Tag: american prospect

This year, though, right-wingers barely even pretended to have [a serious agenda]. Their main talking point about health reform was that it would cut Medicare benefits. They railed about TARP and the auto bailout, but the former originated in the Bush administration, and they will not attempt to repeal it. They talked about creating jobs by reducing the deficit, which is economic nonsense. Moreover, not one of the policy plans the Republicans produced would reduce the deficit by a penny. Tea Partiers ranted about constitutional and economic schemes that they probably won’t even introduce, much less pass.

Mark Scmitt, writing for The American Prospect.
I’d say that about sums it up. To me, the most breathtaking one is that recurrent bit about Medicare: keep your government claws off of it, and/but don’t cut a penny; we are, however, against any and all forms of government intrusion by you filthy socialists.
That the core concept in that piece of “reasoning” was never challenged (successfully or otherwise) is precisely why last night happened. Now they’ll gridlock the government, sit on their hands, default on the debt, and then blame Obama, Our Agenda Setter in Chief, for all of it.

Some people have already asked how an American like D’Souza disparages anti-colonialism, but it’s simple really: African self-determination is seen by many in the West, particularly conservatives, as tragic in comparison to the idealized “stability” of white rule. “Kenyan anti-colonialism” manages to say at once that Obama is a black, incompetent despot who is out for revenge against whites and who will destroy the country in the process. This is profoundly racist on its face. Yet it’s the cover story in Forbes magazine.

Adam Serwer, extending these comments for the American Prospect. I know Bob Somerby doesn’t want to hear it, but “the R-word” is the only rational way to describe this sort of thinking.

All of which to say is there’s no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama’s parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don’t want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage in an argument with liberalism on substantive terms; they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black.

Adam Serwer Archive | The American Prospect (via Balloon Juice)
Agreed, except this isn’t an “argument with liberalism.” It’s an argument with center-rightism.
Source: prospect.org

When you see frightened Americans turning on brown-skinned people they see as potential “Muslims,” that is terrorism working. When the kind of Imam who will say Judaism’s holiest prayer in solidarity with Jewish victims of Islamic extremist terrorism and who tells Muslim audiences that the way to have a government more in line with the Islamic ideal is to be more like the United States is treated as a terrorist sympathizer, terrorism is working.

Adam Serwer
Unfortunately, these instances of terrorism working are being aided and abetted by one of the major political parties in this country. It’s one thing to combat al Qaeda or the Taliban or whatever group out there and quite another to combat this outgrowth of invincible ignorance within our own country; then ladle on top the fact that you’re being fought at each and every step in that long and slogging education initiative by both a party and its extremely popular misinformation outlet which is uncritically treated by most Americans as actual news that must bear some relation to fact, because Walter Cronkite never knowingly lied to us, now did he?
And do not believe for one second that there is any coincidence to the policy positions that lead the GOP to blithely cut funding for teachers, Head Start, and manifold other early intervention programs either. With the GOP’s demographic outlook and warm relationships with most of the emerging majorities in this country, such a move is necessary for survival. It’s their Joe Camel.

Modern Conservatism

I think it basically explains why Palin believes that there’s something offensive about American Muslims building a community center on private property while [Dr. Laura] Schlessinger telling a black woman she should stay out of interracial relationships if she doesn’t want to have n-bombs lobbed at her every day is the height of free expression. The point is that Constitutional rights only apply to whomever conservatives arbitrarily place in the category of “real Americans,” and extending them to anyone outside that narrow circle is a threat to the freedoms only real Americans have a right to enjoy. As Keep America Safe’s Debra Burlingame said of the proposed Park 51 project, freedom of religion “is a Western concept.” Only “Westerners” need apply.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we here at Lemkin call: Nailing it.

(via savingpaper)

Modern Conservatism

Opting Out

Paul Starr argues that, because of the potential for real public backlash, the individual mandate should contain an opt-out provision. In a nutshell, you could choose to opt out of coverage…on the condition that you couldn’t easily opt back in for a five year period afterwords.

I agree with Starr that the mandate is the thing that will really burn people up come, oh, 2075 when the last provisions of this damned bill actually go into effect. And that, if the compromises continue, what you’ll have is a mandate to buy today’s overpriced, under-provisioned insurance…now: with a guarantee of coverage! And but so I tend to think a different kind of solution is necessary when talking about the mandate.

Instead of a fine, you automatically enroll mandated but uninsured individuals into Medicare at whatever the premium cost is for a person of their age (and, yes, I’m therefore proposing here that Medicare-based coverage would/should then be open to anybody of any age that fails to procure private insurance; this doesn’t change the fact that it’s a terrible idea that the smelly hippies will hate, hate, hate). That’s the fine: that you have paid for coverage the hard way…through your tax return; but you’ve ultimately just paid for coverage. The end. No further fines, certainly no jail time, just coverage. Whether you like it or not. If you choose not to decide: you still have made a choice.

Ultimately the opt-out only allows for that most dangerous of impulses: the free rider. I won’t pay until I’m really sick or hit by that bus. It just can’t be allowed if we’re to have any chance at all of containing costs. In many ways, it’s precisely this sort of non-covered coverage that is already driving costs today.