STIMULUS BILL: SO MUCH FOR THE ERA OF "POST-PARTISANSHIP"

From Hullabaloo courtesy of Eschaton:

I think the administration thought they could be mediators between the two parties rather than leaders of the Democratic party. That just won't work, particularly when the Democrats aren't very good at battling the Republicans in close combat and the Republicans can make those who stay above the fray seem lightweight and insubstantial, which is what they've managed to do. They've showed they don't respect Obama and are unimpressed with his mandate --- the administration needs to accept that and strategize with that in mind.

He said today that bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake is not desirable. He should just drop that whole schtick. He can have the cocktail parties and the get togethers and talk to them all he wants. And if they happen to have a good idea (very doubtful) then fine. But they are going to represent their narrow interests because that's what they believe their constituents want. That's the way the system works. They aren't partners, they're political adversaries and they remain adversaries even when there is an emergency at hand. Accept that and fight it out on the merits.

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Right.

The Republicans in Congress are talking all kinds of bullshit about the stimulus bill. Shit like "give us more tax cuts," even though most economists are in agreement that tax cuts are usually banked rather than spent, and therefore ineffective as far as economic stimulus is concerned. Shit like "well this (or that) isn't really stimulus; it's just pork," even though pretty much all pork is indistinguishable from stimulus spending--the idea is to spend the fucking money, get it out there in the economy; building roads and bridges, aiding clinics and hospitals, revamping schools, all this shit provides paychecks and jobs that do not now exist, paychecks which would buy groceries and computers and TVs and cars and countless other items that would ideally get the economy moving again.

It's almost as though the GOP doesn't understand Keynesian economics.

But no matter. They're effectively using the now discredited rhetoric which has served them well these last thirty years or so to bog down the entire debate, confuse voters, and fuck the country. And President Obama's letting them do it.

This was my biggest fear about Mr. Change. He talked big during the campaign. "Yes we can," he said again and again. But he also said all this uplifting shit about coming together, about being "post-partisan." These two ideas, change and unity, are incompatible. There are vast concentrations of economic and political power that will and are doing everything they can to resist both change and unity. The only way to get past them is to fuck their shit up. The only thing to get this wonderful "change" President Obama's been going on about for a couple of years now is for him to roll up his sleeves and punch these motherfuckers in the nose. Repeatedly. Unity ain't doing nothing but repeating the dreadful Democratic mistakes of the past.

Unless Obama takes the lead in branding these Republican know-nothings as straight-up bad for the country, which they most decidedly are, he'll lose, big, and take the nation down with him. Fuck friendliness; the conservatives don't go that way.

Time to kick some ass.

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