Is Barack Obama the FDR of the Right? (Thanks for the thought, Ian)

The Great Compromisers -- does this fill
you with confidence or what?

by Ken

Howie has been keeping tabs on the great "compromise" that at least temporarily averted the dreaded gov't shutdown -- whatever is actually contained in (do we really want to know? the reports are becoming increasingly alarming) -- so I haven't felt any need to interject. But I do have to toss in our friend Ian Welsh's take:

Obama to Right Wing

Posted: 09 Apr 2011 04:38 PM PDT

“I agree with you, now make me do it”
(what FDR said to the left, if you aren’t aware.)

See, he is the new FDR!

While we're on the subject, I've been sitting on a post of Ian's for awhile now, trying to think what to say about it. And now I'm thinking maybe the thing to do is not say anything about it, just to let Ian say his piece.

When Medicare is destroyed is only a matter of when

Posted: 05 Apr 2011 11:27 AM PDT

Folks, this won’t pass this year, but a version of it will pass:

That plan would transform Medicare from a government insurance program to one in which seniors would chose from private, federally subsidized coverage. Americans 55 and older would stay in the current system.

Remember, Obama’s health care reform was essentially the Republican plan from the 90s. The Republicans, whom everyone was sneering at for running crazies, have put in place a team of hard right ideologues, who have moved DC significantly to the right even of where it was. AT some pointe they will pass this, because they want it badly, and the Democrats have no alternative vision other than “right wing, but not as right wing”, which goes nowhere.

I’ve said this before: get out. If you can’t get out, get your kids out. This is not going to end well. Obama has institutionalized Bush rather than rolling him back, and in some areas, such as civil liberties and unilateral Presidential war powers, has actually moved further to the right than Bush was. It is not impossible that this will get better in the next couple decades (as 5 year old Ian once argued, almost nothing is impossible), but it is unlikely. Americans spent the last 35 years spending their retirement, their children’s retirement and running infrastructure and capital into the ground, and they were good with that. Every effort to repeal Prop 13, for example, failed miserably. America is the culture of the free lunch, what Americans don’t realize is that they’re the free lunch.

That doesn’t mean the US couldn’t fix its problems, in theory, but the point is that socially and politically, the US does not want to fix its problems. It wants to continue to make them worse. Yes, a majority of Americans may prefer different policies on some issues, but they aren’t willing to MAKE it happen or to actually pay for it (see Prop 13 above). They aren’t willing to die for it, and at this point, that’s what it would take because your elites see no reason not take everything you have and turn you into slaves in all but name. You will be debt slaves, who own almost nothing, not your house, not your phone, not your car, not your books. Anything which can be rented to you, rather than than sold, will be.

Welcome to the Repo culture. Everything you have, everything you are, can be taken away from you, and you are nothing but a series of revenue streams to your lords and masters. Fail to pay, and you won’t even be allowed to be a debt and wage slave, you’ll be in a cardboard box or a debtor’s prison.

Modern Americans are mostly descended from people who didn’t say “this pisshole country is worth fighting for”, they’re descended from people who said “screw this, I’m outta here”. Emulate them and leave, if you can’t leave do the other thing they were willing to do: prepare for a revolution and be willing to die in it.

Or accept your fate as slaves.

Your choice.

Happy thoughts.


COMING TOMORROW -- THE BORGIAS, PLUS UPDATES ON THE SHOWTIME SHOWS I LIKE, NURSE JACKIE AND SHAMELESS

I was going to try to write this for tonight, but I figured it would help to have another episode of The Borgias under my belt.

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