The problem with using the Government Hammer to pound down every lingering social or civic problem is that sometimes it is actually the head of a screw sticking up and requires different tools than are currently being offered by the democratic Congress as a way of finally snugging that sucker tight to the deck. 

I am not opposed to much of regulatory changes that made it through the House last weekend, most of them revenue neutral for Uncle Sam and long-overdue given the current state of our health care system.  However, If the democratic leadership had followed the lead of Olympia Snowe and the Blue Dogs, as the president seemed to prefer all along, this landmark legislation would have already been signed into law.  As it is, the "public option" just might be the hammer that breaks the head off the health reform screw in Conference Committee.  Assuming it makes it out of the Senate with a huge new beauracry as the price of reform.

Which brings me to the main thesis of this blog:  Why can't we fix the government we have rather than adding billions (trillions long-term) in new spending that will end up in the same unaccountable blackhole every other federal (and state and local) dollar disappears into as soon as it is approved by Congress?

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Paranoia runs deep in American politics these days.  So many on both sides of our gaping cultural divide are willing to believe the most heinous things about their fellow citizens that I am surprised the Republic still stands at all.  The detrimental impact of fear on our nation is rather obvious when the adrenal glands super-charge our systems in preparation for fight or flight responses.  Every political statement becomes hyperbolic chest-beating since fear is at the root of most aggressive or violent outbursts.

One obvious question remains as this behavior surfaces again and again:  Is there really anything to fear from political rivals?

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The funny thing about politics (funny sad, not funny ha ha) is that perception equals reality for most people, and our perceived "reality" then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for the country. 

We have a crappy, partisan hell where nothing gets done because that is how Americans who care about politics (a pathetically small number given the relative importance of the issues involved and mostly of a certain age given the tone) assume tactical partisan warfare is most effective way to accomplish their side's specific goals.  Never mind the lack of effectiveness that such tactics have historically delivered.  We have been convinced that politics is a brutal, dirty game played by brutal, dirty people incapable of empathy or compromise or an objective understanding of historical trends. 

That's the way it is.  The way it will always be.  So get over it, naif, pragmatism's for sissies and losers.  We're gonna get 1960s on their republican (or democratic) asses!

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David Brooks is one of those opinion writers who is hit or miss for me.  There have been recent columns when he really nails it, yet on so many others he crashed and burned miserably, caught in the contradictory tornado of the pseudo-conservative policy ideas that have polluted the republican party for much of its recent past.

Brooks' latest effort dissects the myth of "conservative" talking heads controlling the republican party, showing just how shallow that  "control" truly is based on the last election cycle.  Though his column was pretty much a home-run with regards to timing and appropriateness given the story on the TPM frontpage, I still think he missed the essential dilemma for today's republicans - a total leadership vacuum across all levels of the national and local party apparatus combined with declining voter involvement, giving the Limbots the ability to wave the biggest stick in the first place and position their crazy as the default message for the party.

When the republican caucus and far-right shock jocks offer endless objections rather than even mediocre solutions, the underlying strategy begins to look a lot like obstruction.

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As far as I can tell, this is the only verbiage with regards to a comment policy at TPM.  This was pretty much the way conversations played out for the better part of my first year blogging at this site.  Many heated discussions but certainly nothing personal beyond some rude language now and then or consistent inability to grasp a point no matter how many ways it is explained on both sides of issues. 

There was certainly nothing to indicate that a purely political discussion would move from the virtual to the real world and follow me home like a rabid lost puppy.

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After the break, a series of quotes from both Red State and TPM Cafe will be provided in an effort to determine which side of the political spectrum is truly the craziest. 

I won't label which quotes came from which site, but some long-time readers may be as amused as I am that it is becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference between the left and right fringes.

Enjoy!

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Now that the esteemed Senator Ted Kennedy has been laid to rest next to his brothers in Arlington Cemetery, I feel compelled to comment on why I see his legacy as a reflection of what is most wrong with our political environment here in the United States of America. 

Ostensibly a representative republic, We The People exercise very little control over who we send to Washington DC and seem oddly reluctant to bring in new blood to help move the country in more innovative directions.  For much of our nation's history, we had a steady turnover in Congress due to a large number of voluntary departures.  As soon as it became clear that these clowns weren't leaving of their own accord, it was our duty, and actually a protected right for every American as of 1964, to turn these folks out if they failed to live up to their oath of office.  Yet for the last forty years, the average turnout for presidential general elections has been under 60 percent, and the turnout for primaries barely registers on the scale of influence. 

This is how we created the government we have instead of the government we need.

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Rather than continuing to defend a fellow citizen's right to have an opinion contrary to my own made before an audience of his peers without being made to suffer for it, I am going to try and explain my evolution from eating shit food to demanding no less than a Whole Foods on every corner.  Apparently there is some confusion as to why someone who wants to live a long and healthy life would deign to shop at such a repressive company.

Well, allow me to retort.

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Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was recently confirmed with a vote of 69 to 31. Chief Justice John Roberts was confirmed by a vote of 78 to 22.

Both votes were mostly along party lines, but each featured drastically different rationales for not supporting the nominee despite ideological differences. I cannot find a single democratic senator who voted no because of something Roberts said, either during the hearings or as a matter of public record, though some cited a number of his specific rulings. Not a single one said the fact that he was a white guy was a hindrance to their voting yes. By way of contrast, the republican opposition to Sotomayor, almost to a man, mentioned her "Wise Latina" comments as evidence of her "Judicial Activism" yet not a single one cited her actual rulings. 

I am surprised nine GOP senators voted in favor of her nomination given the GOP's performance so far in the health care and stimulus debates. Even Lindsey Graham was quoted as saying:

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Who should King Barack Hussein Obama go after when we are done gutting private health insurance companies and turning their mostly middle class employees out on to American streets?

How about pharmaceutical companies or those evil government contractors?  Why not the petrochemical industry followed by food manufacturers and then General Electric?  There are some financial institutions who could still use a lesson in manners after the TARP-funded gluttony they just threw in our face.  If we tried hard enough, I bet we could spin up enough populist rage to kill all the companies we allowed to get out of control over the past few decades though short-sighted government policies, lack of meaningful regulation and pathological voter disinterest. 

I say we start with King Corn.

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I was listening to the radio the other day and heard a story on the Cash for Clunkers program being pushed by the Obama administration as a green initiative. 

Here are important details from that story that don't seem to have made it into the public narrative.  Pay special attention to the table midway down the page on minimum required gas mileage.  I can buy a "large light-duty truck" that gets as little as 15 MPG and if it does at least 2 MPG better than my current "clunker" I get a $4,500 rebate!

That is quite a deal for me and the car dealers, though I fail to see what polar bears or the American people get out of the transaction. 

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With the debate now raging over health care reform, mostly around the current inadequate-to-our-real-needs-but-still-super-expensive legislation that is being considered by our dysfunctional Congress, I thought I would offer a quick aside that has yet to make it into the dialogue in any meaningful fashion but seems an obvious part of any common sense solution - lower health care costs by lowering health care demand.

I am talking about killing King Corn.

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I recently found a movie on Netflix that I had never seen before.  Sean Penn narrates a devastating critique of America's war footing since the end of World War II. 

The film tackles one of our most detrimental myths by virtue of an honest and unemotional look at the historical record.  There are some obligatory mentions of the "anti-war" movement having been marginalized and really only had one guy being interviewed to supplement the narration, but I agree with the larger point that the true tragedy remains the overwhelming majority of Americans who were (and still are) gullible enough to believe the shit they've fed by a sophisticated and self-sustaining coup.  Not a coup in the traditional sense, but one founded in a combination of unrelated events that came together with horrific consequences.

It doesn't take a conspiracy to create chaos.

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A twelve-year-old getting liposuction is the most revolting documentary sequence I have seen in quite some time. 

The scene was from a movie called Killer at Large: Why Obesity is America's Biggest Threat.  I thought the film did a credible job of "uncovering" the truth that hides in plain sight on every street in every city in America.  Good facts and figures, even if they did miss a couple of obvious connections that are vitally important to the debate.

Check out the trailer after the break.

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Sorry for an F-Bomb before you even get in the door, but I read something last night that pissed me off so bad that a fuck derivative was the only way to get the point across before moving on to the meat of this blog.  (Prepare for the gratuitous use of meat and meat byproducts as well as the occasional Tourette's outbursts.)  So, I will now switch gears to why we are clearly one of the stupidest fucking countries on Earth and seem to be exporting stupid now. 

Hyperbole?  I think not.

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