« Take a hike | Main | Winners and losers »

O save us from the pitchforks, dear Paul!

By Owen Paine on Friday July 16, 2010 02:45 PM

Over at Thomatose Central, I catch Paul Krugman, terrier for equity, once again chewing up a stage rug over those scarey guys from Elephant Town. Heeere's Kruggie:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/opinion/16krugman.html?_r=1

Republicans are feeling good about the midterms — so good that they’ve started saying what they really think. This week the party’s Senate leadership stopped pretending that it cares about deficits, stating explicitly that while we can’t afford to aid the unemployed or prevent mass layoffs of schoolteachers, cost is literally no object when it comes to tax cuts for the affluent.

And that’s one reason — there are others — why you should fear the consequences if the G.O.P. actually does as well in November as it hopes.

Krug, Krug. Banging the drum for the donkey is obscene, after the lesser evil has more than once, on most major policy avenues, flat-out flunked the George Wallace "dimes worth of difference" test. To suggest continuing to play the lesser-evil card is for undercover Quislings.

PK, the donks deserve to get turned out. Sweeping away pure cover and brand perception management -- all the handwringing on one side and the kill-the-wolf crying on the other -- can you say objectively that Ohbummer & Co. have made life signifigantly better for the median voting souls than a prez McCain would have?

Go down the list of policy areas one by one. Don't notice how it would be packaged, but just what it really would probably amount to. If the difference, the real difference, is second-order, then Ohbummer and his congo pals deserve to get turfed out, for passing up a once-in-a-generation opportunity to try at least to be qualitatively better then that fleabitten gimped-up mean-spirited flight-deck pappy would have been.

I can understand the temptation to pull the lever for a lesser evil. Do it, pal, do it. Even if it only makes a second-order difference, it's still a difference. The logic is fine -- as far as it goes. Pull the jackass lever in November then. I guess that's okay -- even if I think rewarding them only perpetuates a symbiotic evil. Maybe that takes more "evidence" than you find in the record. You certainly seem to have a higher opinion of the Clinton years than I do.

But still: why this absurd ballyhoo -- "The wild things are coming! The wild things are coming!" The guts of your argument becomes this:

"Good people, we have to admit to ourselves that Ohbummer rather pusillanimously has protected the big boys from our righteous pitch forks, and let a lot of us down, but that's only half the story.

"At least he's trying -- you know, trying to protect us from... ahhhh... their evil pitchforks. Right? Eh? Right about that at least... err, if you look at it kinda sideways, maybe, and at least now and then.

"Um... come on... I mean, he's got a good heart... don't he? That oughta count for somethin', I think... no?"

Comments (16)

I think outcomes tend to be slightly better for the commoners when the D-bots are posing as an opposition. Not much better, mind you, but I stand by the notion that there might have been a public option stuck in if McCornhole had prevailed. Green consciousness would also be higher, post-GOM explosion. Some talk about soaking the rich might even exist.

Emma:

While I agree that the new(ish) Democratic administration is neither great nor good, I am kind of hoping that there is another way to read "Ohbummer and his congo pals" than the obvious. Because: ew.

op:

md
i think there's a lot to that line
at least enough to nullify any more
then the wallace dime's difference

uut of power
the pwogs' stealth quisling chiefs
get restless and ithchy
and their believer base bolder
at times the repugs throw em bones
b4 they cause too much dust to rise
maybe you're right
ole pappy McCain
would have been "forced"
to take a Pub-op of some sort
because the strident party agit prop
was played on the party main tower carilon
not the polly pwog
' adlai-wellstone chapel' harpsicord

more basically the path to tomorrow
runs much the same eithyer wise eh ??

u look at the current franco-german reaction now in power and see what??

actions that roughly correspond
to the ohbummer express
only less reactionary on foreign policy
if more reactionary on domestic policy
ya the center-right is even more beholden
to the central bankers magic hands and unions get to play street dancers but ....
seems since the cold war 40's
it never did any euro pwog party
much good at all
"joining" a center"left" gubmint
they become hostages really

the "left" orthrian incubus
our fair nation's centrist agents
of the corporate element
the folks we called back in the day
neoliberals
are always the ones "forming "
any dem-gub....

(we got the dlc-bondage crew from ...wallstreet
in the Democratic hoop dee doo revival
that was
' mr and mrs clinton go to washington '

and now
we live under the hovering concret bloc
of the chicago-boys -bright side
of wall street condominium


it's a little less clear here
then in europe of course
because over there
the pwogs have their various
owner operated "parties"
where here
the bulk of the great foggy the pwog bank
is basically in self imposed restraints
inside
--but over to one side --
of the jackass tent

you can generally find most pwogs in there
mooing and milling and wheeling around
endlessly herded thru the circular
shoots
shoots mercilessly
without a slaughter house

moving largely by themselves
like siphoned water
with a few well positioned
Dembo janus ops and of course
the legion of merit:
the special posse troughites

outside the tent ??

those rugged maligned few
are
subjected relentlessly
to the misdirection
of shallow throated donk cut outs
and wood chuck wrath

upshot
most pwogs here
find themselves automatically
" part "
of
"stake holders in "***
any great and good
circus of the people type government

the basic course as always
hangs in the balance of class forces
and that
only to the extent
institutional arrangements
anchored
in benighted habit
permit

** frugnutz toon
caption : stake holder
image : walter mitty grasping
frantically at a picket post
buried into his brain

op:

emma
is it ew

or errmmm ???

nonny:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/16-5

Linked item very worthy of being 'op'eed.

op:

n
that lakoff guy
is strictly electric Al territory

synectications
semi idiotics
schenectady
the symbol-frame nexus
shumannnthe magnificent
has that local franchise
for more antique philology one turns
here at SMBIVA
to father stuffy Smiff

i'm the poli econ con
along with norman's grand nephew frank

CF Oxtrot:

op --

first it's "Human Doll" Reich and now "Terrier for Equity" Krugman.

I salute the humor!

Michael Hureaux:

Yeah, Emma, I didn't think that "Congo" stuff wsa the best choice of words either. There's got to be another way to word riff off of "congress" besides "congo", especially when the righties are basically attempting to argue that the Black Panthers have taken over U.S. politics.

But I agree with Mikey D. here, the only time the "democrats" are worth a damn is when they have to play the opposition out of power, so let them lose the fucking elections. Let the Republicans run everything into the ground, and in the meantime, (if we can remember how to meet and argue and hash out fighting positions on everyday working class issues) we'll be able to develop an intelligent alliance with some of these people who think of themselves as "democrats". Let the "democrats" go the way of the Whigs, and let us get back to the business of cobbling together an independent political leadership based upon the disenfranchised and the wage earning majority.

Hopefully it's clearer now than it has been in awhile. All the "democrats" are is an enormous distraction from more rigorous political tasks, and thankfully, the Obamarama has been amazingly short lived. I was really worried the hup ho would be able to play this one out for eight years, but it's looking less likely than ever. But we have our work cut out for us.

MJS:

"Conggro", perhaps. Like "aggro."

MJS:
the only time the "democrats" are worth a damn is when they have to play the opposition out of power
I woulda said they're not worth a bucket of warm piss even then.
Emma:

Ah, see? Here I was thinking you were a racist, and apparently you just like devising unconventional, uncapitalized slang terms for Congress. Or all-male conga lines.* Or something. All’s well that ends well.

I tend to think the Democrats are pretty awful in general, too. I was planning to give them a break if they managed to implement some significant health care reform, but alas, they failed there as well. So from now on, I’m going to spend national voting day at the zoo looking at the lions. So fuzzy! Big teeth!


* Despite its origins, I think the conga has been thoroughly cleansed of its racial heritage, what with all the play it gets on cruise ships, at wedding receptions, etc.

op:

all-male conga lines
just the resonance i wash expecting
perhaps if i wrote --in the future--
ohbummer and his hill pals
on the jackass conga line

i must add
hurling the label racist at me was
NOT what i took you to mean
i thought u were mocking
by impersonating
the genteel
Dembo pwog goo goo
hope and candles crowd
i discover i am quite wrong
in fact i'm hearing from
the anti racist vigilance committee

perhaps there's something to this claim
of a raging racist nativist white backlash
rising up to hurl down our civil rights

if i really considered this a threat
to our liberal institutions
== such as they remain==
i'd hardly attack ohbummer right ??

i'd urge a broad front
a circling of the citizen rights wagons

battle inch by inch uniting with one and all to retain what ever space was left
for progressive popular movements
inside the belly of the hegomonic beast

as it is
i have no such fears AT ALL
in fact i consider the fear mongers among us pwogs
objective borros for ohbummer
and the agenda of the corporate
bright side of The Street

op:

apt wiki tid bit :

"“Congo’s” during the festivities,
followed the processions of the Virgin Mary

ohbummer and the dembo party

acolytes all
in the cult of the imaculate concession

op:

"the righties are basically attempting to argue that the Black Panthers have taken over U.S. politics"

led by a 'soul white' tabby cat

how fearsome the dream !!!

Emma:

I find your verse semi-difficult to parse — which is great! Good for you, with the little comment poems! Very cute! No criticisms there — but I am pleased that you are so not a racist that you find being accused of racism absurd. But, you know, I (a random reader!) don’t know you’re not a racist. I don’t know you from a hole in the wall. For all I know, you are secretly Karl Rove in a tinfoil hat. Casual, laffz-related, post-racist racism is super-common on political blogs of all flavors these days, especially the speculative variety which seeks to describe, in patronizing terms, Obama’s perceived racial identity vs. his genotype. Although often launched by technical non-racists, these sorts of attacks always provide a really, really gross reading experience. And their digital pervasiveness gives me the hardcore sads.

I think Obama is a terrible president. Really terrible. If you close your eyes and only listen to anchorpersons regurgitate his sound bites, he might as well be Bush. The Democrats might as well be Republicans, and they all might as well be characters out of a Joseph Heller novel. I live in a world that I can’t quite believe is actually real — which would be fun, if it weren’t, for example, suddenly covered with oil.

But this, okay, was not racism. Definitely not! I’m sorry. Really.

op:

emma
i do not find being accused of racism absurd

i'm sure i'm a racist

i'm prolly not even
a technical non racist

always prepared to be drawn up short on this

so "fire away gridley"!!!

i simply mistook your words

btw
if a random reader objects
to anything i write
that random reader
need do no more
then comment here
and they will receive my personal public response

in this case
as peter sellers sez in what's up pussycat
http://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/whats-new-pussycat-large.jpg

" i promise ...i'll never do it again "

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Friday July 16, 2010 02:45 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Take a hike.

The next post in this blog is Winners and losers.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31