Christ Carrying the Cross
Hieronymous Bosch
1485-1490Oil on panel
76.7 x 83.5 cm
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Ghent
Obama, budget director Peter Orszag and health czar Nancy-Ann DeParle grasp the intricacies of the health-care system as well as any three humans, and they could write a law to make it far more efficient. But now it is in the hands of legislators and lobbyists who care much less about the rationality of the system than they do about the way the bill will affect their particular part of it. Everyone has a parochial agenda. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for example, wants to be sure a new cancer treatment center in Nevada has favored status. Democracy and representative government are a lot messier than the progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to admit. No wonder they are so often frustrated.
David S. Broder - Washington Post
Given the slow progress of cap and trade legislation in the Senate, Europeans are beginning to understand why the UN might be an easier forum for Mr Obama than Capitol Hill. In this, Mr Obama is accused of not trying hard enough, rather than trying to do the wrong things. “Europeans no longer see President Obama as merely an innocent victim of what they regard as rightwing nuttiness in the American political wars,” says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution. “They are beginning to worry that the president has contributed to the paralysis of the system by playing too much defence.”
Edward Luce - Financial Times
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Wingnuts are always framing any question that comes into their heads with a "what would Jesus do", so I thought I would approach the subject of America's political paralysis in the same terms.
What would Jesus do it he were elected president of the USA?
Well of course, if the right wanted to actually run Jesus for president they would have to procure him an American birth certificate, but I suppose if they took the part where it says "place of birth: Bethlehem, Palestine" and rubbed out the (shudder) "Palestine" and substituted "Pennsylvania" that would do the trick. Of course the only president ever born in Pennsylvania was James Buchanan, considered to be in the running with George W. Bush as the worst president in US history. But what the heck, wouldbe birthers would have to be satisfied with Pennsylvania.
American politics being what it is Jesus would have to get a shave and a blowdry haircut and learn to drink beer and boilermakers and eat hotdogs and tacos and bagels and be a regular guy so as not to look effete and elitist... and to read what his handlers wrote for him off a teleprompter, but I suppose if John Edwards could manage all that, God could too.
Of course the wingnuts would have to be crazy to run Jesus for president, it's obvious to me that they have never really studied his programs and policies in any detail; with his love for the poor and driving money lenders from the Temple and encouraging his followers to pay taxes and all of that. And who is going to be First Lady? His mom?
Well, so suppose he finally got elected, he would for sure run into trouble from day one.
What would Jesus do it he were elected president of the USA?
Well of course, if the right wanted to actually run Jesus for president they would have to procure him an American birth certificate, but I suppose if they took the part where it says "place of birth: Bethlehem, Palestine" and rubbed out the (shudder) "Palestine" and substituted "Pennsylvania" that would do the trick. Of course the only president ever born in Pennsylvania was James Buchanan, considered to be in the running with George W. Bush as the worst president in US history. But what the heck, wouldbe birthers would have to be satisfied with Pennsylvania.
American politics being what it is Jesus would have to get a shave and a blowdry haircut and learn to drink beer and boilermakers and eat hotdogs and tacos and bagels and be a regular guy so as not to look effete and elitist... and to read what his handlers wrote for him off a teleprompter, but I suppose if John Edwards could manage all that, God could too.
Of course the wingnuts would have to be crazy to run Jesus for president, it's obvious to me that they have never really studied his programs and policies in any detail; with his love for the poor and driving money lenders from the Temple and encouraging his followers to pay taxes and all of that. And who is going to be First Lady? His mom?
Well, so suppose he finally got elected, he would for sure run into trouble from day one.
Imagine that at the inaugural ball he changed water into wine: he's in trouble right then and there with special interest groups like the Winegrape Growers of America. You don't think California's Nancy Pelosi would let something like that pass, do you? Not with her state going broke.
Now, of course, a salient part of Jesus's program was always healing the sick, for which he never charged a shekel, but if he continued to do that while in office the American Medical Association would be all over him and the big pharma lobbies too... You can imagine the smear campaigns... I prefer not to.
And of course then there is the Holy Land, "Terra Sancta" as old Yasser Arafat used to call it. You can imagine how much slack AIPAC is going to cut Jesus, of all people, on that one, can't you?
Finally, I think that one day, after his morning run on the Potomac, he might just up and drown both houses of congress and all of K-street in the reflecting pool of the Washington monument like he did with the Gaderene Swine... to general applause both in America and beyond her shores.
The moral of the story of course is that the problem is systemic and not really about personalities. As the Spanish say, "esto no lo arregla ni Díos", not even God can fix this paralysis. DS
Precisely at the moment that the Turkish army is about to invade Iraqi Kurdistan and terminally destabilize whatever might be left of Iraq, the Senate passes this "Armenian genocide" resolution. This could literally put in jeopordy the lives of thousands of American soldiers... (not to speak of millions of Iraqis).
Between the Jewish, Cuban and now the Armenian (???), lobbies, any idea of a coherent US Foreign policy is literally collapsing. Any American pretense at world leadership dissolves in this endless nonsense. Quelle bordelle! DS
Armenian sway over US lawmakers - BBC
Abstract: Despite a direct appeal by US President George W Bush, lawmakers in the US have backed a description of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks after 1915 as genocide. While Armenia welcomed the vote by a panel in the US House of Representatives, Turkey condemned it as "unacceptable" and has recalled its ambassador to Washington for "consultations". (...) Ahead of the vote, senior administration officials warned that if the resolution passed, Turkey could cut access to military bases needed for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its passage "would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror", Mr Bush said from the White House Rose Garden. Nonetheless, the non-binding resolution passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee by 27 to 21, a first step towards holding a full vote in the House of Representatives. Given that Armenians represent only about 1.5m of America's 300m population, what has won them such influence over the US Congress - and perhaps the nation's foreign policy? Part of the answer lies in the organisation and determination of the Armenian-American lobby groups, says Dr Svante Cornell, of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) and the Armenian Assembly of America (AAA) are among the most powerful. Another factor is that the Armenian-American community is largely concentrated in important states such as California, Michigan and Massachusetts, Dr Cornell said. "You have basically a number of places where the Armenian issue is very important in local politics - especially for anybody wanting to get elected in California," he said. "The Turkish lobby is much less organised and much less rooted in an electorate than the Armenian lobby." READ IT ALL