The Mendacity of Nope
Healthcare. Afghanistan. Iraq. Unemployment. TARP. State-level governments going tits up. Homelessness. Hunger. Veteran’s affairs. Torture. Gitmo. Not one piece of the progressive agenda is being meaningfully addressed, and congress is about to go on a month’s vacation.
How long are we supposed to wait?
How long are the American people going to put up with this crap?
How long are we willing to blindly accept the ministrations of a federal government that clearly subscribes to the Buck Turgidson School of Social Darwinism?
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops!”
At the end of July, 2009:
More Americans are without access to basic healthcare or medical insurance than ever before.
More Americans died in Afghanistan during the month of July than at any time since the start of hostilities in that country.
More Americans are unemployed tonight than in recent memory.
More Americans will go to sleep hungry tonight (or worried about where the next meal for their families will come from) than at any time in history - even as foodbanks and feeding programs are stressed at unimaginable levels.
State after state - it’s not just California - is laying off or not paying state workers. Essential services are being cut beyond the bone: entire governmental limbs are now being severed.
I actually, for a few months, entertained the audacious thought that health care reform might really get done, and get done right. My “audacity of hope” has been rapidly transformed by the “mendacity of nope”. DKos diarist teacherken wrote a series of diaries over this past weekend regarding a rural health care event that literally made me cry with sadness and anger.
I am sick to death of listening to the gasbags on NPR blather on about how much healthcare reform is going to cost. The banks should have been allowed to collapse, and single payer, universal health care should have been a no brainer. Instead, the banks got a trillion and the sick, uninsured, and poor are gonna get bupkis.
Same as it ever was…same as it ever was…
I am sick to death of being sick to death.
Oh, and before anyone slams me asking what I’m doing about it - yeah, I’ve done my time. I’ve pissed into the tide of social activism so many times that I’ve lost count.
Jeff Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer never had the time to consider that giving up their lives would make a profound difference. But each of them contributed immeasurably to a true, real, movement (and a single cause) that changed the course of history.
I would quite literally give up my own life for this stuff if I thought it would make a difference. But in this day and age, I fear it wouldn’t.
With each passing day, it feels more and more like we’re all drowning in a roiling, angry sea of ineffective national leadership. A riptide of malignant political indifference has washed over the government of the United States of America, and it seems as if we proles are powerless to escape the undertow.
I think you are expecting too much too soon. He’s president, not God. He said in the beginning it would be a long haul. As for healthcare,ca & trade we have to deal with the Senators who are working for the other side instead of working for us. I don’t know how they get elected.
Be patient. Do what you can do to move his agenda forward? I write senators almost every day and they are just my senators but anyone I feel is going against the agenda. Sitting around doing nothing and complaining about it accomplishes nothing.
Bonnie - you are entitled to your position - BUT HOW MANY MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO SELL OUT HIS PROGRESSIVE BASE DO WE NEED TO GIVE HIM!!!!!!
I am less concerned about what he has yet to accomplish - BUT AM VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH WHAT HE ALREADY HAS DONE!!!!!!! “Yes We Can” was a cheap slogan and the promises he made during the primaries and campaign now mean nothing. In case you are not paying attention:
* Escalating wars in South Asia and continuation of war crimes, crimes against humanity (depleted uranium weapons, wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians)
* Installing war cimrinal Lt. General Stanley A McChrystal, George Bush’s Commanding General, Joint Special Operations Command, as Commander of U.S. Forces, stepping up wars in south asia.
* Hiding behind rhetoric of withdrawl while actually maintaining and increasing war crimes in Iraq.
* Increasing funding of the military-industrial complex.
* Reviving military commissions and supporting indefinite detentions without due process.
* Continuing torture policies.
* Maintaining secret prisons.
* Advancing policy of “indefinite detention” - more accurately called “permanent incarceration”, even when no proof of crime exists.
* Sustaining Bush’s abrogation of habeas corpus rights.
* Refusing to hold anyone in previous administration accountable for crimes, treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
* Continuing Bush’s illegal spying programs.
* Invokinge the “state secrets” and refusing to release information or respond to lawsuits emerging from Bush era policies.
* Suppressing of U.S. torture practices.
* Justifing treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity with a faux and manufactured “”global war on terror”.
* Despite campaign promises to the contrairy, beginning to signal an intent to roll back and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare benefits.
* Betraying workers by ignoring campaign pledges to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and pass labor reform (the Employee Free Choice Act).
* Promiting public funds for the auto industry that will be used to cut U jobs, wages and benefits while subsidizing GM’s continuing shifting of jobs overseas.
* Watering down healthcare reform to the point where it approaches little more than public give-aways to insurance companies and providers instead of promoting universal access and cost controls.
* Talking the only option that even he admits provides universal coverage, single payer, out of the debate.
* Spending trillions of federal dollars on taxpayer handouts to benefit Wall Street firms and not “main street” - directly contradicting his campaign rhetoric.
*Promoting the lie of a “jobless recovery”, that somehow we have “put out the fire” even though the assault against middle class and working American jobs is increasing.
==================================
Sorry, but the time to talk about the differences between obama’s rhetoric and actions is NOW! I shutter to think what will happen if progressives just give this corporate shill “more time.”
The Senate working to eviscertate health care is unsurprising but still discouraging. Even the best politicians need public pressure put on them. And we do not have the best politicians.
Latest example that obama has had enough time to show he is a corporate shill and selling out his progressive base:
*Choosing Monsanto hacks Michael Taylor & Dennis Wolff to be in charge of food safety.
The thing is, you measure a President’s progress not by time, but by appointees.
Period.
If my local fire chief puts the guy who has a conscession for GASOLINE in charge of the fire fighters in my County, and they head off to fight a fire with GASOLINE and not water aboard their truck, I know the result. I don’t need to wait for the explosion.
Geithner and Bernanke took at least four trillion dollars of the national money away from Main St and handed it over to Wall Street. And they did this, without putting any regulations on the handout. Right now, according to CNN money “Bailout” Tracker, there is eleven trillion handed over to support this “jobless” economy.
I have patience, believe me. But Obama’s appointees are of the Corporations, and by the Corporations. The peopele being helped by this Administration are those who work for Goldman Sachs, and those who work for Monsanto.
For the average person, life goes on, and unfortunately, the future looks harder than today.
You are incorrect about “the bankers got a trillion”
ACTUALLY, they got over 23 trillion (sic)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aY0tX8UysIaM
and, when asked where the money was spent, they LITERALLY say “I don’t know;” here’s but just ONE example of MANY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ
Brilliant, trenchant, and spot-on, Mr. Blair. Although there are a few worthwhile Democrats, I increasingly feel the Democratic Party is a fraud designed to absorb and dissipate what little remains of the progressive movement in this country.
yeah, i’m not playing anymore either.
2010 is going to be a surprisingly shitty year for the democrats. my prediction is that they lose both houses of congress.
sounds nutso, right? and the dems are supposedly sitting pretty right now.
but I suspect voter turnout is going to be VERY low. I particularly think a ot of blue dogs are going to be replaced.
I suspect voter turnout is going to be VERY low. I particularly think a ot of blue dogs are going to be replaced.