stupid
This Is Our President
Earlier this week, President Obama finally laid out clearly and concisely what he wanted in a health care bill (and only 14 months after he should have!). What he didn’t want: a public option. No government-run health care even though 23 Senators recently signaled that they would support it if the bill were going to go through reconciliation and would only need 50 votes instead of 60. Also, polling shows that a majority of Americans wants a public option. But Obama didn’t include it in his wish list. Why?
As Press Secretary Robert Gibbs revealed today, “We have seen obviously that though there are some that are supportive of this, there isn’t enough political support in a majority to get this through.” They don’t have the votes. Because the President thinks that the measure wouldn’t pass, he doesn’t support it. It isn’t because he thinks the public option is bad or that it needs better definition. It’s because he thinks he might lose. He is a coward.
So this is our President: a man who will fight for the people as long as he thinks he can score a political victory. He won’t fight for us, he won’t fight for change, he won’t even fight for what’s popular. He’ll fight for what he thinks Congress can accomplish. He’ll fight for nothing.
Go Throw Yourself into Mount Doom
If you look at the Amazon pre-order page for the upcoming Blu-ray box set of The Lord of the Rings, you’ll see it has a 1 1/2-star rating based on 1,979 “reviews”. Why all the negativity? Because the extended editions aren’t included. This is the problem with consumers who think they’re owed something by a company because they’re not getting the product they wanted. Not that they bought, but the one they wanted. Here’s a very simple solution:
Don’t buy it.
Women Respond to Stupid Dodge Super Bowl Ad
Perhaps the most tone-deaf, misogynistic Super Bowl ad of this year (although it’s certainly a crowded field) was Dodge’s ad for the Dodge Charger which is “Man’s Last Stand” against being emasculated. To which I and hopefully most viewers, both male and female, responded with a resounding “Boo-fucking-hoo.” Now here’s a fake ad from a woman’s point of view. It’s only a billion times better.
First, for those who didn’t see it, here’s Dodge’s ad:
Now here’s the response:
Joe Lieberman Shows Democrats as the Losers They Are
Nobody likes Joe Lieberman. He’s a puny, unimpressive twerp whose purpose is to make Democrats do whatever Republicans want. But it’s hard to blame him when Democrats bend over time and time again to acquiesce to his demands even though those demands run completely counter to the Democratic platform. Lieberman, after speaking at the Republican National Convention in support of John McCain, still gets to caucus with the Democrats and hold all of his committee chairmenships.
And the White House, so desperate to wrap up a turd of a health care reform bill and shove it under the tree in time for Christmas, doesn’t care. And when the 2010 midterm elections roll around at the Democrats lose control of both the House and the Senate due to their own ineptitude, Joe Lieberman will still be smiling pretty because the Republicans will give him a big slap on the back and say, “Good work, Joe. Always knew you were one of us.”
Obama’s Health Reform Approach: Declare Victory and Get Out
“He didn’t get into the details,” said Bingaman. “His message was: This is a very important thing to do for the country. A lot of people will benefit if we enact health care reform. It’s been a longtime in coming and we need to get it done.”
Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), a member of the Finance Committee’s conveyed this message to reporters after Obama held a speech (after which he did not allow questions) to the senate Democratic caucus. The Huffington Post also said that Joe Lieberman came out of the meeting elated that the President hadn’t said anything about the highly vaunted public option. Of course, even if he had, at this point the public option barely exists. It was a compromise on a never-offered single-payer system, then it was ripped down to an opt-out system by states, wouldn’t come into effect until 2013-2014, and now they’re talking about a “trigger” or maybe a “hammer” or a variety of other gun parts, which will all be pointless since they’ll never load the damn bullets anyway.
Has our President forgotten what reform even means? Yes, I agree it’s important to enact health care reform. But that means you must actually reform health care. He’s been waging this battle for most of the year and at the end it will be a meaningless achievement beyond Obama saying they got it done even if the “it” is nebulous and benefits hardly anyone (except the private health insurers who get to carry on business-as-usual for at least the next decade after having taught our government that it would do wise not to tangle with the big boys).
If any senator could have asked only one question, here’s what it should have been: “Mr. President, what qualifies as a victory in health care reform?” Because without any specifics and just framing it in a historical context of which every senator, no matter how callow and craven they may be, understands, Obama should’ve just had Larry the Cable Guy go instead and just shout his signature catch phrase.
At some point this President is going to have to understand that true governance is not like a sports movie where a big, motivational speech rallies the team and wins the game. Leadership is not a pep talk and just passing a bill isn’t health care reform.
Change We’re Dejectedly Forced to Accept
Obama has announced his grand plan for Afghanistan and I refuse to believe this was the least bad option. Maybe someone with a degree in International Diplomacy and Military Operations can convince me why Obama’s “Nine Points” is the best choice our President could have made. Convince me why sending 30,000 more troops (all fine, upstanding heterosexuals) over the next six months with a drawdown three years from now is beneficial for the American people. Of course it’s beneficial to Obama; he gets to take troops out of Afghanistan when he’s running for re-election even though he put those new troops there in the first place, therefore bringing us back to the place he started when he was first elected and doubtful he’ll have made any more progress. Of course, there is no firm timeline for withdraw and the pace of the pullback will depend on conditions on the ground. Translation: three years is an arbitrary deadline which we can change whenever we want.
Some U.S. troops would provide a supporting role similar to what the U.S. did in Germany, Japan, and Bosnia. What does a “supporting role” in Afghanistan mean? Who knows.
But the “main mission” of the new troops will be to “reverse Taliban gains and secure population centers” in the southern and eastern parts of the country,” and thus the mission is already a failure. How can you support population centers and not leave the country? Sure, we’re going to train Afghan troops (because it’s not like we didn’t do that for the last eight years) and ask the Karzai government is they could pretty please with sugar on top to stop being so corrupt and serve the interests of the people. What makes Obama think that 30,000 more troops can permanently solve this problem? It’s the Iraq problem all over again. We can’t leave or the country will collapse. Meanwhile, our country is having its own kind of collapse but instead putting money into helping the U.S., the Obama administration thinks that money would be better spent on a country that we can’t force to change.
Sure, we’ll make small gains, but nothing that will last. How much money will we spend, how much further in debt will we sink, and most importantly, how many American lives will we lose in the next three years. What do we get in exchange? A turbulent three years in a country which is known as the place where empires go to die. We won’t defeat the Taliban. Cockroaches always come back. We won’t be defeating Al-Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden because they’re in Pakistan and I doubt we’ll hear that country mentioned once in tonight’s speech.
As Keith Olbermann repeatedly said in his Special Comment last night, “We cannot afford this.” I don’t even know why we’re trying to buy it in the first place.
I’m Sick of Obama’s Health Care Duplicity
[Update: The White House says Obama is still committed to the Public Option. We'll see.]
This article published last night by The Huffington Post pretty much confirms my fears about Obama’s strategy concerning health care. His administration has sided, certainly in this crucial legislation directly concerning the lives and welfare of the American people, with the policy of looking good rather than being good. It answers my big question in the weeks following his big speech on health care on September 14th: Where did our President go? It’s been almost six weeks since then and other than a blitz of interviews with talk show hosts, both of the cable news networks and late night, Obama has been MIA. The news of the health care battle hasn’t been Obama calling senators into his office or even continuing public support of the positions he voiced in his eloquent address to the joint-session of Congress. The news has been about bickering in Senate and Democrats in the House showing a backbone and saying they won’t support legislation that doesn’t have a public option.
What Does Your Scared, Incorrect Obama-Association Say About You?
Sadly for Mr. Miles J. Racistmoron, he wrote too large to add more words he didn't understand.
Let’s be honest: if Obama wasn’t black, folks on the far right wouldn’t be coming out in such strong force to rally against him. Sure, he would be taking a lot of heat for his spending plans and conservatives would be doing anything in their power to make folks as scared and angry as possible. But since he’s not white, every scared stupid (and scared, stupid) white person (I think if you find someone who isn’t Caucasian at one of these anti-Obama rallies, you get some kind of prize) are throwing political labels they don’t even understand because some TV or radio pundit used that word even though the pundit didn’t understand it. But the word choice is still important even if you don’t know what it means. The top three choices are “Socialist”, “Marxist”, and “Fascist”. Let’s run through all three to see what it says about the person who uses it!
Socialist: If you call Obama a “socialist”, you may be someone who has a hazy understanding of economic systems and are just using the term as rhetorical hyperbole as a description of Obama’s attempts to expand government in order to serve the people rather than people having the individual freedom to help themselves. But I imagine most cases involve someone who wants to compare Obama to Stalin and thinks calling the President a “communist” may be too passe.
Marxist: The same as the Socialist crowd but attempting to sound smarter despite never reading any of the works of Karl Marx. I am left to wonder if they fear reading his work would make them Marxists.
Fascist: Someone who is comparing Obama to Hitler but who forgot to bring their sign with a picture of Obama made up to look like Hitler. This group is the most peculiar because they want to say that Obama is a dictator who has ambitions to take over the world (and if he ever invades Canada, they’ll have a stronger case) who is providing strict economic controls but they never bring up the whole Hitler-Racism thing. Making that leap would be the equivalent of trying to jump the Grand Canyon on a tricycle.
None of these protesters understand the labels they’re trying to apply to Obama because if they did, they would know they’re only applicable only under the broadest definition of the word. But some pundit has them scared because Obama isn’t a conservative and the pundit keeps throwing out words like “socialist” and “marxist” and “fascist” and the scared people pick those words up and take them to a protest and then yell at the President because they’re angry, scared, and those that are making them that way don’t have, and have never had, an interest in making the scared, angry people anything other than scared and angry.
You Don’t Have THE GOODS When It Comes to Activism
I really like the site Racebending.com because it is a crime that M. Night Shaymalan, an Indian director, feels it’s okay to cast his adaptation of the multi-ethnic cartoon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” with a majority of white actors. You can throw all the excuses you want for not casting Asian-Americans in roles originally intended for that ethnic group: acting ability, martial arts ability, time constraints for casting, but that’s all bullshit. Acting and martial arts can be taught and if you can’t cast the roles then you need to fire your casting director and broaden your search because I refuse to believe there aren’t two Asian-American child actors who couldn’t possibly learn acting and stage combat and that the film had no other choice but to go with two no-name white actors. Oh, but they did have a role for Dev Patel, the charming and charismatic star of the smash-hit “Slumdog Millionaire”. He gets to play the villain. That’s nice.
So I was checking back in on the site today and they were mentioning a protest held this past weekend at Paramount Studios. That’s no problem. Paramount is producing and distributing “The Last Airbender” and even though “The Last Airbender” (the dropped “Avatar” from the title due to James Cameron’s upcoming film of the same name) doesn’t hit theatres until April, they want to make their voices heard and I applaud that action.
But they were protesting not “Airbender”, but a movie called “The Goods”. “The Goods” is a raunchy, intentionally offensive R-rated comedy but the outcry is against the film’s all-audiences trailer where a couple of the big jokes come at the expense of a character called Teddy Dang who is played by the constantly hilarious Ken Jeong. Their point does have some merit in that what people will see is an Asian-American getting beat up and then having a bank bag explode in his face. Is it wrong for Paramount to sell the film that way? Not really. Here’s why:
An Open Letter to President Obama on Health Care Reform
I’m sure these kinds of messages are flooding in. Everyone is passionate, some because they know the cost of not having health care and others because they’re so afraid of what they don’t understand that they’ve let those in the media and opponents of health care reform use them as angry mob.
It now looks like Mr. Obama and his administration will abandon the public option. He wasn’t shooting for universal health care and in retrospect, maybe he should have. To get knocked back from universal health care to a public option is an acceptable compromise. From a public option to “co-ops” is a failure.
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