US POLITICS: AMERICANS, PLEASE WELCOME YOUR NEW PRESIDENT... SCOTT BROWN!

I think this is basically right but conflating this with anti-intellectualism is a mistake. Does "intellectualism" (or better: valuing reason) make people not racist, or tribalist etc.? Does "intellectualism"/valuing reason make people see that solidarity with all people is "the truth"? Those are moral matters and it's not clear that just "thinking through them hard or well" will make people "see the truth".

What changes it more than anything is simply going to school/working around/living your life around people of other ethnicities, I would think. I dunno maybe that's an overly naive view of the way urban vs. rural Americans feel about race...

via tpm:

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/multimedia/video/video.html?video=949486

video of competing HCR rallies in ohio. i wasn't able to watch this with sound, but the :50 mark where dudes scream and then throw money at a dude with parkinson's is especially charming.

I don't see it as the elevation of rationality as much as the small amt of mental & emotional sophistication that protects you against simple manipulation. Whatever gives you a bullshit sensor and makes you back off when something feels inflammatory -- when you feel all het up by a commercial, a speech, or a piece of mail, that's the time to ask yrself why, and who does that benefit?

The tendency to stop and think that process through is missing in a lot of people but it's not necessarily tied to education or cultural sophistication. Probably more tied to some kind of strict sense of inner truthfulness/morality -- not the kind of morality you wear on the outside for your neighbors, but being straight w yrself. And no political or social or religious construct that benefits from its audience's cloudy thinking wants to promote that state of mind, so you gotta do it against all discouragement, for yourself.

is it just because of my own personal bias on this issue that the pro-HCR people seemed totally reasonable and decent, and the anti-HCR people seemed stupid and vicious and cunts?

referring specifically to goole's clip above, but also in a wider context i guess.

Whatever gives you a bullshit sensor and makes you back off when something feels inflammatory -- when you feel all het up by a commercial, a speech, or a piece of mail, that's the time to ask yrself why, and who does that benefit?

Well put. How can this sensor be installed or repaired? People just love so very much to be righteous and especially to YELL.

I've said before that one of the things I find so depressing about the current state of politics, now that the loonies are now in charge of the right, is that well-thought, earnest right-wing ideas or principles are not being advanced and there isn't enough of a reputable opposition to keep the Dems honest. Brown may have already pissed off the baggers (and that's to be expected, I guess, in Massachussetts) but i don't see him or Mittens coming up with mcu in the way of real, serious policy and you can tell the whole GOP is scared of the right-wing fringe.

well-thought, earnest right-wing ideas or principles are not being advanced

like what? aren't conservative democrats basically already playing this role?

Are there any well thought out right wing ideas anymore? I thought it was all culture wars, anti-illegal immigration, pro-business and tax cuts?

the VA atty general is a real treat

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/virginia-ag-to-sue-feds-over-health-care-reform.php?ref=fpb

like what? aren't conservative democrats basically already playing this role?

Good point. I was going to make it.

The right wing -- esp by infiltrating the supposed "progressive" left wing -- have done a damn good job at crippling governmental ability to regulate certain industries. Gov't's main duty should be is (other than defense) to regulate products/companies/people that are harmful to the public wellbeing. The fact that the right is constantly screaming "Gov't can't get anything done" isn't just fearmongering, it's a victory cry. The free market is winning and the future is a bright shining corporately-run fascist state.

Several years ago, I suggested to all of my friends that we join the Republican Party and spend all of our political time, effort and energy trying to make them into a liberal party. They all scoffed at me.

Looking at conservative Democrats and the success conservatives have had in fragmenting the Democrats, I shake my head at their folly.

Wasn't that one of Clinton's goals as president, though---enlarging the tent (not "his" tent, get your mind out of the gutter)?

So was Reagan's. And Nixon's.

yes, true---that elusive middle, or whatever else you want to call "Reagan Democrats".

to me the question is whether the Clinton/Dem shift to the right opened up the Democratic party to voters that would have been scared off otherwise or whether the shift simply moved the nation's political compass to the right. (picking up the Reagan Democrats vs. making more of them?) I think the answer is somewhere in-between.

Yeah, both in the short term, but the latter also in the longterm.

The free market is winning and the future is a bright shining corporately-run fascist state.

adam i think you need to relax a little

No, that sounds right on to me.

haha i was just about to post the same thing, had it in the clipboard and everything

i mean i get the sentiment and all, but i always gotta wince a little bit at the lefty version of OMG SOCIALISM IS HERE

Did anyone read the Harper's article about new technologies designed to crack down on protests? You can read the start here: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/03/0082866
Kinda has me worried Adam's right.

?? there's always some less-than-lethal weapon in development: microwave emitters, sonic screaming guns, water guns with a little electricity in them, etc etc. our military has found itself in hostile civilian populations for 8 years, it's no surprise they're looking at this stuff. these stories run all the time.

besides, cops use tasers like once every 3 minutes in this country, if corporatist-fascism comes out of the barrel of a not-gun, then it's already here basically.

When I hear the word democracy, I reach for my not-gun.

Oh Mr. D. thx for the wonderful new user name here.

― demonic splendor, demonic majesty (Abbott), Wednesday, 17 March 2010 15:50 (2 hours ago) Permalink

100% my pleasure!

Wasn't that one of Clinton's goals as president, though---enlarging the tent (not "his" tent, get your mind out of the gutter)?
_______________________________

So was Reagan's. And Nixon's.
_______________________________

yes, true---that elusive middle, or whatever else you want to call "Reagan Democrats".

i'm not sure that nixon was pursuing "the middle," per se.

now that the loonies are now in charge of the right

be nice. those loonies will soon nearly or actually control a house of congress.

Can anyone make sense of this article for me, if possible

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/03/polls-show-gop-gaining-in-election-year.html

Ladies and gentlemen, Mark Levin:

Levin Will File Lawsuit If Dems Use Slaughter Rule [Daniel Foster]
From CNS News:

Conservative talk-radio host and attorney Mark Levin said he plans to file an immediate lawsuit if House Democratic leaders try to utilize a little-known maneuver under House rules to pass the health-care bill without actually having to vote on it.

“I cannot predict if we would win or lose — this is not as simple as some would have you believe — but I want to put the marker down right now and make it clear to members of the House of Representatives who think the quickest way to pass this is to adopt a rule that assumes that they voted on an underlying bill when they didn’t — that is going to be challenged if they do it,” Levin said on his nationally syndicated radio show Tuesday evening.

hahaha this strategy fits into the Republican theory of tort reform

oh wait

little-known maneuver

LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES LIES

LIES.

This is how the GOP "dominates" the "discourse." They're meaner and more ruthless than Dems. Look at this fool.

http://blog.american.com/?p=11467

Hypocrisy: A Parliamentary Procedure

By Norman J. Ornstein
March 16, 2010, 4:24 pm

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

yes that link is from the AEI

Totally. But if the Dems pass a big law for once, this whole repartee will be forgotten immediately.

xp to Alfred

like, it's cool for political commentators to wring their hands about procedural matters---that's what they do, talk---but let's not confuse that with politics.

I'm just very, very doubtful of the idea that an unregulated and unwatched free market will lead to a good future for a majority of people on this planet. Time and time again it has been proven that the single-minded pursuit of the bottom line is harmful to society economically, environmentally, physically, and biologically. That the only real message I can discern from the Right at the moment is that gov't is bad and corporations should be free to do whatever they want; to do otherwise, and to even treat people the same as you treat corporations, is socialism.

TY Norman Ornstein, another dude from my HS trying to keep Washington real.

congrats on going to high school with that guy

I didn't - he's like a zillion years older than me, HOOS. Every time Norm offers something intelligent, fellow alums can forget about Friedman for a bit, basically.

wow so wait your parents let you skip middle school so you could go to high school with Norm Ornstein? that's rad.

I've said this before but the only famous person from my high school is Craig Kilborn ;_;

craig kilborn is better than no one--no one cool went to my high school

Except, perhaps, you. Someone's got to be the first, right?

Honestly there are like no truly famous *gentiles* from my HS.

thank god

pass it without a vote! brilliant! frankly at this point the republicans seem a little pathetic. how lame do you have to be to allow the other side to pass a bill without a vote??

oh that's not actually happening, you say? somebody should tell the republicans then, i guess

Having a political party organized around anything but ideology makes no moral sense.

since when do politics make moral sense

^^^^

you know what doesn't make moral sense? democracy