HUEY LONG 2012.

I haven't had the energy to even read this thread until now as the current state of politics seriously depresses me. The tea party is the lowest point of American political discourse I've experienced. I don't think I've even been able to fully grasp how truly low the debt ceiling debate was. The tea party is actively trying to burn down the fabric of American society. And that's not the worst part. The worst part is the dems couldn't muster the courage to even put up a facile defense. The French put up a stronger fight in 1942. And the dems are the majority. It's truly mind blowing to me.

It's like the Dems are just hoping that the traditional republicans kill them before the tea party rapes them.

As far as Barry, I'm torn. On one hand, I admire that he's trying to be a centrist and offer reasonable policies that both sides can agree on. On the other hand, it's not leadership. Honestly, Barry needs to take a page from GWB. Step up to the mike, tell the public where the country needs to go, and fucking coerce his opponents along with him and don't be afraid to call the tea party anti-american nihilist who should be tried for treason.

You know I get this. You're right. But even the traditionalist Repubs can't get a handle on TeaPers, their own making. Its like talking to a crazy person over and over and expecting they'll get it. They don't and never will. They need lithium, something. Trust me I got one in the family, not a tea partier just a crazy person. If they didn't sway so much opinion or garner media attention as they do I am sure Barry would say as much.

the only thing that saves him is that there aren't any electable republicans. obama is alienating the left and who knows if they will show up at the polls like 08. he may have already lost the middle even though he keeps trying to play to them. big trouble...

as bad as obama looks now, every republican candidate looks like he or she has escaped from the lunatic asylum and cannot win (though maybe that is too strident an opinion considering the ignorant state of the american electorate).

If American politics is in a poor state so are American history books. The Second World War started in September 1939 and Paris fell in June 1940.

Oh and about a quarter of a million French soldiers died fighting in the Battle of France, just so you know.

Keep in mind, Joe McCarthy and Segregationist Senators went further than the Tea Party has so far, and in the end, they all lost (at least nationally).

Dear Marshall Petain, the great Nazi fighter . Actually 1942 was when the German army rolled through Vichy without any opposition, making it easier for French collaborators to, eventually, help identify French Jews to send to camps. Now, like everything, there were exceptions (I remember Max Ophuls' great documentary about the French underground who fought heroically to protect Jews, The Sorrow and The Pity). In any case, 1942 does have a place in history as representing French caving to Nazi armies. 2011 a place in history representing a new level ov "caving."

Oh, and so we can conclude it's wrong to be essentialist about groups.... Americans about French and their courage.... Scotsmen about Americans and their sense of history.

When someone consistently fails to meet my expectations, I lower my expectations.

The Democrats didn't want to put up a defense. Just like the Democrats don't want the Bush tax cuts to expire, single payer healthcare, cap & trade (or any other climate change regulation), an end to the wars, closing corporate tax loopholes, tighter regulations on the banking industry and Wall Street, stop torture, close Gitmo, cut off funding to another war in Libya, high speed rail, etc etc etc. You do the things you want to do.

For god's sake, Barack Obama has two vacancies on the Fed Board of Governors, and after Peter Diamond withdrew, he just hasn't bothered to nominate ANYONE. Clearly, in this stellar economy, monetary policy just isn't a priority.

I don't expect the United States government to drop what they are doing and implement all my half-cooked ideas and whims. But I won't support the lesser of two evils. That just screws the system and makes it worse. I think some crazy-as-a-shit-house-rate left wing firebreather a la Huey Long should primary Obama from the left. HARD. Not someone like Kucinich or Nader or Anthony Weiner or god forbid Ed Schultz, either. I don't know who that person is, but that's what I want. Dammit.

This, more than an uniformed sense of history, is the American Dilemma. I am a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (a moribund small unit of Cornel West and ancient Jews... I feel right at home). But I pray that Obama doesn't get challenged from the left (cf.Kennedy in 1980). Obama will win primaries, he will be weakened. 2012 is about turnout and we need to pretend that the young, the progressive, communities of color are hugely enthusiastic about Obama and TURN OUT and also vote for a reasonable cohort of new Dem representatives to take back the House.

Oh and let me count the ways that "the lesser of two evils" would be a good outcome.

1. Scalia v. Sotomayor. Thomas (!) v. Ginsberg.

It really was a tough spot to win any concessions because the Tea Partiers are so crazy. I mean, what leverage do you have negotiating when you can say, look if you don't do this the government and the economy will go into a horrifying free fall and the other side goes...OK, fine by me?

That said, yes for the lefties who are more interested in ideology than just randomly supporting the democrat, Barry's been quite disappointing. Even before the Tea Party took over congress, when he in theory could have pushed things through, he was more interested in appearing fair and balanced and in the middle than accomplishing anything he ran on.

I'm still turning out exactly because of that whole lesser of two evils and the disaster that we'd be in right now were we to have republican president cooperating with the looneys. But, I would not at all be surprised to see a lower turnout and the excitement level wiil absolutely be ratcheted way down.

You hold the Senate. Call bullshit on the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment, because the money has already been appropriated by Congress—this isn't new spending—and having it approved twice is stupid. Dare them to impeach you. Let them impeach you. It will die in the Senate, like it did last time.

That might not be the best solution, but it is an alternative to offering more spending cuts than they originally asked for. And it's not an isolated event. The Bush tax cuts would have expired back in December without any action by anyone. Congress had to pass legislation, and Obama had to sign it, in order for it them to remain. Instead of falling for the strategy of "cuts for the rich, too, or no one gets them," call their bluff, fold your hands and let them ALL expire. They are a drain on the coffers anyway—and then this whole "deficit" canard isn't as much of an issue anyway.

They aren't being pushed around; they are doing exactly what they want to do. It's like Larry Craig: you can tell me you are straight until you are blue in the face, but when you keep blowing dudes in the airport…

The real problem, in my book, goes back to redundancy of services and/or programs. If the USDA is giving out SBA style loans but they're for rural or agricultural development, having a director, and 4 layers of people above and below the guy making the decisions makes the one or two projects they fund pretty expensive. The same is true throughout our state, local and federal governments. I don't really know why we need an entire Dept. of Education - it was probably better when it was HEW anyway. That, and the fact that we KNOW that branches of government don't talk to each other very well, so it makes everything more expensive, slower, and therefore frustrating.

Come out with a massive spending cut initiative, taking down agency offices and employees in these recalcitrant members districts, tell GE that you either want them to pay some taxes, or you won't give them decades long tax abatements and incentives to locate plants everywhere across the country, and defund every single redundant or unwanted weapons systems.

We'll see how fucking fast people start screaming for more government spending and for more economic intervention -- because all those people who work in these types of jobs will suddenly have "the freedom to operate a small business without needless and heedless government regulations and oversight" aka start a fucking business and make a dollar themselves like everyone wants to venerate. And they'll see how hard it is, and they'll demand jobs.

It goes back to GARl Rove's thing: make their biggest strength their biggest weakness. Call their bluffs on the whole size and scope of government. Oh yeah, and if I'm running against any tea partier I demand they return their government salary and their government benefits - after all, the government is way too big, and I've never gotten a promotion for derailing the national economy.

Wrong.

To Gar's post: I thought Weigel had an interesting suggestion this past week:



I continue to be disappointed in liberals who are disappointed in Barry: No amount of creative re-imagining on your part is ever going to make this guy not a moderate and not a politician who values his reelection more than the librul agenda.

Save for incredible national disasters like 9/11 - where you get a political blank check for a year or so - isn't it the case that a second term is when you can go buck and doing the things you really came in wanting to do? I'm not saying I'm cool with four years of riding the fence and doing the bare minimum, but I'll take 4 so-so years followed by re-election and 4 "Y'all (R's) are gettin' FUCKED!" years over one term.

You think the Senate would convict on that?

I am fully aware of Obama's position, just as I was when I voted for him. However, unlike politicians (or as they claim), I'm not a stationary target. The status quo as I see it right now is wrong, and moving right—especially to meet far right gas bags—isn't going to make it better. That's both from a policy & procedural/political standpoint.

On a philosophical (and intellectually honest) level, I'm not all that opposed to smaller government. I don't really have a big problem with getting rid of Commerce, other than what do you do with all those newly unemployed people. The tea party & GOP are just bearing out the old P.J. O'Rourke line about Republicans campaigning about how government doesn't work, then once elected, go all out to prove it. And they are taking it to an obvious and ridiculous extent.

I want a healthier, vocal counter-balance to the tea party. Maybe I'll get a fucking Abbie Hoffman American flag shirt and run. I turn 35 in November, bitches.

this is what drives me fucking nuts, it's almost entirely red states that are getting the most bang for buck on federal spending. You have these two asshats from Kentucky acting like they are the spending grown ups when their state is a federal vacuum of blue state money.

btw, SMALLER GUBMINT BLERG BLERG BLERG

House Committee passes bill requiring your ISP to spy on every click and keystroke you make online and retain for 12 months

You're saying frankly what everyone is trying to cash in on as saying, but they can't say it right somehow. I like what your getting at but getting there is "ugggh holy god how do we put that out in words and live up to it."

In theory, I agree with GAR and have posted here and on FB that one solution to over-spending is simply cutting redundant programs/agencies. The risk is what David Weigel wrote in Bloor's quote above: "Sure, you'd leave around 40,000 government workers in the cold.", and the same goes for other government subsidized jobs ("defense", et al).

In general, I can't seem to escape the feeling that our country is fucked. The only glimmer of positivity I have is what Thee Incident brings up above - maybe, just maybe, Obama will go buck in his 2nd term, but the ONLY thing that will allow him to do that is a Democrat majority in the House, and for people to wake up and realize that the tea party are the closest things to faux-Anarchists I'm aware of in the last century. Reversing corporate personhood, Citizens United and from that, general campaign finance reform would be icing on the cake of redemption, but I'm obviously getting all "hopey and changey" again. Those ideals feed into what harry briefly mentioned, and that the most important duty of the President is to elect U.S. Supreme Court candidates.

I've never found any research or proof of this, but Homeland Security always seemed like such an enormous waste of resource and an huge expansion of government that overlaps possibly four existing agencies.

and let's see.... which party did that???

That's part of the point, though, dude. Calling bullshit. Fuck those people - let them go be "the backbone of our economy" like me and earn a goddamn living from their own wits. Oh wait, they can't do it.

i think i've said this before, but i am actively praying to a god in which i hold negligible belief that this will come to pass

let's see some angry black man