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20100115

MILITARY ARRIVES IN HAITI: PROGRESSIVES FURIOUS!

The president has ordered 3500 soldiers of the Army's 82d Airborne Division and 2000 U.S. Marines to Haiti, along with various civilian support units. Upon hearing the news some "progressives" are demanding their immediate withdrawal claiming Haiti is just like Vietnam and troops will soon be bogged down in another endless occupation. Several disaffected former C.I.A. officers and disgraced army generals are saying that the deployment is doomed to failure and that Haiti was not really devastated by an earthquake. The "progressives" claim they are bitterly disappointed in the president and vow to work for the election of "she who must not be named" by campaigning against him. They are calling the U.S. rescue effort Obamahait......:-) :-)

Cross posted at MadMikesAmerica...

8 comments:

  1. Well, unfortunately that's how some progressives sound today.

    Want to hear something funny? Ed Schultz has been barn storming over how lousy the healthcare bill in the Congress is until.... it appears a Tea Bagger in Massachusetts may win the Senate race and Shultz is bemoaning how healthcare may crash. 59 to 41. That I heard tonight, on his show.

    It seems to me normal to be in utter awe how such a Tea Party type, in a 3 to 1 Democratic state, might take over Ted Kennedy's seat. But now something worthwhile is worth saving in the healthcare "reform" bill?

    There are many questions regarding the bill. Is it a give away to the insurance companies or not? (A kind of Medicare Part E.) Is it a beginning which can be built upon? Are the mandates so onerous that there will be a great negative public reaction? Is Roe v. Wade harmed? Does it actually improve health coverage at reduced costs for the American people?

    Certainly it is not the best "progressives" hope for. I'm for single payer myself. But let's not forget, this is the United States of America. Socialism is socialism here, even if that means forgoing decent universal coverage to anyone who needs it: though in the rest of the economically "advanced" world (even in the poor world: Cuba) providing universal care is a given.

    A basic right.

    One which is seen as a public good even if it requires tax dollars to pay for it. After all, where else will it come from if not the "commons?" The tax payer who understands that it is a basic necessity, like good schools, clean drinking water, safe streets, traffic laws, etc.

    What, after all, is wrong with paying for it?

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  2. And if I may add to what I posted above, many a middleclass family, adhering to the Capitalist orthodoxy, pay one or two thousand a month for healthcare insurance - with all its self serving loopholes - but scream at the thought of spending, perhaps, twenty or thirty dollars more a month on taxes for healthcare.

    Though of course they would save more than one or two thousand, perhaps. But big government tax and spend programs? Forget it. They would prefer support the private sector which is screwing them left right and in the middle than forfeit Reagan's great dream of a City on a Hill. The Utopia of Free Enterprise.

    Doesn't the simple fact that we pay about twice per capita than other countries spend have any influence on them? Do they even pay attention? Yet we sneer at France, which, according to various sources, including the WHO, has the best healthcare system in the world.

    But we're better.

    My god, what myopia! There are people, I've heard, who believe the Garden of Eden was in Iowa. And we think we're better?

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  3. Ed is a very practical dude, and as a sports guy interested primarily in a level playing field and taking the best we can get. He's not into compromise oblivion though, and is a wondrous fighter. He also coins great soundbytes...like the one yesterday, referring to the tanking Massachusetts race for the Senate: "The Obama White House finally has located the Panic Button."

    Americans are wonderful at voting out the guy that's in...without the slightest regard for potential consequences. Witness the horrendous court appointments by the Bush administration. If the Repubs take over again in 2010, I simply shall move into the guest room at The Wulfshead and never leave.

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  4. I actually like Ed. And think he, like many progressives, may have been simply hoping to help save the public option with his intransigence. He was simply fighting for what he believes in.

    But in terms of simple political realities what can one do about a Ben Nelson, a Joe Lieberman, a Blanche Lincoln, etc? And now that Brown may be elected the possibility of a filibuster proof Senate may not even any longer exist. A real eye opener. One making us remember how good it was, though it actually wasn't. You need progressives to pass progressive legislation. While perhaps a majority politically we never actually had that. Thus the compromises.

    That is the hard reality and why progressive Democrats failed.

    How many votes would there have been in the Senate for single payer? About thirty? In the House? 150 perhaps?

    Though the irony, obviously, of Brown taking Ted Kennedy's seat is pretty hard. But it's not Tuesday yet. We'll see.

    Voting out an incumbent simply because he is an incumbent seems ridiculous to me. Like term limits. What that does, as we should know, is give lobbyists more power since they become the insiders who know how things work. And believing a politician who claims he is not a politician by voting for him for that reason is falling for one of politics' oldest tricks.

    I would hope, wouldn't you, that a politician is a master politician working for you. Who has the knowledge, experience, and power to work for what you want and need.

    What's more, the "throw the bum" out attitude reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of democracy. For one's "bum" can be another's 'crusader" representing the majority. These gimmicks actually improve nothing.

    This guy Brown is bad news. A Hollywood handsome fake who is playing politics by claiming not to.... An incredible choice to replace Ted Kennedy.

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  5. Politicians running as non-politicians are like self proclaimed virgins running to become whores. And once in office, they shouldn't learn the ropes, how to do things for their constituents back home? Which wold make them politicians, wouldn't it? Or whores.

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  6. Jeremy Rifkin - What the Haitian Crisis tells us about Human Nature:

    "In recent years, whenever natural disasters have struck, in what is increasingly becoming a globally interconnected and interdependent world, human beings have come together as an extended family in an outpouring of compassion and concern. For these brief moments of time, we leave behind the many differences that divide us to act as a species. We become Homo empathicus.

    Yet, when faced with similar tragedies that are a result of human-induced behavior, rather than precipitated by natural disasters, we are often unable to muster the same collective empathic response.

    For example, recall when oil hit a record $147/barrel on world markets in July, 2008. Prices soared and basic necessities from food to heating oil became prohibitively expensive, imperiling the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings. Food riots broke out in more than 30 countries. Yet, the collective response of the human race was barely perceptible. Similarly, plagued with the real-time impacts of human induced climate change, which is already devastating ecosystems in countries around the world and creating millions of environmental refugees, the global response has been weak.

    The question is: why?

    It's true that unexpected natural disasters quickly arouse our attention. But, my suspicion is that this is not the only reason that we are unable to respond to human induced suffering with the same emotional and cognitive focus. The problem lies much deeper. When human induced behavior results in suffering to others on a large scale, we tend to shrug our shoulders as if to say, "that's human nature and therefore, there's not much we can do about it." That's because we have come to think of human nature as essentially selfish. Our beliefs have become a self-fulfilling prophecy--even if they turn out to be incorrect.

    At the dawn of the modern market economy and the nation-state era, the philosophers of the Enlightenment argued that human beings are autonomous agents, and are detached, rational, and driven by material self-interest and utilitarian pursuits.

    But, is that who we really are?

    If so, then how do we explain the empathic response to natural disasters like the one that occurred in Haiti this past week. Perhaps our ideas about human nature merely reflect the operating assumptions of the modern market economy and provide those in power with an easy way to justify and explain the suffering inflicted on others, writing it off as a reflection of our species' aggressive, predatory and selfish behavior."

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  7. Human nature:
    You note traffic has increased at an intersection near your house. In your view it is becoming dangerous to cross the street. You think something besides 4-way stop signs should be installed. You go to city council. You talk to neighbors. You petition. You want an actual traffic signal there. Nothing happens---until the little kid is run over.

    Four days after the earthquake it is clear there was no infrastructure in the biggest city in Haiti. Nothing to deal with anything even much less than this disaster in a neighbor country very close to us in "our" hemisphere. Where was Haiti last week? Where was Haiti last month? Last year? Bush and Clinton now heroic. What did they do before?

    Sometimes, I hate to say it, Yankee can-do---with our billions and medical supplies and all that---seems just a bit obscene. Katrina comes to mind. Bad levees but lots of tears...later. At least we didn't send Blackwater down this time to just shoot the people.

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  8. //The "progressives" claim they are bitterly disappointed in the president...//


    What?! GASP! How more blasphemous than that can one be? Does the "progressive" heresy know no bounds?


    Thanks for the heads up, citizen!


    "Progressives" better be careful what they say, if they know what's good for them. Woe betide the "progressive" who gets on the bad side of the DLC (e.g. Howard Dean), for the DLC Inquisitors are notorious in their zeal.

    The DLC Ordo Hereticus is the largest of the DLC ordos and its Inquisitors watch for enemies within the Imperium's own party.

    Although primarily concerned with monitoring the Ecclesiarchy, the DLC has expanded its jurisdiction to encompass the other perceived internal threats to the Imperium: witches, mutants, heretics, traitors and other "progressive" deviants.

    Some inquisitors within the DLC have been specializing in the identification and eradication of deviant "progressives." They may have numerous cells of Acolytes at their disposal, which range from hive-toughened flamer squads, trained to purge large infected areas, to precision assassination cells, which remove and replace key political figures that have succumbed to the "progressive" lure.

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