myTPM | DF's Blog

Evaluating 2009: What The Dems Did Wrong, Part 1 - "It's Very Stimulating"

February 10, 2010, 4:14PM

If you wish, you can dismiss it as mere Monday morning quarterbacking. I prefer to call it taking advantage of hindsight. What follows here is my take on the major mistakes of the Democratic party during the first year of the Obama administration. It's my opinion, straight up. Take it or leave it.

This is the first of three installments.

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Whether or not you consider yourself a Democrat, whether or not you are or were a supporter of Barack Obama, there seems to be wide agreement at this point that things have not gone well for the Obama administration and Democratic governance over the last year. The Obama administration started out with a very high measure of public support and the largest congressional majorities in decades. One year later, the Obama's approval numbers are middling and the numerical congressional majorities seem not to mean much at all. Already into the 2010 election cycle, the Democratic party seems incredibly vulnerable. What happened?

Let Them Eat (mud)Cake

February 3, 2010, 10:40PM

Listening to Marketplace this evening, I heard guest Tyler Cowen mention that the people of Haiti are literally eating mudcakes. This struck me as astonishing, so I immediately employed the use of Google to verify whether this was true. Well, it turns out that it is:

At first sight the business resembles a thriving pottery. In a dusty courtyard women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden under the Caribbean sun.

The craftsmanship is rough and the finished products are uneven. But customers do not object. This is Cité Soleil, Haiti's most notorious slum, and these platters are not to hold food. They are food.

Brittle and gritty - and as revolting as they sound - these are "mud cakes". For years they have been consumed by impoverished pregnant women seeking calcium, a risky and medically unproven supplement, but now the cakes have become a staple for entire families.

It is not for the taste and nutrition - smidgins of salt and margarine do not disguise what is essentially dirt, and the Guardian can testify that the aftertaste lingers - but because they are the cheapest and increasingly only way to fill bellies.

I'm not sure that I really have anything to add here (except perhaps to consider this in light of the likewise dire sanitation situation). Mostly, I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that people in the Western hemisphere during the 21st century are literally eating dirt.

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Cross-posted @ dagblog.com

American Politics in One Lesson

November 17, 2009, 4:28PM

Here's how American politics can be swiftly summarized:

If I give you five dollars in exchange for consideration in your decision-making process in the voting booth, that's illegal. If I give a member of Congress five-thousand dollars for the same purpose, that's politics.

Trial by Blitzer

November 11, 2009, 8:00PM

I don't subscribe to cable or satellite television. The reason for this is that I basically see no value in it. Pay television doesn't really seem to offer me much. For one thing, it's rife with advertising content. Why do I have to watch ads constantly when I'm paying for the service? Furthermore, much of the content available to basic cable subscribers is now available for free on the Internet.

However, cable news content is not entirely available on the Internet at this point in the game. I'm really okay with that. When I've had cable in recent years, for example last year when I was living at a residence where cable was included, I end up watching cable news. This is regrettable because I really dislike cable news.

So, I'm happy that my exposure to cable news is limited to what I encounter on the Internet. That's usually more than enough to remind me about how awful it is.

While it's easy to hate on Fox, the other networks are in many ways different only in degree and not in kind. Case in point is CNN's Wolf Blitzer who recently engaged in this astounding display:

You Can't Hate Government and Love the Constitution

November 7, 2009, 3:21PM

It's probably a fool's errand to make attempts at parsing the paranoid, hysterical rhetoric that's been flying around in the healthcare debate, but that's never stopped me before. So, I'm watching the fun on C-SPAN this afternoon. Listening to some of the "against" calls, I noticed something that I probably should have noticed before, which is this: The bizarre dichotomy of professing your undying love for the Constitution, while breathlessly spewing venom at the fundamental evil of the government.

Folks, I have to tell you that I love you very much for your dogged support of the Constitution. I'm with you. I believe that it's been a net positive for humanity despite its flaws, which in many cases have been adjusted over the years in a manner that, I would contend, has been largely for the better. Through our history, we've righted some serious wrongs by broadening and deepening our commitment to the ideas that are embedded in that oft referred to document. And we may yet have some way to go in that respect.

However, it should be noted that the one thing the Constitution does, first and foremost, is establish a government. I must say that the people who cling tenaciously to the Constitution while hurling invective at the very institution that the document creates have perhaps missed the point.

The Public Option Option Option

October 9, 2009, 3:01PM

So, perhaps you've heard the buzz about a shiny, new compromise compromise in the battle for healthcare reform reform. First, there was the notion of single-payer. Of course, this proved to be far too unpalatable for anyone to the right of Dennis Kucinich, so then we were given the notion of the public option. This would create a Medicare-style system for anyone who wanted to buy in. It was certainly a compromise, but the merits of the compromise, as well as the general notion, were clear - it's publicly run and anyone can opt in. Public. Option.

Of course, then came the deluge of counter-offers and distortions. It quickly became the "government option" or "government takeover of healthcare" or "Barack Obama wants to kill your grandmother by way of ripping your children to shreds and force-feeding her to death with the pieces like the Sloth guy in Se7en." Oh, and the further compromises. For some, the public option was still not enough of a compromise, so it needed to be sliced up into 50 parts or converted into regional co-ops or hooked up to triggers.

A Few Bad Apples

September 17, 2009, 3:00PM

You've probably heard by now of the videos being promoted by Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com and Fox News that purport to show Acorn employees engaging in some rather unethical behavior. I don't know to what extent the videos have been edited, because they have clearly been edited, but there certainly seems to be some rotten behavior on display. The SF chronicle has reported that that these employees have already been fired, although the same article also notes that there were other cities that booted the videographers, with the Acorn office in Philly even filing a police report, something that Breitbart and Giles, one of the videographers in question, patently denied on Hannity.

A 9/11 Every Two Months

August 17, 2009, 2:57PM

That's what we have in America today in terms of the casualties caused by our corrupt insurance regime. About 18,000 deaths occur annually in America due to lack of health insurance. That's 1,500 deaths per month, or a casualty total equalling all of the casualties of September 11th, 2001, every two months.

Can I Play With Madness?

August 13, 2009, 6:07PM

I am baffled.

Maybe it's because I can remember things that happened more than five minutes ago. Maybe it's because I remember when my country rushed into a war of choice in Iraq. Maybe it's because I remember attending massive protests in major metropolitan cities with hardly a mention in any newspaper or on any television program or in any other outlet that exists as a part of the ostensibly liberal media establishment. Maybe it's because I remember seeing pictures and reading accounts, all distributed on the Internet, of protest marches that were at least as big, if not bigger, also with no mention in any major media outlet. Maybe it's because I remember protestors being cordoned off in "free speech zones" during public appearances by George Bush, sometimes miles out of the watchful eye of television cameras.

Tips for Right-wing Nutbars: Watch Colbert

August 13, 2009, 6:01PM

Last night, Ann Coulter was a guest on Hannity. During her appearance, in typical Coulter fashion, she made the over-the-top claim that she was just fine with "death panels", which in her interpretation sound more like execution panels, so long as she was a panel member. Oh, and she apparently has a list of people she'd like to kill, Zeke Emanuel being among them. Watch:

President This Guy?

December 5, 2008, 1:02PM

With all of the early prounouncements about what kind of president Barack Obama already has will have been, along with all of the hand-wringing about the future of the GOP, I feel that I have to weigh in on the issue of the moment. What's that you say? Deuteronomy lupus? Lobotomy cupid? I can't understand what you're saying when you talk with your mouth full. Say, what's that you're eating? Gubberman cheese? I'm not sure I've had that variety. Wait, what? "It's the economy, stupid?" Well, I don't appreciate your tone one bit. Besides, I'm trying to talk about the future here.

Blaming Blacks

November 13, 2008, 7:04PM

Many of you out there share my disappointment in California's approval of Proposition 8. However, over the last week I've heard too many voices, even those rising from prominant gay communities like the Castro district, that have been far too quick to blame black voters for the proposition's passage. The evidence being offered here, we are told, comes from exit polls. How solid is this data? As it turns out, not very.