Well…listening to all of the talk, talk, talk that is going on about the budget negotiations, I have a piece of advice for both sides but for the dems in particular. Stop using loaded words when you talk about the negotiations….watching the news last night all I heard from the commentators on the left and in the middle was that the repubs were going to “cave” or “buckle” on tax increases on the wealthy to start to work on the deficit…and I think that these kinds of words mean something and are making any such deal even harder. I think it goes back to the Japanese concept of “face”, and it would be a good idea for the dems to think about how they can work to help the repubs save face in these negotiations and stop rubbing the fact that they got smacked in the last election in their faces. Of course, I would propose that this would only go so far as the repubs actually governing for the entire country and not their rich bosses….if they can come to the table with facts and be adults, I think it would be good for those of us on the left to help them…and go back to governing the country, not just fighting all the time…
Tag Archives: democrats
Here’s the difference…
Well…I think things are starting to turn in the election and I do believe that it comes down to the competing visions that the two parties have for the country…the dems have a vision of possibilities and a greater future with fighting for the middle class while the repubs have a vision of a diminished America of going backwards on the rights of citizens and giving more and more away to corporations and the rich. The American people are starting to see the repubs for who they are and they don’t like it…they don’t like ole Mitt trampling on the memories of the 4 Americans killed in Libya and they don’t like that he appears more and more like he is in no way near ready to be president….and the media is starting to call them on their vagueness and lies…I am really starting to have hope that the repubs are being seen for what they are…they are not like the rest of us to be sure…
Maybe the tide is turning….
Well…it has been a while since I really had something to say about politics and you might say I’ve never had anything to say about it but I have to disagree….there was an interesting article last week in the WAPO by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that elaborated on what I have been saying for a couple of years now…that there is not any equivalence between the radicalism on the right and left…..even though the media, in some misguided paen to fairness, has been treating them as the same; that the dems are as responsible for the poisonous politics that now rule in Washington when it is just not true….in instance after instance, it has been the right who has held the country hostage to their radical, crazy worldview…I think one of my favorite passages in the article goes like this “the republicans are unmoved by the conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science…” sounds like willful ignorance to me, where faith trumps facts and political gain is placed above all else…even the good of the country. So, we may be seeing the first cracks in the wall of lies that the right has used to dupe the middle class into voting for them…my fear is that they have done such a good job demonizing “facts” that we may already be lost….geez….
We lose again….
Well…the debt ceiling nonsense that is going on in Washington is sucking the life right out of me….when I hear that the dems are giving up everything…..cut to SS, Medicare, and every other program that helps the retired or middle class to the repub thugs and they are not getting anything in return, I despair for the future of this country. If it wasn’t for all of the things the repubs did…the two wars that were not paid for, the tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation, we would not be where we are and there would be no need to further gut the middle class to pay for this stuff. And, they are so against tax increases for the rich and connected but I guess that doesn’t count for you and me…retirees are going to get a huge tax increase by having the cost of Medicare go up and by cutting off the cost of living increases for SS. Why is it that the repubs always attack the little guys? I think it’s just typical bully behavior to pick on people that can’t fight back….I hope we can remind the voters who it was that gave the country away to the ideologues…and who drove the economy back into the ditch by cutting spending when the recovery is still so weak. Geez…
Not sure what’s going on….
Well…it’s been a struggle lately to find anything to write about….I wonder if it’s that a lot of the columnists that I disagree with are on vacation…I may have to start taking notes during the day so I remember anything that might get me started…I did see a turtle on the trail today which is really unusual; probably the first one I’ve seen in more than three years….I could go on about the Casey Anthony verdict but I just don’t care about it….the prosecutors didn’t prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt and that is how the legal system works…what I don’t understand is why everyone is so upset about it….why do people invest so much in things that have nothing to do with them? I do really like the crop of candidates that the repubs are putting forward for 2012…they all have so many flaws that it should be easy to beat them in the election….I am a little concerned what the dems are giving away in the debt talks….they still don’t get it that the repubs don’t want to do anything to help the middle class and will not compromise even if the country is going to go down the tubes….they and their rich buddies will survive even if they crash the economy so they just don’t give a damn…okay…..that’s about enough for now….the US women’s team is playing in the world cup this aft so I need to take a nap before that…I will try to come back and be a little more cogent but it just not that kind of a day…
When do we get a victory?
Well..this thought just popped into my head as I was cleaning my stovetop..yeah, I know, weird, but that’s me…and you know that if you’ve been here before. I think it was spurred by the collapse of the Dems in regard to the blackmail by the repubs on the tax cuts but also on the compromises that the dems have made on all of their legislative agenda, on healthcare, on taxes, on financial regulation, and on DADT. All of these bastardized compromises make me want to shout “when do we get a victory?” When do the majority of Americans get the healthcare they deserve without giving the insurance companies billions more in profit? When do gays and lesbians get their full status as Americans? When do we get the victory that would keep corporate money from buying elections?
Democrats and independents, the game has changed; you are still bringing a knife to a gunfight and unless you change your tactics, you will continue to lose and the country will continue to go down the path of the rich getting richer and the rest of us will just toil in our uncertain jobs until we are told we are no longer necessary. I’ll shout this question to the Dems: “When do we get a victory?”…geez…
Compromise as a political weapon….
Well…there is a new narrative coming out of the repubs that the reason that the dems lost the house in the mid-terms was that they didn’t compromise enough on their agenda, that they jammed the healthcare bill down the throats of America without talking to their repub counterparts. Okay, is anyone laughing as much as I am? Especially when related to healthcare, the dems went from their proposal for a single-payer system to the bastardized one that was passed…and the majority of the bill were things that the repubs had proposed just a few years earlier…so, the repubs get everything they want and then still run against the bill? But, you know their idea of compromise is that they get everything they want and then still bitch about it. They are so spineless that they won’t even support financial regulation of the guys that screwed up the economy if their idiot fringe (who doesn’t understand any of it…just listen to Michelle Bachmann) starts to howl. How can you, or why should you compromise when the only thing these guys want is a return to the robberbaron times of the early 1900′s? They’ve shown they have no good ideas and to give their stupid ones like tax cuts for the rich validity by compromising on them is the height of folly that the dems will have to get over…geez…
I think it was worth it…
Well…have been reading a lot of newspapers today, and over the last few days and a new idea has popped into my head…that whatever the cost in seats that the Dems paid in this election, it was worth it to get the legislative victories that they got in this congress. It was worth it to get started on reforming healthcare…and I don’t believe that the law as enacted is perfect by any means, but it is a good basis where the normal process of implementation and change that almost all legislation goes through can begin. It was worth it to get consumer protection where there was only big business dictates before….and it was worth it to get some little financial regulation back in place on the banks that ruined our economy.
Now, I don’t know if that was a political calculation on the Dems part; I’m sure no party wants to lose seats and give up control of any part of government they used to get these accomplishments, but, to me, it was certainly worth it to push the balance of power just a little ways back towards you and me….and lets hope that the repubs don’t waste the country’s precious time with the nonsense they are promising..or we’ll have the house back in 2012…