Identity Crisis Politics

The War on Women, Blacks, Muslims, and just about everyone else...

The push to see the United States as the Christian nation it never was...

The dispute over Obama's citizenship...  (And here I thought legitimacy disputes only occurred in hereditary monarchies.)

The primacy of identity over policy is the defining feature of this election.  It is a feature of all US elections, but this year the election is about identity.  This despite huge policy issues: unemployment, war, climate, and on.  And yet the country is having an identity crisis.  It is as though the public is trying to fix a leaky roof by undertaking psychotherapy, and all the while the roofer is busy stealing the family jewels.

Older white Americans seem to feel they've lost themselves in all the changes that have taken place since 1960, and they want the mythical past back.  Everyone else is glad of the changes, or at least was until the wealthy old white guys were allowed to return to abusing everyone else back in the 1980s.

And so we have a conservative black president and an election about identity.  As a progressive bird, it surprises me that the wealthy old white guys get so much support.  Yet it just may be that the identity issue is the one to deal with.  If it isn't resolved, and in favor of the whole public rather than just wealthy old white guys, policy is only going to get worse and worse. 

Meantime, the wealthy old white guys are robbing the rest of America blind.  I wish America would finish up with the identity crisis and get on with it already.

Breaking news: Romney may just have pushed the country a giant step on the path with his "47%" remark.

[Minor edits and rewrites within 24 hours of publication.]

The Worst Thing the Obama Administration Has Done?

(This is a collection of links about the response of the Islamic public to the vaccination scam the CIA ran as part of its assassination campaign against Usama bin Laden. I wrote them up for Ta-Nehisi Coates's blog, and decided they were worth repeating here. [Added:] these were flagged as offensive and not restored. Bah!)

Every time I think I'm getting to accept the Obama Administration, I'm reminded of something else awful it has done. My latest reminder was yesterday, when I read that Pakistan is deporting the non-Pakistani staff of Save the Children as probable CIA agents. As part of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the CIA ran a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan, vastly undercutting the already uncertain Pakistani trust in real vaccination campaigns. Recently, Pakistan ordered all foreign employees of the Save the Children foundation out of the country on the grounds that they had been suborned by the CIA. It is possibly just grandstanding. On the other hand, it is possibly true: Save the Children is not likely to have the kind of hiring process that would detect an agent undercover.

It made the papers.  Guardian story. AP story.

We also have Dr. Anthony Robbins, co-editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Public Health Policy: editorial at JPHP and backgrounder at ScienceBlogs.

It's not the action of the Pakistani government that most disturbs me, it's the disruption of the already fragile trust of Western NGOs on the part of the public in Islamic states. People will die because of this. Polio could be eradicated in Pakistan if the Pakistani people trusted the aid workers, and what trust there was has been badly damaged.

David Wright, Save the Children Pakistan country director, quoted in an editorial from The News of Islamabad, Pakistan, "Our ability to continue this important work has been seriously undermined by CIA’s use of humanitarian activity as a cover for their intelligence gathering."

BBC article from before the deportation: "UN polio vaccine doctor injured in Karachi attack"

Al-Jazeera on Taliban opposition to the program.

One of the most discouraging things about this story is that the Administration and the CIA have made the Taliban's allegations true.

[Restored because the author found his guts:] If this leads to the failure to eradicate polio in Pakistan, and the ultimate failure to eradicate polio globally, it will be the worst thing the Obama administration has done. Even a sufficient delay might make it the worst.

As I said, every time I think I'm getting to accept the Obama Administration, I run across something like this.

Liars!

The Republicans seem to have decided to do nothing but lie until the election: over three two months. We're going to be crazy and sick with disgust by the end of it. Charles P. Pierce, on fire at the RNC:

It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie. It was an entire evening based on demonstrable lies told in service to the overriding demonstrable lie. And there was only one real story for actual journalists to tell at the end of it.

The Republicans simply don't care.

They don't care that they lie. They don't care that their lies are obvious. They don't care that their lies wouldn't fool an underpaid substitute Social Studies teacher in a public middle school, who would then probably go out one night and get yelled at by Chris Christie. ("They believe in teacher's unions. They believe in teachers," he said in his speech. Yeah, you just don't believe in paying them.) They don't care that their history is a lie and that, by spreading it, they devalue the actual history of the country, which is something that belongs to us.

They've pulled out all the stops.  They think this election will be their victory, and there will be no-one to call them to account at the end of it.

And they may be right.  They own a whole television network and have a huge staff of net propagandists to spread their lies.  The "vote fraud" lies are widely believed.  The "Obama has removed the work requirements for welfare" lies seem to be taking hold.

This must have been what the run-up to fascism was like in the 1930s, with mass media  pumping out lies and the media-induced madness setting a population against itself.  Well…it isn't the 1930s. There is some hope. But what are we hoping for? A still-bad political situation which can be salvaged? Hell of a thing to have to hope for.

Croak!

The Executions Will Continue Until Morale Improves

In the wake of three mass shootings in as many weeks, I am realizing that I wrote about this, almost exactly three years ago. I was originally writing about the hatred whipped up against health care reform, but the radical right has kept whipping up the hatred. And now…this. My original article:

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

I think I know the bottom line: someone is going to die. Too much crazy has been unleashed, too much negativity. Mobs at town halls. Death threats. And they're going to keep stirring the pot, until some dramatic act of violence happens, until the House caves, or until the House is back in session.

"For, without a cement of blood (it must be human, it must be innocent) no secular wall will safely stand."--WH Auden, Horae Canonicae, "Vespers."

Link

It seems the leadership of the far right is encouraging domestic terrorism in the United States.

Virginia v Sibelius: Another Such Victory and We Are Undone

A collection of notes, instead of a long piece.

Winners

Health insurance companies!!!!

Yes, everyone's favorite insurance companies will make out like bandits. In exchange for a modest reduction in gross profits (to 15-20% per insured), this weakly-regulated oligopoly will get the entire country as customers, mandated by the federal government.

Pharmaceutical and medical equipment suppliers

And these firms will make out like bandits, because they'll be getting millions of new customers and are weakly-regulated.

I think I detect a pattern here.

Obama

His signature bill survived.

John Roberts

He gets to write a largely conservative decision and saves the prestige of his institution.

Losers

People in red states, especially the poor and the brown-skinned

The working poor will get slammed because the red states are planning not to implement the Medicaid expansion. There will be people who are not covered by either Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act and this group will be disproportionately brown; for an analysis, see David Dayen, link. The same states are planning not to create the insurance exchanges that the ACA mandates, despite the law. And, finally, when those states do implement the ACA, their weak insurance regulators will be the ones overseeing its implementation. In such places, the low end insurance mandated by the ACA is likely to be insurance that can't be used at prices that can't be paid.

The Economy?

No-one I have seen has done any modeling to the end of predicting the macroeconomic impact of the ACA. The ACA mandates an expansion of health care, which might be stimulative, but it is also, in effect, a tax, which might be regressive. If the effect is regressive, full implementation could make the on-going depression worse. If the depression continues, it will also fall disproportionately on the young, who will be required to spend scarce money on insurance.

The Law

The decision is exceptionally incoherent. Future cases regarding Federal power will be hard to decide. It is likely the decisions will be arbitrary, based on politics, rather than a consistent legal or ethical basis.

Progressives

Every new Federal spending program will be subject to the incoherence of this decision, the question of how will the Court rule on it.

Wingnuts 

The didn't get their cruel decision, and the 1930s and 1940s Commerce Clause decisions stand, albeit in weakened form.

And then there's that third thing

That is, people who are both winners and losers.

The middle class and working poor

Why are these people listed last? But in fact Because they are last; Congress and the President put the insurance companies's profits before the majority of the public. Some of this group will, at long last, get needed health care. Others will get costly inadequate insurance.

Young people

Who will have to pay into this system, though their incomes are low and they are the lightest users of health care. For a minority of young people, however, the mandated insurance will be a literal lifesaver.

Women

The ACA requires that a range of women's preventative care be covered without a co-pay. This is a huge thing. On the other hand, the ACA cuts insurance coverage for abortion. Again, this will probably hit hardest in red states, but in all states it is potentially a killer.

Conclusions

Thanks, guys! We really needed this mess. Why, oh why, could Congress not have seen the way clear to Medicare for All?

Corvids Feast in Denver

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock, there has been a mass shooting a the Denver opening of Batman. Twelve are dead and 58 injured. The murderer, a man named Holmes, planned the murder, and apparently also planted a bomb in his apartment, which has so far kept police out, and led to the evacuation of five buildings. It appears that Holmes played annoying music and left his door ajar, apparently in an attempt to attract  neighbors who would open the door and detonate the bomb.

The most extensive coverage is at the Denver Post. Talking Points Memo also has good coverage.

Holmes was a neuroscience student, who recently dropped out of graduate school at the University of Colorado. As usual with such people, he was a polite man who kept to himself.

I will venture the following speculations about what will be found when Holmes's background is investigated:

1. It will turn out that Holmes had a history of violent fantasies, possibly even a history of actual violence, perhaps directed at animals
2. He studied neuroscience in part because he was seeking a cure for his disorder, but it may also have given him the opportunity to cause pain.
3. His problems were recognized. It is possible he sought help for them.
4. The people who recognized his problems did not act on the knowledge, perhaps were unable to do so. If he sought help, he did not get it.

A history of violence-related mental illness would have disqualified Holmes from legal weapons purchase and ownership, if the laws regarding weapons purchase and ownership were taken at all seriously. It is as I said, years ago: you hominids will end up with the right to own weapons and nothing else.

[Update:] Yup.

Colbert to CNN, Fox: You Suck At News

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