Sanity abides

Fierce Planet Posted on by

In the face of all the fear and violence, and with much love for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and all my friends who are off to D.C. this weekend, let me say “May Sanity Rule!”

Sanity Poster


Talking Points Memo has the very best rally story of the day.

TPM Reader JL recounts his unusual flight into DC for the sanity rally:

My girlfriend and I cashed in our miles so we could fly in for the rally. As we boarded our flight from Minneapolis into Reagan, it was largely an older crowd, and we figured we must be the only ones on the flight headed for the rally.

Then, as we were getting settled on the plane, we started hearing whispers from seats behind us, “Are you going to the rally? Are you?”

We found out our neighbor was, a gentleman who was upset he hadn’t been to Woodstock, and wanted to make up for lost time.

As people began to realize the plane was filled with nothing but rally goers, no joke, we all cheered, spontaneously. The flight had much more energy than usual – loads of people chatting about Jon Stewart, politics, etc. It seemed most people on the flight were baby boomers. After all, who else is going to have the time and money to fly themselves in from Minnesota?

When we landed, a woman shouted, “Sanity has just landed in DC!” and we all burst out in cheers and applause.

Sorry for stealing the whole thing, but it’s so wonderful it needs a full quote. Have a great time folks! We’ll be watching here in Colorado.

Poster from Sane Or Not by Andy.

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Sore winners

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Tom Junod at Esquire has an important take on the nature of the Tea Party and the oddity of how these folks, who are generally among the winners of our society, feel as if they are put upon minorities and losers. Junod calls them the “Sore Winners” and uses the example of a friend of his. This friend has a good life, he is well-off and he and his family have everything they need and many luxuries. Rather than feeling blessed, they feel somehow persecuted by those they consider “less deserving” than themselves.

Indeed, he wasn’t as happy for himself as he was pissed off at everybody else. He was pissed off at President Obama, for the health care bill and for the promise of higher taxes. But mostly he was pissed off at a system that he believed to be rigged, in favor of… well, President Obama, but also illegal immigrants. Those taxes he was paying? Illegals didn’t pay any of them. That health-care bill he hated? Illegals were going to benefit from it. That school his son was going to attend in the fall? He’d be going to a better one, if his last name was Gonzalez.

That last bit is demonstrably false, of course. White males, especially well-to-do white males still get the best of everything in this country. But I don’t think they’ve ever been more whiny, more touchy-feely offended at having to share even a little of life’s bounty with women, minorities, immigrants, all the others who have dared to step out of their allotted place.

Republicans, who once decried the rise of identity politics, now practice it so relentlessly, so ruthlessly, and above all so successfully that they’ve created a beleaguered minority where only a cosseted majority stood before. It is a kind of super minority, its material well-being encroached upon by the swelling ranks of the shiftless poor and its spiritual well-being encroached upon by shadowy “elites” whose figurehead is in the White House.

Yes, the Tea Partiers are basically the Republican base. They may lean a bit more libertarian and less socially conservative than some others in the Republican base. They may not include as many of the neocons who have run the party for so long. They are not particularly oppressed economically, educationally, professionally, but they sure are angry at a changing world, and offended, deeply, that they are slipping away from what used to be “the natural order”, with themselves alone at the top of the heap.

It’s a great article. Read the whole thing.

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The Republican Party’s governing philosophy

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Seriously, the Republicans in Congress don’t have one. What drives them is a pure lust for power, and money for their corporate backers. They have no actual ideas about how to grow the economy, how to raise wages, how to improve education, or about what to do for any other problem facing the country. They’ve got nothing.

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

— Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

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Disapproval of the health care bill

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A new poll reinforces something I’ve discussed before on this blog, that the majority “disapproval” of the Affordable Care Act is not because a majority wants to repeal the bill or disapproves of government involvement in regulating health care. The poll is from the Associated Press-GfK poll, and it finds that while 37% want the bill completely repealed, another 36% want to bill expanded with more changes to our health care system, like a public option.

This is in line with my own anecdotal experience as well. I hang out with mostly leftist types and many of them remain furious that the bill passed without a public option and with so many benefits for the insurance companies. And I find it hard to disagree with that. The insurance companies add nothing useful to the mix and are a big cost drain on the system. I understand why the bill passed in the form it did, and I continue to believe it is a good step towards a better system, but I’d gladly support changes to strengthen health care in this country and decrease costs by removing insurance companies from the mix.

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Trying to stay hopeful

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Talking Points Memo has a slideshow of polling trendlines in a bunch of hot Senate and Governor’s Races. In spite of the Dems getting a little momentum recently, things still look pretty bad overall. I’m trying to stay upbeat (and yes, I’ve voted myself), but have to admit I’m pretty worried at this point about how bad it’s going to go on Election Day.

If you know an Obama voter who is not turning out this year, please encourage them to vote! A lot of these races are only a few percentage points apart, and turnout will be key.

Edit to add: This is useful. An interactive map of the races with self-identified Tea Party candidates, compiled by the NY Times.

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What has happened with jobs

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Austin Goolsbee takes to the White House White Board to explain job losses and gains every month for the past three years. Note the small drop off over this past summer, when the stimulus began to fade somewhat. It’s my own belief that if the stimulus had been stronger growth would be stronger now, but it’s just as clear that the stimulus did good for the economy, and provided many jobs, if not as many as we need.


Also note in his explanation: the stimulus contained a lot of tax cuts. Taxes are lower now than when President Obama took office. Lots of people still don’t understand that.

Nonetheless, we cannot cut our way to prosperity. We have to grow out of it. Tax cuts alone can’t do that, and cuts in spending are actually counter-productive in many cases.

Edit to add: This article in the Huffington Post tells an instructive story. The issue of whether pure austerity can lead to economic growth is about to be tested in England.

When was the last time Britain’s public spending was slashed by more than 20 percent? Not in my mother’s lifetime. Not even in my grandmother’s lifetime. No: It was in 1918, when a conservative-liberal coalition said the best response to a global economic crisis was to rapidly pay off this country’s debts. The result? Unemployment soared from six percent to 19 percent, and the country’s economy collapsed so severely that they lost all ability to pay their bills, and the debt actually rose from 114 percent to 180 percent. “History doesn’t repeat itself,” Mark Twain said, “but it does rhyme.”


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Did you realize that Obama cut taxes

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One of the weirdest things about this very weird political season is that Republicans are excoriating President Obama for raising taxes. But he didn’t. A big part of the stimulus package was a tax cut for 95% of working families. For our house, it came to about $25 in every paycheck, every two weeks. The sad thing is that most people don’t realize it, and don’t give him credit for it. And so the lies continue to spread.

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