Last call: A time for goodbyes
March 3rd, 2011 by Steve
The plan is for me to continue as a contributor to the new BuzzFlash at Truthout, although not in the context of The Last Chance Democracy Cafe. While I have not seen the concept myself, I am told that the new site will be both extremely cool (there I go showing my age again) and much more interactive. It really does sound like it will be great. I encourage all café readers, current and past, to check it out when the time comes.
To be honest, the café never made the kind of splash I (probably naively) dreamed of when it opened. On its best day ever, it attracted less than 10,000 visitors. More often, we were lucky to get 1,000 unique visits early on and even fewer in later years. Still, I’ll confess to feeling a fair degree of pride with what we’ve done here — especially with the episodes. In an Internet filled with millions of blogs and endless rants, there has always been only one Last Chance Democracy Café.
Giving in to a bit of nostalgia last weekend, I reread some of the earlier episodes — stories first posted at BuzzFlash way back in early 2004. I couldn’t help but be struck by how relevant they remain today. If anything, the central theme of the series — that the concentration of economic wealth in the country also leads to an unhealthy concentration of political power in the hands of the few — speaks even more loudly today than when the series started.
America might have been wise to have followed Zach’s example, and listened more closely to what Horace, Tom and Winston had to say.
But mostly, when I think back about the café, I remember with gratitude that small, hardy bunch of regulars who stuck with us for so many years, often doing so in the face of inexcusable neglect from yours truly. To you, along with Mark, Chad, Gonzo and others from BuzzFlash who gave me this chance, I owe much.
So thank you, my friends.
May we meet again on a better (more liberal) day!
Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day
February 25th, 2011 by Steve
1. Who’d've thunk I’d live to see the day when an Eisenhower Republican (elected as a Democrat) is regularly accused of being a socialist?
2. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when teachers (TEACHERS!!!) have become the profession most widely condemned for making TOO Much money? (Next up, attacks on blind people for hogging all the good scenery.)
3. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when right wing members of Congress are even crazier than right wing commentators? (Is there no such thing as a saturation level for craziness — some upper limit, like the speed of light, beyond which matter or lunacy simply cannot travel?)
4. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when increasing taxes on billionaires (currently taxed at the lowest level in decades) is seen as immoral, while cutting nutritional and medical services for poor children is regarded by the in-crowd as being among the highest forms of moral rectitude?
5. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when the leading lights of the media believe that enabling a lie constitutes objectivity, while disclosing the truth amounts to bias and must be avoided at all costs?
6. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan (were they alive today) would face primary challenges from the right? (And probably lose.)
7. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when being certifiably insane is a prerequisite to being nominated for public office by one of the two major political parties? (And the news media would then declare the leadership of that party as the more “serious” of the two and invite them onto news talk shows at a much higher rate.)
8. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when I sometimes actually sort of miss the good old days of Richard Nixon? (Who, as big a crook and a jerk as he was, actually pursued policies that were more liberal than those of Barack Obama in a number of areas.)
9. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when multinational corporations are free to spend as much money as their leaders want to support candidates without being required to prove that the funds didn’t come from overseas interests, but, increasingly, actual living, breathing Americans can’t even register to vote without producing a birth certificate?
10. Who’d’ve thunk I’d live to see the day when Democrats, the same political party that led the nation through World War I, World War II and most of the Cold War, would be too scared to stand up to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck?
These days I sometimes feel just a little like Rip Van Winkle, as though I’ve awakened from a very long sleep to find a world I can no longer recognize.
Maybe I’ll go back to bed.
The one indispensable journalist of our time isn’t a journalist
December 14th, 2010 by Steve
When thinking of Barack Obama these days, political progressives tend to find themselves haunted by a wide range of emotions, many quite negative. But one thing in particular, I think, predominates — utter and compete bewilderment. How, we keep asking ourselves, could the politically brilliant candidate we saw in 2008 have, so quickly, morphed into the politically tone deaf president who so often confounds us today. Yet, the evidence of his decline insults our senses every day.
Given the choice between bargaining toughly with a remorseless GOP as opposed to simply begging them for mercy, Obama seems always — yes, always — to choose the latter. Capitulation has become his preferred negotiating strategy; .”>first he gives away the farm, and only then does he ask the other side for something in return, Thus, a few days ago, the Democratic base watched in disgust (again) as the president adopted (again) GOP talking points in calling for a wage freeze for federal employees, doing so without first asking for anything in return. And in response, the GOP kicked sand into his face.
But, hey, at least it made Michele Bachmann happy.
Here’s a frightening thought: could it be that Obama’s habitual refusal to fight back against the GOP isn’t, as so many of us have been assuming, the result of a poor political calculation. That it is, instead, amoxicillin prices, simply an expression of the man’s character.
We’ve all known people like that, of course, buy amoxicillin no prescription. They’re often wonderful and gifted human beings, but folks who, for whatever reason, Billiga amoxicillin apotek, are constitutionally incapable of handling conflict. It is their nature to always seek consensus, to always give ground easily, even when dealing with people who refuse to play fair in return.
Looking back, the possible presence of this aspect of his character can be seen in his writings, pharmacie amoxicillin bon marché. Several years ago, back in the heart of the presidential campaign, I posted a piece titled, In Search of the Real Obama, giving my take on his book, The Audacity of Hope. I found it troubling:
There’s just something far too convenient in where he draws the lines for his deeply felt beliefs. He thinks (correctly) that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime and is dangerously flawed . . . yet (there are an awful lot of yets with Obama) he still thinks it’s appropriate for society to execute the really, really bad murderers as opposed, Louisiana LA , I guess, to the only sort of bad murderers. Being the unquestionably brilliant man he is, Obama must know this is a distinction without meaning, and utterly beyond definition. But given the public’s view on capital punishment, it is a convenient one to draw. This convenience of belief recurs often, troublingly so.
And no, of course, this makes him no worse than any other politician. But you see, I was hoping for something better than no worse.
There is also an unmistakable element of intellectual dishonesty in how Obama tries to paint his self-portrait as the sensible man in the middle — as the one reasonable soul in an ocean of partisan fanatics. He often commits the sin of false equivalency. Yes, conservatives are bad about this, he will say, but then he will always quickly add that liberals are equally bad about that. But the truth, of course, is that usually they aren’t. How could they be? As of the time he wrote the book, liberalism had been all but politically powerless for over a decade.
As you can see, Buy amoxicillin from canada, what troubled me most about Obama at the time was the political convenience of much of what he said. His words struck me as more as a reflection of a persona he wanted to sell, as opposed to the man himself. Now, two years into his presidency, I’m beginning to think I may have been wrong, That something far more troubling is actually at play. It may just be that a tendency to embrace convenient centrism, while all the while refusing to fight for principle, or for that matter to fight for anything other than his own office, isn’t just an unwise political gambit, but actually a true reflection of the man’s character. When you think about it, this thought starts to makes a lot of sense. A man of Barack Obama’s brilliance would surely have figured out by now that his strategy of chronic capitulation has been a political disaster and have changed course, if political calculation was all that’s been involved. But a man’s basic character is a harder thing to change.
So, contrary to the theme of my old essay, it may be that I did find the real Obama in his book after all. And, my God, what a bummer that would be.
Paul Krugman
To be honest, I’m finding politics an incredibly depressing subject these days (more depressing than death but less depressing than the popularity of “reality based” television programming). So why not offer up an incredibly depressing post. Which brings us to the political question of the day, namely: Which of the following far from unlikely scenarios would actually be worse for the GOP over the long haul, Scenario number one: As a result of far right wing nutcases knocking off slightly less freaky establishment backed candidates in the primaries the Republicans fail to gain control of the Senate; or – Scenario number two: Far right nutcases not only knock off slightly less freaky establishment backed candidates in the primaries but then also actually manage to get elected (as many certainly will) and thus become the standard-bearers for the Republican Party for the next six years while all the while pushing for causes like the abolition of social security. I know which scenario would be worse for the country. But which would be worse for the GOP over the long term is far less clear cut. Comprare amoxicillin. North Dakota ND .
July 6th, 2010 by Steve
Here’s another fine Reader’s Contribution , :
We’re So Sorry, uncle BP
We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain. We’re so sorry uncle BP
But your oil’s in our gulf
And here comes a hurricane.
We’re so sorry that the sea turtles got in your way. We’re so sorry, uncle BP, Hawaii HI , But our spatulas and shops vacs
Haven’t really done a thing
We’re so sorry, uncle BP
That Obama’s liberal goons have made you pay
We’re so sorry, Delaware DE Del. , Vermont VT Vt. , uncle BP
That the pelicans and walruses
Are messing up your day.
Duh, Virginia VA Va. , duh, duh, doh duh duh duh dumb
Duh uh doh duh uh duh duh duh dumb
Duh, dumb
Oil across the water, West Virginia WV W.Va. , plumes under the sea.
Booms across the water, stench across the sky
Admiral Allen called the Coast Guard
The oil is slick and the tar balls are hard
We’ll send the porpoises a get well card, Texas TX Tex. , District of Columbia DC D.C. , and sip coffee.
(because the harbor’s filling up with a thick black tea)
Oil across the water, crude under the sea
Waves across the water, clouds across the sky.
Pay a little, be a lawyer, get around
We will never shake you down.
Pay a little, please don’t frown.
We can all jump in the gulf and swim around
Safe and dry upon the ground
You will never let us drown.
Oil across the water, death under the sea
Tar across our beaches, WE are so sorry.
– Paula-7/6/10
(With Apologies to Paul McCartney)
Posted by: Alwayshope.
June 24th, 2010 by Steve
Speaking as a Democrat — though a fairly disgruntled one of late (okay, an extremely disgruntled one of late) — I find myself looking ahead to the inevitable GOP gains in the mid-term elections with surprising ambivalence. On the one hand, I’m still enough of a partisan to want my team to win just for the sake of winning — sort the same way that as a KC Chiefs fan I want the Chiefs to win (and, yes, my life is filled with disappointments), Then there’s the fact that to elect a large number of the current batch of nuttier-than-a-fruitcake-on-steroids Republican candidates could do irreparable harm to the nation. Still, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that stupidity of this magnitude deserves to be punished: and as counterintuitive as it may seem, there is no surer way to see to it that the GOP is punished than by giving it a modicum of power.
Without a doubt, the current GOP embrace of (or hostile takeover by) the Tea Party is the single most self-destructive action taken by a major political party in my memory — and I was around for the McGovern campaign in 1972. Hell, Ozzy Osbourne represents a paragon of virtuous self-restraint in comparison to the GOP’s headlong dive into disaster, Attacking Social Security, Kjøp Discount amoxicillin. All but advocating armed insurrection. Buy amoxicillin cheap, Calling for the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency. Defending BP. That’s one hell of an agenda to take to Middle America.
And remember, it isn’t as though the public loves these dudes. Polls show the electorate as a whole doesn’t think much of the Tea Party – and that’s before they really have the chance to get to know them and experience the full flavor of their fanaticism. Over the long haul (and even the fairly short haul), embracing these hardliners is suicide for the Republicans. Yet that’s exactly what the GOP is doing. And if the Republicans end up doing well this year, which, given how angry the voters are, may well happen, they’ll end up embracing the extreme of the extreme even more in the future, buy amoxicillin without prescription. Maryland MD Md. , And that could very well kill the party for a generation.
In truth, there’s one and only one hope left for the GOP, amoxicillin prices, and that’s if they get their asses kicked in 2010. If that happens, they may do some soul searching, maybe even take a baby step or two back from the edge of the cliff, New Hampshire NH N.H. . But if it doesn’t happen and it probably won’t, God save the Grand Old Party.
For the sake of the nation, I still hope that the Democrats do better than predicted this year — but if they don’t, viewed from a purely political standpoint, it’s far from clear who the real loser will be long term.