The Democratic Party is increasingly becoming an embarrassment. Okay, I suppose that could be seen as an accomplishment, given how pathetic they already were. But really: not only did Obama and Harry Reid decide that, in spite of his monumental douchebaggery, Rape Gurney Joe should get to keep his Committee chairmanships and remain a close friend of the very party that he's been actively pissing on and underminig for years. Even now, when he's actively supporting a Republican agenda, he is allowed to remain part of the inner circle of influential "Democrats." And not only did they hand over large parts of the health care reform process to Grade A Dipshit Ben Nelson of Nebraska -- who ran with the opportunity to screw the pooch and place a big, fat earmark for himself and Nebraska in the final bill -- but they then proceeded to reward the nasty little shit for that kind of behavior with a cool half million dollars of DNC money waay outside of any election cycle. Inquiring minds say: WTF?

And now, taking that as a clear hint that he can do no wrong, Ben Nelson has announced that he's going to filibuster Obama's appointment of Craig Becker' to the National Labor Relations Board. I guess this is where it's prudent to reiterate that Ben Nelson is -- at least nominally -- still a Democrat. And there I was, thinking that, if nothing else, Democrats could at least be counted on to support the labor end of the labor relations equation. Silly me. This does highlight one thing, however: with friends like Ben & Joe, what value was there really in that precious 60 seat majority which Reid & Obama wasted on accomplishing fuck-all? Or, rather: why lament the loss of the super-majority, or pretend it really mattered in the first place, if it was contingent on appeasing reactionary retards like Nelson and Lieberman? It's like claiming your ship is perfectly sea-worthy, except for that propeller that spinning the wrong way and the gaping hole in the bow. Sure, Reid & Obama can wail and gnash their teeth about how they suddenly can't get anything done because those mean ol' Republicans who will now filibuster everything. But really, boys: either you could and should have passed it all before you allowed Brown to ride into town, buck-naked in his shiny pick-up truck, or you need to own up to the uncomfortable fact that right now, the obstructionism is not so much coming from the (would-be irrelevant, if it weren't for the fact that Obama insists on inviting them to the table so they can revel in mucking things up) Republicans, as it is from Democratic senators. If Reid & Obama and Tim Kaine had any kind of strategy, they'd take a bunch of those wankers out behind the White House woodshed and serve them a heaping big helping of whoop-ass. But maybe it's time to stop with the theatricals and for Obama & Reid to own up to the fact that they weren't really that keen on passing anything particularly epic anyway, and that it actually suits them just fine to have some scapegoats for what is, in essence, your own fatally flawed approach to Democratic policy-making. You're where you're at because you've sold out on the values your party used to represent, and you're stuck with people like Ben Nelson becaause at the end of the day, he represents what you've come to cherish: the status quo, the corporate interests, the big players with the big checks.

I have no idea what Tim Kaine's strategy for the DNC might be, or if, indeed, he even has one at all. Maybe he's simply trying to outdo Steele in the "crummiest, most incompetent chairman evah" category, and he might just nab the trophy it if he keeps this up. A bit like wining the Biggest Midget award at the Social Outcast Games, but still... oh, shiny! Or maybe his strategy is the ol' tried and true Democratic Fail Plan: pretend to be Democrats, act like you're Republicans, then feign disbelief when people pick the real deal in the election, restart the cycle by positioning yourselves as a genuine opposition party. Lather, rinse, repeat. I guess it keeps the money flowing from suckers who keep believing that Lucy will one day leave the football in place and keep coming back for more.

Oh, and Harry Reid: if your job description talks about managing everybody else's lethargy to ensure that absolutely nothing gets done, then you, Sir, are doing an amazing job. Simply outstanding. Stellar. Yes, you may just be the pre-eminent clusterfucker of your era. Otherwise? For shame, old man, for shame. Even if the good people of Nevada can only find a three-legged syphilitic goat to run against you in the primaries, my money would still be on the goat. But of course, you can probably rely on your good friend Tim Kaine over at the DNC for some undeserved campaign contributions -- I hear he's a sucker for treason and sell-outs.

Sir Change-a-Lot continues to amaze with his novel interpretation of teh stupid. Here's his latest brain fart on the mutant golem that is his so-called Health Care Reform:

“I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward,” Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.

Mr. Obama challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which the president said he would not do....

When asked by Ms. Couric if he would agree to discard the bill and start over, the president said he would not. The starting point, aides said, would be with the proposals that passed the House and Senate.

Let me see if I'm missing anything:

1. Run your campaign on progressive, genuine health care reform to get all the progressives all fired up about how hopey-changey your tenure as President is going to be.
2. Initiate the process by immediately conceeding everything audacious enough to really make a difference: single payer, universal health care, taking on the insurance industry.
3. Once you've given away all the potential cards for negotiating you might have had on hand, proceed to invite the Republicans to be part of the process. Fail to notice for months that all they want is to run down the clock and prevent anything from actually happening. Keep trying, while making yourself look like a pitiful fool at the mercy of the opponent you just trounced in the '08 elections. 
4. Ignore the fact that you actually have the majority to pass significant legislature without letting the Republicans piss it to pieces. Insist on bipartisanship even though your partner continues to spit in your eye. A perhaps noble, but certainly pointless gesture that might buy you some brownie points with a few corrupt Beltway insiders, but renders the average Democrat wondering what the fuck you're thinking.
5. Negotiate sweetheart deals with big pharma behind closed doors, ensure them that their exhorbitant pricing will remain unaffected by anything that might come to pass.
6. Now hand over the whole process to major league assholes like Ben Nelson and Max Baucus, basically the Democratic Party equivalents of toxic assets. Let them destroy what remains of genuine reform. Sprinkle generously with compromises to accomodate Joe Lieberman's permanent hissy fits, and serve.
7. Send out Rahm Emanuel to run interference whenever progressives start to point out that this is *not* the way to do it; let him call them retarded while he ensures that people like Ben Nelson get their sweetheart deals *and* are rewarded with money from the DNC for sabotaging the process.
8. Proudly claim in public that you got 95 percent of what you wanted with the watered-down senate plan that may not even be able to pass because the party you so ineptly lead somehow managed to lose Ted Kennedy's bullet-proof seat in MA to a tea-bagging nude model with a pick-up truck. A bit like looking at your ex-wife's restraining order and commenting how this is exactly the kind of relationship you want, with openness and frank expression of opinions...
9. Fail to realize or acknowledge that you've completely blown it; pretend that going back to Square One and renegotiating what's left with the Republicans is really like asking the burglar if he'd like the PIN code to your bank card as well.

I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be excited about the prospects of another round of this. When he's done, I assume Obama will have finagled a system under which Aetna has direct access to my bank acocunt, while in return my kids will be allowed a single emergency room visit, provided they bring their own supplies... The current system is looking better and better -- as with all good things involving the Democrats these days, we're really better served if they don't even try.

For some reason, the myth persists: NPR is nothing but a bunch of tree-hugging union activists, hell-bent on forcing their socialist ways on the world using tax-payer dollars. Millions of gullible lefties continue to support NPR's fund drives in a presumed conviction that it somehow balances out Fox News and helps to ensure an "alternate" viewpoint.

And yet, all they seem to get for their hard-earned dollars is brilliant bullshit like Cokie Roberts claiming that Hawaii is a suspiciously exotic place for Barack Obama to go on vacation, endless corporate-friendly soft-porn and the occasional mainstream Democrat, who is then immediately rebutted by at least a dozen invited and unchallenged Republicans.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I was deeply involved with an effort to get Vermont Public Radio to add Democracy Now! to its schedule. In spite of overwhelming popular support for the idea, we were roundly dismissed and ridiculed by VPRs board -- DN! was just too far out there, too weird, too challenging to their comfortable little cocoon of self-righteous mainstream blather. Mind you, this was at a time when NPR was busy cheerleading for the pending invasion, bending over backwards in order not to challenge the conventional wisdom as presented by the Bush Administration, actively avoiding anything resembling investigative journalism, so perhaps it wasn't too surprising that they were reluctant to add a little truthiness to their plateful of hyper-patriotic cheerleading coated with the regurgitations of pseudo-intellectuals like Thomas Friedman to make it seem like in-depth coverage.

But evidently NPR is still so busy proving to a world that really, honestly doesn't give a shit that it isn't as liberal as the wingnuts think, while still trying to convince the liberals that it represents some sort of sensible, sane alternative to Fox and Clear Channel.

Alas, whenever they run into anything more controversial than, say, the weather, NPRs crack squad of highly paid pundits and reporters seem to step in it with gusto. Viz. the latest gem: the passing of Howard Zinn. Now, given that he was a historian with the courage to take a different look on things, always thinking outside the box, going the extra mile to see things from more than one side, true to his convictions, never shy to speak his mind, it is perhaps not so hard to understand why the morons at NPR would have no clue how to deal with his death. But their treatment of him was classic NPR: "hey, I know: why don't we get David Horowitz, renowned right-wing bullshit artist who is wrong about things more often than even William Kristol, to spend a few minutes of our air time slandering the memory of a man whose boots he's not worthy to kiss? That'd make for some awesome radio."

And so, in closing: I'm still not going to support my local "public" radio station -- because it doesn't offer me anything I couldn't get for free simply by banging my head against a wall and slashing my wrists with sharp objects.

Great; I'm *so* glad our secular leadership feels it's necessary to party hard with this particulalry virulent crowd of Bible-wielding mercenary hypocrites. How very civil of the preznit to stand up at their party and gently wag a finger at his hosts for indirectly backing a bill in Uganda that would make homosexuality punishable by death.

How about you reconsider their invitation alltogether next time?I mean, I don't assume you're having brunch with the KKK next weekend in order to take the opportunity to caution them that some people might disagree with their use of cross burnings to express their dissatisfaction with race relations?

Lucas decided early in the season that he was done with cross country skiing, which for a couple of years has been his big thing -- he's really good at it, it's something we all enjoy to do as a family, and we just plain figured it was going to be something that was part of his life. But, no. Done. Dee Oh En Eee. Done. Slapped up an edict on his wall, Martin Luther style, declaring that he was fed up, it was boring not fun not his thing no way no more. Problem was, he'd committed to this earlier on, we'd paid the program fees and we didn't just feel he could bail -- particularly when it transpired that his real reason for bagging skiing was really so he could spend more time being one with the couch and hanging out with his buddies. While that's all well and good now and then it can't replace a bit of physical activity. We're still trying to get used to this change -- Lucas used to be Mr. exceptionally active, every sport under the sun, on the move all the time -- for him to want to just veg is quite novel.

Anyway, we managed to convince him to at least to go ski practice on a regular basis and just bag the races on the weekends. That, however, didn't last long, and soon he had it his way: no practices, no skiing at all. Now what? The other night, Mom decided she'd had it with this, and got back on the nag wagon. Normally I would have joined her, but I've drunk the cool-aid, and we're in button mode right now, so I asked her flat out: "which of your buttons does it push when he decides not to go to practice?" And as if I'd turned on the spigot she let loose with a heartfelt, "I resent that he's not taking advantage of the opportunities he's given; I never had any encouragement to do sports as a kid, my parents didn't care if I watched TV all day and I just think it's wrong for him to do this..." Wow. She realized what was happening, and we enthusiastically moved on down the road. "So, what do you think it says about his parents when he just bags sports like that" and "can you come up with a narrative where it isn't the end of the world if he decides not to go to practice?" It was rather remarkable -- he's still a schmuck for going back on his word, and it's still not okay for him to trade in an active life for one-on-one time with his Playstation, but. We made huge progress right there and then in our attitude towards this whole situation, and I for one could suddenly find it a lot easier to face him without instantly having that creeping, "oh, yeah, you're that miserable kid that I can't figure out and can't really trust and that I sort of resent for making what I consider a bad choice."