How Wingnuts Roll.

Although I think most of the most rabid wingnuts are personal cowards in both the intellectual and physical sense, that is not what’s motivating them with all this oh noes, hand wringing shit. IMHO

I think at this point, it is pure unadulterated tribalism for a party and brand with three legs in it’s grave and the other slipping. Much as they now forget who GWB was, mainly due to him losing all power for their cravings in that regard, they still have center stage and defend his policies. Largely, because they believe in them, but also because what the hell else they going to do. They were spawned by Bush and Cheney and are children of the damned in that regard. Guarding the Alamo with little more than clenched teeth and spittle.

There are other, and somewhat more sensible and sane republicans out there, at least to know when to quit and do something new, or at least repackaged new. This is what’s behind the crazy tea bag shit and the crazier still notion they can sell it outside the wire of the south and a few other places. Desperation doesn’t care about the odds, it is seat pants flying of the cornered with no where else to turn.

The problem for the GOP and right sided people is there are so many of them, and they are well funded by other crazies that have money to keep it going, until all that is left is Bachmann, Steve King, Eric Cantor et al and the Titanic Stringed Quartet.

Then things might get a little better for them when the bottom comes up to hit them in the face.

Samuel Barber: Agnus Dei (Adagio for strings)

State of Health Care Reform

This has been the big error in dems and Obama’s initial rollout of hc reform, but they have corrected in time I think,. Beginning with the Joint Session speech where Obama laid it out better, and more to the point. Most folks are ok with helping out those who can’t get healthcare and from a distance can see problems with the system as a whole. But most have not had the experience of major illness or accident where they have to use the system in a big way.

On paper, their policies look good, but they have no way of knowing what would happen if they had to use it to survive and not go broke. Cases like Lee Benders are testament to this, and more folks are now coming around to the notion that even they with good policies are not secure and cannot depend on a scurrilous insurance institution to do what’s right when the chips are down.

So the numbers of people supporting a PO and all the other reforms have gone up since Obama has taken full time to the bully pulpit, and shot holes in the facade of lies put up by wingnuts and their ignorant mobs. Watching the Senate Markup, I am even more confident, that though it will be messy and tough, we are going to get a decent reform bill passed. Now that the public is starting to realize that nobody is safe with the status quo/

This has been you weekly Stuck See’s A Pony A Coming Through the Rye.

GOP Odds For 2010

It’s still too close to Bush for there to be a big GOP gain. They will pick up some seats they lost closely in wingnut districts, and if not this cycle, then the next will see the virtual extinction of the white democratic CC’r in the deep south. And I look for Landreux to fall, though she is tough as nails and could well pull it out.

The Senate lineup so favors dems in 2010, it should make up for any punishment by voters on the economy, that likely won’t start creating decent jobs till too late next year for it to matter.

And the pundits have a stake in keeping the numbers balanced to perpetuate the eternal dem/repub street fight. And for someone like Charly Cook to buckle to the rush predicting for dem defeat speaks for itself and the rest of the braintrust punditry. They are not so stupid as pure self interested. Though many are dumb as Turkeys.

Dick Cheney and the Conservative Movement

No. they have always been that way. It’s a pseudo philosophy that intellect or pure ideas can solve the problems of men. Like the free market model governing itself and a country. Pure ideology for success, until it’s put to the test. Then all the human failings and the angst and failure and redemption take hold, and they have no antidote for that. It becomes a disease to them to be shunned and that has thwarted their well thought out designs for harmonious existence.

That is why empathy has become the enemy. Because the day to day fumbling of human imperfect persons always beats the ideological in the end. Dick Cheney is the perfect leader for this cause because he runs on pure ideological thought of action reaction to solve every problem. And the action is always force of will, that too often simplifies itself to physical force of one kind or another.

But all of the work to build a “conservative movement” has itself dissolved in failure, as it was destined to once put to the test. Man is not a creature of predisposition to follow set rules that don’t account for human frailty. They don’t get this simple fact and are even blind to the fact that they also belong to it.

So now we see the aftermath of emotionally arrested people whose blueprint for governing a country that turned out to be a futile attempt to bypass the complexities of life here on planet earth. Nothing is left but resentment and bewilderment on how to proceed. And Cheney reminds them that force is always there to pick up and use one way or another. This is the tea bagging movement. A minority with no sanctioned power generates it’s own with pathetic attempts at intimidation to get their way. Cheney can’t help them, his room in purgatory has been decorated with the lost souls from which his actions turned them out early from this life.

Todays State of the Union

We have two countries IMO, and always have. And they are existing together only for reasons of shared wealth and defense, or potential for shared wealth. They are ideologically disparate and geographically divided which makes overt rebellion more possible.

I do believe the majority are 1st world citizens, but it is not a large majority, and there are enough who can be swayed by bullshit in any given election. It’s just a sense on my part, but I get the feeling that the bond to generate shared wealth is dissolving into concentrated ideology. I hope I’‘m wrong, but right now, doing away with the filibuster would go far in breaking the bond completely. Aggravating as it is.

And I think the founders knew this about the American condition from day one, and why they made the government we have, with shared powers, and means for the minority to participate in the debate and have some favors of their own, by codifying the debate as extended.

It is also why we only change when in genuine crisis, whatever the issue is that’s causing the emergency. No way to run a country, but it’s what we have.

The Color of Wingnut

Talking about racial stuff is uncomfortable. And when I do it I feel like I am doing something wrong, and using it as a political weapon blithely. I figured there would be some of it bubbling up from some quarters on the right, but pieces like this Mccain dude and all the birther shit and behaviour at the teabagging parties has surprised this early on.

And now with the speech to students, it seems like whatever coding for it is being rapidly rinsed away and it soon will be more overt than we’ve seen since the 60’s. Even the talking heads like Mathews et al are citing it as fueling the over the top emotion coming from the right. There are legitimate ideological differences present, but the blanket rage and irrational myths being propagated and apparently believed by a large faction on the right can’t be explained away from just political disagreement.

And Obama is not doing anything that wasn’t declared by him during the campaign, and sometimes I wonder if his recent timidity isn’t just a kneejerk reaction to not fan the flames any more than they are. It is going to get uglier and uglier. The subliminal messaging from the right is do what we want or else, It wreaks of entitlement in the extreme, combined with mob hysteria and a complete lack of intellectual engagement toward reasonable compromise.