Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

[Titular coinage coined by BDR to the best of our knowledge.]

YOU MAY, you few who venture here, have noticed that the legitimate posting has been thin here at The Stump lately. We’ve got a dozen starts and stops in the blog post drafts folder, and feeling more and more apathetic about all topics every day.

We cut our teeth as a political blog of sorts, following our rulers daily crimes, rationalizations and nonsensical rhetoric. We started out opposing war and torture and discovered along the way that we also oppose imperialism and our amoral mixed-economy “capitalist” system. Where does that leave us when it comes to politics blogging?

If politics in America has come down to stylistic hair splitting between parties that equally serve the economic interests of entrenched power, if the various conflicts and stalemates among our ruling class are meaningless. If in the political media…

…contentless tactical “analysis” and the responding think piece regretting the absence of substance have become the political equivalent of the call-and-response liturgy, the undramatic dialogue at the center of the discourse of political journalism… [IOZ]

…what is to be said of blogs that comment on this type of thing? Is there any meaning in repeatedly remarking upon meaninglessness?

Who knows what will become of this blog? Changes of some sort are surely coming. In the meantime we’re posting things of a somewhat different nature on this new Tumblr thing the kids are all talking about at Stump Lane The Lesser please look in on us over there.

In the meantime here’s a mini post:

Toyota: meh.

EVERY auto company is sitting on known safety issues with their vehicles. Recalls are based on economic decisions, not safety concerns. This is a witch hunt. The media makes the public out to be such fucking ninnys afraid of everything and demanding complete safety. If it’s true everything they say about you, Public, well, BUCK UP. Driving is unsafe. At least in that it will never be perfectly safe. If you want a post about this whole thing read this one. Just replace “Toyota” for the TSA and “sticking accelerator pedals” for terrorism. And be sure at least to watch the video over at that post.

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.

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!

[Prologue edited for clarity.] Years ago, before my ideas went out of fashion, I went around calling myself a Liberal. I also frequently submitted posts for the Carnival of the Liberals, and still do occasionally. Sometimes I manage to sneak one in there. The Carnival was the driving force behind my beginning a series of long form posts (one and two) in which I began to sketch out my political thoughts in an attempt to figure out what it all meant. Enough time has passed since the second of those posts, that I feel rather radically removed from the younger me that wrote them. This post serves as a continuation of that project, yet picks up not where that different me left off, but instead from where I find myself now.

I AM NOT A LIBERAL. Certainly not in the postmodern United States where words have no meaning beyond their commercial utility, where “Liberal” means “Progressive” means centrist corporate imperialism with a friendly face, and the “center” is nowhere near the middle of the full range of political possibilities.

I’m a Recovering Progressive

Classical Liberalism, if that term can still be used meaningfully, may be onto something in emphasizing individual liberty, but loses the thread in its devotion to free market, laissez-faire economics. A condition which may very well work on a much smaller scale, yet does not obtain in a society such as ours, large enough to necessitate the establishment of a ruling class, which in turn manipulates market conditions to enrich a powerful elite, and then globalizes that influence through military force.

My Liberal/Progressive friends acknowledge this on some level. They are concerned that the system is broken and they want to fix it. But it’s worse than broken: it works perfectly; in accordance with the demands of the powerful. The People have been rendered utterly powerless. It cannot be stated in any plainer or more direct terms. We. Have. No. Power. In directing the governing forces of our political-social-economic system.

Add to this competition over the dwindling, soon to be scarce resources necessary for human subsistence, and the problem comes into clear resolution. Our current situation is untenable. This fucker is too big. Not “too big to fail,” but “so big it must fail.”

One cannot rely on Big Coercion* to insure (sic) healthcare for all. (Or low oil prices, or safety, or whathaveyou.) It is worth examining whether it is right to even request such provisions, when by doing so one legitimizes an institution that directly expends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on military supremacy and conquest. The American Way of Life had a a good run there, but really, to quote myself, “Is it even right to ask for a bigger slice of the pie, when the pie is imperial plunder, taken through violence and exploitation?”

* It is appropriate to call it Big Coercion, when “big” has come to mean “evil” in the parlance of the postmodern commercial utility of vocabulary. Think “Big Oil,” “Big Insurance,” “Big Government,” and so on.

(more…)

OPINIONS LIKE THOSE most often expressed on this website, regarding society, the economy, domestic and foreign policy, are more marginalized now than they were during the Bush years.

Under Bush, these views were enthusiastically embraced by many as they were antithetic to the concerns served by the bumbling monkey and his deranged puppeteer in the white house. Today they are rejected as radical and unreasonable, not just by conservatives, but by liberals as well.

It was to be expected from the Democrats now engaged in ruling the world, as these views oppose the very power they now wield. True to form, Barack Obama has acted not one whit better (in any regard!) than his predecessor. This too, was to be expected. But really, My Obama Loving Friends, is this the best you could Hope™ for?

The issues discussed here all revolve around a single aspect of our society. You might say it’s the defining principle. It’s about power* not party. Of those two things, how many do you have?

* For “power” see the lovely Jack London quote in the sidebar menu.

Greenwald — …the central political fact now is that the Democratic Party controls everything in Washington — from the branches of government to favors doled out to lobbyists to the policies that Congress and the President enact. Wars that are fought and bills that are or are not passed and policies that are maintained are, by definition, Democratic actions. The dreaded Right can’t dictate or stop anything. — Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No! The Democrats ARE the dreaded Right. Just watch them. — [Via: BDR] —

The Anonymous Democrat Complaint Box @ Something Awful.

THERE ARE THINGS that could be said about kayinmaine of White Noise Insanity’s peculiar brand of myopia. Though, when one really looks at it, the condition isn’t myopic at all. It’s less a problem of nearsightedness, than of not seeing what is right before one’s eyes. What’s more, it goes beyond merely that of a vision problem. It’s a tone deafness to one’s own White Noise. Some of that ringing we hear is dissonance. It’s the dissonance between the world that can easily be observed for oneself, and the world our rulers (yes, even one’s favorite preferred leaders,) instruct must be observed.

While it’s all well and good to not believe in anonymous white house sources saying the administration views liberals on the internet(!) as fringe figures who “need to take off [their] pajamas and get dressed,” is there any evidence in the administration’s actions since taking office that would indicate they could truthfully say otherwise?

Though Kay correctly doubts the veracity of what right wing gasbags say on television, it is far wiser to doubt, (better yet ignore,) everything in the ‘political’ realm. “Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask anything of them.”

Nonetheless, keep spittin’ those mad rants, Kay, and we’ll keep on reading!

HAVE I MENTIONED that the United States electoral system is a sham? I believe I may have.

Bob Edgar of Common Cause emails to champion the cause of safeguarding our elections:

In a case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the highest court in the land could overturn more than a century of law and pave the way for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on direct campaigns to elect or defeat federal candidates.

Such an earth-shattering decision — which many court observers believe we are about to see issued — wouldn’t just change the character of our elections. It would fundamentally undermine the strength of our democracy.

The “strength” of our “democracy” is that the elite can predetermine the outcome without holding guns to people’s heads and looking illegitimate to the international community. Otherwise, the ostensibly democratic election process would have been put out of its misery long ago.

What conceivable difference will it make, to the average person watching the TV, if campaign billions continue to be funneled through 527 group’s and PAC’s rather than through the candidate committees themselves?

But no, the usually useful idiots are engaged in their usually useful idiocy, as Washington stages another shell-game debate in the name of transferring more private wealth to the state-partnered corporate class. Headlines warning that the so-called public plan may be “dropped” entertain the same fallacy as The Obama’s liberal supporters engage–those on the left-hand side of the idiot corpus as it were. They assume that there exists a “public plan” to be dropped. Meanwhile, the rightards engage in some supremely amusing agitprop, creating a fictional groundswell of chimerical grassroots opposition to a proposed system of socialized medicine that was never really proposed. The whole thing is a sham, and in the end the circular genius of state capital will again reward itself by reforming a system in favor of the system already in place. The rules of this game are simple, and I refer everyone once more to The Ratchet Effect. — IOZ —

THIS STUFF used to scare the shit out of me before I learned how to perceive correctly… Apparently we are past the second stage of five steps toward fascism. Here are a couple of the symptoms that prove it:

“…political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner.” … Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: “deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement.”

And more ominously: “The most important variables…are the conservative elites’ willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate.”
[Sara Robinson]

First of all, what “growing” and/or “advancing Left”?

Second of all, what “massive popular mobilization”?

Third of all, what “deadlock”?

Fourth of all, what “crisis”?

If the answers are: 1. the Democrats, 2. Obama voters, 3. in congress, and 4. big government socialism, well… [spit take,] LOL, etc.

Has the power elite’s ability to secure trillions of dollars of government bailouts, or impunity in conducting lucrative foreign wars of convenience, or near complete control of public opinion really been diminished, at all, by Democratic party rule in DC?

Are attempts in congress at implementing a universal, single payer health care system expanding government offered health insurance mandating that people purchase health insurance, really to be considered a deadlock that threatens the interests of powerful insurance companies?

Please!

PS: Go back to the top of this post and don’t read it. Go read Al Schumann’s instead.

Why Health Care Is Different — Is this an issue that Democrat[ic politicians] really care about? Is it something they’re willing to fight for? Are they willing to put aside the normal idiocy of legislative sausage-making, and I-want-mine-ism? Or is it just a campaign promise they roll out in the fall to help beat Republicans so that they can go about raising money? — Taken in order: No. I doubt it. Of course not. Yes. –

SO WE FILED and paid our damn taxes today. Taken through coercion to be spent, in the main, on killing motherfuckers overseas and making interest payments on the vast amount of debt accrued, in the main, through vast amounts of investment in building and maintaining the capacity to kill motherfuckers overseas. Though I disapprove to the greatest extent possible, I also do not relish the idea of incarceration for tax evasion. So we pay.

William Godwin provides a comforting rationalization:

The greatest mischief that can arise in the progress of obedience is, where it shall lead us, in any degree, to depart from the independence of our understanding, a departure which general and unlimited confidence necessarily includes. In this view, the best advice that could be given to a person in a state of subjection is, ‘Comply, where the necessity of the case demands it; but criticise while you comply. Obey the unjust mandates of your governors; for this prudence and a consideration of the common safety may require; but treat them with no false lenity, regard them with no indulgence. Obey; this may be right; but beware of reverence. …’

Criticize while you comply. Blarg! Yes. Join a tea party with a bunch of craven, politically partisan yahoos? Thanks but no thanks. I mean, if we’re going to remain stuck with this massive state, stealing vast amounts of money from the people once a year, I’d rather they spend it on healthcare, social security and such, rather than some kind of bottom-up redistribution/killing motherfuckers scam. Besides, our rulers are unmoved by public protest, or haven’t you noticed?

As a post script, there’s a legal case I learned about once in a 100-level Business Law course I took. Read about it under the cut. (more…)

THE THING ABOUT VOLUNTARY RESPONSE SAMPLES is that you can’t draw conclusions about the population you are sampling from them with any measurable degree of certainty. The thing is, in a voluntary response sample, people with strong opinions tend to be overrepresented. See, I learned that in Statistics class.

It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country’s precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots … that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

[Associated Press: Voter turnout best in generations, maybe a century]

Seems to me like presidential elections are about the biggest voluntary response samples around. So the lopsided electoral college results and the ‘large’ margin of victory in the meaningless popular vote, (large being a difference of 6% points,) don’t necessarily demonstrate ‘broad support’ for president elect Obama. Though past presidents have claimed to have popular mandates on less.

Keep in mind at all times, not all of those 36% who didn’t turn out are apathetic with no sense of civic duty. Many feel disenchanted with or alienated (like me) from the political system ruling class.