FUCK the "art of the possible" -- It's time to DEMAND the IMPOSSIBLE [View All]

[nashville_brook]

It's exactly the "sensible-ness" of this administration that is fucking this country beyond repair. When the other side consists of nothing but raving lunatics, bringing your most magically sensible game is suicide.

RIGHT NOW folks, European countries that instituted AUSTERITY are expecting contracting economies. CONTRACTING economies. Not slower growth. Contraction. We needed a solid Keynesian strategy out of this economic quagmire back during the anemic "stimulus" debates. Instead we got this 'ART OF THE POSSIBLE" bullshit that was kneecapped by pragmatic capitulations to delicate GOP sensibilities.

So, we're fucked. They are drowning our country in the bathtub, and the "sensible" response we're getting from our "leadership" is "can we please make the water a little warmer."

Since when did we start buying into this "art of the possible" nonsense, anyway?

Did Martin Luther King Jr tailor his actions as to "what was possible"? Did Jack or Robert Kennedy? Did ANYONE who ever did anything worth fucking talking about? Fuck no. You set out to do what's impossible. You set your sights on that or else nothing ever changes.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/demanding_the_impossible_20110411/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Truthdig+Truthdig%3A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines


Demanding the Impossible
By Eugene Robinson

Far-right Republicans are winning the budget wars because they understand something that nobody else in Washington seems to grasp: The old truism about politics being the art of the possible is no longer true. There’s no question who won last week’s showdown. The outcome—nearly $40 billion in painful cuts—goes well beyond the GOP’s initial demands. That Democrats were able to save a few pet programs is something, but not much. You really don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

(snip)

The far-right ideologues in the House seek to starve the federal government to the point where it can no longer fulfill its constitutional duty to promote the general welfare. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, but that’s what this struggle comes down to. Their inspired tactic—which has worked so well that they would be crazy to abandon it—has been to take a wildly extreme position and stick to it with the obstinacy of a mule. When Democrats offer to negotiate, Republicans increase their demands. The result is that they shift the battlefield and end up fighting on terrain so friendly that they literally can’t lose.

So an initial GOP call for $32 billion in cuts was raised to $61 billion—a ridiculously impossible number. Of course they didn’t get it—but they got almost two-thirds of the way there. Democrats, including President Obama, continue to play by the old art-of-the-possible rules. Bless their hearts. They caucus, they cogitate, they ruminate, they make reasonable concessions and ultimately come up with a result that everyone, surely, should be able to live with. Then they get hit with the next sucker punch.

(snip)

Politically, Obama gets to be seen as sensible, pragmatic, and more interested in solutions than political gamesmanship. But step back and look at the bigger picture. Why are we even talking about spending cuts, rather than increases, when the economy is still struggling to climb out of one of history’s worst recessions? If rising medical costs are the real long-term problem, Obama’s reform law took the first steps toward a solution. Why aren’t Democrats saying the obvious: We need to go farther down that road—at least to a government health plan—rather than reverse direction.