“Look out, Haskell, it’s real!”

When Ken Salazar was my Senator, I let him know of my displeasure with his signing on to the Gang of 14 that gave us Alito. I explained just what was wrong with what they were doing, and I got a very nice email response from him or someone in his office, telling me very politely that I should go fuck myself.

Suckers!

Given the reactions to Occupy by the $aires (as detailed by Jeff Greene in NY Magazine, Fear and Loathing, perhaps in equal measures), and the nonstop corporate media efforts to downplay, mock and ridicule the movement, I think you’re spot on.

And he was sitting on somewhere between $15M-$20M in unspent campaign funds on election day. No doubt to keep those planes full of lawyers he promised ready to go.

But how does that square with our need to look forward, always forward, and the fact that the Village Punditry just can’t stand protracted fights?

Though I would guess that dumping the electoral college would have huge majority public support. Then again, so did a public healthcare option.

Once in office, incumbents of every stripe seem to realize that it’s to their advantage to do absolutely nothing about these voter suppression efforts, because they’re still far more likely to retain office with a smaller voting pool. I don’t know how to get them to act on it.

As I noted earlier, the largest bloc of eligible voters in 2008 were the self-disenfranchised (even if you assume some of those tried to vote and were somehow discounted). I guess we’ll find out soon whether one of the (intended?) effects of Obama’s rick-rolling of hope and change voters, especially young ones, was to shift more of them into the “What’s The Point” party.

There’s a case to be made for voting for Nixon’s head over the two guys running to his right.

What I’ve found sort of surprising is that with some notable exceptions (e.g., Cheney the Daywalker), the forces of anti-democracy seem still to want to maintain the appearance of representative government. Sure, they are becoming more and more brazen in their theft of elections (and attempted theft, like the effort smacked down in Ohio last week), but most of them still seem to value having the banana republic look official on paper.

I don’t know whether that is because it is easier to keep real uprisings from starting that way or there is some part of them that hasn’t quite given in to the Dark Side, or what, but it seems to me any place they feel vulnerable is a place worth exploiting. Which I guess is a part of that being discussed. Maybe the efforts to convince people to choose Coke over Royal Crown cola would be more effective fighting tooth and nail with every elected official over the voting access and security issues.

The billionairians at the gate are engaged in both nonstop skirmishes plus efforts to breach and also the longer term siege. They’ve got the resources to outlast us and they’ve convinced a sizable number of inhabitants that the real enemy is within (those damned DFHs and womens and such that keep stabbing society in the back).

Of those who do see where the real threat lies, a majority seem to think that supporting the internal leader who wants to let them in a few at a time is the only choice, given that the alternative wants to throw open the gates and declare game over, man.

Is there a difference between the two? Sure, sort of. But let’s not forget that in 2008, the largest number of eligible voters were under Abstain/Gave Up (37%). Other drew at most 1% (with Team O and M drawing roughly 33% and 29% respectively). It seems to me the place to pull voters from to effect any kind of change is that first group, but I’ll be damned if I have any solution to doing so.

And Miller has the gaul to say he’s just as tough on the banks as anyone.

That’s odd, “Miller” doesn’t sound French!

Yeah, I actually have no dispute with this guy on a number of goals, but vehemently disagree about the way to achieve them. He actually doesn’t care about any of the social issue distraction because as he said he’s not a fundie wackadoo, but he is firmly entrenched in the “poor black people late on their mortgages crashed the global economy, climate change is a conspiracy, no problem can’t be fixed by larger and larger tax cuts for richer and richer people” school of thought. When I try pointing out the empirical evidence that does not support such positions, that’s where some part of his brain goes offline. Which for some reason always reminds me of trying to reason with a fundie….

Is wanting clean air and water and uncontaminated food supplies and secure infrastructure a “conservative” or a “liberal” position? To my mind it should be both – and yet it seems our elected representatives regardless of what they call themselves fight against such things because some corporate entity somewhere might have to provide slightly less profit to a small handful of people if we tried to do them.

You’re right, it’s not really about the label or brand.

This guy is an engineer with decades of experience. And listens to Rush every day and swears by him. I can only conclude that either some people’s brains are missing crucial connections through the frontal lobes that permit self-critical evaluations of one’s own thinking or perhaps undiagnosed delusional thinking is widespread. Could be both!

I mean, I understand coming from a different perspective, having different priorities and values. But I don’t understand embracing a worldview that forces one not only to exclude inconvenient truths but to actively engage in removing them from consideration. Of course I guess what I’m really saying is where the hell did all the honest Republicans go?

That’s exactly what I said to him. He stared back at me blankly.

I heard from a far right coworker recently that George Bush was never a “true” Republican or a conservative. (Of course, he also thinks Obama is a Socialist.) After I stopped laughing I started pressing him to identify who really represents the GOP ideal, and the only person he could come up with is Rush. I agreed with him that Rush is the true leader of the GOP. But he didn’t know why I couldn’t stop laughing when I said it.

Oh, I don’t think he’s been suckered one bit. I think he wants to be the guy who finally realized the corporatists’ dream of undoing the last bits of FDR’s program. I think they want to keep working class people paying into the system and then legalize the theft of those funds to spend on whatever the hell they feel like, minimizing any return they might eventually have to pay off to the investor. Much as the Reagan-era criminals looted pension funds and dismantled stable companies, these triangulating bastards are happy to preside over the dismantling of the social safety net in the name of corporate profits. Let them eat cat food.

Also, it’s time to starting putting the I back in SSI – Social Security INSURANCE, as in, I pay premiums for years, decades even, and then down the line assuming I’m still alive I get the return on my investment.

Nothing even remotely welfarey about it, though as we all know the goal of the “let’s go back to letting poor people die” crowd is to shift the language of social security insurance from something that you’ve bought to something that you’re being given (i.e., an entitlement), whether you “deserve” it or not.

I think the only appropriate response to these sorts of suggestions is to “negotiate” in the other direction. Oh, you think people should work till they’re 70? Let’s change it to 60, with a medicare buy-in at 55. You want more? Okay then, 55 and Medicare at 45. Less competition for jobs and better healthcare for when we need it.