Thursday Open Thread

 

"A New Deal" - Tim Larson and the Owner/Operators

- Bread and Circuses - E.J. Dionne notes today that our politics (and the coverage of it) has reached a certain level of decadence that he finds disturbing.  I am wondering where the fuck he has been for the last fifteen years or so -- dating back roughly to the Republican "revolution" and the rise of talk radio and then cable blather.  The ship hit the iceberg long, long ago -- somehow folks like E.J. (who always seems a very decent fellow) didn't seem to notice up in the first class cabins that we were taking on water.  We remain in the midst of what has been a truly devastating economic meltdown for vast swaths of the American populace, we are involved in three separate wars, and the world's most turbulent region is in the midst of unprecedented upheaval -- and a narcissistic little exercise by a Democratic House backbencher is all that cable news wants to cover.  Predictable and depressing.

What's bugging you?    

Comments

[jeanne marie]

Preach it. I thought I hit outrage fatigue a long time ago, but as Bruce Cockburn put it "the trouble with normal is it always gets worse"

I don't want to believe it, empirical evidence to the contrary.

[kathy a.]

dionne also strikes me as decent. and i've got no real complaints when someone reaches critical mass on outrage and sees the light -- even part of the light, even belatedly.

you might enjoy jon carrol's column from yesterday, about the rise of intentional ignorance. trauma warning: he talks about palin.

[kathy a.]

yesterday, i posted a link about disabled homeless vets and a lawsuit to put property to work in los angeles to house the many disabled homeless vets there. [est. 8% of the disabled homeless vet population nationwide; the property was donated in 1888 as a permanent home for disabled vets.] here's an editorial from LATimes, endorsing support of disabled vets.

today, i see that ryan and his pals seek to end VA healthcare for 1.3 million vets. way to show your patriotism and keep promises, guys!

[Paula B]

thanks for these links, kathy. I'm actually working on a piece about homeless vets with mental health concerns, so these are very helpful.

As for cutting benefits, have noticed that the GOP always seems to go after the programs that are the most efficient, including the VA and Medicare?

[kathy a.]

paula, there's that. and then there is also how these same cost-cutters also tend to be warmongers, and bleat about how others should make the sacrifice with service to protect our freedoms, and promise we will always support them.

maybe they can blow off seniors and middle class people and working class people as leeches on society, using their twisted logic. it also appears they can blow off people who have served and sacrificed for the country in ways that can't be fully repaired. it's appalling.

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

Thanks for those links as well.

At what point is it going to occur to the big vets groups -- the American Legion and the VFW that the Republicans couldn't give a shit less about them. They use them to play on cheap patriotism, but once the photo ops are over, they don't care if all the vets live in boxes under the freeway.

It's an absolute disgrace.

[nancy]

kathy--You were discussing the prison population in California awhile ago. This might interest you. It's from Solitary Watch .

And PM Carpenter's response to Dionne is also worth reading. (it's sans the "color", SC). :-)

[kathy a.]

nancy, thanks for the link! i'm very interested in the underlying article from the new england journal of medicine, which at a glance looks at mental illness, substance abuse, and poverty in the overall prison population; the indadequacy of prisons and tough on crime measures for dealing effectively with these; and a bit of the impact on society of using such expensive, misdirected measures. bravo.

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

I like Carpenter's take on things, although I would say the illness goes back even further.

My friend Rick Perlstein is of the view that in 1980 America had the chance to make an adult choice or accept a fantasy world and by voting overwhelmingly for Reagan, fantasy won out. And that strikes me as a pretty reasonable line of demarkation.

Having said that, the Reagan people were models of considered sobriety compared to the pathological imbeciles who now run the GOP.

[low-tech cyclist]

dionne also strikes me as decent. and i've got no real complaints when someone reaches critical mass on outrage and sees the light -- even part of the light, even belatedly.

Absolutely. Especially when that person is a Villager in good standing, which Dionne is. The Village is so close to being a black hole that while it is theoretically possible for light to escape, it always comes as a complete surprise anytime it does.

The GOP's willingness to blow up our economy unless Obama agrees to...well, who knows what exactly, they've played this very nicely by throwing numbers around, and expecting the Dems to fill in the specifics...should have been sufficient evidence of terminal dysfunction in our political system to convince anyone not actually siding with the (Republican) terrorists.

(Speaking of which, it's a shame that it's not Obama's (or Reid's) style to respond to the GOP debt limit games with, "We don't negotiate with terrorists.")

And the terminal dysfunction of our 'liberal' media is amply demonstrated by:

1) their continued adoration of Paul Ryan and his deficit non-reduction plan;

2) their refusal to make any moral distinction between the two parties on the debt limit issue;

3) their worship at the altar of sacrifice and austerity, despite the complete absence of evidence that this would do anything but weaken our economy still further, and make the alleged goal of deficit reduction even harder to reach;

and I'm sure there are others, but I've got to get back to work. We've just gotten a bunch of money to do a pile of work that is inarguably in my area of responsibility, so I may be kinda quiet around here for the next several weeks.

[kathy a.]

go spend that money well, LTC! at least somebody's doing something about jobs. ;)

[low-tech cyclist]

Well, 'we' is the government agency I work for, which is getting the money from another government agency, that got the money from the Affordable Care Act. And we'll spend the money by expanding the size of a nationwide health survey in a manner calculated to enable us to produce state-level estimates of the incidence of various health-related conditions.

Hello, anyone still awake? ;^)

It will actually create jobs for a few hundred field interviewers and such, as well as keeping me and a handful of co-workers extremely busy over the next few months.

[kathy a.]

who's keeping count of the clown car? newt's staff just quit. he says he's going to forge ahead, "beginning anew" in -- really? -- los angeles on sunday.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

The amusing thing is that DC's economy is in pretty good shape because of this kind of spending. (Unemployment is well below the national average and real estate prices are actually rising.) As a result, the villagers are even more out of touch with what's going on in the rest of the country than they normally are.)

[Sir Charles]

kathy,

Now that one brought a smile to my face.

I am only sad that it might mean that the Gingrich train wreck ends sooner rather than later. And it really is enjoyable if you dislike the man as much as I know.

[nancy]

DC's economy has mostly always been in good shape. When I lived there as a student in the early eighties, during the downturn, things were just hummin' along. That's why it's so frustrating to be looking at the employment climate from my perspective, as the parent of a very-bright and talented kid headed, with many of his college graduate peers, to the possible prospect of a "lost generation" experience. The Fred Clark link several days ago (thanks l-t-c) has been reverberating--but I want to hear this sentiment and it's prescription voiced loud and clear from the White House-- not from a blog entry somewhere. Hello? It sure seems like crickets.

Make work? No, it's all waiting to be done and then some. My suspicion though is that they don't want to fight with the GOP over what "needs" to be done and that, as MrBill puts it, is"chichenshit".

Btw--getting the liberal arts grads to work (yes, I know, infrastructure catch-up by planners/ engineers is way behind and obvious) would do us all a world of good. Music, the arts, writing, journalism, etc. The Depression era efforts left us a wealth of painting, photography, literature, music, libraries and public school projects. (Bob Dylan's high school hallways were embedded with lines of poetry, mine were lined with breathtaking commissioned murals). And yes, Grand Coulee dam was a bit of an economic "boost" that the GOP would no doubt object to today. Socialism at its best. It worked. And then some.

[nancy]

Also--Grand Coulee dam helped bring you the affordable Washington State wine that may be helping you through the current heat wave. ;^) The profitable orchards and basin are now verdant. The Columbia Basin was once-upon-a pre-WPA time, a dustbowl of nothing but tumbleweed and sadness. Connecting dots, I am.

[oddjob]

(Although it also ruined any number of salmon runs.)

[beckya57]

It's not an accident that the GOP goes after well-run, efficient programs. The GOP HATES those programs, because they want government spending to primarily benefit special interests, not the people being served. The contrast between regular Medicare, which the GOP wants to destroy, and Medicare Advantage, which is the only part of Medicare they like, is an obvious example. Medicare Advantage is much more costly and inefficient than Medicare because of its subsidies to for-profit insurers. They just want the government to function as a massive patronage operation to feed the endless demands of the top 0.01% of the wealth distribution.

[kathy a.]

following up on the newt story: to live and die in L.A.. man of the people always, newtie is giving a "major foreign policy address" at the beverly hills hilton. and then he has to fly all the way across teh country for some debate thingy.

[kathy a.]

to return to the topic of stupid reportage: newt's problem is the top story on wapo online. that story links breahtlessly to his "rocky start" on account of the unexplained bundles reportedly owed to tiffany's. this is the most important news that the main newspaper in the nation's capital can deliver?

[nancy]

oddjob--Salmon runs are reflective of dam projects all over the Northwest. Let's look at the BIG map. The tribes believe, as does the governor of Oregon, that removing two dams on the lower Snake River are what may be necessary for saving the salmon runs. This fight goes on and on because of the use of the rivers as shipping lanes. Also it's a Columbia Basin farmer fight; these folks all vote red, red and red, while all being heavily subsidized. And since the Depression, they've done very well financially. They aren't paying the slightest bit of attention to the jobs deficit, I promise you.

It is true that fish ladders were not part of the Grand Coulee project, and they should have been. (Just a bit of the current NW political battle + history). Wow, I'm off into lectureland--sorry.

[big bad wolf]

it's not an acquittal or a dismissal, but it is pretty damn good .

nice for me to see the fpd get such a good result :)

[oddjob]

America is a center-right country?

NOT!

Hat tip, The Plum Line.

[oddjob]

Salmon runs are reflective of dam projects all over the Northwest.

The same is true of Atlantic salmon runs in New England (although they're nowhere near as famous or politically prominent). Dams generally are harmful to salmon.

[ninejean]

@oddjob, @nancy -- The hydro engineers that I work with tell me that they know how to build/install a fish friendly turbine. And have, since the early '70s. Problem is, almost all of the NW dams predate that.
Shelf life of a hydro turbine is about 50-70 years. Most of the ones we have installed now were built in the 1950-70 timeframe.
The new ones are more expensive than just replacing the old ones.
Over the next 20 years, there's a whole lot of turbines that will need to be replaced. In the current economic climate, is this going to happen?

[Sir Charles]

ninejean,

(For some reason when I saw your name I thought I was going to have to remove a spam comment -- glad that wasn't the case.)

In some of the smaller dams on the east coast they have put in fish ladders that supposedly allow the fish to swim up and avoid the dam.

Not sure in answer to your question. We have become the nation of endlessly deferred maintenance and short-sightedness -- although we have a host of nuke plants in the east that are heading toward obsolescence. One has to hope that something will be done with these -- they furnish about 20% of the electricity in the east I believe.

[ninejean]

...So, I [belatedly] wrote a reply. When I hit "post", I got a message that said something to the effect that "sorry, you can't post here". So, with pretty much no effort at all, I've been banned.

[kathy a.]

no, i don't think you've been banned. that sounds like some computer glitch, ninejean.

[Sir Charles]

ninjean,

You have not been banned.

We don't really do that around here.

Keep trying -- it's just a glitch I'm sure.

[nancy]

ninejean--when that happens you copy your comment, pull up a new tab, pull up the site and paste the comment in the new comment box. in order to activate the preview/post buttons, you will need to strike one new letter--add a period, whatever--then you should be good to go. :-)