckley dismisses Liberals. It’s just a friendly little jab at the idea that political advocates often live in a bubble.
Rene
October 20, 2013 - 3:32 pm
George, I think the difference is that the “boys in the bubble” in the American Left haven’t gotten official positions in the Democrat Party, much less have been elected to anything.
But the “boys in the bubble” in the American Right managed to do it. And it’s not only Liberals that have noticed how damaging this can be for society and for the Republican Party itself. Karl Rove, for instance, knows the score.
R. Maheras
October 21, 2013 - 4:58 am
Rene — You’re fooling yourself. The only reason some of them “rolled over” is because they thought it eas politically advantageous, based on the still stunning impact of 9-11, and the intel out there from not just US sources, but the intel sources if some of our allies. The far left folks, like Krugman, were hysterical about Bush, Cheney, and all the rest the day he entered office. I remember the hue and cry of those who vowed to leave the country if Bush was elected.
Rene
October 21, 2013 - 7:42 am
Russ – But those far left folks weren’t ever in power. Krugman is a political writer of articles, not a elected official. Also, almost 100% of the fools that predicted apocalypse when Bush and Cheney were in power were the ordinary Liberal folks, not the politicians.
They had the bark, and that bark made you pissed off, but they didn’t have the bite.
The Liberal politicians, the guys that rolled over because they thought it was advantageous, as you so aptly put, were pragmatical professional politicians that tried to do what they thought was best for them. Like Liberal politicians almost always do.
As opposed to the Conservative hardliners of today, the Tea Party elected guys. They are truly ideological folks, not just realistic weasels. And we’re all going to learn that a cynical weasel is less dangerous than a ideological crusader that doesn’t care what damage they cause.
R. Maheras
October 21, 2013 - 10:06 am
Rene — A lot of all-encompassing labels are thrown at the Tea Party by liberals that are bullshit.
From my vantage point, the main reason the Tea Party came into existence is because the Republicans, under Bush, appear to have forgotten that fiscal responsibility was supposed to be one of the Republicans’ core tenets.
Democrats, because addressing budget cuts entitlement reform are perhaps the ugliest political babies out there, won’t touch ’em with a ten-foot pole. So they are natural enemies against fiscally conservative Republicans– which is all Tea Party members really are.
Bachman and the other “sound-bite” favorites of the left are like sideshow freak distractions for the rubes.
Neil C.
October 22, 2013 - 6:14 am
Yet none of the ‘sideshow freaks’ were disowned until they started hurting the brand recently. The ‘freaks’ have become the mainstream of the party now.
Mike Gold
October 22, 2013 - 8:51 am
The Republicans desperately need their one-eyed man.
R. Maheras
October 22, 2013 - 9:47 am
Political parties only publicly reject their sideshow freaks when they become a political liability — as the Democrats finally did, after a 100-year political alliance, with their one-time pals, the southern states.
Rene
October 22, 2013 - 11:02 am
Russ –
The “Tea Party as Libertarians” is a myth that has only a partial reflection in reality. Libertarians have never had a “pure” representation in American politics. Actually, no one is ever purely represented in American politics, since you guys have only 2 parties.
Because the Tea Party comes closest to it, a lot of Objectivists and Libertarians have come up with the comforting myth that that is all the Tea Party is: champions of fiscal responsibility.
So that it makes easier for them to ignore or downplay all the other points in the Tea Party agenda that they don’t like and that lots of “sophisticated” people don’t like: stuff about religion, immigration, guns, gender, sex, the environment, the culture, all of them also integral part of the Tea Party.
And even if we pretend for a moment that the Tea Party is only the champions of so-called “fiscal responsibility”, there is a whole economic agenda behind that phrase that is often hidden behind a façade of no-nonsense technocratic “truth”.
The whole blah blah blah of fiscal responsibility is a part of the agenda of unrestricted capitalism that a lot of people have flat out rejected in recent American elections, only it’s dressed up as a “necessity”. We’ve had that con game in my country in the 1990s, together with excessive economic openness, labor insecurity, privatization, and all that nasty stuff that goes with it, in short, tricke-down economics, or Reaganomics that came for another try.
Why is it always “fiscal” responsibility. Can’t we talk about social responsibility? Environmental responsibility?
Rene
October 23, 2013 - 8:49 am
Russ –
Check out this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/opinion/the-cry-of-the-true-republican.html?hp&_r=0
A choice bit:
“There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out.”
Mike Gold
October 23, 2013 - 12:06 pm
Got it backwards, Russ. In 1948, the “Democratic Party,” such as it was, didn’t split from the South, the South split from the Democratic Party and ran Strom Thurmond as the presidential candidate for the “State’s Rights Democratic Party.” At that same time, the progressives split from the Democrats and ran Henry Wallace both president under the Progressive Party banner. Somehow, that shithead Truman managed to win without the left and the right flanks, beating Tom Dewey by a small margin.
It’s truly a shame that both spin-off parties didn’t organize for the long haul. If they did, today we’d have the Progressive Party, the Conservative Party, the Democratic Party, and a very, very different Republican Party… and more Americans would feel they have a voice in our government.
George Haberberger
October 23, 2013 - 1:40 pm
Regarding the NY Times article that Rene cited: Mr. Taft may consider himself a “genetic Republican” but genetics has little, if anything, to do the politics.
He said, ”Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.”
He says the Tea Party has made the Democrats the party of fiscal responsibility? Why? Because they were in favor of raising the debt ceiling? It is to laugh. Where was that sense of fiscal responsibility from the Democrats or from Mr. Taft’s revered version of the Republican Party when continued out-of-control spending necessitated raising the debt ceiling? If the Republican Party is changing or being usurped by the Tea Party, Mr. Taft should just look in the mirror for the reason.
And comparing the Tea Party to McCarthyism is simply another desperate attempt to marginalize what they stand for. It is a variation on calling them racists.
R. Maheras
October 24, 2013 - 5:52 am
Mike — Semantics. The Dixiecrats quit because they knew they were being fired. That’s the way it is with Democrats. They rarely tell you to your face they’re going to cut you off at the knees. Instead, they slowly marginalize you, and when they think their position is strong enough and your weak enough, they cut you off completely. Eventually, they reason, you’ll either go away on your own volition, or simply wither and die on the vine.
In a workplace analogy, a typical Republican will walk up to you and fire you to your face. A typical Democrat will move your desk to the basement, take away all of your responsibilities, shun you, and wait for you to quit.
Rene
October 24, 2013 - 2:15 pm
That is one of the few times I agree with Russ. The typical Republican fully believes in hierarchy, and fully accepts inequality, so they don’t have a problem wielding power. They even relish it, as they usually see the world as the strong naturally lording over the weak.
Democrats, on ther other hand, usually are a bit ashamed of power, since in a hypotethical liberal utopia, everyone would be equal.
When someone in a weak position dislikes a Conservative, the Conservative thinks “that is THEIR problem”. But Liberals don’t like it when anyone in a weak position dislikes them.