“

We now know how it works: a minority group wins just enough votes to have sufficient Congressional representation to twist, postpone, water-down or even stop governmental action. These minority groups may not have the power to impose their views but have just enough power to veto the agenda of the majority.

These disrupters have no interest in helping govern the nation; their goal is to undermine or altogether block the initiatives of their political rivals and ensure their failure. And they justify the “collateral damage” of their belligerence in terms of noble-sounding national causes—from curbing intrusive government to stopping its wasteful ways, and from protecting the middle class to battling corruption. Raising the flag of the common good, divisive leaders deftly obscure the fact that they and their close allies are the primary beneficiaries of their obstructionism.

”

– http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/don-t-feel-too-bad-americans-gridlock-is-global/280790/

The biggest difference between the suicide caucus and the survival caucus is geography. While the suicide caucus is dominated by the South, and especially members from Appalachia and states like Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia, as well as Texas, the survival-caucus draws members more equally from the South (thirty per cent), the Midwest (twenty-seven per cent), the West (twenty-two per cent), and the Northeast (twenty-one per cent). There are no Texans, Tennesseans, South Carolinians, or Georgians in the survival caucus. In fact, the clearest divide between the two caucuses is also the oldest divide in American politics: North-South.

“

The common core belief, then and now, is actually descended from “Huck Finn” ’s unforgettable Pappy and his views on the “guv’mint”: the federal government exists to take money from hard-working white people and give it to lazy black people, and the President is helping to make this happen. This conviction, then and now, may not fairly be called racist in the sense that it isn’t just (or always) an expression of personal bigotry; rather, it is more like a resentment at an imagined ethnic spoils system gone wrong. (Hatred is less the key than a throbbing sense of unfairness.) Presumably, it makes space for a handful of hard-working black and brown people who are being victimized, too. (If there is much doubt that there is a racial component, the disparate reactions to Obama’s mythical foreign birth in Kenya and Ted Cruz’s actual one in Canada should put it to rest.) A focus group on the current state of the G.O.P., conducted by Democracy Corps, an organization put together by James Carville and Stanley Greenberg, was on the whole quite sympathetic to Tea Party and to evangelical feelings of alienation from incomprehensible social change, making it plain that the core grievance is still the over-riding feeling that “their party is losing to a Democratic Party of big government whose goal is to expand programs that mainly benefit minorities.”

So we don’t have to look any further than our own past to find exact cognates for today’s movement to the right. The fever won’t break, because it’s always this high. The best hope one can hope for is that, somehow, the adjustments to reality get made, even in the face of the ideology. Reality has a way of doing that to us all.

”

– http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/10/the-john-birchers-tea-party.html

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So you have this neighbor who has been making your life hell. First he tied you up with a spurious lawsuit; you’re both suffering from huge legal bills. Then he threatened bodily harm to your family. Now, however, he says he’s willing to compromise: He’ll call off the lawsuit, which is to his advantage as well as yours. But in return you must give him your car. Oh, and he’ll stop threatening your family — but only for a week, after which the threats will resume.

Not much of an offer, is it? But here’s the kicker: Your neighbor’s relatives, who have been egging him on, are furious that he didn’t also demand that you kill your dog.

And now you understand the current state of budget negotiations.

”

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Legalisation may, as I noted last week, result in more adults using marijuana, but the negative consequences of any increase in use are likely to be modest given its relative safety compared with most other psychoactive plants and substances. Legal regulation offers the promise of safer use, with consumers able to purchase their marijuana from licensed outlets and to know the type and potency of their purchases—and to have peace of mind that such purchases will be free from contamination. Legalisation will also accelerate the transition from smoking marijuana in joints and pipes to consuming it in edible and vaporised forms, with significant health benefits for heavy consumers.

Hundreds of millions of people worldwide use marijuana not just “for fun” but because they find it useful for many of the same reasons that people drink alcohol or take pharmaceutical drugs. It’s akin to the beer, glass of wine, or cocktail at the end of the work day, or the prescribed drug to alleviate depression or anxiety, or the sleeping pill, or the aid to sexual function and pleasure. A decade ago, a subsidiary of The Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal, speculated whether marijuana might soon emerge as the “aspirin of the 21st century”, providing a wide array of medical benefits at low cost to diverse populations. That prediction appears ever more prescient as scientists employed by both universities and pharmaceutical companies explore marijuana’s potential.

”

– http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/1020#pro_statement_anchor

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Hospitals don’t have poverty wards; if a patient comes in the door in bad shape, they don’t do a wallet biopsy before deciding what care that person should receive—everyone at a hospital receives the same quality. But if a community has a higher number of uninsured, that means the latest and greatest technology and treatments will drive up the amounts of unreimbursed care. In essence, hospitals that provide the best, most modern, and most expensive treatments in an area with lots of uninsured will be forced to pass unsustainable amounts of cost to their prices. Insurance companies won’t pay it, local governments won’t finance it, and the hospitals will go out of business.

The only option then? Don’t provide the top-quality care to anyone—insured or not. That keeps the cost of uncompensated care down and lets the hospital stay in business.

”

– http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/10/truth-obamacare-already-insured

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Some Americans think that this crisis reflects typical partisan squabbling. No. Democrats and Republicans have always disagreed, sometimes ferociously, about what economic policy is best, but, in the past, it was not normal for either to sabotage the economy as a negotiating tactic.

In a household, husbands and wives disagree passionately about high-stakes issues like how to raise children. But normal people do not announce that if their spouse does not give in, they will break all the windows in the house.

”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/governing-by-blackmail.html?ref=todayspaper