GOP felt left out of Obama inaugural

'08/12 Election, Grand Old Paedophilia Party, US politics
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The crybaby party whinges about not getting enough respect from the president they despise:

So, let me get this straight. Republicans spent Obama’s first term on a scorched-earth campaign, hoping to destroy his presidency and nearly everything he proposed. GOP leaders met privately exactly four years ago yesterday to plot their comeback by obstructing the president wherever possible, and refusing to compromise with Obama on literally anything, even when he embraced Republican ideas — and then they executed that plot without hesitation or shame.

After Obama received another endorsement from the American electorate, members of the shrinking Senate minority heard the president offer a robust defense of his governing vision, and their first reaction is … it lacked “outreach” to the other side?

Seriously?

What Blair, Brown, Clegg and Cameron have wrought

Poverty, UK politics
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Teenagers with no prospects, no money, no job, education or place to go to other than the night buses, but they’re the lucky ones:

Official statistics on bussing don’t seem to exist, despite a lot of research. However, I did speak to two children’s charities that were very aware of the extreme measures exiled teenagers were taking to stay off the street, particularly at night. “There are so many teenagers in peril,” said one charity worker, “that the ones who have an Oyster card, a jacket, even a place to go for a few hours in the day to change or sleep won’t be seen as a priority by the government, social workers or indeed charities.”

That’s the Britain that New Labour, the LibDems and Tories have build.

Can’t limit the right of flabby middle aged men to play Rambo

Civil liberties, US politics
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Sadly, No is frustrated about the ongoing failure to curb gun violence:

And on that note, what the fuck is up with that goddamn impulse. Every fucking time there’s one of these shootings, we inevitably circle around to only talking about how to make life more miserable, regulated, and abusive for the victims. How there need to be armed security guards, locked and barred doors, mandatory metal detectors, armed teachers, 12-year-olds hiding in sniper nests… All the things that don’t actually make the kids safer, but do disproportionately get used to punish non-conformity.

All because it is simply inconceivable that we could in any slight, minor, infinitesimal way inconvenience the people who ACTUALLY COMMIT THESE MURDERS.

You can’t negotiate with mad men

US politics, Wingnuts
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David Atkins articulates Obama’s core dilemma:

But no one should delude themselves into believing that if he were, the Republicans would be intimidated and stand down. Quite the contrary. We are in uncharted waters, an era unprecedented since the Civil War in which one side is willing to let the country burn down in order to achieve its goals. Californians already know this well, having been forced into perpetual fiscal crises by a bare 1/3 Republican remnant in each chamber. Even as Republicans continued to slowly lose ground and seats, the vast majority of the caucus remained entrenched, fearing only opposition from the right. They were more than happy to let the Democratic-controlled state slip into chaos in order to get their way. California Democrats were left in the ugly position of making a series of Sophie’s Choices, determining only which children to shoot to appease the tiny Republican minority. In an era of perpetual and consequence-free hostage taking, the only calculation that matters is which hostages to save and which ones to shoot.

Mental health is a political issue

Health, Life under Capitalism
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Mark Fisher argues that mental health cannot be considered in isolation from our society as a whole and how the economic depression helps cause and worsen mental depression:

It would be facile to argue that every single case of depression can be attributed to economic or political causes; but it is equally facile to maintain – as the dominant approaches to depression do – that the roots of all depression must always lie either in individual brain chemistry or in early childhood experiences. Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn’t address the social causation of mental illness either.

The radical therapist David Smail argues that Margaret Thatcher’s view that there’s no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, finds “an unacknowledged echo in almost all approaches to therapy”. Therapies such as cognitive behaviour therapy combine a focus on early life with the self-help doctrine that individuals can become masters of their own destiny. The idea is “with the expert help of your therapist or counsellor, you can change the world you are in the last analysis responsible for, so that it no longer cause you distress” – Smail calls this view “magical voluntarism”.