maven&meddler

Watching this depressing health care reform dance take place in the Senate this week has removed any  hope that, as a country, we can pull together and do the right thing anymore. I’m not so naive to think that political agendas and jockeying for position haven’t always been with us, but in times of crisis the one thing American’s could count on was our leaders ability to put the petty bickering aside until things could heal or sort themselves out.

Not so anymore, and both sides are to blame.

The Dems have their hands just as deeply in many of the same corporate pockets as the Repubs. That’s were the real problem sits. But, then there is the frighteningly bitter and irrational hatred for all things ‘government’ that has become the GOP - the party of ‘no’ - that really puts the poisonous icing on the cake.

Take a look at the ever changing health care reform bills and the pathetic attempts to rein in abuses by the financial services industry.

Any gutted, picked over carcass of legislation that finally reaches Obama’s desk for signing will be, as Tom Friedman calls it “suboptimal”. We produce suboptimal, because that’s all you can get agreement on and not leave dead lying about the hallways of power anymore.

It’s become just that toxic.

When will Harry Reid ‘get it’ that anything that would bring meaningful reform will be interpreted as a ‘stumbling block’ by the likes of Lieberman, Snowe and Nelson? Harry - here’s a message: They don’t want to play and so don’t care what you put in or take out. I’m not sure I care anymore whether or not you have 60 votes, since whatever comes out of it won’t be worth the powder to blow it to hell.

But, wait! Here comes a shining lady to remedy it all. Sarah Palin. ‘Rogue’.

Yup. She’s a bringer of peace and cooperation.

The GOP needs her like they need an untreatable genital rash, and they’re evidently too dumb to know it. I read in this mornings Reno Gazette-Journal about her book signing at Costco, complete with gushing accounts by patrons that she represents all that is truly good about Mom, apple pie and the flag.

Maybe these people don’t deserve serious, effective, democratic governance.

Meanwhile, it looks like Al Gore won’t debate Sarah Palin. And, why would he? She is such an authority on the subject of climate change that is would be a waste of time. She made a pretty good case for her level of understanding of climate change - or lack of - in a recent Washington Post op ed piece:

“With the publication of damaging e-mails from a climate research center in Britain, the radical environmental movement appears to face a tipping point. The revelation of appalling actions by so-called climate change experts allows the American public to finally understand the concerns so many of us have articulated on this issue.”

Huh. I never realized that she had articulated anything beyond flag waving. But, she does get a lot of the popular key words, like ‘tipping point’ in there so that it sounds like she almost understands the point of Malcolm Gladwell’s book- if she’d read it. That probably plays well to the Glenn Beck crowd. And, of course, just everybody ‘knows’ that all climate science was compromised by a handful of emails from one scientist at one institution.

Here’s an interesting read on this topic:” A case of classic Swift-Boating: How the Right Wing Noise Machine Manufactured Climate Gate” at ClimateProgress.org.

Here’s an excerpt:

The hacked e-mails do nothing ^[3] to change ^[5] the scientific ^[6] consensus ^[7] that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use are raising temperatures and making oceans more acidic. As the right attempts to use the Climategate story to derail the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference this week, arctic sea ice is still ^[8] at historically low levels, Australia is still ^[9] on fire, the northern United Kingdom is still ^[10] underwater, the world’s glaciers are still ^[11] disappearing and today NOAA confirmed that not only is it the hottest decade ^[12] in history, but 2009 was one of the hottest years in history. But how did the right-wing noise machine hijack the debate?

Isn’t it interesting how wingnuts can take the smallest thing and spin it to a conspiracy of global …. nay, biblical proportions? Don’t think so? Haven’t you ever watched Glenn Beck? This talent is what endears Fox to its hysterically minded devotees.

No wonder soap operas are on the decline. That same folks have Fox News, and can endlessly churn Obama’s Nobel that ‘everyone knows’ he didn’t deserve until we all throw up.

Do you ever notice how often the wingnuts invoke ‘everyone knows’ … they seem to have a corner on all the moral certitude on the planet. It is almost always offered up without corresponding facts or evidence.

I’m always wondering, ‘if everybody knows all this stuff, why are we in such a mess?’

I keep waiting for Beck or Palin to come up with a real answer, but they don’t need to since ‘everybody knows!’

Sigh.

I’m going to end the week in enforced christmas cheer. I’d feel worse about it except that I know that I’m not alone.

I don’t mind if others, particularly those with children in the house, want to be all giddy over this holiday, but don’t feel like you have to drag the rest of us along in your frantic plan to have just simply the most wonderful holiday party ever. I have a life outside of yours.

All I really need is one week of this crap. Christmas Eve through New Years Eve.

You’re right. There’s a good measure of curmudgeonly humbug here, and it has zip to do with being an atheist. This whole ’ holiday season’ thing just tires the crap out of me, and I suspect that I’m not alone in that either. I simply can admit it.

So, leave me alone unless you just want to go skiing, or have a relaxing dinner. Here’s waiting for January 2nd.

Cheers.

maven