September 14th, 2010 / 3:36 pm
Roundup
Reynard Seifert
Roundup
I Like What The Hell Is Going On Over Here
Mark Newgarden (Click through for to make bigger)
Jean-Luc Godard just might accept//that fucking Oscar//after all.
You need to go outside, says Lapham’s — they says a lot of good things to say.
Reading back issues of the NY Times, found this great little Glenn gem.
Who doesn’t believe in intellectual property? Jean-Luc Godard.
Tags: ?//?, lapham's quarterly, mostly jean-luc godard, NYT, oscar wild?
Good catch on the Criterion podcast! I just had to re-download the Godard oeuvre after accidentally trashing my DVDs. Good to know the G-man won’t mind.
I love drama.
Good catch on the Criterion podcast! I just had to re-download the Godard oeuvre after accidentally trashing my DVDs. Good to know the G-man won’t mind.
I love drama.
Re: the Glenn Beck article, “Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.” — IIRC, Martin Luther King was a socialist.
is there a whole book of these
it’s from an anthology called we all die alone, haven’t read it yet
On the Glenn Beck article: all the more reason why everyone here should compel every jaded, overly-cynical liberal they know to register to vote, then get out and do it on Nov. 2 — and NOT cast a protest vote. Otherwise we’re more than likely to see a number of anti-masturbation, anti-civil-rights, anti-Social-Security, pro-2nd-amendment-remedy, pro-concentration-camp-for-the poor teabagging loonies entering Congress.
Re: the Glenn Beck article, “Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.” — IIRC, Martin Luther King was a socialist.
(stand back, Owen… a rant is coming!)
Ah, the vote. The shell game of North American Democracy, the technique of which has been refined a little bit more with each pushback-response to every populist advance of the past 150 years. Not to mention the fundamental absurdity of the fact that you get to “choose” the President (well, often), while They get to choose the Presidential candidates! Is that not brilliant? Think about it for a few seconds. What’s the point of “democracy” if you don’t get to choose the *candidates*? (ie, imagine being granted the wonderful opportunity of picking your very own husband/wife from a long-list of half-a-dozen candidates… provided by your High School Guidance counselor?)
As the Bush1-protege who expunged the lingering vestiges of the New Deal put it: “I did not have sex with that electorate!” No, the electorate sucked his doomcock and reverted to a state of total Serfdom as a result. And this redneck-former-governor-of-Redneckville is the flagship avatar of the Liberal Hoax…!
But first, some history before we contemplate the fact that Billy Clinton’s policies, “greatly strengthened the anti-New Deal, giving the right-wing dominated Republican Party control of Congress.”
Q: What was that pernicious New Deal thingy which the Reagan-Bush-Clinton hydra emancipated us from?
A: “The New Deal government moved forward in 1935 to advance a democratic people’s program in response to enormous pressure from the working class. The most ambitious public employment program for the unemployed was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Roosevelt administration created it in response to demands from unemployed councils, social worker groups, and community-based groups who called for “work relief.”
“Additionally, the New Deal government enacted national anti-poverty legislation to provide public assistance for working families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). With the growing New Deal coalition behind him, Roosevelt also established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) for the mostly rural, poor one-third of the nation who lacked access to electricity because private power companies saw little profitability in providing electricity to those areas.
“The National Labor Relations Act, establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), created a mechanism to provide a democratic process enabling workers to establish unions. The NLRB was also given authority to prevent employers from using criminal or threatening tactics against workers to block union organizing and to compel bosses to bargain collectively with workers. Social Security and unemployment insurance legislation, the latter particularly championed by a nationwide network of Unemployed Councils, often organized by Communists were enacted.
“Another major achievement of the New Deal coalition on the labor front was the formation of a new way of organizing workers. In 1935, the Committee (later Congress) of Industrial Unions (CIO) was formed by industrial unionists to organize the mass production industries and millions of unorganized semiskilled and unskilled workers. Communist Party USA activists, who for years had been engaged in campaigns to build inclusive industrial unions, played a leading role in this development.”
And no, I’m not a “Communist”. Fuck “Communism”: any economic system *which isn’t controlled by Sociopaths* will work, including Capitalism.
But what are your taxes for? Certainly not infrastructure (check out all those collapsing bridges and Range Rover-swallowing potholes). Most of your taxes go to bomb-making and bomb-housing and bomb-delivery-systems. Some of those taxes used to go towards making sure you and your neighbors earned a decent wage and could send your kids (if you’re a breeder) to decent schools while making payments on a decent little one-family dwelling…
Clinton was put in place to put a stop to the last little bits of *that* bullshit. And voila: it worked: the average American now lives in a situation resembling a smoking bomb crater. And the current stylistically-Liberal POTUS (or CPOTUS as I call him) has expanded the regime’s ability to spy on, imprison or assassinate *potential* “threats” to the regime to a degree that Bush2 wouldn’t have dared to.
Dude. It’s a con.
Vote for Pamela Anderson. Or try to find a shadowy, non-Sociopathic, Left-leaning billionaire who’ll fund an anti-Tea Party and put a New New New New Deal in place. (Anyone have David Bowie’s phone number…?)
is there a whole book of these
it’s from an anthology called we all die alone, haven’t read it yet
On the Glenn Beck article: all the more reason why everyone here should compel every jaded, overly-cynical liberal they know to register to vote, then get out and do it on Nov. 2 — and NOT cast a protest vote. Otherwise we’re more than likely to see a number of anti-masturbation, anti-civil-rights, anti-Social-Security, pro-2nd-amendment-remedy, pro-concentration-camp-for-the poor teabagging loonies entering Congress.
(stand back, Owen… a rant is coming!)
Ah, the vote. The shell game of North American Democracy, the technique of which has been refined a little bit more with each pushback-response to every populist advance of the past 150 years. Not to mention the fundamental absurdity of the fact that you get to “choose” the President (well, often), while They get to choose the Presidential candidates! Is that not brilliant? Think about it for a few seconds. What’s the point of “democracy” if you don’t get to choose the *candidates*? (ie, imagine being granted the wonderful opportunity of picking your very own husband/wife from a long-list of half-a-dozen candidates… provided by your High School Guidance counselor?)
As the Bush1-protege who expunged the lingering vestiges of the New Deal put it: “I did not have sex with that electorate!” No, the electorate sucked his doomcock and reverted to a state of total Serfdom as a result. And this redneck-former-governor-of-Redneckville is the flagship avatar of the Liberal Hoax…!
But first, some history before we contemplate the fact that Billy Clinton’s policies, “greatly strengthened the anti-New Deal, giving the right-wing dominated Republican Party control of Congress.”
Q: What was that pernicious New Deal thingy which the Reagan-Bush-Clinton hydra emancipated us from?
A: “The New Deal government moved forward in 1935 to advance a democratic people’s program in response to enormous pressure from the working class. The most ambitious public employment program for the unemployed was the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The Roosevelt administration created it in response to demands from unemployed councils, social worker groups, and community-based groups who called for “work relief.”
“Additionally, the New Deal government enacted national anti-poverty legislation to provide public assistance for working families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). With the growing New Deal coalition behind him, Roosevelt also established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) for the mostly rural, poor one-third of the nation who lacked access to electricity because private power companies saw little profitability in providing electricity to those areas.
“The National Labor Relations Act, establishing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), created a mechanism to provide a democratic process enabling workers to establish unions. The NLRB was also given authority to prevent employers from using criminal or threatening tactics against workers to block union organizing and to compel bosses to bargain collectively with workers. Social Security and unemployment insurance legislation, the latter particularly championed by a nationwide network of Unemployed Councils, often organized by Communists were enacted.
“Another major achievement of the New Deal coalition on the labor front was the formation of a new way of organizing workers. In 1935, the Committee (later Congress) of Industrial Unions (CIO) was formed by industrial unionists to organize the mass production industries and millions of unorganized semiskilled and unskilled workers. Communist Party USA activists, who for years had been engaged in campaigns to build inclusive industrial unions, played a leading role in this development.”
And no, I’m not a “Communist”. Fuck “Communism”: any economic system *which isn’t controlled by Sociopaths* will work, including Capitalism.
But what are your taxes for? Certainly not infrastructure (check out all those collapsing bridges and Range Rover-swallowing potholes). Most of your taxes go to bomb-making and bomb-housing and bomb-delivery-systems. Some of those taxes used to go towards making sure you and your neighbors earned a decent wage and could send your kids (if you’re a breeder) to decent schools while making payments on a decent little one-family dwelling…
Clinton was put in place to put a stop to the last little bits of *that* bullshit. And voila: it worked: the average American now lives in a situation resembling a smoking bomb crater. And the current stylistically-Liberal POTUS (or CPOTUS as I call him) has expanded the regime’s ability to spy on, imprison or assassinate *potential* “threats” to the regime to a degree that Bush2 wouldn’t have dared to.
Dude. It’s a con.
Vote for Pamela Anderson. Or try to find a shadowy, non-Sociopathic, Left-leaning billionaire who’ll fund an anti-Tea Party and put a New New New New Deal in place. (Anyone have David Bowie’s phone number…?)
“What’s the point of “democracy” if you don’t get to choose the *candidates*?”
What’s the point of democracy if you don’t get to choose, frame, and vote on the issues yourself? Representative democracies are nothing but democracy for the rich.
Ever truer
“What’s the point of “democracy” if you don’t get to choose the *candidates*?”
What’s the point of democracy if you don’t get to choose, frame, and vote on the issues yourself? Representative democracies are nothing but democracy for the rich.
Ever truer
This isn’t a Democracy, it’s a Plutocratic Republic. Unfortunately: a Democracy is non-sustainable on a broad scale.
But while you moan about not having a large enough role: others are voting people into office to screw you and your neighbors up your asses.
Steve, all the crazy conservatives who normally don’t vote are voting, this year. Liberals aren’t. You know how this ends.
Unless you want the teabaggers taking over the GOP: the answer is NOT to vote Protest.
It’s time to swallow your pride and get thee to a voting booth.
Well, instead of “taking over the GOP” I meant “taking over the country”. Granted, they’re doing both, but it’s the country I’m concerned about, not the GOP.
Owen: remember back at the turn of the century when people said that if Bush wins, they’re leaving the country? I was living in So Cal at the time (back in the US after having been abroad for 5 years); I’m the only one I knew who made good on the threat (of course, that was before it dawned on me that Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama is a seamless continuum).
I’m a permanent over here. I’ll take my chances with Nazi 1.0
You got anything to back up that claim that democracy is non-sustainable on a broad scale?
I can guarantee you that Democrats are just as apt to screw myself and my neighbors “up our asses.” They just look prettier while they’re doing it and use the pretty words they picked up at whatever Ivy League school they attended to make it sound more pleasant, too.
Steven, be sure to let us know how Merkel and her “austerity” work out.
Hank: I don’t feel like any more sophomoric, low-content battles today. You want to discuss something, I’m open to it. But you and I (along with everyone with a clue) know what’s goofy-yet-poignant about your reflex jab so it’s not even fun for me to bother going there. Or do you live in Switzerland?
[counter-rant alert]
Steven, I’m with Olberwen on this.
Your memory of ‘the Clinton years’ doesn’t gibe with mine. For the two years after Nov. 92, Clinton had every Republican in America Obsessed with Bill Clinton’s Penis – you remember the eventual ‘Constitutional’ [be-afraid quotes] implications of that Obsession.
But his loudest enemies, his most theatrically hysterical detractors, for those two years were lefties holding him to idiotically Leninistic standards of purity: wave your magic stick and bring “democracy” to Haiti or you’re not really a Democrat! wave your magic stick and let gays serve openly in the military or you’re not really a Democrat!
Of course after the ’94 Contract on America Clinton ‘let Dickie Morris in’ – he’s a pol; if the left won’t fight fiscal ‘conservatism’ instead of fighting him, he’ll find strategies and allies so that he can stay in office. Imagine if FDR had been ordered to get America out of the Depression by Nov. ’34 or else: he never would have “moved forward in 1935” with the New Deal.
Likewise with Obama: he has no magic stick. With Baucus, Lincoln, Nelson, the Blue-anus Dogs in the House, and so on, single-payer (for example) was never on the table. Had he been intractable on that one issue, that Democrats could hold one (or both) houses against the Teabaggers wouldn’t even be bruited as a possibility.
I understand the attractiveness of hypercynicism: predicting the most apocalyptic doom succeeds no matter what happens, because when anything goes south: ‘see!’; and when things are not an unmixed disaster, the extreme-disaster prediction is never held against the predictor.
But really, if you can’t tell the ‘difference’ [ok, be-less-afraid quotes] between Obama’s administration and the Rove administration (when Hanoi George was sitting in the chair and wearing the hat), then I think you’re neglecting how thorough-going the Executive branch is in the American economy. You mention “infrastructure” and imply that Obama is a military-industrial-complex shill. A fiscalcon administration means the drinking water is less potable, air-traffic controllers have fewer hours of sleep, spinach has more E. coli and eggs (even) more salmonella, and on and on. Hydrological engineers are less listened-to, atmospheric scientists are silenced, fired, and smeared at NASA, dead American soldiers are brought to Dover secretly (so Republicans can win elections), etc. etc.
By the rhetoric of assimilating Clinton and, especially, Obama into the Reagan Legacy, you implicitly compare Democrats to perfectly rational, uncorrupted, decent governors, and find liberals to be as catastrophically misadministrative as fiscalcons and Democratic (or, in the vanishingly rare cases when it’s not noseless-face spiteful, Green/indie) voters to be doubly stooges (for believing in “democracy” and for believing in the difference between progressive and fiscalcon officers and policies). This dismissal only works when one simply ignores the – yes, incremental and granular – difference between a progressive bureaucrat and a fiscalcon bureaucrat with responsibility for innumerable everyday checks on the real BIG government of private accumulation.
To me, your exaggerated standard of righteousness (that Clinton and, especially, Obama fail to meet) plays right into the hands of the Koch brothers, Freedom Works, the Rove administration Legacy Misunderburnishers – all of whom are working as hard as they can to limpet an immobilizing carapace of compromise onto Obama, and succeeding partly because too many progressives are willing to agree that Obama is Just Another Fiscalcon.
Steven, your ‘independence’ is essential to The Conspiracy!
Oh, cross-posted.
Ok, how about listening to a sophomoric, low-content rant?
This isn’t a Democracy, it’s a Plutocratic Republic. Unfortunately: a Democracy is non-sustainable on a broad scale.
But while you moan about not having a large enough role: others are voting people into office to screw you and your neighbors up your asses.
Steve, all the crazy conservatives who normally don’t vote are voting, this year. Liberals aren’t. You know how this ends.
Unless you want the teabaggers taking over the GOP: the answer is NOT to vote Protest.
It’s time to swallow your pride and get thee to a voting booth.
Well, instead of “taking over the GOP” I meant “taking over the country”. Granted, they’re doing both, but it’s the country I’m concerned about, not the GOP.
Owen: remember back at the turn of the century when people said that if Bush wins, they’re leaving the country? I was living in So Cal at the time (back in the US after having been abroad for 5 years); I’m the only one I knew who made good on the threat (of course, that was before it dawned on me that Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama is a seamless continuum).
I’m a permanent over here. I’ll take my chances with Nazi 1.0
You got anything to back up that claim that democracy is non-sustainable on a broad scale?
I can guarantee you that Democrats are just as apt to screw myself and my neighbors “up our asses.” They just look prettier while they’re doing it and use the pretty words they picked up at whatever Ivy League school they attended to make it sound more pleasant, too.
Steven, be sure to let us know how Merkel and her “austerity” work out.
Hank: I don’t feel like any more sophomoric, low-content battles today. You want to discuss something, I’m open to it. But you and I (along with everyone with a clue) know what’s goofy-yet-poignant about your reflex jab so it’s not even fun for me to bother going there. Or do you live in Switzerland?
[counter-rant alert]
Steven, I’m with Olberwen on this.
Your memory of ‘the Clinton years’ doesn’t gibe with mine. For the two years after Nov. 92, Clinton had every Republican in America Obsessed with Bill Clinton’s Penis – you remember the eventual ‘Constitutional’ [be-afraid quotes] implications of that Obsession.
But his loudest enemies, his most theatrically hysterical detractors, for those two years were lefties holding him to idiotically Leninistic standards of purity: wave your magic stick and bring “democracy” to Haiti or you’re not really a Democrat! wave your magic stick and let gays serve openly in the military or you’re not really a Democrat!
Of course after the ’94 Contract on America Clinton ‘let Dickie Morris in’ – he’s a pol; if the left won’t fight fiscal ‘conservatism’ instead of fighting him, he’ll find strategies and allies so that he can stay in office. Imagine if FDR had been ordered to get America out of the Depression by Nov. ’34 or else: he never would have “moved forward in 1935” with the New Deal.
Likewise with Obama: he has no magic stick. With Baucus, Lincoln, Nelson, the Blue-anus Dogs in the House, and so on, single-payer (for example) was never on the table. Had he been intractable on that one issue, that Democrats could hold one (or both) houses against the Teabaggers wouldn’t even be bruited as a possibility.
I understand the attractiveness of hypercynicism: predicting the most apocalyptic doom succeeds no matter what happens, because when anything goes south: ‘see!’; and when things are not an unmixed disaster, the extreme-disaster prediction is never held against the predictor.
But really, if you can’t tell the ‘difference’ [ok, be-less-afraid quotes] between Obama’s administration and the Rove administration (when Hanoi George was sitting in the chair and wearing the hat), then I think you’re neglecting how thorough-going the Executive branch is in the American economy. You mention “infrastructure” and imply that Obama is a military-industrial-complex shill. A fiscalcon administration means the drinking water is less potable, air-traffic controllers have fewer hours of sleep, spinach has more E. coli and eggs (even) more salmonella, and on and on. Hydrological engineers are less listened-to, atmospheric scientists are silenced, fired, and smeared at NASA, dead American soldiers are brought to Dover secretly (so Republicans can win elections), etc. etc.
By the rhetoric of assimilating Clinton and, especially, Obama into the Reagan Legacy, you implicitly compare Democrats to perfectly rational, uncorrupted, decent governors, and find liberals to be as catastrophically misadministrative as fiscalcons and Democratic (or, in the vanishingly rare cases when it’s not noseless-face spiteful, Green/indie) voters to be doubly stooges (for believing in “democracy” and for believing in the difference between progressive and fiscalcon officers and policies). This dismissal only works when one simply ignores the – yes, incremental and granular – difference between a progressive bureaucrat and a fiscalcon bureaucrat with responsibility for innumerable everyday checks on the real BIG government of private accumulation.
To me, your exaggerated standard of righteousness (that Clinton and, especially, Obama fail to meet) plays right into the hands of the Koch brothers, Freedom Works, the Rove administration Legacy Misunderburnishers – all of whom are working as hard as they can to limpet an immobilizing carapace of compromise onto Obama, and succeeding partly because too many progressives are willing to agree that Obama is Just Another Fiscalcon.
Steven, your ‘independence’ is essential to The Conspiracy!
Oh, cross-posted.
Ok, how about listening to a sophomoric, low-content rant?
All those people who said they’d leave the country if Bush was elected were fools. Every one of them who moved to Canada was a fool. (And how many of them voted?) If the Party of Cruelty is poised to take over your country: you stand and fight. You don’t abandon it to the cruel, crazy people.
Hank, just imagine 300,000,000 people in a really, really big room trying to pass legislation. That’s Democracy on a broad scale.
As for your criticism of Democrats: you obviously haven’t been paying attention. The problems arise when the complications of politics come into play. Democrats, like everyone else, have to work within the restraints of the political situation(s) they find themselves in.
Also, for those who are upset about not having your choice of candidate, there’re two options:
1. Vote in the Primaries. If your state has a closed Primary: join your party of choice (and make sure it’s one of two: unless you live in San Fran: the Green Party will never, ever win. (They didn’t even do it in San Fran, last mayoral race))
2. Run for office yourself.
Once you get into office — if you do — you’ll get a reality check, which is that the only ways to get anything done are 1. bullying, 2. compromising, 3. communicating to the People to try to get them to turn against your opponents. All three are quite tricky. Bullying makes enemies, which means complicated conspiracies to slander, stonewall, and get rid of you and your party. Compromising depresses your base (though it’s generally considered the best and easiest way to get anything accomplished). Communicating usually doesn’t work. (For example: try telling the American People you’re going to regulate Wall Street, and then watch the stocks plummet . . . or, for that matter, that you’re going to regulate the big businesses they work for.)
Too many liberals are too simplistic in their thinking. Politics is complicated. Progress is made in steps. But if Democrats don’t have the support of liberals: you’re going to continue to have Republicans running the show, and all they care about is money. They want to get rid of Social Security (FDR), Medicare and Medicaid (LBJ), and civil rights legislation (LBJ), as well as the minimum wage (forget who established it, but when it gets raised it’s always by Democrats).
Didn’t think I’d be saying this, but: thanks, deadguy. (And, actually, Olberwen is somewhat amusing, in this context. I’ll give you credit for that one.)
…Though I prefer Rachel Maddow over Olbermann, myself.
Anyone remember when Bush Corrective’s administration wanted to “redefine” nuclear waste? Anyone?
Anyone remember when they lowered the standards of what constituted ‘safely potable’ drinking water?
Anyone remember the changes they made to bancruptcy legislation? Allow me to remind you: Neither you nor I can file for bankruptcy protection any longer. But corporations can.
Every Democrat opposed it. But they were in the minority, and afraid to filibuster.
I’m with everyone who thinks most Democrats need a spine. But to use that as an excuse to allow the Republicans to maintain (or reestablish) power is absolutely unforgiveable.
Anyone realize that the repeal of DADT is being pushed forward this coming week? Anyone? Sure, it came through during the Clinton Administration, but it was a step. This is how political progress works.
When Bush Corrective came into office, he set out to eliminate a raft of environmental regulations put forth by . . . yes, Bill Clinton.
He also neutered FEMA, which was a rather effective organization created by Bill Clinton.
He also decided to stop monitoring domestic terrorist activity (and claimed Clinton was overly obsessed with the matter) . . . until, well, you-know-when.
I don’t like the Clinton Centrists either, I think they’re wrong-headed fools, and I think it’s time they go. Obama absolutely needs to clean house next year. But, like deadguy says: to hold the Democrats to impossibly purist standards is not just counterproductive but dangerous… not just dangerous but it’s partly the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now. People who don’t vote because the Democrats aren’t politically pure enough are as responsible for Bush Corrective as the evangelicals and Jeb Bush are.
And… if Democrats all thought like Ralph Nader, they’d never get anything done, because they’d be in the minority, always. This country wouldn’t even have a minimum wage.
Ever wonder why the Green Party can’t win a major election?
Whoops, I meant deadgod, not deadguy. Sorry: an innocent slip, not even Freudian. I didn’t mean anything by it.
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me
There’s some consolation in that.
I know where Medicare, Social Security and all that wonderful stuff came from, thanks. I know where NAFTA came from, too, as well as the Vietnam War and I know what the Carter Doctrine is. I’m aware of the fact that Barack Obama has reserved the right to have American citizens abroad assassinated. TARP was passed by a majority-Democratic Congress. Barack Obama (as well as the rest of the Democrats, and the Republicans, too) know who their boss is — Goldman Sachs and their sort. Class war is really a phrase we don’t hear often enough in America.
Re: “imagine 300,000,000 people in a really, really big room trying to pass legislation” — ’tis more a flaw in the nation-state than in democracy itself. The idea of 536 people making laws that effect 300,000,000 people is pretty absurd.
I’m afraid you guys are too far inside the belly of the beast to see much beyond onion rings and the occasional kernel of undigested corn (aka hokum).
Even if some of the positives you cite are verifiable (some of them are spun too hard to be taken seriously and some are just nonsense: http://www.1hope.org/clinton.htm), they don’t justify the incredible destructiveness of an Imperial power that even the Liberals and Lefties (like you guys?) are eerily fucking hesitant to condemn.
There are two factions of one party; pick your team. Whatever. Coke is better than Pepsi… no, Pepsi is better than Coke! In fact, both are poisons compared to mother’s milk (we’ve never seen the stuff, of course. But it’s worth thinking about…)
Q: do you think Germany in ’33 was exactly the same as it was by 1939? Of course it wasn’t. But wasn’t “1933” already deserving of *utter condemnation* from its citizens, even if some *very good* domestic policies were in place? (And guess what: they were. AH got nothing but praise from all sorts of sane people for his handling of the German economy: for every “good thing” done by Obama or Clinton, I can show you a “good thing” done, for Das Volk, under the Early Phase Notsees).
(The Germans aren’t exactly Walt Whitman *now*. But it’s the irony that the Germans did their Notsee 1.0 thing already and spent the past 60 years trying to live it down that makes the place noticeably less scary than America has been since Emperor Ronnie, internally and externally, no matter what they tell you about German skinheads, who were actually attending seminars from their So Cal brothers a while back! But we digress)
This is the shocking thing about your defense of the Democrites: you suddenly don’t give a shit about that ever-growing pile of 1,000,000+ dead Ferners, none of whom posed any possible threat to either of you?
Guys, it’s a classic pattern. But The Notsees 2.0 are lots slicker. Better movies and pop music. Lots of fun porn and good junk to eat. And wall-to-wall feel-good, mind-clouding Normative Propaganda. And check it out: Notsees 2.0 aren’t stupid enough to deport Jewish physicists or round up “enemies of the state” and kill them right there in the street (much smarter to kill them all off-screen)!
“He also neutered FEMA, which was a rather effective organization created by Bill Clinton.”
Good Gawd! You don’t know what FEMA is for, Owen…? But that’s another conversation.
Now some data to counter your data. Just for the sake of data. In three categories.
Big picture:
1. http://www.zcommunications.org/the-evil-scourge-of-terrorism-by-noam-chomsky
2. http://www.zcommunications.org/human-rights-in-the-new-millennium-by-noam-chomsky
3. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Is-Anyone-Surprised-An-by-sam-hamod-100825-828.html
Clinton:
1. http://www.counterpunch.org/bovard04202010.html
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/the-great-american-sticku_1_b_715952.html
3. http://www.counterpunch.org/blum10202006.html
operative quote on Clinton:
“Clinton’s role was decisive in turning Ronald Reagan’s obsession with an unfettered free market into law. Reagan, that fading actor recast so effectively as great propagandist for the unregulated market — “get government off our backs” was his patented rallying cry — was far more successful at deregulating smokestack industries than the financial markets. It would take a new breed of “triangulating” technocrat Democrats to really dismantle the carefully built net designed, after the last Great Depression, to restrain Wall Street from its pattern of periodic self-immolations.”
Obama:
1. http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47696,news-comment,news-politics,barack-obama-from-anti-war-law-professor-to-warmonger-in-100-days
2. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/02/09/state_secrets
operative quote on Obama:
“Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Lawsuit
“The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.
“A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.
“This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed.”
That’s all I’m going to say about it. Both sides will remain unchanged in their opinions. But propaganda shouldn’t go un-rebutted, eh…?
All those people who said they’d leave the country if Bush was elected were fools. Every one of them who moved to Canada was a fool. (And how many of them voted?) If the Party of Cruelty is poised to take over your country: you stand and fight. You don’t abandon it to the cruel, crazy people.
Hank, just imagine 300,000,000 people in a really, really big room trying to pass legislation. That’s Democracy on a broad scale.
As for your criticism of Democrats: you obviously haven’t been paying attention. The problems arise when the complications of politics come into play. Democrats, like everyone else, have to work within the restraints of the political situation(s) they find themselves in.
Also, for those who are upset about not having your choice of candidate, there’re two options:
1. Vote in the Primaries. If your state has a closed Primary: join your party of choice (and make sure it’s one of two: unless you live in San Fran: the Green Party will never, ever win. (They didn’t even do it in San Fran, last mayoral race))
2. Run for office yourself.
Once you get into office — if you do — you’ll get a reality check, which is that the only ways to get anything done are 1. bullying, 2. compromising, 3. communicating to the People to try to get them to turn against your opponents. All three are quite tricky. Bullying makes enemies, which means complicated conspiracies to slander, stonewall, and get rid of you and your party. Compromising depresses your base (though it’s generally considered the best and easiest way to get anything accomplished). Communicating usually doesn’t work. (For example: try telling the American People you’re going to regulate Wall Street, and then watch the stocks plummet . . . or, for that matter, that you’re going to regulate the big businesses they work for.)
Too many liberals are too simplistic in their thinking. Politics is complicated. Progress is made in steps. But if Democrats don’t have the support of liberals: you’re going to continue to have Republicans running the show, and all they care about is money. They want to get rid of Social Security (FDR), Medicare and Medicaid (LBJ), and civil rights legislation (LBJ), as well as the minimum wage (forget who established it, but when it gets raised it’s always by Democrats).
[post-that-turned-into-a-rant alert]
Yes, Maddowen, she’s less heavy-handedly theatrical with her incredulity and scorn than Keith. But his segments can be compressed bursts of focused and – most important – informed/informative disdain: most tonic. Luckily for us, we don’t have to choose between them. Unluckily for everybody, being rational doesn’t always make ‘sense’.
FEMA wasn’t actually Clinton, though it ran well enough in his administration. It was a Carter program – he having been an excellent president and the best ex-president since, who, Quincy Adams?
(Carter pinched federal emergency reaction from HUD and made an office in charge of co-ordinating it. Executive re-organization under Democrats [not a Blanket Statement alert] tends.to be administratively rational and (at least a little) more effective; Republican re-organization is exclusively in accordance with the BIG (real) government of private accumulation.)
History did, in its contorted way, reproduce itself in the hideous farce of 2000. I’m not referring to the centennial constitutional “crisis” of Hayes’s stolen election, but rather to the tragedy of 1980. Too strong? Here’s two examples: energy policy (Carter took on, in the limited ways available to him, oil companies; today, even Swift-boat Pickens is paying for Carter re-election ads on tv); and environmental policy. (The reason I’m angry, in a Leninist way, at Teddy K. is 1980 – when the left in America threw away a raft of golden opportunities and stuck themselves with the – now – second-worst Presidency this country has [gulp] yet had.)
–
mimi, I saw Lee on, I think, CNN the other day, paired – in their bullshitly even-handed way – with that human-shaped colostomy bag Alex Castellanos. (Maybe I’m garbling talking heads.)
I’m registered as a Republican – have been for decades – , so I can vote in the primary for the stupidest, craziest sociopath they fart out at some particular moment. It drove and drives me crazy, the fiction that, since at least Prop. 13, there’s even been such a thing as a “moderate Republican”. If people actually choose Teabagging pre-hominids, well, fuck. But better a Teabagger than a piece of shit dressed awkwardly as a human being – like Puling Lindsay Graham and Thumbscrew Johnny McCain.
Didn’t think I’d be saying this, but: thanks, deadguy. (And, actually, Olberwen is somewhat amusing, in this context. I’ll give you credit for that one.)
…Though I prefer Rachel Maddow over Olbermann, myself.
Anyone remember when Bush Corrective’s administration wanted to “redefine” nuclear waste? Anyone?
Anyone remember when they lowered the standards of what constituted ‘safely potable’ drinking water?
Anyone remember the changes they made to bancruptcy legislation? Allow me to remind you: Neither you nor I can file for bankruptcy protection any longer. But corporations can.
Every Democrat opposed it. But they were in the minority, and afraid to filibuster.
I’m with everyone who thinks most Democrats need a spine. But to use that as an excuse to allow the Republicans to maintain (or reestablish) power is absolutely unforgiveable.
Anyone realize that the repeal of DADT is being pushed forward this coming week? Anyone? Sure, it came through during the Clinton Administration, but it was a step. This is how political progress works.
When Bush Corrective came into office, he set out to eliminate a raft of environmental regulations put forth by . . . yes, Bill Clinton.
He also neutered FEMA, which was a rather effective organization created by Bill Clinton.
He also decided to stop monitoring domestic terrorist activity (and claimed Clinton was overly obsessed with the matter) . . . until, well, you-know-when.
I don’t like the Clinton Centrists either, I think they’re wrong-headed fools, and I think it’s time they go. Obama absolutely needs to clean house next year. But, like deadguy says: to hold the Democrats to impossibly purist standards is not just counterproductive but dangerous… not just dangerous but it’s partly the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now. People who don’t vote because the Democrats aren’t politically pure enough are as responsible for Bush Corrective as the evangelicals and Jeb Bush are.
And… if Democrats all thought like Ralph Nader, they’d never get anything done, because they’d be in the minority, always. This country wouldn’t even have a minimum wage.
Ever wonder why the Green Party can’t win a major election?
Whoops, I meant deadgod, not deadguy. Sorry: an innocent slip, not even Freudian. I didn’t mean anything by it.
Steven, neither I nor, I think, Owen is arguing that Clinton and Obama have not made repellent accommodations and compromises with America’s BIG private governors. In fact, we both explicitly accept this here, don’t we?
What I, and (I guess) Owen, are saying is that the comparison of Democrats with perfectly virtuous governors is absurdly mistaken: compare the whole of Reagan’s or Hanoi George’s administrations with the whole of Carter, Clinton, or – yes, it’s only been two years – Obama.
It’s not Coke vs. Pepsi – it’s brackish ditch water vs. strychnine.
You mention “suddenly [not] giv[ing] a shit about 1,000,000+ dead Ferners” – where is anybody here, by not pitching hysterics, not giving a shit?? To take an inflated Terror Stat and conceal the genuine complexity and variety of “Obama” is consistent with Noam’s selective jigsaw pointillism, but not with understanding the interrelation of ‘forests’ and ‘trees’.
To me, assimilating a fons et origo of Everything Wicked (called “America”) to fascism is the mechanism of neutralization that you discern in “The Notsees 2.0” – knowing The Real Game has taken you out of the real game. (Yes: “I know you are etc.”)
You’ve rebutted the unmade claim that ‘Obama is Neo’; you haven’t shown how the incremental, granular distinctions between the Rove administration and these guys actually Don’t Matter.
Barbara Lee Speaks For Me
There’s some consolation in that.
I know where Medicare, Social Security and all that wonderful stuff came from, thanks. I know where NAFTA came from, too, as well as the Vietnam War and I know what the Carter Doctrine is. I’m aware of the fact that Barack Obama has reserved the right to have American citizens abroad assassinated. TARP was passed by a majority-Democratic Congress. Barack Obama (as well as the rest of the Democrats, and the Republicans, too) know who their boss is — Goldman Sachs and their sort. Class war is really a phrase we don’t hear often enough in America.
Re: “imagine 300,000,000 people in a really, really big room trying to pass legislation” — ’tis more a flaw in the nation-state than in democracy itself. The idea of 536 people making laws that effect 300,000,000 people is pretty absurd.
I’m afraid you guys are too far inside the belly of the beast to see much beyond onion rings and the occasional kernel of undigested corn (aka hokum).
Even if some of the positives you cite are verifiable (some of them are spun too hard to be taken seriously and some are just nonsense: http://www.1hope.org/clinton.htm), they don’t justify the incredible destructiveness of an Imperial power that even the Liberals and Lefties (like you guys?) are eerily fucking hesitant to condemn.
There are two factions of one party; pick your team. Whatever. Coke is better than Pepsi… no, Pepsi is better than Coke! In fact, both are poisons compared to mother’s milk (we’ve never seen the stuff, of course. But it’s worth thinking about…)
Q: do you think Germany in ’33 was exactly the same as it was by 1939? Of course it wasn’t. But wasn’t “1933” already deserving of *utter condemnation* from its citizens, even if some *very good* domestic policies were in place? (And guess what: they were. AH got nothing but praise from all sorts of sane people for his handling of the German economy: for every “good thing” done by Obama or Clinton, I can show you a “good thing” done, for Das Volk, under the Early Phase Notsees).
(The Germans aren’t exactly Walt Whitman *now*. But it’s the irony that the Germans did their Notsee 1.0 thing already and spent the past 60 years trying to live it down that makes the place noticeably less scary than America has been since Emperor Ronnie, internally and externally, no matter what they tell you about German skinheads, who were actually attending seminars from their So Cal brothers a while back! But we digress)
This is the shocking thing about your defense of the Democrites: you suddenly don’t give a shit about that ever-growing pile of 1,000,000+ dead Ferners, none of whom posed any possible threat to either of you?
Guys, it’s a classic pattern. But The Notsees 2.0 are lots slicker. Better movies and pop music. Lots of fun porn and good junk to eat. And wall-to-wall feel-good, mind-clouding Normative Propaganda. And check it out: Notsees 2.0 aren’t stupid enough to deport Jewish physicists or round up “enemies of the state” and kill them right there in the street (much smarter to kill them all off-screen)!
“He also neutered FEMA, which was a rather effective organization created by Bill Clinton.”
Good Gawd! You don’t know what FEMA is for, Owen…? But that’s another conversation.
Now some data to counter your data. Just for the sake of data. In three categories.
Big picture:
1. http://www.zcommunications.org/the-evil-scourge-of-terrorism-by-noam-chomsky
2. http://www.zcommunications.org/human-rights-in-the-new-millennium-by-noam-chomsky
3. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Is-Anyone-Surprised-An-by-sam-hamod-100825-828.html
Clinton:
1. http://www.counterpunch.org/bovard04202010.html
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/the-great-american-sticku_1_b_715952.html
3. http://www.counterpunch.org/blum10202006.html
operative quote on Clinton:
“Clinton’s role was decisive in turning Ronald Reagan’s obsession with an unfettered free market into law. Reagan, that fading actor recast so effectively as great propagandist for the unregulated market — “get government off our backs” was his patented rallying cry — was far more successful at deregulating smokestack industries than the financial markets. It would take a new breed of “triangulating” technocrat Democrats to really dismantle the carefully built net designed, after the last Great Depression, to restrain Wall Street from its pattern of periodic self-immolations.”
Obama:
1. http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/47696,news-comment,news-politics,barack-obama-from-anti-war-law-professor-to-warmonger-in-100-days
2. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/02/09/state_secrets
operative quote on Obama:
“Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Lawsuit
“The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.
“A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.
“This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed.”
That’s all I’m going to say about it. Both sides will remain unchanged in their opinions. But propaganda shouldn’t go un-rebutted, eh…?
[post-that-turned-into-a-rant alert]
Yes, Maddowen, she’s less heavy-handedly theatrical with her incredulity and scorn than Keith. But his segments can be compressed bursts of focused and – most important – informed/informative disdain: most tonic. Luckily for us, we don’t have to choose between them. Unluckily for everybody, being rational doesn’t always make ‘sense’.
FEMA wasn’t actually Clinton, though it ran well enough in his administration. It was a Carter program – he having been an excellent president and the best ex-president since, who, Quincy Adams?
(Carter pinched federal emergency reaction from HUD and made an office in charge of co-ordinating it. Executive re-organization under Democrats [not a Blanket Statement alert] tends.to be administratively rational and (at least a little) more effective; Republican re-organization is exclusively in accordance with the BIG (real) government of private accumulation.)
History did, in its contorted way, reproduce itself in the hideous farce of 2000. I’m not referring to the centennial constitutional “crisis” of Hayes’s stolen election, but rather to the tragedy of 1980. Too strong? Here’s two examples: energy policy (Carter took on, in the limited ways available to him, oil companies; today, even Swift-boat Pickens is paying for Carter re-election ads on tv); and environmental policy. (The reason I’m angry, in a Leninist way, at Teddy K. is 1980 – when the left in America threw away a raft of golden opportunities and stuck themselves with the – now – second-worst Presidency this country has [gulp] yet had.)
–
mimi, I saw Lee on, I think, CNN the other day, paired – in their bullshitly even-handed way – with that human-shaped colostomy bag Alex Castellanos. (Maybe I’m garbling talking heads.)
I’m registered as a Republican – have been for decades – , so I can vote in the primary for the stupidest, craziest sociopath they fart out at some particular moment. It drove and drives me crazy, the fiction that, since at least Prop. 13, there’s even been such a thing as a “moderate Republican”. If people actually choose Teabagging pre-hominids, well, fuck. But better a Teabagger than a piece of shit dressed awkwardly as a human being – like Puling Lindsay Graham and Thumbscrew Johnny McCain.
Steven, neither I nor, I think, Owen is arguing that Clinton and Obama have not made repellent accommodations and compromises with America’s BIG private governors. In fact, we both explicitly accept this here, don’t we?
What I, and (I guess) Owen, are saying is that the comparison of Democrats with perfectly virtuous governors is absurdly mistaken: compare the whole of Reagan’s or Hanoi George’s administrations with the whole of Carter, Clinton, or – yes, it’s only been two years – Obama.
It’s not Coke vs. Pepsi – it’s brackish ditch water vs. strychnine.
You mention “suddenly [not] giv[ing] a shit about 1,000,000+ dead Ferners” – where is anybody here, by not pitching hysterics, not giving a shit?? To take an inflated Terror Stat and conceal the genuine complexity and variety of “Obama” is consistent with Noam’s selective jigsaw pointillism, but not with understanding the interrelation of ‘forests’ and ‘trees’.
To me, assimilating a fons et origo of Everything Wicked (called “America”) to fascism is the mechanism of neutralization that you discern in “The Notsees 2.0” – knowing The Real Game has taken you out of the real game. (Yes: “I know you are etc.”)
You’ve rebutted the unmade claim that ‘Obama is Neo’; you haven’t shown how the incremental, granular distinctions between the Rove administration and these guys actually Don’t Matter.
whoa… all I have to say about anything now is: the new format is srsly fcked!
Most of what deadgod said. Plus:
Small-business bill just passed. Obviously it means nothing because people are still dying in wars Obama can’t get out of yet must get out of. (Explanation: When he leaves Iraq, it’s bloody, bloody civil war, and lots of dead people, and the result: another dictator just like Hussein to reinstate control and “peace”. When our troops leave Afghanistan, which they must: the Taliban and Al Quaeda return. And you, Steve, talk so high-and-mighty about morality.)
Hank, whom do you want in charge of arranging the laws necessary to safeguard a free nation? A whole lot of ill-informed people (that is: most of America)? Or a selection of really smart, capable people who can organize very complicated legal and socially affective matters in their heads? Think Barney Frank vs. Christine O’Donnell.
I really do think deadgod put his finger on it when he mentioned how too many liberals hold their leaders to impossibly pure standards. Hank and Steve: I don’t say this to be mean, but neither of you appear to understand politics, and this is a shame. We need intelligent people like yourselves to save America. (At any rate, I’m tired of having this argument with people nearly every goddamn autumn. (Yes, I vote nearly just about every year: proposals/resolutions and state offices in off-years, Primaries and Congresspeople and state offices at Presidential half-terms.))
I also understand what’s at stake if the Republicans take over Congress again. Perhaps you two have a short memory, or maybe you really don’t care but would rather sit back and stroke your moral stick. Apparently you really don’t understand the context, if you’re willing to sacrifice me and everyone else to the Radical Right, every election. Liberals and moderates who do not vote and do nothing substantive to change the political situation are just as guilty as the warmongers and Plutocrats. Precisely as guilty. BECAUSE YOU WILL NOT FIGHT, you will not hold people’s feet to the fire. You simply get drunk/stoned in your living room and complain like some stupid ass, while everything goes to shit.
I say this out of passion and urgency, not to be mean.
Think Koch Brothers. If you won’t vote, then instead of complaining about them: adopt their strategy. In opposition. It really is a brilliant strategy. Liberal activists have a lot to learn. Code Pink have done precisely nothing effective to help this nation.
As far as political assassinations: it’s been going on since FDR. I don’t like the idea, but I don’t expect it to stop. A lot of liberals prefer the idea, actually, to war, which kills a lot more than 1 person.
On FEMA: Another conspiracy theory, I think, is coming on. Hear any clicking on your phone line, lately?
…It looks like things are on their way to getting out of hand. Besides the fact that this new format is messed up: I think I’ll drop out soon as well.
It truly is.
I think I’m done here, now. This needs to stop.
The New Trend on the Web should be shit staying exactly as it has been for… decades! Wouldn’t that be kinky? This Neomania meme is the most pernicious subverter of actual progress I can think of… you can’t build a culture or an idea-structure on constantly shifting sands. The amount of time I spend learning new gizmo protocols, every year, for example, is ridiculous. It’s like learning French for six months and then French 2.0 is released…
Let’s write a PERMANIST MANIFESTO
Oh, and, Reynard, if you *didn’t* delete a (non-abusive) comment of mine in this thread (and then put the second one in moderation) and all the weirdshit was owing to the hideous format change: my sincere apologies for chucking aspersions
More like: the simpler the better.
Occam’s Format
Eh… now you’ve hit me where it hurts, Steve.
…And I don’t mean your new holy title.