Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

IT DOESN’T MATTER what kind or size of majority you have in congress, the result is the same. Consider:

• Patriot Act
• No Child Left Behind
• Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq

were passed in an evenly divided senate.

• Partial birth abortion ban
• Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization
• Unborn Victims of Violence Act

were passed in a senate with 51 republicans.

• Bankruptcy reform
• Military Commissions Act
• Secure Fence Act

were passed in a senate with 55 republicans.

I didn’t look up all of the votes, but at least one of the above passed, unfilibustered, with less than 60 votes, but many of them passed with significant to total democrat support. Yeah, yeah, it’s that the republicans will be obstructionist and won’t play fair, etc. But all of the above happened when mathematically the democrats could have done the same thing. If they won’t dig in their heels and filibuster the fucking Military Commissions and Sweeping Torture and Human Rights Violations Under the Carpet Act, then what the hell do they represent?

But they’re going to pass health insurance! They haz 2!

One cannot even imagine anything more horrible than the end of the Democratic majority. Therefore, passing a terrible bill that everyone knows is only being enacted as a political ploy to keep the Democrats in power is the best, in fact only, move, because it keeps the Democrats in power.

Witness Massachusetts.

And I just have to point out one more time, there is no health care in this bill. It mandates the purchase of insurance, but does not mandate that insurance companies pay for whatever care you need. Who’s gonna come out ahead in such a transaction? [Chuck Dupree]

PROGRESSIVES, we can say this because we used to be one, are bracing today for the potential loss of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat in a nuclear republican attack on the democrat’s super-majority that could result in the revocation of democrat carte blanche to save the world, the loss of which will usher in a new era of republican obstructionism and the collapse of civilization.

Progressives, and we can say this because we used to be one, are nothing if not prepared: What if Scott Brown wins today in Massachusetts?

Image: Make

[Idea credit: Frederick UPDATE! Frederick provides the appropriate visual aid.]

SENTIMENTAL NOTIONS ABOUT “DEMOCRACY” aside, the system is a sham, says Digby. But we should keep on voting. Or something:

It’s indisputably true that the political system is run by wealthy plutocrats and much of what passes for democracy is kabuki. Same as it ever was, I’m afraid. But that’s not exactly the point. It’s still worth participating, doing what you can, containing the damage, stopping the bleeding, fighting the fight — for its own sake. [Digby]

What about living well? Now there’s a fight that’s worth the effort.

If you don’t think [participating is] worth anything, however, you do have a choice. The obvious alternative, as PinNC wrote in TBOGG’s comments, is this:

• If you really think that the political system is broken beyond repair, you have a blueprint from the 1770s to help you out.

Pick up your muskets, kids, or STFU. [Digby]

If you choose, (instead of strapping on a suicide belt and testing your fate against the naked power of the state security apparatus,) to live life eschewing the politics of the day and simply taking joy in the moments of freedom you can eke out under such a system, then, Digby instructs, you should “shut the fuck up” about it.

Oh, please dear! I’ve got news for you: the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!

See also: IOZ
More on alienation/abstention in our own Simulacrum of Democracy category.

Question Everything

• Pay attention in class… unless you’ve already mastered the material.
• Don’t distract others… unless you are creating a diversion.
• Don’t make fun of people… unless they are an asshole.
• Don’t do anything to hurt others… unless they are trying to hurt you.
• Be respectful to your teacher… unless they’re full of shit.
• Take your turn in class or play… unless you don’t want to.

[Via: this isn't happiness.]

NUMBER ONE: The Nobel Peace of the Dead Prize

Today on Democracy Now! a discussion about the five wars the United States is now conducting.

And a musical number from another decade:

MEANWHILE a murder of malcontents maligns the malevolence manifest in modern mediocracy, (misnamed meritocracy,) or mayhaps, merely malingers, merrily mocking the moribund monks who marvel at the masters’ megalomaniacal might.

Now segregated from the general blogroll in the sidebar here at The Stump, the Malcontents are a group of friends with a penchant for borderline incestuous cross-promotion of memes and inside jokes, and known to regurgitate quotes from The Big Lebowski when cornered. I FUCK YOU! YOU CANNOT HURT ME! I BELIEVE IN NOSSING! [See also.]

WE AREN’T HYSTERICALSERIOUS ENOUGH in our response to the Nigerian Christmas would-be terrorist plane bomber. So says Donald Douglas, partisan windbag.

In another of his posts, Douglas characterizes the event as a “threat of potentially catastrophic proportions.” He mentions, among other things, the lack of a “screening system or requirement in place at international airports that will detect explosives.”

Perhaps this type of screening at airports simply isn’t feasible. Surely a cost-benefit analysis, a pragmatic calculation which shouldn’t be that hard to understand for self proclaimed fiscal conservatives. It goes something like this:

[If the video doesn't work here, it can be viewed on YouTube]

When such a screening process proves unfeasible, new rules are implemented instead. No walking about the plane, or covering up with a blanket for the last hour of a flight. Really? No watching live television news on board? Come on, you authorities aren’t even trying anymore in your attempts to prove you’re doing something to protect the traveling public.

In all seriousness, impractical fantasy response, and absurd actual response to this (failed!) attack aside, why respond at all? Terrorism ain’t nothin’ to be afraid of it’s so rare. You don’t worry this much about lightening strikes or shark attacks, do you? If you’re really really risk averse, you can easily avoid international terrorist attacks by religious radicals by staying home.

There’s the solution: personal responsibility. Crying to the Daddy State to protect you from every conceivable harm is absurd. Familiarize yourself with the latest terrorist tactics. Decide how you would choose to respond to them in the unlikely event, and train your body and mind in those responses. Demand that the authorities report the nature of the threats we face so that the public is as informed as is possible. (If the existing protocol for dealing with hijackers, for example, were to go along with their demands and allow the experts to do the negotiating, and intelligence comes in that says terrorists may try to use hijacked planes as missiles, change the protocol! And publicize the change so the people know what they might be up against.)

That said, in all fairness, Donald Douglas isn’t a hand-wringing Daddy State type. He’s deeper than that! (more…)

IT CAN’T BE over-exaggerated how freeing it is to renounce faith in high school Civics class mythology, and stop following national “politics” as if it were something people exert meaningful control over. At least, we’ve tried to stop following it, or to do so with a clearer head, and limiting our occasional remarks to the nature of the beast, as opposed to issuing calls to action. The latest spectacle our overlords have regaled us with, so called heath care reform, has provided ample opportunity to take note of folks weighing in doing just that.

Political activist and blogger Jane Hamsher is taking flack from every direction, (say it ain’t so, Blue Gal!), mainly for this, among other things.

Look, if Washington DC deserves anything at all from The People, it’s more defeatism. (See also the defeatists!) Hamsher has come round to the defeatist health care position that we have advocated right here in this space. And for good reason!

We only point this out because we love you.

Hail Krampus! Io Saturnalia! Thank goodness for the solstice! Have a great long weekend, everybody!

PLEASE TURN TO PAGE 246 in your songbook, to Saint Steven’s hymn, Shoplifters of the World Unite.

Man Bites God

Father Jones, 42, was discussing Mary and the birth of Jesus when he went on to the subject of how poor and vulnerable people cope in the run-up to Christmas.

‘My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,’ he told his stunned congregation at St Lawrence and St Hilda in York.

‘I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

‘I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

‘I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. [Daily Mail]

Concerned, friendly atheist, Hemant Mehta, zooms past the myriad moral issues that result in modern-day people finding themselves poor, vulnerable, struggling to make ends meet and running out of options. He zeroes in instead on the hairsplitting he groks the priest is engaging in:

Because burglary is very different from shoplifting? [Mehta]

Well, when you really look at it, yes. Yes it is.

Burglary is personal. The victim feels that their home, their personal space has been violated. If the victim is also struggling to get along in lean times, they are harmed in their need for the stolen effects.

Shoplifting from a large national business, as the priest specifies, is not personal because a large national business is not a person. What’s more, being large, it is more able to absorb petty losses to shoplifting.

This priest, religious context aside, offers sound, pragmatic advice for people who find themselves languishing toward the left end of our graphical diagram of human nature, that is, people that could be said to be ethically justified in the use of force for self preservation.

“I would ask them not to take any more than they need,” is sound, pragmatic advice for everyone, in a general sense. Especially for those who approach life in society with deference to subsistence.