SAVE YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY, call John Boehner @1-202-225-0600. Isn't YOUR life's work worth a phonecall, or two?

Are you on Twitter, Schwarz?

Anyway, typical Obama. I suggested on a forum i'm a long-time regular on that just yesterday that perhaps Obama keeps getting this right-wing policies because that's what Obama *actually wants*.

The response? :

''it obviously pointless debating with you about any of this if your hatred of Obama has really risen to levels where you've convinced yourself that he's actually a shadowy secret agent of the right, and that everything that's happened that might be seen to benefit the right wing is of his design.

I mean, seriously. You've essentially become the left wing Glenn Beck at this point. At least we'll get a three month break from this lunacy soon enough. ''

I really love your writing on Obama, because it cuts right through the bullshit. Away from sites like yours, Distant Ocean, Greenwald etc, I just feel (and am treated like) a total freak though.

I cannot fathom the power the idea of Obama, rather than the reality, seems to have over people. By the way, these are all pretty much mainstream liberals who hated Bush.

Over the last few years I've barely heard a peep out of them. It's an incredibly frustrating experience just getting them to talk about the nature of his presidency, let alone get them to face up to it and accept the reality of what he is.

And I say all of this as somebody who lives in England. I can't explain it. I point to how he's carrying on all the policies of Bush and I either get ignored, abused, or am dealt a serious of pathetic arguments about how it's different, how Obama has to play a game, how I can't be so simplistic.

Everyone has gone completely mad. No principles at all.

Anyway, carry on your great work here. It's pretty hard holding the opinions I do, but it's always comforting to read this sort of sane commentary and remember that i'm not insane.

. . .the best lack all conviction . . .the worst are full of passionate intensity

I think it is just fantastic to see them work together so that we will have progress! Truly inspiring, I just love bi-partisanship. Instead of doing nothing congress is really getting work done! Such a relief.

Sounds like a good call because Obama knows that the polls fault Bush II for the economy more than they fault him, thus, as you say he is not doing this just because of poll pressure against him.

"..you've convinced yourself that he's actually a shadowy secret agent of the right."

Secret? No, actually, he's quite open about it.

Google blog search gives 143,000 results for "the best lack all conviction," compared to a 184,000 for "we must love one another or die," although I'm not sure the two lines are equally representative of their respective pomes. I guess working that out might be a way to practice with this statistical calculator I just bought for 35 buck on ebay, but I don't think I will.

Amazingly, it seems as though Republicans are now so crazy that they'll refuse to vote for a deal that would give them only 98% of the right-wing agenda right away...

I'd agree it was crazy if I didn't agree with their belief that they can eventually get 100%. Why settle for less when they've got such a perfect ally in the White House?

And I meant to point out that Obama did in fact lie about Social Security and other issues. You're quoting an article from after the election, but this is what he said on his campaign website (in November of 2008):

Obama and Biden will protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries alike. And they do not believe it is necessary or fair to hardworking seniors to raise the retirement age.

Also:

Protect and Strengthen Medicare: Obama and Biden are committed to the long-term strength of the Medicare program. They will reduce waste in the Medicare system, including eliminating subsidies to the private insurance Medicare Advantage program, and tackle fundamental health care reform to improve the quality and efficiency of our healthcare system. They support closing the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program.

I've heard the "Obama didn't lie" line often, but the fact is that he lied sometimes and didn't others, crafting his messages for the audience in question, and relying on his amorphous hope-n-change rhetoric to snow his followers on those issues where the facts were available.

godoggo

I don't think either line is terribly representative, and representative is where bad poems are born. But those are some kick-ass poems if ask me, despite everyone liking them. Sort of like the Beatles.

the rest of ya'll

The only politicians who don't lie don't have anything to lie about, and damn near everybody else lies pretty routinely too. People basically just don't mind some lies and do mind others. (Of course, I would never lie.)

Everybody needs to read Lincoln a little more closely, but a little differently too, especially the house divided idea, maybe the Cooper Union speech for the real historically studious, because we are now very much a house divided, but the part of the house that has all the power is trying to crush the rest, and the rest is us. The mighty MICFiC, the National Security State, our military Empire--this two-faced power, this Janus promising us protection while devouring us, is incompatible with economic democracy, and the great vaunted American hypocritical ideal, political democracy, is incompatible with the absence of economic democracy. That's what's been going on for decades now, and I suppose from the getgo really.

So duh, yes, of course our established leaders of all stripes agree that all vestiges of economic democracy, Social Security and Medicare, must be destroyed, because the Empire, the MICFiC, the NSS--by its very nature this power is compelled to suck every penny, every farthing, every drop of wealth from the economy, and any politician who stands against it simply cannot stand for long. For this reason, it matters not what Obama wants, because as a politician he wants and by his nature has to want political success more than anything else, so he has no chance to succeed in his present situation except as the forgettable creature he is. Or, perhaps alternatively, as a political martyr, which doesn't seem to appeal much to him at all.

It takes a hell of a bombardment of ideology from birth onward for most peole not to see this bleak situation, and now the situation is dire enough that it takes a spectactular rebombardment from time to time to keep people zombied up for more war and business as usual. We live in a modern American version of 1984, but less interesting and with better special effects and entertainment to keep us distracted.

This being so, "we must love one another or die" is not much of a message for the age. We better get a hell of a lot tougher and less sentimental than that or a whole lot of us are going to be murdered, by starvation or violence of the absence of medical care.

That's enough rant for me. Some of ya'll can go back to calling Obama names now.

Nicholas is spot on about Obamaites, and I suspect the race thing has a lot to do with it. My theory is that "liberals" feel virtuously non-racist by voting for, and everylastingly defending, the fraud because they think their support proves their liberal purity. It's a damn lazy and stupid attitude, but in my experience with relatives and friends, it prevails .

WHY THEY SO CRAZY NOW

Harold Meyerson writes in the Washington Post:

The Republicans, that is, have embraced market libertarianism at the very moment that America’s market capitalism is functioning worse than at any time since the Great Depression. Their timing is so perverse that we have to seek explanations for their radicalism that go beyond those of economic philosophy.

Republicans, to be sure, have long waged a war on government, but only now has it become an apocalyptic and total war. At its root, I suspect, is the fear and loathing that rank-and-file right-wingers feel toward what their government, and their nation, is inexorably becoming: multiracial, multicultural, cosmopolitan and now headed by a president who personifies those qualities. That America is also downwardly mobile is a challenge for us all, but for the right, the anxiety our economy understandably evokes is augmented by the politics of racial resentment and the fury that the country is no longer only theirs. That’s not a country whose government they want to pay for — and if the apocalypse befalls us, they seem to have concluded, so much the better.

Article I sec. 2 paragraph 2 of The U.S. Constitution states that THIS is the white man's nation. A white man counts more than others and at the other end UNTAXED INDIANS count as zero.
Obama is black and therefore terrifying to the "redneck" population.
As a president he's no more wicked than
Deadeye and his pet goat,Codpiece. Since he is determined to follow their policies and expand them, he's just as stupid.
He DOES represent a MAJOR CHANGE in that he goes against the spirit and meaning of Article I sec. 2. The HOPE he embodies IS the hope that WE THE PEOPLE are in the midst of change and possibly toward more racial equality and understanding.
Deadeye and his pet goat, Codpiece (his sacrificial lamb on the altar of Rape&Pillage) Served twice and there was NOT enough buyer's remorse to impeach (or press charges as a weak after thought) while they stole EVERYTHING WE had, destroyed everything WE stood for. The ERROR is within US, WE did not impeach and therefore gave the green light to Obama to continue as such. Why expect him to give the suckers an even break?
He "got" Bin Laden, half a loaf is better than none. If he ends up poking US in the eye with a sharp stick, its 'cause WE begged for it.

President Obama is an extremely powerful symbol to American liberals, much more for what he is than what he does. Obama the person is a clear victory for liberals, a group in desperate need of victories, even if Obama the President is turning out not to be. Even on his worst day--and he's had some pretty bad ones--Obama is proof that the Sixties happened. That's all American liberals have left.

The last 50 years have been devastating for American liberals faced with a well-organized and funded Right willing to use everything including violence to gain political and social control. The time to beat this radical rightwing ideology was at the moment of violence--'64 or '68--using standard criminal investigations to identify and punish the small group of rightwingers who had used violence against their political opponents.

If the anti-liberal political violence of the 60s had been prosecuted effectively within the system, the hard right wing would've stayed a fringe element. But the liberal elite overestimated their own power, and underestimated the ruthlessness of their opponent. By the time they realized their mistake, a whole generation of "liberals" in-name-only had been spawned. That's what we're suffering through now.

Obama the person embodies the few liberal ideas that liberals still have confidence in -- racial equality; elite education; a certain technocratic bent; etc. Admitting that Obama has been a disappointment (like Clinton before him, and Carter before him) is simply too much to bear.

My father, a Chicagoan and lifelong Democrat, now firmly believes that "this country is conservative." Largely thanks to the corporate news media, he believes that liberal ideas (like Medicare and SS) are not successful and popular ones...even when they are terrifically successful and popular. No matter what the issue, American liberals are beaten before they start, and have been beaten from the moment they acquiesced to a generation's worth of unpunished murder. If they wouldn't fight for their own leaders, why would you ever think they'd fight for YOU?

Fact is, most of the anti-war movement has been silent on the terror wars since Obama was elected. Obama proves that all liberals care about is their symbols. Liberals are just as willing to support war as long as it is one of their own leading it. Liberals are willing to roll over when Obama destroys social security. It all seems very tribal to me. Issues are a non-issue except for symbols.

Obama was dropping hints that he meant to attack "entitlements" even before he won the nomination, a year before the election.

Yeahbut ... Michele Bachmann! Didn't you hear me? I said Michele Bachmann!

Seriously folks, this is getting tiresome.

If Obama's politically knowledgeable supporters can call themselves liberal then the term has absolutely no meaning. I don't mean it's bad, I mean it's meaningless. I can call an endtable and the color mauve liberal with equal effect.

Liberal is misused. We've had generations of rightwingers who, amongst themselves, become "liberal" so long as only people like themselves are being considered. Without egalitarianism, there is no liberalism. So: they're lying. They're just rightwingers that aren't big on total fascism.

Dig up and re-read the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. MLK was directing the meat of that to white "liberals" who would have rathered that blacks did nothing to win social justice. An intellectual tradition that happily tosses 13% of the population under the bus so it can get an edge doesn't deserve to be granted the same political alignment of those who fought and sacrificed during the Civil Rights movement.

Obama and his ilk are rightwingers with a variant tactic. While Republicans see the mass theft or killing of poor and minorities as a good, the servile rightwing Dem sees them as acceptable losses -- the former will, when confronted with his own classism or racism, will result to distracting shouting, while the latter will simply refuse to talk to you. The moral difference is negligible.

So if we could, at best, use the term "liberal" ironically -- or better yet, not at all -- for the leftish rightwingers, that would be swell.

Very interesting ideas popping up here, so let's get dialectical, because this is both very complicated and very simple.

The loop between materialist factors that ultimately drive history and social/cultural/historical/political psychological factors that provide all the details has lots of feedback. Both mistah charley and mike have made important points, through harold myerson and mike's dad, but there is a why behind the why.

Mike, propoganda and advertising work, so yes, your dad is right, the country has become more and more conservative. (Garbage in garbage out.) And yes, mistah charley, Harold Myerson is shrewd to notice that the GOP's rhetoric is increasingly out of touch with reality, and even grounded on the politics of resentment and utopian nostalgia for a betrayed glorious past--the foundations of fascism. There are lots of political and ideological and cultural and demographic factors contributing to that ugly development, but let's go deeper to the material causes at work and leave the rest to academia.

Our economic system is unstable and unsustainable, so the house of cards we call prosperity always topples every time we add a few cards, and rebuilding it gets harder and harder. This has been going on a long time, in human terms, though not so long really from a bigger picture. Still, as Keynes noted, in the long run we're all dead, so our whole lives have been lived in teh shadows of this problem. Technological advances keep us going, but they are destabilizing, and the fundamental dynamic of the whole market-based economic system is what Schumpeter called the process of Creative Destructive--constant dynamic, destabilizing change that always introduces a new problem with every solution. A very efficient system in some ways glorified by its fans, but ultimately a self-destructive system. The more the system develops, the clearer that becomes, though unfortunately we also get more and more dependent on it as that happens, and those who profit from it become more and more powerful.

Even more than mechanization, computers and other advances in information management in the last couple of decades have introduced changes that make many, many people what the Brits aptly call redundant, and so a large percentage of the population is condemned to having their role in the national economic calculas amount to nothing more than a small contribution to aggregate demand without any real contribution on the supply side of those nasty economic equations that officials like Summers and Rubin use. The Right resents the lack of self-reliance these people show, though they might as well blame fish for having gills and breathing in water. People are what they can be, but in any event that problem is the tip of the iceberg and, speaking of fish, mostly a red herring. Throw in declining rates of profit, increasing militarization, resource depletion, climate change--well, Mad Max might have been optimistic.
People fear the future because there is much to fear.

But what do we do about it? The Right's answers are lies and flattery, but there's not much more attractive than that, especially compared to half-baked pablum preached by the craven opportunists pretending to oppose them. Real change would be just so damn hard, and maybe not even possible anyway. Not to many folks are up for that sort of challenge. Maybe the ATR crowd and some others, but basically a handful.

So we sally forth into the future, but on a fundamental level, something has to give. The system as constructed is internally inconsistent and incoherent, and eventually there won't be enough money to keep it going. Before we get to the end point when it collapses, there will be a social battle over diminishing social resources--do we feed the Empire or do we pay to take care of people. It sure looks like the Empire will win, because the Empire is so powerful now that people aren't even allowed to reflect on the fact that our foreign wars don't just kill foreigners--they kill Americans. Every person who dies without medical care for lack of funds is a victim of the trillians we spend on the occupation of Centrial Asia.

That really isn't complicated.

So if we could, at best, use the term "liberal" ironically...

I more or less always do, though I don't bother with the scare quotes.

I don't agree that we should use the term liberal ironically, but I'm a radical, so what do I know?

My own perspective is that liberalism is as liberalism does. If the vast majority of liberals are running behaving in the ways that all of you decry, well, that's liberalism. Sure it's different from the liberalism of even say a few decades ago (and I wouldn't have been a liberal then either), but contemporary conservatism is different from the conservatism of a few decades ago too.

One thing that has always defined liberalism is support for capitalism (and liberalism has been supporting war-making for at least a century as well).

Today's liberals have shed support for ameliorative economic policies, but that's because the working class has (temporarily) surrendered in the class war.

My own perspective is that liberalism is as liberalism does. If the vast majority of liberals are running behaving in the ways that all of you decry, well, that's liberalism

By this logic it is impossible to have an operational definition of anything. Indeed, any principle or code of honor could be destroyed in a matter of weeks by pranksters adopting the nomenclature of the target then consistently violating its principles. If club consisting of millions of people eat steak and pork chops every day and call themselves vegetarians, it doesn't mean that the definition of vegetarian has changed, it means those people are liars.

One thing that has always defined liberalism is support for capitalism (and liberalism has been supporting war-making for at least a century as well).

Also bullshit, I'm afraid. I'd refer again, offhand, to the civil rights movement -- and to anarchism. There are many liberal political perspectives that are either hostile to or indifferent to capitalism, and calling liberalism pro-war is as vile a lie as calling feminism pro-rape.

By this logic, it becomes literally impossible to lie. Any worldview that cannot contemplate liars is more disjointed from reality than the physics of a Looney Tunes cartoon.

colorless mauve endtables sleep furiously

"By this logic it is impossible to have an operational definition of anything. Indeed, any principle or code of honor could be destroyed in a matter of weeks by pranksters adopting the nomenclature of the target then consistently violating its principles. If club consisting of millions of people eat steak and pork chops every day and call themselves vegetarians, it doesn't mean that the definition of vegetarian has changed, it means those people are liars."

I stand by what I said, if the representatives of a political movement advocate something, than that is what that political movement stands for. The history of liberals supporting wars.... Well, you got Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, etc. just to name a few off the top of my head. Jeez.

"Also bullshit, I'm afraid. I'd refer again, offhand, to the civil rights movement -- and to anarchism. There are many liberal political perspectives that are either hostile to or indifferent to capitalism, and calling liberalism pro-war is as vile a lie as calling feminism pro-rape."

This is just stupid, I'm afraid. Some Civil Rights leaders were liberals, yes, but they were also pro-capitalist, even if they also supported unions and the like. MLK, Jr. never attacked capitalism per se. Malcolm did (later in life), Malcolm was not a liberal. And this anarchist just has to laugh at the implication that anarchists are liberals. Anarchists have a long and rich history of denouncing liberalism, so that's really a silly assertion of yours.

If the representative portions of feminists had been advocating for rape for decades, than it would be fair to say they were pro-rape. Luckily, they have not.

I stand by what I said, if the representatives of a political movement advocate something, than that is what that political movement stands for. The history of liberals supporting wars.... Well, you got Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, etc. just to name a few off the top of my head. Jeez.

And I stand by what I said. Since liberalism is, depending upon its incarnation, a set of values, principles, and a code of honor, it can be violated. I can toss your strawman list out by that logic -- which, ironically enough, I can do by your logic as well, since what you're employing is fallacy, not reason. Wilson is a particularly egregious example of an obvius liar. Way to join the tradition of deliberate falsehood.

This is just stupid, I'm afraid. Some Civil Rights leaders were liberals, yes, but they were also pro-capitalist, even if they also supported unions and the like. MLK, Jr. never attacked capitalism per se.

Continuing in the tradition of obvious lies. You have redefined "never attacked capitalism" to be whatever the hell you wish it to mean. WTF have you done to "attack capitalism?" If you identify the economic system that our aristocracy loves the best as capitalism (I don't, but you're indulging in a bullshit fantasy world that clearly does), MLK, by supporting the rights of the poor, did more to attack capitalism while eating breakfast in the morning than you've likely done in your entire life. Seriously, this is a rightwing-level of delusion here.

And anarchism denounced "liberals" for the same reason that I just used scare quotes: they were lying assholes seeking social control, not supporting any egalitarian principles they claimed to espouse. Are you seriously refusing to read the original post? How do you form a worldview which cannot contemplate the fact that people lie? The Nazis put the word "socialist" in their name. Do you think they were socialist? Clearly, you must. Jeez, indeed.

If the representative portions of feminists had been advocating for rape for decades, than it would be fair to say they were pro-rape.

And plenty of rightwingers who call themselves feminists have endorsed policies for several decades now that are objectively pro-rape. You therefore must believe, if you apply your logic consistently, that all feminists are pro-rape. And that's the game, folks, thanks for coming out.

I just now saw mr. charley's post.

He used less than a tenth of my words and proved the point perfectly.

Bravo.

Well, there's definitely something to be said for using less than a tenth of your words.

and in the spirit of using less than a tenth of your words, I'll just add that supporting ameliorative policies or even the power of workers to preserve some of their power within capitalism DOES NOT constitute an attack on capitalism per se.

As opposed to MLK doing more to undermine capitalism than I ever have, well that's true, but so did George W. Bush.

There's something to be said to responding directly to an argument, rather than repeating a self-serving lie.

Your last post requires yet another lie about the nature of capitalism -- and Bush.

Speaking of whom: if these are your actual beliefs and not just trolling, you're about as anarchistic as Bush is.

And you are about as much of a honest and coherent interlocutor as Bush is.

Who the f*** are you to talk about who's an anarchist? At one point they're liberals and at another point they're all "lying assholes seeking social control." So, yeah, I'm going to listen to you when you judge my anarchism (that's sarcasm by the way).

Engaging with you, I've discovered far too late, is a mug's game.

You change definitions of terms whenever it suits you. Lying troll is lying.

Rhetorical question: Does liberalism seek to abolish capitalism?

What? The answer is no?

Well than I guess that means that you are a stupid douchebag.

Rojo is being intentionally obtuse here. Obviously we need a rough operational definition of liberalism. Generally speaking liberalism is in favor of regulated capitalism (i.e. the welfare state), which means: social insurance, public health care, real public education (not charter schools), strong unions and rights to organize in the workplace, and a major role for the government in funding public infrastructure, research and development, and foreign aid.

However, if contemporary Democrats want to: roll back union rights (just to a lesser extent than Republicans, make cuts in social insurance programs like Social Security, raise the age of eligibility for Medicare and hence cut public health care, make cuts in aid to the states, make cuts in public investments in research and development, and weaken public education through partial privatization - that's fine. But to call it liberalism is willfully deceitful - because it plays upon the fact that adults today were raised to value certain policies under a liberal rubric and will have loyalty to politicians who raise that standard.

And let's be real, anyway. Very few Democratic politicians describe themselves as liberals much these days. They call themselves progressives. Even this doesn't work - because the progressives of the early 20th century again were extending public services while in large measure this current incarnation is quite often doing the opposite.

Respectfully, Ranjit, you're wrong.

I acknowledged that liberals can be in favor of ameliorative policies (regulated capitalism), that's implicit in this statement of mine from above: "Today's liberals [I maybe should have said "Today's liberal politicians" to be clearer] have shed support for ameliorative economic policies, but that's because the working class has (temporarily) surrendered in the class war."

Now, that's an interpretation of how history works, and you can argue with that, but I never accused liberals of being for full-throated predatory capitalism, just capitalism. However, as should also be clear from the sentence of mine I just quoted, I think that predatory capitalism tends to come back very quickly when the working class is not vigorously combating the class war.

Also with respect Ranjit, but I object to you suggesting that I'm being "intentionally obtuse." Obtuse, maybe (although obviously I would disagree), but how do you know what my intent is? Seems to me you are just saying what No One of Consequence is saying, but with slightly better manners: "Rojo is a troll"

Um, dude. You're a troll. You begin with being impolite and blame others for the predictable result. You lump in a tremendous number of philosophical systems under "liberalism," many of which are a) indifferent to capitalism or b) hostile to capitalism when you can't even define capitalism, which means you're either a fucking moron, or a fucking troll.

No matter who deals with you, the result is the same: you'll be a collosal asshat and, as such, you'll take insult from whatever it is they said because if they say anything accurate, it will imply that you -- accurately -- are a troll.

If you weren't a trolling asshat, you'd open up with definitions, rather than lies -- especially about things that are clearly stated upthread. How are those pro-rape feminists working out for you?

"No matter who deals with you, the result is the same"

Is that why the only person who's ever acted towards me like a tremendously self-important douchebag at this blog, when I've been interacting w/ others just fine here for years (albeit intermittently), is you?

Sure. The result is ALWAYS the same. Sure.

I'll consider myself self-important once I'm declaring myself morally superior to anyone who ever sacrificed during the Civil Rights movement; until then, I'm afraid you've cornered the market on that particular vice.

Uh-huh, and I did that when? When I called MLK a liberal, I'm guessing? Guess what, noting that I'm not of EXACTLY the same political persuasion as MLK does not equal me claiming moral superiority to him. That should be blindingly obvious to anyone that is not a giant, dishonest, scum-sucking douchebag. I also think Gandhi made a mistake or two in his political life, the horror! I know, I know, I'm a horrible monster.

Noting that liberals are not against capitalism (and that I am) does NOT mean that I think that all liberals, ever, for all time, are evil bastards. I probably wouldn't bother coming to this blog if I did.

You, on the other hand, are about the lowest form of life I've ever come across on the web.

Ugh, I'm done with you. I should have been done earlier when I mentioned that it's a mug's game.

So, go ahead and issue whatever calumnies you wish. The record of this thread stands for itself and people can judge for themselves who's the biggest ass here (hint: it's you!).

I now promise to never engage with you again. Last word is yours, take it away!