By Hanlon, on November 20th, 2009 at 03:49 PM
 Any time I see a question in a news article that “asks a question” related to the current health care bill and the death of democracy. Nine times out of ten it’s a pissed-off conservative columnist that wants to say that the “Obamacare” (oh brother) bill means Democracy will get replaced by communism.
This, however, brings up a much better point, sort of. First off, though, the rather asinine part.
Also cited at times are the divisions among Americans, which make paralysis in Washington natural and maybe even healthy. Obama, after all, was backed by only 53 percent of those who voted, who in turn represented only 64 percent of adults eligible to vote. When half the country passionately fears government intrusion and the other half is passionately ashamed that Americans may be dying for lack of health care, reform is not going to be easy.
This is, possibly, the most angering point I’ve heard brought up by anti-Obama zealots. It’s the kind of thing that I came up with when I was 19 and thought I was original. Much as no one may want to admit it, this is how every election works. Bush got less than even a plurality of voters in his first “win”, with a painfully small number of voters. Also Hiatt is incorrect, those 53% actually only represented 57% of eligible voters. It was 64% of registered voters. Or just do it in straight numbers and since 69.4 million people voted for Obama with about 304 million Americans, then 22.8% of the population decided for the rest.
But that’s how it always goes, more so if you’re like Lincoln or Clinton and only won a plurality of voters, rather than a majority. Then we’re talking less than half of the bare majority of three-quarters of the population.
Anyway, here’s where things get much more reasonable:
Or maybe the country isn’t all that divided — most of us would welcome common-sense improvements in health-care delivery and insurance — but the system feeds on and exacerbates our differences. The advent of the 60-vote rule in the Senate has magnified the already formidable checks and balances built into the Constitution, with the disproportionate blocking power it awards small and rural states. Cable television and the Internet have empowered those with the greatest intensity of feeling. The self-serving redistricting habits of the political elite, designed to protect incumbents, have left most legislators vulnerable only to primary challenges from the extremes of their respective parties.
We live in an era where sound bytes and winning “news cycles” means more than getting things done. The Republicans are more focused on sticking it to the Democrats to win over the pissed-off Teabagger movement than they are on crafting a bill that will, ten years down the road, be seen as a triumph. Which isn’t necessarily their fault, given the ADD-fueled circus that 24-hour cable news has created. Entire elections can be won and lost based on positive coverage or too much attention on a slip of the tongue (McCain had a lot going against him, but near the end he was getting pounded for really trivial things).
Now we have a system that’s terribly crippled, with people calling for changes and reform that just plain aren’t coming thanks to the Congressional blockading, a president who can barely get any nominees confirmed, all because the opposition party has decided that the checks and balances the Constitution affords them must be wielded like a weapon in order to appease the frothing non-masses.
Democracy is in paralysis, and the health care bill is showing us the nature of it, though the bill itself is largely inconsequetial in that effect.
By Hanlon, on November 4th, 2009 at 03:27 PM
 I was perusing another forum I belong to and stumbled across a poster with a notable Ron Paul bend to him. Anyone who frequents the internet is familiar with these types: the r[EVOL]ution banners and founding father quotes all over the place. Well one of those quotes struck a chord with me:
If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.
- Thomas Jefferson
This is one of those quotes that sounds great on the surface, and one that fuels much of what I’d called the neo-libertarian attitude in the United States, chiefly amongst the younger set and (tragically) the Beckalytes. After all, following unjust laws just because they’re laws is to accept tyranny, right? So we owe it to ourselves to stand up for our rights in the face of unjust laws.
One problem.
Who decides what laws are unjust? Are we really to believe that every person is endowed with the intelligence and the knowledge to decide for himself what laws are just and what laws are not? Take a moment to imagine the chaos of the entire nation deciding which laws to follow because they disagree with them.
Young people open about getting drunk and high because of arcane age and legality laws. Second Amendment nuts carrying AK-47′s in public because they disagree with any limitations to their right to bear arms. Business owners refuse to hire blacks, arguing that affirmative action is a Big Brother type of law. Other business owners fire all their employees and replace them with illegal immigrants, arguing that if the people are in the country and willing to work for cheap, they should be allowed to. Swaths of people stop paying income taxes. Just for starters.
It’s one of those quotes that only sounds good because it was made by a man who revolted against his government and happened to have great ideas for laws. If it had been, say, Timothy McVeigh (who was a notably big fan of Jefferson quotes), then chances are people would doubt its wisdom. When really smart people fight against unjust laws, that’s a good thing. When everyone fights against all the laws they think are unjust, it’s anarchy.
This is why we have government. Because we realized that the common man may have a vague idea of what he wants, most are simply not able to understand the finer points of keeping a nation together. Thus, we elect people whose sole job is to decide what laws are good and what laws are bad.
Now this does become corrupted when those officials are bought and paid for by lobbyists and big business. The proper answer, however, is change within the system. If you can’t find a representative who you believe has your best interests in mind, run for yourself. The wrong solution is to start running around breaking any laws that you disagree with.
By Hanlon, on July 30th, 2009 at 10:24 PM
 Long title, I know, but whatever. Point is, this is what makes my head explode. Personally, I was just angry that Obama decided to have a Bud Light. Not because I give a damn that it’s a Belgian owned company now (I loves me my Belgian beers), but because Bud Light hardly counts as a beer. He might as well have gotten soda water and dumped a little yellow food coloring in it.
Anyway, that’s not the real controversy with the whole meeting of Obama/Gates/Crowley. No, conservatives are taking the “sulking child” approach and declaring that if they were Crowley by god they’d have turned the president’s offer down!
GOLDBERG [Fox News contributor and author]: From the president’s point of view, it probably is. Now, I wouldn’t even presume to give Sergeant Crowley any advice; he’s a big boy and he certainly knows what he’s doing. But, just so you know, I wouldn’t go and take part in a dog and pony photo op, not unless I got some apologies first. It’s a good move for the president possibly, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with it.
Hannity and Rich Lowry join in as well. If you want a simple explanation for the conservative punditry/politicians that will explain a solid 90% of what they do and say, it’s this: there are good guys and bad guys, and once someone’s an enemy they remain so.
Once you land on the naughty list to a conservative squawkbox, you’re beyond redemption. Everything you do is now evil and they will never ever never no sir never ever forgive you. The very idea of talking to an enemy is repulsive, they seem to think it shows weakness. Compromising is impossible, diplomacy useless, and talking out problems is off the table. You’re a “bad guy” forever, and will be met with nothing but pure malice. So Crowley meeting up with Obama to talk about what went down just strikes them as foreign, a crazy idea.
If, say, some Republican Congressman said something to massively offend me, would I accept an offer to have a beer? Damn right I would. That’s how I operate and how I like to think most adults do. The goal is to have no enemies not because you blew them all up and pissed on their ashes, but because you worked out the problems.
By Hanlon, on March 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 AM
 With the Limbaugh “I want him to fail” hullabaloo only getting bigger as various Republicans either speak out against him (Cantor), agree with him (DeLay, Santorum), or disagree and then tuck tail and beg for mercy (Steele), I’ve noticed that there’s a new line getting hocked that seems to want to agree with Limbaugh without having any balls to it.
It goes something like this: I don’t want Obama to fail, I want his policies to fail.
Far as I can tell, people who say this seem to think that it’s totally different. It’s not. Saying you want the president’s policies to fail is the exact same as saying you want the president to fail. It’s an excuse in the way “I don’t want him to die, I just don’t want him to be alive any more” is an excuse. The president affects the country via his policies, if they fail, he fails, we fail.
It’s legitimate to suggest that you want Obama to fail at enacting his policies. This is entirely fair, because we spent the last eight years hoping that Bush’s efforts to push this or that through the books would fail. There’s nothing wrong with that. You want your ideas to become law, not the other guy’s.
That’s not what we’re seeing. Instead, the Santorums and Limbaughs actually want liberalism to fail. They seem to, quite literally, want Obama’s attempts at “liberalization” to crash and burn. It echoes the sentiment of a recently unearthed 1993 memo from Bill Kristol re: health care; there is an actual danger in liberal policies succeeding because it means people won’t support conservative policies.
To the right, this is actually a bad thing. What is paramount isn’t the progress of the nation as a whole, it’s the victory of conservative ideology. In the end, what’s important isn’t which side would work better, what’s important is “my side wins, and you lose.”
You can test this at home. If you find yourself locking horns with a right-winger that’s talking about how they agree with Limbaugh that they want Obama to fail or that they want liberal policies to fail, just ask them this simple question: Now that the stimulus bill has passed, do you want to see the economy improve? The answer may or may not surprise you, and it may or may not be “no”, but you’ll get a better understanding of the kind of person you’re dealing with.
For the Limbaughs and Hannity-types, the answer will be “no”, and that’s the problem. If Obama passes a nationalized health care bill, these people will want Americans to suffer as a result. If Obama turns back any Bush policies, they’ll be crossing their fingers that things will go tits up. Let’s say he officially closes down Guantanamo and stops all of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques, they’ll be hoping to see some extremists go back to Iraq. He undoes the illegal spying? They’ll be praying for a terrorist attack. All in the pursuit of “conservatism” winning in the end.
The response to all this might be “well didn’t you want to see Bush’s policies fail?” Not at all. I’ve said time and time again the ego blow of having a Bush policy succeed is a hell of a lot better than watching it crash and burn. I disagreed with the Iraq invasion, but was I happy to see civilian deaths? Of course not. Do I think that seeing liberalism get more popular is worth the few million jobs lost and the giant deficit? Hell no.
Let me make an analogy, since I so often do.
Suppose you have an illness. It’s pretty bad, if not fatal. You go to the doctor and discover that there are two treatments on the table for what you have. You can have surgery on your affected organ, or you can start up a drug protocol. You have a preference, but your doctor insists on the other. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you want the surgery but he writes you a prescription for the drugs.
Tell me this: when you take your pills, do you want them to work? Are you hoping that they’ll only make you worse in order to convince the doc to let you have the surgery?
If you’re Rush Limbaugh, you’d say the latter. If you’re a liberal, you’d say the former. Much as we’d disagree with a Republican’s policies, once they’re in, they’re in, and it’s far better to hope that they work than to cheer for their failure, for one simple reason. If they fail, we as citizens pay the price. Try to have them replaced, sure, but don’t hope for failure.
Okay, I think I took care of that.
By Will, on February 23rd, 2009 at 08:57 PM
 For our more sensitive readers, said language will be after the bump. However, I would suggest you all read this story on Bloomberg (and this handy distillation of the story on the Consumerist).
Here are some particularly interesting tidbits:
“Bonuses were determined based upon the performance and the retention of people, and there is nothing that happened in the world or the economy that would make you say that those were not the right thing to do for the retention and the reward of the people who were performing,”[former Merrill Lynch CEO John] Thain said, according to the transcript.
After the top four recipients received $121 million, the next four received a combined $62 million, he said, and the next six a combined $66 million.
Overall, the top 149 people who got bonuses received a combined $858 million, according to Cuomo’s letter. He said 696 people got bonuses of $1 million or more.
Read More ->
For our more sensitive readers, said language will be after the bump. However, I would suggest you all read this story on Bloomberg (and this handy distillation of the story on the Consumerist).
Here are some particularly interesting tidbits:
“Bonuses were determined based upon the performance and the retention of people, and there is nothing that happened in the world or the economy that would make you say that those were not the right thing to do for the retention and the reward of the people who were performing,”[former Merrill Lynch CEO John] Thain said, according to the transcript.
After the top four recipients received $121 million, the next four received a combined $62 million, he said, and the next six a combined $66 million.
Overall, the top 149 people who got bonuses received a combined $858 million, according to Cuomo’s letter. He said 696 people got bonuses of $1 million or more.
Read More ->
By Hanlon, on September 18th, 2008 at 09:56 PM
 Steve Benen, formerly of The Carpetbagger Report, gives us what may be the best perspective on McCain’s recent confusion over Spain.
Let’s also not lose sight of the broader pattern. McCain thinks the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia was “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” He thinks Iraq and Pakistan share a border. He believes Czechoslovakia is still a country. He’s been confused about the difference between Sudan and Somalia. He’s been confused about whether he wants more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, more NATO troops in Afghanistan, or both. He’s been confused about how many U.S. troops are in Iraq. He’s been confused about whether the U.S. can maintain a long-term presence in Iraq. He’s been confused about Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda. He’s been confused about the difference between Sunni and Shi’ia. McCain, following a recent trip to Germany, even referred to “President Putin of Germany.” All of this incoherence on his signature issue.
I’m curious. What do you suppose the reaction would be from the political establishment if Barack Obama had made these mistakes over the course of the campaign? What would reporters, pundits, and Republicans have to say about Obama’s ability to lead a complex world in a time of war and uncertainty?
I think an intellectually honest person would agree that if Obama had made these same mistakes he’d be labeled “clueless” on foreign policy. So, why the double-standard?
That’s exactly right. McCain’s strength is supposedly his foreign policy knowledge. Remember Charlie Black said that Palin’s lack of expertise on the issue would be forgiven because she’ll be able to learn “at the foot of the master,” and the master himself is now sitting at nearly a dozen, a dozen, major mistakes on the subject of foreign policy. Not little oopsies, but serious errors either of judgment or factual knowledge.
And yet we’re supposed to believe that McCain is this hard-nosed expert ready to take the reigns of the country and steer it in the right direction while teaching his VP all about it. Obama can’t even have a slip of the tongue before his judgment is questioned, I cannot imagine what would have happened if he was making this kind of volume of mistakes.
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