Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Wetsuit optional.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Han shot first.

We can agree to disagree, but I’m right.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense.

I can see Russia from this blog!

Also, too.

The Math Demands It!

We have all the best words.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Word salad with all caps

An almost top 10,000 blog!

How has Obama failed you today?

Lighten up, Francis.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Consistently wrong since 2002

Just a few bad apples.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

You are here: Home / Archives for Erik Kain

Erik Kain

Americans don’t actually want to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act even if they say they do

by | 29 Comments

This post is in: 

According to a new Gallup poll Americans are pretty much split evenly on whether or not we should repeal the new healthcare law. But as with any other government program, Americans are only against it in the abstract. Americans hate the mandate, largely because it’s called a mandate, but love parts of the bill that end pre-existing condition clauses. Of course, you can’t really have a system of private insurance that allows anybody to get a plan at any time without a mandate, so we’re stuck with the good and the bad.

The healthcare law is a mixed bag. It doesn’t go as far as many wanted it to go – something like single payer, preferably. It changes rather than expands the role of government in providing access to healthcare. It’s inefficient in some ways; in other ways it improves upon the status quo. One thing that sort of irks me about it is how politics forces us to make do with something as ad hoc as all of this. We have Medicaid – administered by the states – and Medicare – administered by the federal government – and now the ACA – administered by the states – and rather than just save tons of money and increase efficiencies enormously by combining all these programs into one federal healthcare program, we have to leave this expensive patchwork in place and then just build upon it (and the patchwork is much worse once you think about how the private insurance system is designed, and the entrenched inefficiencies baked into healthcare writ large including hideously opaque prices…)

In any case, take away the parts that people dislike about the bill and of course people suddenly love it. Talk about it being struck down, and most Americans still imagine that their favorite parts will remain.

If you took away all the fearmongering surrounding the bill, they’d probably be fine with it also. But a steady diet of death panels and threats about tax-hikes has everyone much more frightened than they would otherwise be about a bill that basically just opens up non-employer-based insurance exchanges so that people have just a tiny bit more access to reliable healthcare than they did before. It’s neither a panacea or a government take over. It’s just sort of a step in the right direction and a step in the wrong direction all at the same time, and better – certainly – than doing nothing.

The ACA hurts Obama in swing states, even if people like the bill in pieces; but as James Joyner notes, if Romney gets the GOP nod it may be a moot point anyways.

(cross-posted)

Americans don’t actually want to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act even if they say they doPost + Comments (29)

Rick Santorum hates religion but he hates puppies even more

by | 40 Comments

This post is in: 

What a silly over-the-top thing to say. It’s the sort of rhetoric that is ruining this country, damnit, and this is the greatest country on earth.

Why, it’s a little bit like saying that the whole separation of Church and State thing we have baked into our constitution is out-dated, like Rick Santorum said on This Week:

I don’t believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and visions of our country.

This is stupid on so many levels.

Obviously the church is just one of many special interest groups that really does have some say over matters of state. That’s simply a reality of representative government, whether we like it or not. But more importantly I really don’t think that Rick Santorum understands what he’s saying here, and the implications for freedom of religion.

It’s almost as though social conservatives think that religion and government were kept separate because effete liberal elitists wanted a hedonistic society unfettered by the moral constraints provided by religious institutions. But nothing could be further from the truth. It was the Baptists and Thomas Jefferson who really lobbied hard for the initial cleaving. They saw the political power of the Anglican Church as a real threat to religious freedom and decided that the best way to preserve that freedom was to keep government out of church business, and vice versa.

Fast-forward a few hundred years and you have guys like Santorum who apparently don’t understand the first thing about the point of keeping the two institutions a healthy distance apart from one another. This is either straight-up opportunism dressed in religious drag or it’s one of the dumbest things to have fled a politician’s mouth in, well, days.

cross-posted

Rick Santorum hates religion but he hates puppies even morePost + Comments (40)

David Cross on the contradictory language of the right

by | 130 Comments

This post is in: 

A couple people have directed me to this clip (which I would embed if it were allowed.)

David Cross says what I was trying to say about the double-speak on the right much better – or at least much funnier – than I do.

This is more evidence that while the right is very good at talk radio, the left is much better at humor. Maybe this is why liberals can tackle pop culture better than conservatives.

Humor translates into mainstream pop culture better than anger and resentment. But anger and resentment and fear of change are perfect kindling for blustering talk radio or its doppelganger on Fox.

(cross-posted)

David Cross on the contradictory language of the rightPost + Comments (130)

America is one hell of a country, according to Rick Santorum

by | 122 Comments

This post is in: 

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.”

~from Paradise Lost

“This is not a political war at all,” Rick Santorum told Catholic students at Ave Maria college. “This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.”

More of the transcript here.

Santorum’s 12th century rhetoric is par for the course when it comes to the conservative movement during culture war season. Blending religiosity and politics is as old as either, but one still can’t help but cringe a little when you listen to the former Senator from Pennsylvania and his alleyway doomsday sermons. Perhaps it’s because we’ve had such a long bout of fiscal conservatism that the emergence of good old fashioned culture war trash-talking is a shock to the system.

So I won’t talk about the culture wars. I’m more interested in the right’s incoherence than in its issue-arsenal at the moment.

What I don’t understand – what just baffles me endlessly – are these dueling notions of America as the greatest, most super-fantastic nation on Earth and America as an immoral, decayed society under assault from all sides. We are God’s people but we’re also so vulnerable to Satan himself that we need a super-hero, super-holy president like Rick Santorum to save us.

The cult of American exceptionalism is, perhaps unsurprisingly, comprised by the same people who make up the cult of American decline. There’s an insecurity about it that I think shines a little light onto the conservative movement and the Republican Party. The pretense of toughness; the rah-rah-rah nationalism; the sense of victimization, of being endlessly put-upon. These are all forms within the language of American conservatism, or at least mainstream movement conservatism, that give shape to the broader dialogue on the right.

show full post on front page

America is one hell of a country, according to Rick SantorumPost + Comments (122)

Santorum calls Foster Friess’s Bayer aspirin comment a “bad joke”

by | 76 Comments

This post is in: 

Rosie Gray, writing at BuzzFeed, chatted up Rick Santorum about the unfortunate comments his SuperPAC backer, Foster Friess, made about contraception earlier:

Rick Santorum wasn’t very amused by his friend and super PAC backer Foster Friess’ comment today about using aspirin as birth control.

Today on MSNBC, Friess said “Back in my days they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives,” adding, “The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Asked about the quote outside the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner here in Novi, Santorum wasn’t at first aware of the incident — but when it was described to him, he told BuzzFeed “I’m not responsible for every bad joke one of my supporters makes.”

Friess will be appearing on MSNBC again at 10 tonight to “set the record straight” on his aspirin remark, he tweeted earlier.

Speaking with Lawrence O’Donnell this evening, Friess played dumb, saying: “Back in my days, they didn’t have the birth control pill, so to suggest that Bayer Aspirin could be a birth control was considered pretty ridiculous and quite funny. So I think that was the gist of that story, but what’s been nice, it gives an opportunity to really look at what this contraceptive issue is all about.”

Right, the part about putting the aspiring between girls’ knees had nothing to do with it.

“I have been blessed by contraceptives,” Friess went on, inexplicably. “It’s an important thing for many women. it’s allowed them to advance their careers and make their own choices. That’s what’s special about America. People can choose. That’s what’s so annoying about this idea that President Obama forcing people to do something that is against their religious beliefs and that’s what the issue’s about, where Rick Santorum, as I said earlier, you know what his position is, but yet he’s never had any attempts, in fact, has even funded contraceptives to fight aids in Africa.”

What an odd shuffle. It’s almost as though Santorum and Friess are coordinating their message, and when Santorum expressed his distaste for Friess’s joke, Friess backed away from it. Not surprising, really, given Santorum’s meteoric rise in the polls and his need to start appealing to larger swaths of the American public. One can only play the far-right social conservative card in so many settings. After a while you need to diversify.

The problem for Santorum is that he really can’t shake his social conservative bona fides. That’s his strength and his weakness. Despite what Politfact might say, a majority of Americans are not hardcore so-cons, and most Americans are pro-birth control. 2011 was the first year that most Americans voiced a favorable opinion about gay marriage, for that matter. Santorum’s politics are a dying breed.

I hope he wins the nomination, even though I’m pretty sure he won’t.

(cross-posted)

 

Santorum calls Foster Friess’s Bayer aspirin comment a “bad joke”Post + Comments (76)

That story about government agents forcing a kid to eat chicken nuggets instead of the lunch her mom packed for her? Yeah, that’s bogus

by | 84 Comments

This post is in: 

Mark Thompson uncovers the truth behind the story about the little girl “forced” by “state agents” to eat chicken nuggets instead of her packed lunch:

One problem: the story is a load of bunk at worst, a non-story at best, standing for little more than the proposition that low-income children in NC’s low-income pre-K program whose parents don’t send them to school with enough healthy food will be provided with additional food to supplement what their parents send them to school with.

For starters, the context in which all of this occurred was a public school pre-K program run by the state popularly known as “More at Four,” but now called the generic name “NC Pre-K.”  In order to have a child enrolled in this program, which has a limited number of slots, the parents must actively choose to enroll, with priority going to “at-risk” children, to wit: special needs children and (importantly) low-income children.  Indeed, to even be eligible for the program, the child must either fit in one of those two categories or have a parent on (or about to be called on) active military duty.  Enrollment as an “at-risk” child means that the child’s enrollment is fully subsidized by the state, regardless of whether the day care is private or public.

These facts are critical because the “state agent” in this story turns out to be nothing more than a researcher from a program that grades the performance of pre-schools and operates out of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It also does not appear that this institute has any actual authority other than to provide assessments, which the state then uses in making licensing decisions and in setting the fees it will pay the day care provider for subsidized care.

Notably, as the second-linked story above suggests, the mother’s main gripe here does not even appear to be with this “state agent,” but instead with the school’s teachers, who continue to give the girl milk and vegetables despite letters from the mother asking them not to.  Indeed, the notion that this “state agent” was going around inspecting every single lunch box brought to the school does not appear to have much basis, as the agent apparently ordered full school lunches for every single child in this program and was evaluating the school’s compliance with standards, not individual parents’ compliance.  Even if he was doing such an inspection, there’s a pretty obvious context-specific reason for it: this is an opt-in program for parents who largely can’t afford to provide fully balanced meals.

Her other major gripe appears to be that she is worried about being charged for the additional food being placed in front of her daughter based on a letter from the school purportedly saying that kids who did not bring a healthy lunch would be offered supplements and that parents “may” be charged for the supplemented portions.  However, as the second-linked story makes clear, no such charges have been issued nor apparently was there any actual chance that such charges would be issued.

The original story’s claim that the relevant regulation applies to all pre-schools is also false – to the contrary, it applies only  to pre-schools choosing to participate in (and eligible for) the subsidized program.

The original story further obscures that in no circumstance was this child – or any child, for that matter – being forced to eat the school-provided lunch, nor was this child -or any other child – deprived of her boxed lunch.  Instead, as the second linked story acknowledges, the child was just provided with additional food and given the option to consume that in addition to her boxed lunch.  In other words, the claim that the school “replaced” this girl’s turkey sandwich, banana, apple, potato chips, and juice with chicken nuggets is totally bogus.

So before we all go crazy talking about how awful the nanny state is to make this poor little girl eat chicken nuggets instead of her sack lunch, let’s all take a deep breath and, I dunno, spend some time researching the facts. I love a good knee-jerk reaction as much as the next guy, but when something sounds too awful to be true, chances are it is. With the very real problems in, say, our criminal justice system – no-knock raids, innocent people on death row, overfilled prisons, and so on and so forth, spending any time at all on this non-troversy is a waste of precious digital ink.

(cross-posted)

That story about government agents forcing a kid to eat chicken nuggets instead of the lunch her mom packed for her? Yeah, that’s bogusPost + Comments (84)

Our immigration policy is anti-family

by | 178 Comments

This post is in: 

The story of Felipe Montes is horrifying but not an isolated incident. Montes, who had lived in the United States for nine years before being deported, left behind his wife Marie and their three children. Their youngest had just been born a couple months earlier, and Marie had fallen ill. She survived on disability with Felipe gone. And, of course, the story only gets worse from there:

 Less than two months after their baby was born, just two weeks after Felipe was loaded onto a plane and deported to Mexico, the Allegheny County child welfare department took the children from Marie and put them in foster care.

Allegheny County has already convinced a judge to end family reunification efforts with Marie Montes. She wants the children to be placed with their father. “If they can’t be with me, I want them to be with him,” she said. “Nobody is a better father than he is.”

But next week, on February 21, the county’s Department of Social Services plans to ask a judge to cease all efforts to reunify the family and put the children into adoption proceedings with foster families. Though Felipe Montes was his children’s primary caregiver before he was deported and has not been charged with neglect, the child welfare department nonetheless believes that his children, who have now been in foster care for over a year, are better off in the care of strangers than in Mexico with their father.

For Montes, this feels tantamount to kidnapping.

“I cannot find the words to tell you how important my kids are to me. I would do anything for them,” he told Colorlines.com, speaking on his cell phone in Mexico while on a break from his job at a farm. “In this world there are many injustices. At the very least, I would like them to send my kids to Mexico.”

The tragedy here underscores a larger tragedy with the US immigration system. US-born children who are deported with their undocumented parents are not counted by the government, not included in their tallies. When we hear that 400,000 undocumented immigrants were deported, how many of those took their US-born children with them? What are the true figures?

The tragedies stack up. When Felipe Montes was deported, his economic productivity was lost. That’s an immediate loss for the country and his community. A worker and a consumer simply disappeared from the local economy. Worse still, his wife could no longer support their children due to her illness and the loss of income. That obviously has a direct economic impact on that family (not to mention the emotional impact.)

Compounding the economic strain this created, now the the taxpayer is footing the bill for the childrens’ welfare, sucking even more money out of the economy and pumping it into the badly broken foster care system. It’s one thing if kids are taken from truly abusive homes and placed into foster care – that’s a state service born out of inevitability and mercy. But when it’s the result of an immoral immigration policy that is at once harmful to the broader economy and to the lives of very real, very innocent people it’s just unconscionable.

show full post on front page

Our immigration policy is anti-familyPost + Comments (178)

Andrew Breitbart says he’ll take a drug test after his anti-OWS rant goes viral

by | 177 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like Breitbart’s little anti-Occupy Wall Street rant has more people than just me questioning his use of illicit substances – though I just wondered if he had a drinking problem.

Seems the Big Hollywood blogger-in-chief is on the defensive, if his Twitter feed says anything about it:

Notice the deflection here – as though David Brock just screamed at a bunch of protesters and had to be dragged off by security. It’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to Breitbart.

Two thoughts: First, it’s easy to beat a drug test, especially if you’re doing something like cocaine or speed – the sort of drugs that might make someone lose their head at an OWS protest. Stimulants leave the bloodstream quickly, and with a little preparation you could easily beat the test. If it’s booze, of course, this is all a moot point.

Second, who cares if he was high when he flipped out on the protesters? It’s almost more understandable if he was. If he has a substance abuse problem, I might sympathize with him a little bit. Addicts need help, not scorn.

But if this was the angry rant of a sober man? That’s much more troubling. That says something about Breitbart as a human being, deep down – about his anger and instability as a person without the use of drugs.

(cross-posted)

Andrew Breitbart says he’ll take a drug test after his anti-OWS rant goes viralPost + Comments (177)

Every sperm is sacred

by | 289 Comments

This post is in: 

Now that death panels are a thing of the distant past, the real threat to liberty in this country is apparently the pill, something that we’ve had for over half a century and that a majority of us thought was a fairly settled debate. Of course, since the right is adamantly opposed to providing life-saving universal access to healthcare we instead get yet another front in the culture wars.

Now the administration has changed course in the right direction on the contraception mandate:

Today, the White House did the right thing for women, public health and human rights.  Despite deep concerns, including my own, based on what transpired in the past under health reform, the White House has decided on a plan to address the birth control mandate that will enable women to get contraceptive coverage directly through their insurance plans without having to buy a rider or a second plan, and without having to negotiate with or through religious entities or administrations that are hostile to primary reproductive health care, including but not limited to contraception.

Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide contraceptive coverage. Administration officials stated that a woman’s insurance company “will be required to reach out directly and offer her contraceptive care free of charge.  The religious institutions will not have to pay for it.”

This is the right move. A smart, effective way to get past the objections on the right. And it pushes us one tiny step closer to shedding employer coverage altogether.

Even before the changed policy, public opinion was squarely behind the administration:

A solid 56 percent majority of voters support the decision to require health plans to cover prescription birth control with no additional out-of-pocket fees, while only 37 percent are opposed. It’s particularly noteworthy that pivotal independent voters support this benefit by a 55/36 margin; in fact, a majority of voters in every racial, age, and religious category that we track express support. In particular, a 53 percent majority of Catholic voters, who were oversampled as part of this poll, favor the benefit, including fully 62 percent of Catholics who identify themselves as independents.

It will be interesting to see how Republicans respond to this latest move by the president. The reason it’s an issue at all is simple: just as the economy starts to heat up Republicans panic and pick a fight over something bound to whip up the fervor of the angriest of culture warriors: no death panels this time, no, this time it’s contraception. But actually that’s not quite right either. That’s just a code word for abortion.

Of course, we’re not talking about a mandate to cover abortions, we’re talking about a mandate to cover birth control. Some people on the fringe of this debate equate the two, but a huge majority of Americans disagree. A majority of Catholics disagree, for that matter.

show full post on front page

Every sperm is sacredPost + Comments (289)

Why conservatives can’t do pop culture very well

by | 298 Comments

This post is in: 

Yes, somebody actually painted this. And no, I don’t think it’s satire. You have to sort of love the rooster, though. He’s as free as a bird now.

The question is: where’s Waldo?

You see this is why conservatives are failing when it comes to waging the culture war in the arts, and why they at once turn to political means rather than cultural means to wage that war. It’s also why we see so many conservatives devolve into self-victimization.

Conservatives have a hard time making conservative films or television shows – though occasionally you’ll find a show like 24 which espouses some conservative ideas about war and national security. I think the success of 24 was in weaving some conservative ideals into a show that focuses mostly on the action.

You rarely hear conservative music outside of Nashville. Country is one of the few successes at transposing conservative culture war politics into pop culture.

We do see plenty of sexism and other illiberal views in our  mainstream pop culture, of course. See Alyssa Rosenberg’s deconstruction of the Superbowl ads for one example.

But for some reason, conservative attempts at pop culture simply don’t pan out for the most part. So we get complaints about liberal media or liberal Hollywood or whatever. But it’s not liberal Hollywood’s fault that conservatives can’t do art. (Nor is it entirely obvious that Hollywood is liberal, but that’s another story for another time.)

And it’s not as though no good conservative art or literature has ever been produced. It’s just that today’s conservatives have lost any sense of proportion or subtext. Everything is so overt and over-stated. I think that The Lord of the Rings is a basically conservative text. It’s just not explicitly conservative and doesn’t say anything nasty about Obama.

Today’s conservative pop culture is reactionary, which is fitting I suppose. There was a mockumentary conservatives made a couple years ago that attempted to not very cleverly spoof Michael Moore. But an attempt to beat Moore at his own game is probably going to fail, if only because it’s little more than preaching to the choir (and this isn’t even to say that Moore isn’t deserving of his own criticism – the left is actually very good at leveling its own critique at Moore.) It’s the same in politics: conservatives aren’t so much interested with their own ideas about governance as they are about responding to and obstructing the ideas of their opponents.

And perhaps that’s the crux of the issue. Conservative art mimics conservative politics rather than the other way around. And so it can never really be art.

(cross-posted)

Why conservatives can’t do pop culture very wellPost + Comments (298)

What Obama’s Up Against

by | 167 Comments

This post is in: 

Not-Romney is one candidate with two heads, one of which is very large.

 

 

Nate Silver thinksthe GOP primary is going to be a long, protracted race, noting that it bears a “resemblance to something like the 1984 Democratic contest or the 1976 Republican race.” Mondale won in 1984, and Ford beat Reagan in 1976, but both primaries were close calls, and neither Mondale nor Ford inspired their respective parties.

Still, I’m not sure either one had as abysmal an outlook as presumed front-runner Mitt Romney does in this race:

Meanwhile, the two not-Romney candidates – Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum – are nipping at Romney’s heels making sure that neither one has any real chance at stealing the nomination.

And of course Ron Paul has his base of support which will likely neither grow nor dwindle in the coming months.

show full post on front page

What Obama’s Up AgainstPost + Comments (167)

The case for democracy

by | 259 Comments

This post is in: 

One thing libertarians talk about a lot is coercion. If you really peel back libertarian philosophy that word looms just about as large as “liberty” or “freedom”. Coercion can take a bunch of different shapes. Taxes are coercion. Democracy is coercion. Unions are coercion. Anything that represents the will of the collective over the will of the individual is coercion.

Theoretically, the ideal libertarian society would have no democracy at all. That’s the only way to prevent collective decision making. So in order to actually craft Libertopia, democracy is out. Ideally not even a representative democratic republic would remain.

Michael Lind recently wrote a piece on libertarian hostility to democracy and at the time I felt as though something were missing from the otherwise excellent article. I believe that many libertarians sincerely do believe in liberty. Yet for all that, the antipathy to democracy – which goes well beyond Hayek’s preferred “liberal dictatorship” – reveals the fundamental internal conflict within libertarianism: in order for it to exist as a model for society, democracy must be snuffed out through coercion.

show full post on front page

The case for democracyPost + Comments (259)

So long and thanks for all the fisks

by | 190 Comments

This post is in: 

This will be my last post at Balloon Juice. I want to thank John for inviting me to write here. It’s been quite a ride. Lately, however, I have begun to find that I am simply spread too thin. I need to spend more time reading and thinking and taking my time. Less arguing, more meditating.

In any case, I’ve learned a lot blogging here and arguing with everyone and having my ideas put to the test. I hope some of you will come continue the conversation elsewhere, either at The League or at American Times or on Twitter.

Cheers.

So long and thanks for all the fisksPost + Comments (190)

Why Obama Waited

by | 218 Comments

This post is in: 

The answer to the many questions surrounding why Obama waited so long to release his birth certificate is simple.

In 2008, Obama met with Donald Trump in a secret closed-doors beer summit. There, they hatched a scheme. Knowing that there is a large segment of the American people that is still deeply racist, and that said racism would not emerge blatantly when confronted with the first black president, Obama and his good friend The Donald began crafting a long-con. At the first whiff of birtherism, Obama released most – but not all – of the relevant documentation of his birth in Hawaii, throwing the racists birthers a bone to chew on for the next couple of years. The plan was in motion.

The long-form birth certificate remained under lock and key in Hawaii. As the years went by, the usual suspects on the right trotted out one crazy conspiracy after another. Obama ignored them. Trump waited patiently while drawing as much attention to himself as possible.

Then, in 2011, Trump played his, er, Trump card, launching a wild-eyed conspiratorial presidential bid based almost solely on the birther question. Polls showed that Trump’s popularity was rising, and almost overnight he was polling at first place. A clear front-runner had emerged, and the crux of his campaign was the missing long-form birth certificate. Trump beat that drum as loudly as possible, even sending private eyes to Hawaii to track the runaway birth certificate down. And people loved him for it.

Birtherism, it appeared, had taken over a larger segment of America than anyone had expected. Despite rumors of its death, racism in America was still very much alive and kicking. And now it had its avatar.

Now it was Obama’s move. At the height of Trump’s popularity he released the final, definitive document: the long-form birth certificate – knowing full well that it would do nothing to placate the birthers. However, with so much momentum now behind Trump and a large segment of the Republican base rallied around the cause, there was little the GOP could do to recover and run anything like a legitimate challenge to the president in 2012. The threat of an independent bid by Trump – who could easily self-finance such an effort – was too great.

Obama effectively steered national attention back to the rightwing fringe – a fringe, mind you, that is also the largest voting bloc on the right. He also ensured that his good friend Trump was the one spear-heading the movement.

This effectively torpedoed Republican chances of a victory, and ensured Obama a second term, where he went on to do many great things, including finally realize Trump’s dream of universal healthcare for all. And everyone lived happily ever after. Well, almost everyone. Racism, it turned out, was still not over in America, even though a black man had been re-elected president. And Obama had to endure four more years of one of the most thankless jobs on earth. And Trump?

Well, Trump lost his reality shows on NBC but that hasn’t stopped him from finding a way into the spotlight. With his gig on Fox, Trump ruthlessly parodies rightwingers from within the heart of the propaganda machine itself.

Why Obama WaitedPost + Comments (218)

An anti-war, anti-union, anti-stimulus, anti-safety-net candidate

by | 245 Comments

This post is in: 

Okay, as is often the case I have done some serious thinking after getting some very good push-back in the comments and from some of the other authors here and elsewhere over my Gary Johnson posts. First of all, I think it’s important to note that I did not say I would support a Johnson candidacy, only that I’m tempted to support the most viable anti-war candidate that comes around. Probably the best argument against supporting Johnson is this: supporting a candidate based on a single-issue alliance is not as effective as supporting a cause.

It’s also more dangerous because if that cause becomes too embodied by that candidate, then the rest of his ideas – like abolishing the Fed, for instance – can then become conflated with the good cause as well. And so you weaken and undermine those ideas by associating them too closely with the bad ideas of the candidate you supported. You see this with Ron Paul, who has very good and decent positions on foreign intervention and the security state, but who is way off in crazy Austrian land when it comes to economics and goldbuggery.

It’s important to build up support for these ideas from the bottom up rather than from the top down. If you want a more anti-war, civil-liberties-based liberalism than you have to argue for it, work with activists to build up grass-roots support for those policies, and vote for local and state candidates who support those ideas. Making a deal with the devil may be a dramatic and appealing way to register one’s dissent, but it’s more than likely counter-productive. A show of support for Johnson’s anti-drug-war policies is just as easily taken as support for slashing public support for healthcare and education, or for busting public sector unions. As someone who really thinks it’s high-time for some form of single-payer health insurance in this country (and the ACA for now) and who supports public education against this constant barrage of corporate reforms, a vote for Johnson would be a vote against things I care deeply about.

The trick, then, is making a vote for Obama go as far as possible. Because I am fundamentally opposed to his foreign policies also, and to his escalation of immigrant deportations and medical marijuana busts and the ratcheting up of the TSA. I think you can support a candidate and still be a vocal and persistent critic. So that is what I will aim to do.

PS – you can email me here or follow me on Twitter here. I have posted a full-excerpt of this post at Forbes.

An anti-war, anti-union, anti-stimulus, anti-safety-net candidatePost + Comments (245)