What the Fug?

TW: It appears the Dems will lose Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat and even if Coakley should pull it out it still speaks volumes. We get the governance we deserve as I say over and over. I must say I am disillusioned with America. I thought after eight years of destructive and paranoid bullshit emanating from the White House that folks might have actually been ready for some new approaches. Apparently not.

If folks think, Beckian/Limbovian/Cheneyesque/Foxy/Palineolithic soaked teabaggery is a viable governance strategy then our nation really deserves to slide quickly down the slope that was greased so effectively by eight years of W Bush/Cheney.

A friend of mine has been saying for awhile that what Americans really want is a modern Caesar, perhaps he is right. Wake up for crissakes!! Obama and this Congress were never given a chance to do anything much less screw things up. Yet somehow all of the BS induced by cutting taxes for the wealthy, cutting regulations regardless of their impact, making war like a hegamon and seeing if we could inject ever larger doses of religion into folks lives etc. etc. is the Dems' fault. "We waaaaant smaller guvmint" unless of course it entails more prisons, torture on demand, sacrificing liberty without remorse in an utterly futile pursuit of perfect security and bellicose foreign policy. Universal health care, who cares? But by God do not put MY bennies at risk. Do not institute measures that just might bend the cost curve.

24/7/365 opposition appears to be a very viable electoral strategy be very careful what you ask for. There will be one clear way to break gridlock- Caesarian methods.

Perhaps the Massachusetts loss will wake up the folks who apparently thought pulling one lever last year would fix everything. But that is almost certainly wishful thinking on my part.

From Andrew Sullivan:
"...there's no compromise with the current GOP. They make Gingrich look like Pope John XXIII. If they got back majorities in the Congress, there will be no debt reduction; there will simply be nihilism until they can try to beat Obama in 2012.

Secondly, there's a lie masquerading as analysis going around. And that is that the health insurance bill is some sort of radical idea, fomented by "radical leftists", etc etc. This is propaganda. In fact, the final bill is exactly where a sane compromise is to be found: near-universal coverage; no single payer; no public option; reforms for pre-existing conditions and other injustices; cost control mechanisms; Medicare cuts; deficit reduction. 16 years after the Clintons tried, it's a more moderate bill. It was widely debated in the campaign. It isn't perfect. It needs work. But it's a start.

The blame for the delay lies fundamentally with a GOP that is still intent on putting power before country, and decided the day Obama took office that he was such a threat to their beleaguered brand that they would oppose everything he proposed, demonize him as much as possible, forgo any cooperation, and then try to blame him for the recession, the wars, the unemployment, and the debt he inherited ... while never actually proposing any serious alternative on any of them.

It is a nihilist, populist, primal scream. And if the Massachusetts result is interpreted as a vindication of that strategy, we will have thrown away a very rare constructive moment for targeted government action to tackle the deep problems - healthcare access and cost, too much reliance on carbon energy, an empire bogged down in two quagmires, a debt that will soon threaten this country's currency - in favor of news cycle, tactical Rovian bullshit..."