Fire the HHS Secretary

Health and Human Services secretary Sebelius should be fired. She is in charge of the agency rolling out Obamacare and that's been a bomb so far. And her performance on the Daily Show last night was a talking-points riddled mess of ineptitude. General McChrystal was fired for less. Now don't get me wrong, I support Obamacare despite it's many wrinkles and warts. But three years of prep, and "This website is currently down" is the best the Feds can do?

Does the GOP get it?

It's been a few months, but nothing has changed. The GOP seems to want to doom itself. They lose another presidential election, lose seats in the Senate, and hold onto the House because of gerrymandering and redistricting. Yet the most vocal in the party still think they have sway. They don't.


Here's why I won't vote for the current GOP:

1. This is the biggest bunch of sore losers I have ever seen. They LOST, yet they whine about  how they don't get much respect. Four years of hate spewing disrespect for the President and they just keep going at it like it's the right thing to do. No thanks.
2. Trying to use the debt limit as a negotiation tactic is wrong. It's  wrong to vote for a budget (or continuing resolution or whatever they do to get money out the door in this current era of deadlock) that spends more than the government takes in, then refuse to pay for the bill by taking out debt. CONGRESS spends money, not the President. Yet the current leadership says the debt limit increase should be like an allowance. Why is it OK for anyone in government pass off this kind of ignorant behavior as acceptable? They KNOW how the system works. Pandering to a perceived idiot constituency is disrespectful to every citizen and way too cynical for someone in national office.
3. Thinking that a government shutdown would show the President who is in charge is just dumb. Didn't work in 1995, didn't work in 2011 and it won't work now. 

No thanks, GOP. You have lost 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, and you will lose again. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, the Tea Party, and old people is not the way forward.

Death of a party and other notes

Like many other parties before it, the current version of the GOP is dying. The countries demographics are changing, and the party of grumpy old white men is not going to survive in my lifetime. It will take awhile, maybe a few years, but this current party can't survive. It might take down the Democratic party with it, but that wouldn't be so bad, would it? The Republican party as it now stands offers me nothing in terms of interest or my vote.

Mitt Romney is really doing a great job of embodying the current GOP. I don't know what the man actually thinks. I have always thought that if Romney ran as Governor Romney from Massachusetts, then Obama would have real problems. But Romney gave that up (or was forced to) by the GOP extremists and now sounds small and confused. His comments on the Libya attack on the American Ambassador, his pick of Paul Ryan, his disastrous comments made to the fundraiser luncheon in Boca Raton, his continuous flip flops all demonstrate a person who will conform to what he needs to do to gain support. That might work well in business, but not politics. People know that turning Medicare into a voucher program, but ONLY for those under 55 is not fair. People can smell they hypocrisy. This is the party that cut payroll taxes, then turns around and screams about how few people pay payroll taxes!!

In 2004, gay marriage was used to get people to come out and vote and probably helped elect George W. to another term. W. ran against an elitist, out of touch Democrat from Massachusetts named John Kerry. 8 years later, the GOP trots out Romney, an elitist, out of touch Republican from Massachusetts. And gay marriage is now supported by a majority of Americans.

As Paul Waldman observes:

As I've maintained for some time, for all intents and purposes there is no "real" Mitt Romney. His political beliefs are the equivalent of Schrodinger's cat. They exist in every state at once until you open the box to observe them. If the one opening the box is a Tea Partier, they instantly lock into place as a set of Tea Party beliefs; if it's a bunch of GOP plutocrats staring down, that's whose beliefs he'll mirror. Romney has spent the last five years in an intensive period of study, with his subject the contemporary American conservative mind in all its permutations. He's well aware that the misleading talking point about 47 percent of Americans not paying taxes gets repeated all the time on the right, in private and public. What he was telling the people in that room is what he tells any group of people he speaks to. His message was, in Christine O'Donnell's immortal words, "I'm you."

Of course, when Mitt Romney loses, the GOP will not learn that it's religious zealotry to broken ideology of supply side economics and hate is the problem here. No, it will blame Mitt and try again. How many times will it take for this failure to shake these folks awake? Is America going to be held hostage by this old guard until these folks die of old age and whose ideas are finally swept into the dustbin?

"Sarah Palin would be a great foreign policy advisor [to Mitt Romney]. To her, all policy is foreign." - Steven Colbert

Pity the elites!

It was their upbringing..or whatever according to David Brooks today. Don't punish our elites, but pat them on the head and tell them this mess isn't their fault. If you want to give elites today a different 'ethos', you PUNISH the current crop of idiots and throw them out. That establishes the baseline for the next crop of elites to work against.


I also think that Mr. Brooks is suffering from his inability to admit that he is one of those elites. It is really easy for people who are well off tho waggle their fingers at those who are less fortunate. Hard work doesn't just get you to the top. Luck is a big factor. But to admit that luck and place have helped out is somehow fallen out of favor with a lot of elites, as if that invalidates their efforts. Whatever happened to humility? 

If you’re doing reasonably well, and your life is stable, then it’s likely you’re saving and spending as much as you “like” to. That’s very different than spending as much as you “got” to. Try to remember that the next time you’re lecturing someone you don’t know on how you’re doing a better job than they are.

The quote and link above reminds me of when Mrs. Romney was taking offense to comments that being a stay at home mom is a full-time job and isn't something to use as a put down. So what about all those single and poor mothers who 'should go and find jobs to support their children?'

UPDATE: July 16: Andrew Sullivan nails it on elites and responsibility. He calls out conservatives, but I think that Democrats are doing their best to play catch up here in a lot of ways as well. The money bit:

The reason America's elite finds itself under so much criticism is not that they are elites. It is that they have become self-serving, accountability-free elites.

Whenever someone says 'well, the markets will judge the actions of x' or something along those lines, this is abdication of responsibility. If you do something, you are responsible to see it through. You do not get to claim credit for success if you will not own up to the possibility of failure. Politicians can claim that the electorate will pass judgement on their actions, but if the politician does everything they can to obscure, hide, and exaggerate their actions, then what is being judged is not the reality, but the perception.

This is how I explain to my parents what my job is

The Plastic Can-didate

Why vote Republican?

And for that matter, why vote Democrat?

Bruce Bartlett does a wonderful job showing how badly Republicans blew up the budget during the Bush years. Obama seems pretty happy to continue these disastrous policies.

David Frum has summed up the Presidential election nicely:

The Democratic message is shaping up as: "The Republicans/the Fed/the Europeans wrecked the recovery, and we weren't smart enough or tough enough to stop them. Vote us."

The Republican message: "Obama could not fix the mess we made. Vote us."