Lookin’ a little human… 18 October 2007
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
A fresh water fish swims in a tank on display at a shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, for National Ornament Fish Day. [AP via BBC]
Could be post-nuclear, from human flesh. Fascinating version of the human face, forehead, good peripheral vision, lips, cheeks, chin… and apparently some decorative whorls on either side of that knob of a chin. I’d love to see the profile…
A very fleshy presentation… Hell, dress it with self-segregating head gear, from a “white lady” summer straw affair to baseball cap to some sort of identifying color tag cotton neckerchief on the head… and you have the non-voter. Or the voter.
A haunting image…
Enjoy………………
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Listening to Negroponte on Charlie Rose. Gah. He blames the Iranians for “upsetting their neighborhood”. I am going to be hearing this utter scheisse for the. rest. of. my. life………
************************************************
Marisacat 
Here’s to lookin’ a little human.
You can SouthPark-ize your loved ones … or your not-so-loved ones, as the case may be. 😉
Jeesus. There ya go and out Delaware Dem again.
She’s incorrigible. Everyone says so. 🙂
2 – BHHM
gosh you are right.
I knew it reminded me of someone.
hmmm this may be around as I Think it is a day old, in the LAT:
Grease the already greasy wheels!
BBC: One day transport strike in France
Prolly test his temper as well….
LOL
Defense Industry Embraces Democrats, Hillary By Far The Favorite
And yet so-called “liberals” will happily vote for them. Enjoy the blood and gore, folks.
Off to work … have a good day.
Great to see you’re back in the commenting saddle again, Mcat.
Loved the stuff on the gay priests in the last thread. I was told by a NYPD cop who knew him well that the revered FDNY chaplain Mychal Judge, killed at the WTC, was gay. But:
From this story, he seems like a good guy, but I really have to laugh when I see a reference to how he counseled people on their marriages. How can you live such a male-centered existence, in a political and religious hierarchy run by males, and advise anyone about relationships that involve women?
The church is rotten through and through with hypocrisy and misogyny.
Moazzam Begg, interviewed at SleptOn:
Interview By Dan Glazebrook 10/16/07.
sv, I had that discussion with my husband the fallen Catholic. He keeps insisting that women have very powerful positions in the Church. All I could think of was The Magdalene Sisters. The power to do what ? Run the laundry and beat the shit out of younger, vulnerable women ?
Gack.
our favorite spelunkers (from rawstory):
“Despite an intense lobbying effort from such privacy groups, the Senate sealed an expected deal this week with President Bush to grant major telecommunications companies — including Verizon, Comcast and AT&T — immunity from prosecution for their role in the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program if they can “demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.”
Damn, I just got the strangest phone call – some woman wanted to chat about camels. I told her I was busy trimming my hedges.
13–sorry, wrong number!
aravia cite from last thread:
what ridiculous tonguefoolery.
I hope Ariana has read the 800 comments taking her to task for ignoring the NUMBER ONE question asked by her readers in that ridiculous Pelosi Tea Time Interview. Huffington demands we be FEARLESS but cowers like a crow before a scarecrow like Pelosi.
My favorite bit is Ariana deciding to ignore that impeachment question because she personally decided that there are more important things to do and discuss. O’ The Democracy!
HuffPo is becoming the political version of TMZ….
gotta remember:
Atianna fucked Newt. More than once. Bad enough to value his policies or quote him favorably – esp anything to do with rights or freedoms … worse to, you know … ew.
Oh, be fair, you harpies.
They were just anxious to get the interview in the can before that really cool pearl auction on ebay could wind up.
Priorities, My Dears. Priorities.
She fucked Newt? Seriously? Yikes. What a horror.
ms x:
Totally. Nuns are the original Little Sisters in the Frathouse. Nothing matters except getting recognition from the Boyz. Brides of Christ! It’s sick.
Mcat 17: Thanks loads, lady. You just put me off my meals for the next week. The horror…
well I think AH is another case of a fake move to the Democrats. I was suspicious of her years ago, then in 03/04 thought, well… maybe.
But really not. And frankly it owuld take a lot to screw Newt. I rather suspect they agreed, agree on quite a few things.
Decent Esquire article on the march to war with Iran. Confirms for many of us that this was indeed planned long ago. Personally, I don’t think Hersh and Ritter have ever been wrong – if the full story is ever written, we’ll see exactly what was behind each of the delays.
#21 – Marisa – I never trust a hard rightwinger that suddenly “sees the light” and becomes a “liberal” unless they can describe and talk about the complete psychological breakdown that such a dramatic shift in consciousness would require. That’s one reason why David Brock has credibility with me. Not that he changed into a leftist, that would be a distance too far from where he started. Arianna is simply an authoritarian gadfly who moves to wherever the pickings look easiest. For fun and personal profit. She has no difficulty being used – what a shame the left hasn’t figured out as well as the right how to make use of such people without embracing them as one of their own. As for Newt – well, it wasn’t as if she was getting any at home. Better to fuck another rightwing, family values hypocrite than risk being exposed by someone on the left.
well frankly neither has credibility for me. Both too far right, embraced repressive and oppressive acts, which they carried out themselves.
And last of all, the Clinton congealing fuckball they moved over to, is no credit to anyone. The War and War Bonds party… going to out bush Bush, IMO.
I don’t even worry about it anymore. Once I did.
23, Marie:
yeah, like for example, Kos and his cavalier brushoff of why he suddenly changed from “fanatic Reagan supporter” to whatever fakery he’s peddling today.
Brock has credibility with me.
Well the media does suck to the point where almost anybody can be right making a living telling you how much it does indeed suck.
sv -#25 – yes. Political orientation is a sum of an individual’s worldview – biases, knowledge, etc. The latter is highly resistant to change. It’s why education up to a certain age, like 20-22, is so dangerous to the established order. Also explains why so many young people can become liberal while they attend college and later revert back to something closer to what was socialized in them by their family or origin, religion, community, etc. (Assuming they had shifted their orientation based on knowledge and not simply because it was more fashionable to be liberal, and given the sorry state of education in the US today, doubt that many are getting enough to be well grounded in a liberal orientation.) To become a liberal and remain a liberal is hard work for anyone not oriented in that direction at a young age.
Today “libertarianism” has become fashionable among the young because they know they don’t like the rightwing interference with their sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. But they do like the GOP myth that without taxes, the special ones will become rich. And they love the creepy, nationalistic, militarism in the US. Explains why they slobbered over shiny four stars as much as Chris Matthews did over the prancing, codpiece “I am a war prezidant.” Totally clueless as to the homoeroticism that they’re responding to on a subliminal basis.
Today “libertarianism” has become fashionable among the young because they know they don’t like the rightwing interference with their sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.
Actually the world “libertarianism” is used by so many people with so many different types of politics it’s almost meaningless.
Usually it means “I’m an anarchist but I ‘d rather sit in front of a computer than go outside and smash a Starbucks”.
It can also mean “I’m a Republican but I’m too embarassed to tell you I voted for Bush”.
Or it can mean “I hate blacks and don’t think my favorite bar should have to let them in”.
Or it means “I just turned 19, never had sex, and have a crush on the TA who assigned me Wealth of Nations”.
HC #26 – “Blinded by the Right” details a credible journey to his change. While it is possible to write about a fake transformation since the elements to a real one aren’t unknown, it is easier said than done. A con-artist wouldn’t include the sorts of small details necessary to describe such a journey. A good fiction writer might be able to accomplish it but Brock doesn’t write fiction.
Well, Brock is gay and being a gay Republican is a bit like standing in front of a bus whistling Dixie. Even Sullivan claims to have voted for Kerry and seems to be disturbed by the idea of torture.
Wow. They tried to assassinate Bhutto. Now let’s read the articles and figure out who “they” is.
wozzle, if all you’re put off of is dinner, you’re a fortunate person.
I’m thinking of going out to the factory floor now and offering somebody five dollars to knock me out with a 10 lb rigging hook — Wile E. Coyote-style– so I won’t have to think about… THAT… for at least three or four hours.
The problem is that Brock has a long history of being an oprative, dissembler and propaganda fabulist wordsmith for hire.
He just got tired of the R gay closet, imo, and changed sides. Brought his “skill set” wtih him. Plus these switchers are heralded. Much beloved, esp a few years ago when Brock noticed the sun and saw The Light.
IMO “liberal” BlahgSnarls, Snouts and Snots and tabulators (which is what he is, of media word parsing) are laughing loud long and hard at the assembled “D” masses.
And again, being at the core of a Clinton operation (this is roundly admitted w/r/t MM) is NOT A MOVE OVER to anything. A shift of some sort, moving from High Episcopalian to Calvary Presbyterian. If that..
Just my opinion.
31
Actually I kind of got a kick out of the effort. Talk about not “waiting around to see what happens”.
LOL on her way into town from the airport.
Forget about “swing voters” — even die hard Republicans are running away from their party. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that over a third of President Bush’s largest fundraisers have yet to support a candidate in their party’s primary. As one Bush Pioneer put it, “I’m just not happy with the direction of our party. I think we have a huge credibility problem, which I have not seen any of the candidates show the ability to rise above.”
Everyday Republicans are sick of their party making choices they wouldn’t make — can you blame them?
While the Republican Party is coming apart, our Party is investing in infrastructure and grassroots development. We’re not going to miss a single chance to cement a strong position and reach areas that Democrats ignored for decades.
Our innovative voter contact system will give Democratic organizers on the ground the tools they need to target key areas and get out the vote on Election Day. And our field organizers are meeting with election officials in every state to prevent any attempted voter disenfranchisement before it happens.
Come Election Day, we cannot leave anything out there on the field. Step up and do your part by donating $15, $25, $50 or more:
George Bush may be gloating today, but we’re not falling for it. The Republican Party is alienating more and more Americans who can’t stand its narrowing, cruel agenda.
If there’s ever been a day that shows how important victory in 2008 has become, it is today.
Despite a broad, bi-partisan effort in Congress, George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program remains in place. This president and his loyalists in Congress have done the unthinkable, cutting millions of American kids from the basic health care services they need.
You stood up and fought, the Democrats in Congress stood up and fought, but we just didn’t have the numbers to overturn the veto.
HCfM – ugh.
innovative voter contact system
Smack upside head, “Hey! YOU! Send money!”.
Not here to say that Brock is or ever can be much more than a liberal — he squandered to many of his formative years consuming rightwing garbage and therefore, isn’t that well educated in history, economics and sociology. He doesn’t deny that he was a rightwing operative or that he was morally bankrupt for years. However, he was never in the closet. No more so than many of the Hill staffers that aren’t public figures. They just live in their rightwing bubble world where being gay is no big deal as long as it’s not in the face of the constituents back home. Then there is the code among the gay DEM and GOP in DC – don’t publicly out us and we won’t out you. Brock could, but refuses, to tell any of those secrets. Although, I’ve long held the suspicion that he was the original source of the tip on Gannon/guckert. Overall, he’s more useful than parade of retired generals now distancing themselves from the GOP. And more sincere than Huffington who never paid a price for being a rightwing flak or leaving the GOP. If people like Brock and Huffington only nudge people little further to the left than they were in 2001 when GWB had a 90% approval rating, than they have served a useful purpose. If they stop where they are, then other voices will come along take their place. My god, in 2001, I was reduced to reading MWOL and Alterman because there was so little out there. I don’t read Media Matters but it’s still a good thing that someone is out there tracking and documenting the lies of the Rush crowd for those not bright or educated enough to recognize bs when they hear it. They are like entry points for people who sense that something is very wrong with this country and begin to look for alternative voices. For many, it will sustain them for a while and then they’ll get bored and move on to something more substantial and edgier or simply become better media consumers. We didn’t get here overnight and if there is any hope for this country, it won’t be reversed quickly. Unfortunately, must say that the gold dust twins, Hillary and Nancy, may set the women back another generation. A major reason why taking both of them out as quickly as possible would be a good idea.
If people like Brock and Huffington only nudge people little further to the left than they were in 2001 when GWB had a 90% approval rating, than they have served a useful purpose.
Well throw Kos the individual on that pyre as well. They are in this – all of them – together.
Where in all the scabrous exhorted hatred of Bush (whihc has made jack difference – on anything) is there even a nudge ot the left?
None. At a time when genuine left, liberal progressive (pick a word) rhetoric and push for policies might be on view.,… that is NOT what we see.
What I see, and it is my opinion and nothing more, I see the right and the hard right morphing their public face. and online has assisted.
None of those who has been allowed to rise to notoriety, much less leadership and or link sappy happy heaven online is the least bit other than moderate / right to full on right and authoritarian. And I speak of what rides the so called left, broad left, of the dial.
Nature of the online BUSINESS. Authoritarians, attys, operatives from various nooks and crannies, pols, ex pols and oh yes programmers.
Where in all the scabrous exhorted hatred of Bush
It’s professional wrestling. They’re the impressarios. We’re the dumb hillbilly audience. And it works for the “left” and the “right”, for Kos and LGF. As long as you don’t step over a certain line (criticize Israel, talk up Nader or Ron Paul, suggest that maybe Hugo Chavez isn’t so bad) you can be as vehement as you want.
But note how angry they all get if you say something like “gee you think we should be wasting that much time on Ann Coulter”.
31&34–Bhutto campaign slogan “It’s a blast to be back in Pakistan!”
I don’t mean to belittle the 80+ deaths, and countless other injuries. Just the chain of slaughterhouses the US opened in the Middle East as if they were 7-11 franchises. Or maybe I should say 9/11 franchises.
Good Lord. It’s up to 126 dead in Pakistan now.
Fucking liberal media. There are so many good things happening in Pakistan and this is what they cover?
How about the Goddamned scools?
Viking Kittens.
Just because.
It’s 80 fucking degrees in fucking Late October.
It’s Al Gore’s fault.
some woman wanted to chat about camels
Maria Muldaur called you?
Political orientation is a sum of an individual’s worldview – biases, knowledge, etc. The latter is highly resistant to change.
I don’t know … I was a little fucking “libertarian” in my early twenties. I said all the stupid shit about Social Security and whatnot. I loved Gary Hart, wished that I’d been a year older so I coulda voted for John Anderson. Other than my anti-nuke beliefs, I was probably center/center right in a lot of ways. I definitely thought “victimless” crimes shouldn’t be crimes (still do), but wasn’t a fan of the national gov’t, hated much that the Democrats did. Hell, in a lot of ways I was a lot like the people who became the core of the DLC.
Then I got some schooling, moved out into the world, went through a couple of recessions, met some people of different races and different social classes, and I’ve moved steadily left as I’ve gotten older.
So, I don’t know, maybe not, but I think it’s a journey I’ve made.
Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, Dodd put a block on that horrible spying bill mentioned above.
From the statement at his site:
Of course, this raises the issue of why him and the other more-leftish Senators don’t use this tactic more often … say about anything to do with the war.
A poster at Common Dreams demolishes the “purity” strawman:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/17/4629/
COMarc October 17th, 2007 4:25 pm
“Why is it that the Democratic coalitions are always to be built on anyone to the left of Reagan giving up their beliefs and having to support a pro-war, pro-corporate agenda? If there was truly a coalition and some give and take, perhaps a coalition with a few of the less neaderthalic Democrats might be possible.
But the deal the Democrats always offer is that we should completely surrender all of our ideals and positions in exchange for absolutely nothing. Apparently we are supposed to feel great joy in the simple fact that a candidate with a (D) after their name won an election. We certainly aren’t supposed to expect any more than that.
The day I hear the Democratic leadership telling the pro-war, pro-corporate Democrats that they have to surrender and give up what they believe in at least part of the time in order to be in a coalition with us, then maybe I’ll believe in the possibility of a coalition with the Democrats. But this one-direction, we-always-get-screwed coalition is for the birds.”
I don’t know if anybody’s linked to this yet (I could very well have missed it), but a new Pepe piece is up:
Marisa #39 – Kos? Wouldn’t occur to me to lump him in with Brock and Huffington. He’s a conservative kid who got lucky, and too stupid or uneducated to know that “I hate GWB” doesn’t make one a Democrat or liberal which is why at his not so tender age, he has no idea what his political orientation is. Not as smart or educated as either Brock and Huffington. And can’t write half as well as either. Huffington is the cleverest of the three and the best self promoter. Kos looks like a carnival huckster; whereas, Arianna seductively sells the high priced stuff. She and Kos are relatively amoral, but Brock does have a conscience, not all that well developed but still a conscience. Making money is a more well developed orientation in those who are or were Republicans or corporate DEMs. Maybe because their self-worth is tied up with financial success.
Compare Atrios and Kos – Duncan had his blog before Kos and is an economist. Yet, he didn’t have that money making thing down. His blog was just a place for him and others to rant. Possibly from day one Kos saw a business opportunity. Back in the late eighties I had a friend who was a computer/intenet geek. I recall him telling me about how important it was to get “hits,” but there seemed not to be any reason for that except self-gratification. (Advertising sales is obviously not one of my business areas of expertise because I never considered how “hits” could one day be turned into dollars.) Guess I’ve known too many younger men like Kos who with limited talents and not much brain power have been financially successful — all of them are exceedingly boring and given to having inflated opinions of themselves. Those I’ve known always thought that I liked them, never recognizing that they weren’t interesting enough for me talk about them to others, and that flattering them was a game for me to see how much of a sucker they were. (Now I sound like a terrible person — but as I never did that for any personal gain or malicious reason, it only makes me a little bit devious. They were good experiments to see what worked best with men which I applied with clients when I was forced to do marketing.)
MitM #48 – “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” was bound to kick in at some point when they all recognized that the US could give a shit about the separate factions. Wonder when the Kurds will get a clue and join them? Perhaps when they see that the US will do nothing to protect them from the Turks.
A theory about why Hastert is suddenly resigning. After describing a the testimony of a couple of hookers talking about Wilkes and Cunningham in Wilkes’ trial, we then learn that Wilkes’ nephew testified:
This is the real reason for the Dali Lama thing, not to mention the poison toys and food (what, all the sudden Chinese goods turned bad?!?!) and other China bashing we’re hearing more and more of:
The war party is gonna get its war, dammit.
More Questions For The Candidates
Marie – dunno if you were online back in 2001, but there was a lot of good left stuff. Counterpunch was up and running strong, I believe alternet was running, as was smirking chimp. Really the best thing going though was the indymedia sites that largely organized the anti-globalization movement. Lefty activists worldwide were using those sites to communicate get out news about police actions against peaceful protest, etc., etc. Narconews was running & had wonderful stories about the leftist movement in Latin America – and there were the political BBS – alt.politics, alt.politics.green, alt.politics.us. Granted they were overrun with right wing idiots trying to pick fights, but there was a lot of useful conversation. I was was also on numerous e-mail lists started right after the election that were full of great links.
All of this lost steam with the invention of the ‘blahgs’. Activists got funneled into the sheparding done by a bunch of ops to get in line behind the Dems. I, for one, fell for it.
What I think is sad, is that since many have now seen the light about the ‘blahgs’, with the notable exceptions of things like the Jena protests, left orgnanizing online has not returned to the prominence it had before the ‘blahgs’. I don’t know if having an organized left could even make a difference at this point, as this country is going to hell whether we want it to or not – and no amount of hoping will change that – but I think it could be useful to prepare for re-establishing a strong left in this country after the crash.
Wow. Now that is a profound insight. How incisive of them.
No, I’m not kidding:
David Lynch talks defense policy with Shimon Peres: meditation is “like a giant flak jacket”
2001? Hmm. I was reading Slashdot and Fucked Company and trying to trick people into clicking on Goatse.
Steve Gilliard used to post long, pompus very earnest pieces on Fucked Company about the site being the kernel of the next great tech industry labor movement. So I followed him over to Netslaves occasionally.
I followed Cockburn from the Nation to Counterpunch I forget when, easily by 2001.
I started checking out Atrios when the mainstream media was briefly into him during the Trent Lott affair.
I remember the exact date I started reading Indymedia, February 15, 2003. Indymedia’s incredibly uneven and right now New York Indymedia’s being ripped a part by a long running feud between the anarchists from Infoshop and some members of the RCP.
I read the Howard Dean blog alot in 2003 and 2004.
I think it was AFTER the November 2004 election when the Democratic sites went psycho authoritarian. Atrios used to be a fun site (he used to have “Talk Like Bill O’Reilly” days). Then around late 2004 a certain type of person kind of took over, the kind that would call you a “troll” if you did anything to question the orthodoxy.
By 2005 it was done. The Dem sites were unbearable.
I was involved with “World Can’t Wait” for awhile and I was trying to get them to let me put them on a Scoop site but they didn’t want open forums of any sort (since they were afraid trolls would post threats to Bush etc. and get their tax exempt status taken away).
This country is just so fucked up:
Well, they showed HER.
ugh.
Oh wait. Terri Schiavo. That was a real watermark in the degeneration of the Dem blogs.
The party line was “Harry Reid is a genius for doing nothing” and if you said anything different you were immediately labeled a “Troll”.
Something really did happen in the Fall of 2004 (besides the election) but don’t ask me to figure it out.
Just to warn you before you hit play, this is very loud and very abrasive, but I liked it. Interesting video, too:
Otep – “Warhead”
In 2001, most of my political yakking was happening on the Ms. Boards. Ironically, getting fired up about Nader’s campaign in 2000 got me connected to a couple of other feminists who’d also been inspired to re-examine their commitment to woman-centered activism in the aftermath of the stolen election. The twist was that we were often made very unwelcome in feminist spaces by the Democrat true believers, despite any attempts at olive branches. (I was briefely involved with MoveON in 2002, then dropped it because I could smell the scam.)
One “sister” over there was convinced that I was booted off the board because I was so loudly dismissive of Democrats and the two-party system. (It’s a long shot, but not impossible, I suppose.) I had a little series of electoral reform “cheat sheets” I used to post there, which would inevitably get a few good responses but mostly indifference. A very familiar pattern in my experience around the blogosphere.
[waves to VA Green.]
Oh, and Madman, sorry to hear about your problems at your home space. Hope you can get it all sorted out soon.
Thanks Ms. X … something is really broke. Don’t know how long it’s going to be.
This is interesting:
Lara Logan *Things Are Going Very Very Badly In Iraq*…
Was ‘thereisnorape’ the doctor on call in the ER the night the Howard student came in?
Re #17
Figuratively or for real? Ew. I guess it all fits in with that picture supporting the thread.
lucid & HC – only started to get on-line in late 2000. Up until then merely used it for research and e-mail. And then only looked for things to read that didn’t make me feel crazy. But do know that I didn’t look for much in 2001 (my first response on hearing about a plane flying into the WTC was to look around for a radio and not to get on-line). Can only recall that I found my first blog (probably Atrios) after I’d been reading Counterpunch, The Nation, Daily Howler for several months. iirc Atrios took me to MyDD and that to dKos. And TPM was in there somewhere. I liked and lurked at MyDD and dKos because they seemed to have some expertise in electoral politics — as my mood was dark and could only foresee a very good midterm for the GOP – I appreciated hearing that “we’re gonna win this. The day after the election, I ended my lurking. I was pissed that I and not they had been reading the right tea leaves. But being right is not a criteria for credibility in this country anymore. MyDD began boring long before he shut it down for a while and I quit going there. I also soon gave up on the comments at Atrios as it was nothing more than people talking to themselves and rarely saying anything of interest. digby was there back then.
I would date the deterioration to the spring of ’03 with the appearance of the Clarkies, not that I could have recognized it for what it was back then. Why the hell was there an invasion of people raving about some retired general for POTUS? By 1/04 the inherent possibility of blogs becoming an organizing principle was over – it was all about raising campaign money and getting messages from DEM politicians and their staff. And for all that time that people spent there, they still couldn’t see that the ’04 election would be another GOP winner.
Do recall saying that Reid was an idiot in his handling of the Schiavo issue but don’t recall being trolled for it. Reid wouldn’t recognize a winning position if God came down and handed it to him.
Surprisingly enough, thoughtful and very liberal people do still appear at dKos. Their UID numbers get higher and higher. It’s become rare for me to encounter many with a UID lower than 60,000 and now most of them seem to be above 100K. If I had to guess, I would say that the ratio of readers conservative to far left hasn’t changed all that much over the years. Yet, the ratio of naive and either not too bright or too educated has increased since late ’02 to early ’03. Nobody back then would have said, “candidate X really, really cares about ME.”
I sense that this wave of blogs is now mature. Will be around for several more years. But long past being cutting edge. And have no idea what will emerge next.
Lara Logan *Things Are Going Very Very Badly In Iraq*…
VERY interesting. She said she “grew up in a police state” (South Africa) and the Bantustans were natural training for covering the US occuption of Iraq.
Fear of blacks in SA is exactly like fear of the Iraqis. Overcoming your fear of blacks is the key to being able to operate effective in the Middle East.
Makes all the connections.
I would date the deterioration to the spring of ‘03 with the appearance of the Clarkies
Another watershed was Ohio in 2004. Atrios shut down his blog for two days in order to avoid discussing it. Kos just banned any discussion of election fraud. Then the banning of 9/11 conspiracy theories. The constant demonization of Nader. Then the banning of debates on Israel/Palestine. Then the banning of debates on Ron Paul.
The more debate you ban, the worse it gets. Even banning worthless debates like the 9/11 conspiracy theory debates still throws out all the subtle issue that can often come up in those debates with the larger bullshit.
It’s going to get much, much worse. Right now Kos is just a bunch of press releases for Edwards and Obama. When Hillary gets the nomination, the whole site’s going to be sort of besides the point. Why not just go to the Hillary blog?
Marisa #204 prior thread re: Hastert. His DEM opponent last year was Lasch, a union carpenter (iirc but definitely union and blue collar). Has a college degree in something. Not rich and not a blue dog. With little money he managed to get 40% of the vote. He’s running again. A much better candidate than some of those Rahm-lets.
And banning Cindy Sheehan. That might have been the nail in the coffin but it was inevitable. The opposition to the war was useful until November of 2006. Then you had to find some excuse to shut people up.
I’ve often found Logan’s statements to be remarkably direct.
But I’m guessing her network owns anything she does there so she can’t take a bunch of photos of those dead soldiers then publish a book independently when she gets back.
just let several out of moderation … mostly Madman and Marie…
so they are up thread.
Sorry!
*************
Marie
thanks for the nudge. It was someone (self funder, millionaire, refusal to campaign) who ran against iirc the No 3 or 4 in R leadership in the House. If I recall there was a good sized scandal against him as well and the seat should have been taken.
Will see if I can find the name in my gmail from the time.
Phillip Jones Griffith said that the only reason journalists had so much freedom in Vietnam is because 99.9999% of them were patriotic and pro war.
http://tinyurl.com/33hshd
The rules had been made before anybody in the Pentagon had ever imagined an anti-war movement. And by the time they figured out that the people at home (and the soldiers) were horrified at the idea of killing the Vietnamese, it was too late. It was out.
re: Dem to replace Hastert, the party big wigs don’t want Lasch
HERE is his website, already set up to run for the set, and on the front page there is a blurb that reads:
He really pushes the idea that he’s a scientist and that there are technical solutions to all of our problems on his issues page. Beyond that, he advocates almost nothing clearly.
Just saw a video (in of all places, the NYTimes webpage) h/t to Lenin’s tomb for the link. If you haven’t seen it (although I’m usually WAY behind everybody else on all these) I highly recommend it.
HC #66 – Why not just go to the Hillary blog?
Exactly. TLC is already so much of a subsidiary of Hillary, Inc. that it’s painful to think about going over there. That’s exactly what dKos became as soon as Kerry got the nom in early ’04. If they were to ban anything, it should be candidate shill diaries. Put the links to the candidate blogs at the top of the page.
As I read Atrios intermittently, missed the fact that he shut down in ’04. But on his site why not – it’s not as if anybody there was bringing in useful information from the ground in OH. A few people did do that at dKos. Can also understand banning 9/11 CT – those people use weak or selective evidence and crappy logic. I might ban them for stupidity. But banning I/P is crazy — this is a major issue that we must get more clarity on even if it means a lot of brawls. I was labeled a CT for a diary suggesting that Pat Tillman was either fragged or murdered on orders from higher up. I know that it wasn’t an accident but there isn’t enough information available to figure out why he was murdered or how far up the chain of command the order came from.
50
what is going on online is keepign a tight lid on any sort of movement, mass small fractured or otherwise.
If they rise, are elevated, get five mil in VC money, are a direct line tool of the party, are at the top of the heap of the online Clintonite sites and orgs (I covered Arianna, Kos and Brock in there as well as most others who rose) they are conservatives.
In that sense, not in how he writes or does not write I lump Kos right in there.
and again, only the conservatives are trusted.
It gets so old.
Just saw a video (in of all places, the NYTimes webpage) h/t to Lenin’s tomb for the link
They were on Democracy Now today.
The Al Gore cult used in ways the Kos Kops don’t approve of. Ha. Ha.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/18/204119/89
over a year ago, Ari Berman idd a piece in The Nation on the online sites – not so much blahgs as orgs, like CAP for one… I posted on it at the time (will see if I can find it)… some strengths here and there BUT he also listed the verboten topics by the party – which he pointed out, avoiding those you avoid gaining first, strength in broadening the arguments, but you, second, avoid any breakthrus in reporting or discussion etc.. Standstill..
I/P ws right in there.
Honestly I don’t get the fuss about Al Gore. The Kosniks think he’s the next best thing to Jesus. Alexander Cockburn compared him to Joseph Goebbels.
People are *projecting* their own bullshit onto him. He’s the same Al Gore he’s always been. He writes decent books. He’s an intelligent guy who knows how to frame issues. But he’s not a good politician and he’s not exactly progressive.
If he ran now, Hillary would slime him beyond recognition. It would rip the party in half and he at least knows it so he’s no more going to try to take the White House away from Hillary than he was from Bush in 2000.
Yeah he won a Nobel Prize. So did Jimmy Carter. Crappy right wing president, best advocate the Palestinians have ever had.
Arafat won a Nobel Prize. Same full of himself gangster quisling posing as a revolutionary before and after.
True, Martin Luther King used the Nobel prize to push himself to do better things but Gore is no MLK.
President McKinney
That bolded sentence sums up the root of so many problems in this country.
I’ve probably told this story before, but I used to watch people shopping with groups of friends at the big Virgin store on Union Square. Someone would pick up headphones and start trying different stuff on one of the listening posts. You could see them start to move, light up a little to whatever they were hearing, only to watch them catch the eye of their pack and immediately stop and put the headphones down if everyone else shook their heads or smirked or made fun of them. It was sad, pathetic herd behavior, and I would see it over and over again.
Americans have been trained to see themselves as a market segment, and convinced to feel uneasy if they’re tempted to step outside of their designated group.
CSTAR #76 – thanks for the link. Excellent short. Not sure why Americans wouldn’t have been able to figure that out by themselves, but I suspect it’s because they think the Iraqis are dumb and uneducated. Then they convinced themselves that it was all about some religious/ethnic strife. When it’s about US occupying their country. As someone said a few years ago, it takes some hard work to suck more than Saddam did.
Marisa #78 – yes but it will soon become apparent that the $ take and readership has peaked and may decline faster in the coming month than they’ve been projecting. There will always be an audience for infomercials — beats me why – but most people quickly turn the channel/station. Turning themselves into Demomercials was not a good marketing strategy as it reduced the potential readership and may have reduced the amount that could be raised in a more sophisticated fundraising campaign. Boring candidates are not inspiring enough for people to open their wallets.
Campuses Have Become Poisoned by an Atmosphere of Surveillance and Harassment
I so wish MicKinney would run.
I know we’ve discussed this before. I’m a CT’er. Do you think the same of me? [not trying to start a pissing match here – just curious]
Run Granny Run premiered on HBO tonight.
They’ll be showing it frequently over the next week or two.
Oh, and I think I have a link about the I/P debate in spam.
Mark Crutcher, founder and CEO of Life Dynamics, explains it all.
On the Road to Rodham and Gomorrah
The only “true fact” in this pile of steaming manure is that the cost of a first-tri abortion has held fairly steady for about 15 years now–which goes to show what’s possible when insurance companies are out of the picture.
This is because [1] insurers require doctors to have hospital privileges, and [2] doctors must admit a minimum number of patients to a hospital in order to maintain admitting privileges, but [3] abortion patients hardly ever require hospitalization.
In fact, if a doctor whose practice was confined to abortion care admitted enough patients to maintain privileges, s/he would be hard pressed even to maintain a license to practice.
But Crutcher should pat himself on the back for coming up with the best strategy yet for “reducing abortion” — just jack up the fees. I’d say that DFL should sign him up as a consultant … if they didn’t already have him on speed dial.
I’m so glad that we’ll soon be able to entrust the whole thorny dilemma into Hillary’s capable hands. I’ll be rolling in those big-time insurance bucks before I know it.
I don’t believe any topic should be off limits … this country is awash in crappy logic (just turn on CNN at any time day or night and watch for the next shoddily studied medical “breakthrough” story to see another example).
I remember reading about MK Ultra back in places like OMNI magazine when I was really young, and remember such stories being attacked as silly conspiracy theories before the papers were released during Clinton’s term. I remember a “60 Minutes” interview w/ a guy who was trying to get people to believe that his father, Frank Olson, was murdered by the CIA (his father was a researcher on MK Ultra). Evidence came out since that he might be right. People used to write off reports that Tuskegee was a “conspiracy theory”.
People work in collusion and secret all the time to obtain some goal. Corporations do it, governments do it, people do it, for reasons big and small. Discussing what may or may not have happened is essential so that eventually, from all the chaff, some wheat might come out.
Madman…
did not find anything in spam and found moiv in Moderation…
Sorry!
The comment should have turned up by now, either in the thread or in a filter… they are not delayed by more than about 2 – 3 minutes…
I’m constantly amazed how completely different their universe is from the one I live in, Moiv. Sick people, deluded by their superstitions.
I wouldn’t mind their universe so much if they would stay in it.
But they do have that itch for manifest destiny — and “whoops! there goes the neighborhood.”
MitM #90 – agree – conspiracies/collusion is an everyday occurrence. Many of those CTs from the ’50’s & 60’s seemed completely plausible to me at the time. However, we tend to forget about all the truly nutty ones that were nothing but psychotic fantasies. For example, I didn’t doubt for one minute from the moment that the Watergate burglary was reported that Nixon’s fingerprints were on that. Same with the coup in Chile.
lucid – depends on what you mean by 9-11 CT. Not at all satisfied that it was hatched in a cave in Afghanistan or even that Cheney/Bush had no prior notice. However, it’s a big leap from those suspicions to postulating that a plane didn’t crash into the Pentagon (when there is overwhelming physical evidence and eyewitnesses that it did).
saw hersh speak last night, he had pretty hard words for clinton, and did a fantastic job of responding to some likudnik hecklers by asking them “how am i anti-semitic?” and then laying out clearly how iran policy and the democratic party’s unwillingness to even slow the drive to war to “major jewish groups” and fundraising needs. and then following that with a discussion of how israel got nukes, and our role in helping them.
such an amazing thing, that one would actually be startled when someone says that in public, without hedging. speaks volumes about the degree to which public criticism of israel is taboo in this country.
hersh was trying to put on a good face for the chance of restoring the republic, but his tone of voice said it all. we’re fooked.
MitM #84 – Asch did experiments in conformity decades ago. Basically, most people are too insecure about their perceptions and cognitive abilities not to succumb to peer pressure, even when it’s visibly obvious that the group is flat out wrong.
There is something correct about the notion of “electability” but it’s very broad and has no real meaning when it comes to the narrow range of candidates from which we normally get to select from. There is a second component of it that isn’t absolute but relative. And fashions change. In ’64 Rockefeller was dismissed because he was divorced (although there was a bit of a scandal attached to it as well.) That wasn’t an issue for Reagan or Kerry. But could it be for the twice divorced Rudy who shacked up with his third wife before filing for divorce from his second? Or Newt? I don’t know but it could easily give some voters pause. In general politicians and consultants lag behind the changes in the electorate. They tend to refight the last election instead of the current one.
McKinney is great in the House – but seems to have trouble holding onto that seat. She’s not electable to the WH unless her opponent is a one-eyed, short, wild looking Muslim. No atheist need apply although we’ve surely had a few agnostics. In the TV era, looks matter. Put Kucinich’s words in Mitt Romney’s body, he could win. Otherwise, forget about it.
I think Jimmy Carter, and Mearsheimer and Walt, have broken something loose, that and the horrible pics coming out of Lebanon. It suddenly doesn’t feel so verbotten anymore.
McKinney is great in the House – but seems to have trouble holding onto that seat. Marie
Well the leadership was and is opposed to her. Pretty simple. When she made it back she was denied her seniority andit was clear, Nancy would not permit it.
And the CBC is fucked and DLC enough that they side, most/enough with Nancy.
Running for president is NOT to win. To get rhetoric and ideas out there.
or you know, lie the fuck down and die.,
Hard to hold onto your seat when your own party, usual slavishly devoted to anybody w/ an incumbent D after their name, do everything they can do to stab you in the back.
Watching the Granny D doc is heartbreaking. The way the Donklephants treat her is just fucking horrible (watching Dean run away from a photo-op is fucking horrifying). The Donk candidate for Governor spends a chunk of his debate PRAISING THE REPUBLICAN incumbent, fer jeebus’ sake.
There is one part, when they’re feeling low, where her son says, “they trot you out like a dancing mouse when they need something,” it’s so damned sadly true.
I wish I had a fraction of her strength and drive.
It is foolish to support that party in any way.
Marie – it has been confirmed the Bushco were warned in no uncertain terms by several foreign governments what was about to happen. While I find the ‘no plane hit the Pentagon’ side of the truth movement incredibly annoying, I think there is a mountain of evidence indicating collusion of some sort within the US government & transnational corporate world. How deep it goes, we’ll never find out – which is why at this point I’ve really given up arguing about it with anyone. I must also admit though, that for a long time I had my doubts about the collapse of WTC 7. Something just didn’t seem right about it. Again – we’ll never know.
What disturbs me though is that in ‘banning’ talk of conspiracies, Dkos also lost a guy like ‘Gnat’ who always had really good finds in various news sources around the world about the seedy shit various colluding groups were pulling. I think that it is sad that anyone who researches in this vein gets lopped in with those who are simply batshit insane. If I point out the the Bush family made their fortune arming the Nazi’s, does that mean I’m a Larouchite, despite the fact that they did? Again – I said I was just curious, but I do find conspiracy research incredibly valuable – even if in the end it turns out there wasn’t a conspircacy at all.
lucid
gnat was a WONDERFUL poster.
Even before I was banned (over two years ago) they would hound him. And I can no longer remember the topic but they pulled a diary of his posted late one night. Pulled it after the goon on duty that night showed up in the diary.
Think Armando the magnificent was on duty that night.
I think the Bushies did what Americans always did … they underestimated the threat, figured that it wouldn’t be so bad, maybe just one file room of the Reichstag rather a bigger fire, then they’d be able to gin up their “war on terror’. I think they ignored the warnings partially deliberately and partly out of arrogance. Stuff after that … well, like you said, we’ll never know.
I’d forgotten about gnat … good links. I’ll never understand why we’re expected to listen to religous fantasies with “respect” in a country where so many other topics with actual supporting facts to make a case are considered “conspiracies” and out-of-bounds for discussion.
If I point out the the Bush family made their fortune arming the Nazi’s, does that mean I’m a Larouchite, despite the fact that they did?
Considering the fact that Germany was by far the biggest and most powerful country in Europe in the 1930s, the idea that Americans were dealing with Nazis is no more far fetched than the idea that their dealing with the Saudi Royal Family now.
I must also admit though, that for a long time I had my doubts about the collapse of WTC 7. Something just didn’t seem right about it.
Well, a lot of people are fooled by the fact that they locked down the area and there aren’t a lot of photos of both sides of the building. A lot of the conspiracy theorists are influenced by the fact that it looked OK on the north side. But on the south side it was a wreck.
And the 9/11 conspiracy theorists also argue that no property was damaged outside the WTC footprint, which is nonsense. The Verizon CO behind Building 7 was flooded when building 7 collapsed and it put a number of tech companies (ISPs and such) out of business).
Admittedly the 9/11 Commission fucked up by not examing Building 7 but we were never supposed to learn anything from the 9/11 Commission. Remember, it was originally supposed to be chaired by Kissinger. So it was for show and wound up leaving a lot of people wanting a real investigation.
The “controlled demolition” argument is beyond silly. Nobody brings a 110 story building down by controlled demolition. They dissassemble it floor by floor the way they’re doing with the Deutche Bank Building now.
As for the idea that they stood down or that they were conducting a sting operation or that the Israelis were following Atta and knew something and didn’t tell us, all of that is possible. But I doubt I’ll ever find out in my lifetime.
Oh, and after watching this doc, watching this determined woman, I’m more convinced than ever that the left must not only abandon the Donklephant party, but it should work to actively destroy it.
I met Gnat at a NY meetup. Great guy. Had 2 fascinating conversations with him about all this stuff. IIRC he was a fact checker for the Times or something like that.
I’m more convinced than ever that the left must not only abandon the Donklephant party, but it should work to actively destroy it.
I knew that in 1988 before I was old enough to vote and in 1992 when I voted for Perot.
But I backslide.
Marisa & MitM – agree that the DLC has been horrible to McKinney; they’re such tired, prissy old maids. However, absent a rock solid constituency tht will re-elect you know matter what you do, one doesn’t have complete freedom to do and say anything and everything. Pelosi showed her ugly (racist?) side when she gave Harmon her seniority back but not McKinney. And the CBC, the only functioning element in Congress for the past few years, now seems to have been drugged into a weird submission. All jumping on the Hillary bandwagon. Don’t know that I’ve ever felt more strongly about hoping for a candidate that’s not a Republican to lose.
HC #83 re: Gore fuss. Have you looked at the other candidates? Gore has more experience, is more progressive on a couple of issues than the others, no more conservative on any issue, wisely opposed the Iraq war, difficult not to respect someone who unfairly lost an election, was told by the DEM insiders to GO away, did his own thing and won an Emmy, Oscar and Nobel prize. Plus he won in 2000 against the odds with less money, a press that hated him and burdened by Clinton’s shenanigans. Isn’t putting your money on a demonstrated winner a better bet than an untested horse? It’s not as if there is any new mud that can be flung at Gore. Who knows what they’ll come up with Hillary. That’s my take on the fuss.
Considering the fact that Germany was by far the biggest and most powerful country in Europe in the 1930s, the idea that Americans were dealing with Nazis is no more far fetched than the idea that their dealing with the Saudi Royal Family now.
Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick … they were doing more than normal business with Germans who happened to be affiliated with the Nazis. The Bush and Preston families were active colluders. They were active in the American right, and there is some evidence that they were involved with the business/rightist plot to remove FDR that Smedley Butler exposed. They were found guilty later of trading with the enemy, yet of course were let off with a slap on the wrist.
Off to bed.
jeez …
Herbert Walker family… Prescott’s FIL.
And we see in their names how they still honor him.
Gore is fine outside of office or as an outsider, just like Jimmy Carter, just like Kucinich.
But put him in power, I don’t see him acting much differently from the rest of the Democrats.
He wrote some good books on the environment in the 90s and did little in power.
He opposed invading Iraq in 2003 but when he was Vice President he was the point man for the hawks in the Clinton administration pushing for tougher sanctions.
Personally he’s OK. But the problem is structural. Gore isn’t tough enough or power hungry enough or radical enough to break down the corrupt power structure in the Democratic party. I don’t see him doing much.
And the CBC, the only functioning element in Congress for the past few years, now seems to have been drugged into a weird submission.
They were actively bought off. Go read this for starters.
I know it’s hard to give up on the party, since the current system offers them as the only alternative, but you really need to face how corrupt they are, from top to bottom, with the few good ones so tied in knots by commitments from the party (and the demonstration of McKinney as to what happens to “members” who don’t get with the program), that you can expect NOTHING from them.
right … Walker. Up too late, transmuting “Prescott” into “Preston” …
gonna sleep now.
They were active in the American right, and there is some evidence that they were involved with the business/rightist plot to remove FDR that Smedley Butler exposed.
Most of the Western ruling class was doing active business with the Nazis. And most of them were fascists.
Mussolini was on the verge of falling in 1926 and the Mellon Bank bailed him out. This was even worse than the Bush family.
They were found guilty later of trading with the enemy, yet of course were let off with a slap on the wrist.
Yep. The great liberal icon Roosvelt wasn’t going to do that much to anyone in his own class.
Now if they had been some Italian anarchists or some German anarchists 50 years earlier, they would have put a rope around their necks and hung them from the nearest tree.
gnat is still there diary today unless this is not who you were referring to.
Baron Thyssen ring a bell? Yes they were active collaborators.
Marie – interesting to see he’s still posting. I was at a meetup with him right after the conspiracy purge & he told me he would probably make himself scarce & did for quite a while when I was still there. I don’t recall seeing much of anything by him in 2006.
HC – yes many American industrialists supported the fascists, but the Bush family’s collusion was extremely bad – and continued until 1942 – after we entered the war.
Guardian article on the Bushes and the Nazis.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1312540,00.html
The great liberal icon Averill Harriman also did business with the Nazis
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world’s largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to war
But it looks as if the Bushes continued after Pearl Harbor.
and continued until 1942 – after we entered the war.
And now the same people calling for WWIII against Iran are still doing business with the Iranians.
We’re all such complete suckers.
The typical smart high school kid knows more about the Democrats than most people on Kos.
http://riseresistrevolt.blogspot.com/2007/10/democrats-revealing-their-true-colors.html
Its no secret anymore, the War on Iraq is a horrific crime. With over a million civilians dead, thousands of working class youth, forced into the army, because they have no other path, to kill other exploited and oppressed people, maimed and buried, with the largest refugee crisis in the middle east since the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948, with the country’s infrastructure bombed to rubble, with people being deprived of basic needs like clean drinking water and electricity, and with kids afraid to go to school not because of bullies, but because they’re afraid of being killed by the occupation, its hard to deem the War on Iraq and its consequences anything but the barbarism of an imperialist occupation and a crime against humanity. Yet despite this, it didn’t come as a suprise to me, when a week or two ago, top democratic candidates for the 2008 election refused to promise that they’d have the troops out of Iraq by 2013. It didn’t suprise me that Clinton, Obama, and Edwards took the exact position that they were voted into power to act firmly and immediatly against. What did suprise me a little, I guess, was that they were honest that they would not end this colonial occupation and that they are truly not the anti-war party that they have framed themselves to be.
This is a link I got onto thru RigInt… a comment by iridescent cuttlefish, i always watch for her comments.
Shadow of the Swastika – link is to part 3 which pulls forward into the modern R party. Even if everyone knows the bones of the story, SotS, 1, 2, 3 had tidbits I had not known.
fwiw.
I really wish that people would just let the whole Gore-on-the-White-Horse thing go. For fuck’s sake. He folded. He screwed the people who tried to vote for him. He waited the demure, decent interval to sort-of oppose the war. Shit.
Also, that movie of his is a mediocre, self-serving pile of nothing. Nothing, that is, that wouldn’t be done better in a Nova episode, without the weepy bullshit about his son being trotted out again for the 9,726th time.
Fuck the Nobel. They gave Kissinger the fucking Nobel. So big deal. …the Nobel Peace Prize is the Oscar for prigs.
Oh, my poor stomach. Just looked at that link to “fijiancat’s” diary.
Have a long and happy life in Orangeville, Honey-Bun. You are well-suited to that environment. Call me when the lot of you can rustle up more than half a dozen brain cells between you. Fucking morons.
HC #110 Personally he’s OK. But the problem is structural. Gore isn’t tough enough or power hungry enough or radical enough to break down the corrupt power structure in the Democratic party.
Don’t necessarily disagree. But what people often miss about Gore is his parents – they instilled the Boy Scout and also the FDR populism in him. His father’s electoral loss crushed him – and to avoid that fate, the Boy Scout dominated his political life. His reward after 25 years was to be undermined by his boss and the party in his WH bid and then to be cheated out of his win. IMHO that’s why we began to see his roots in his convention acceptance speech and have seen more since his loss. Unlike someone like Colin Powell who many thought would push back against GWB and I didn’t think for a second that he would, Gore isn’t as predictable. What you see, may not be exactly what you get with him. Roberts, Alito, Hillary — 99% predictable. Gore a lot less so. I think many people also want to see that in Obama but that may be wishful thinking.
Don’t think the comparison to Carter is apt – he was a DC outsider who was resented and didn’t know his way around DC. I don’t think the DEM Party is much more corrupt today than it was in ’76. The faces have changed but the balance of power among the different factions is not much different — although the average IQ may be considerably lower. Why I doubt that Gore is hungry for the job now is that he’s smart enough to know that the shit is about to hit the fan economically and the mess in the ME will only get worse in the next year. If the economy is ready to topple by election day 11/08, I might vote for the GOP because Rudy, Mitt, whoever would make it even worse – would become the 21st Century Hoover. And the era of the Clintons and Bushes would be over.
ms_xeno He folded. He screwed the people who tried to vote for him. He waited the demure, decent interval to sort-of oppose the war.
I don’t get this. What do you mean “he folded?” He fought back in FL and won in the FL Supreme Court to recount all the votes. The Bush team had filed in federal court to stop the recount and were working their way up the appeal ladder when the FL SC ruled. Then they went to the SCOTUS and got an emergency stay. Exactly what the hell was Gore supposed to do? Only two choices: accept the decision of the SCOTUS or armed rebellion. There was no public support for the latter.
And he didn’t “sort-of oppose” the war. In Sept. 2002 – before the IWR was voted on — he gave a great and passionate speech denouncing an invasion of Iraq. Gore is a more conservative politician than I would like to see in office but I get really sick and tired of the right, left and center giving him a bum rap. Everybody seems to hate him which suggests that maybe I should really like him because god knows the left, right and center in this country screw up big time most of the time.
that maybe I should really like him because god knows the left, right and center in this country screw up big time most of the time.
No marie THE GOD DAMNE FUCKING GOVERNENT screws up.
The GOD DMANED STUPID LEFT still knocks at the door of government thinking it will be let in.
Center and right run the fucking country.
Do ever go out of your way to read beneath the apologist level about Gore? Becasue the script ani’t working.
The Democrats don’t do well, and stiff the Granny Ds of the world because they want to collude iwth the hard right.
Not even collude with the Rrpublicans, but collude with the hard right.
We got here somehow, and it was not the Reoublican right alone.
…Only two choices: accept the decision of the SCOTUS or armed rebellion. There was no public support for the latter…
Oh, right. I keep forgetting that Boy Scouts don’t rebel without a note from home. Yeesh.
His party slapped their base in the face, and is still doing so. To suggest giving him another chance to do that is madness, in my book.
Leave the man where he is, for pity’s sake. Let him make his movies and give his speeches and what-the-fuck-ever. He was worse than worthless on his last trip to the WH and given that he’s chin-deep in the same sort of interests his supposed arch-enemies the Clintons are, only a fool would expect another go-round to be any different.
As far as I’m concerned, not enough people hate him. I only hope that a huge chunk of his sappy-assed worshipful fan base nowadays (a la’ “fijiancat”) is made up of folks half my age that simply have no clue as to what the Clinton/Gore reign was really like.
Little story, nasty as can be, that fits in well with the resurgence of thereisnospoon at MLW with his rape tales… and the related diary tonight at PFF.
If Gore really is the best we can do, if that pathetic excuse for a politician is what the Donks are capable of, we are well and truly fucked and might as well openly declare an Emperor, as plainly the Republic has no hope of being saved.
Gore didn’t fight, and what little pantomime he offered as a fight was tactically wrongheaded from square one. But that’s not the worst of it … the final knife in the back of Donklephant voters was when that smarmy asshole mocked the CBC from the podium when they BEGGED a Senator to step forward and fight for the disenfranchised black voters of Florida.
God, let him enjoy his ability to propagandize for a fairly worthy cause. He’s better at it.
There were three elections stolen in 2000, Fujimori, Milosovic and Bush.
In Peru and Serbia, the theft was reversed in the streets.
In Florida, Al Gore told Jesse Jackson to take his people home.
I can’t forgive him for that.
Hilary takes Chinatown (latimes):
http://tinyurl.com/26ftq3
Hairclub, no. 75,
Not to mention that countless reporters and their editors were working hand-in-glove with the CIA. A number of prominent journalists of the era (e.g., Steward Alsop) were probably actual CIA agents.
I went to bed laughing at the DK thread, and I’m still laughing at fijiancat’s” bleating. Whyyyyyyy are you so meeeeeeean to me when I’M a good Gore-worshipping Nader-hater, toooooooo ??
Because, you stupid ass: You are a cheap whore amongst cheap whores. All of you enduring robbery and beatings daily and worshipping at the feet of your pimp, the DP. Some day you think that you, too, will get to be a Madam or pimp, but you’re wrong. There’ll just never be the demand for Madams and pimps that there is for whores. The power-over relationship you’re in doesn’t allow for it.
Ergo, you will be vilified for uttering the dreaded word “Independent” no matter which pimp you want for the post, even the beloved Al Gore. “Independent” is a threat to those running the whorehouse. Period. It will not be allowed. Period.
You and your board and your party have all done your part to wall off any chance for any Indies to make any move from the Left flank at all, no matter how modest. You have cheered for the undermining of democracy and you have plowed the fields with salt. You have ceded populism and revolutionary impulses to the likes of Ron Paul, because you are lazy, stupid, and endlessly masochistic. You disgust me.
Now shut up and take your medicine from the other battered street-walkers, fijiancat. Then you can all line up together and sing a chorus of “When He Hit Me, It Felt Just Like A Kiss” while you wait around for your next beating.
Fucking idiots.
The Hillary button that needs to be:
I’m a shill for Hill!
W/r/t Al Gore, I never much liked him for the simple reason that he was/is so close to Marty Peretz. I’ve always been convinced that choosing Lieberman as his running mate was an idea given to him by Peretz. He’d probably have talked him into doing all sorts of other dreadful things as well.
Didn’t take long for some of the people who despise Banazir Bhutto to move against her. She and her family have alienated so many people over the years that whatever investigation might ensure from this is liable to collapse due to the sheer enormity of the task of narrowing down the list of suspects to a manageable amount. It’s interesting to note that the dictator Musharraff who came to power in a coup against the last elected government of Pakistan called the assassination attempt “a conspiracy against democracy,” especially if you enjoy gallows humor. It’s also interesting to note that Bhutto’s husband did not accompany her on her return. For her sake, I hope her food tasters didn’t decide to stick with hubby.
136-I heard that Warren Christopher urged Lieberman on Gore.
134. ms_xeno
{Applause} Brava! Brava!
Great diary on peace summit:
http://www.politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=858#34327
Madman, the Mayor of Madison just got a free trip to Israel with other local politicians…they sure have plenty of money to spread around. I lost the link.
and:
MitM #130 If Gore really is the best we can do, if that pathetic excuse for a politician is what the Donks are capable of,…
No, the Donks best is Bill & Hill. Has been since 1992. The Donks told Gore to GO AWAY, get lost once they realized that he didn’t plan to be a placeholder for Hillary ’08. Bill was out there saying that Al should just find some little college to hire him as its President. How could any of you have missed the internal schism in the DEM Party in 2000? If it wasn’t obvious to you then, how could you not have seen it in late 2003? After it was clear that the Donks were doing everything possible to take down Dean and Al endorsed him.
For the most part, my attitude towards politicians ranges from indifference to loathing. Those in the second category are incapable of working with anybody but those on the right. Those in the first do have the capacity to work with the left — if pushed enough — and work less well with the right. That’s the best that we can get when government is stacked with neo-liberal, neo-con, corporate evangelical hypocrites. Take them out of the equation and we might as well recognize that fascism has won. Hand the deed to the WH to the Bushes and Clintons. Admit that we’re all good little Germans. There is no white in our institutions today – never has been. But there is some gray left which the left, right and center are doing their very best to blot out and leave nothing but black. Taliban vs. N. Alliance. Some choice. Some legacy to leave to future generations. Because no white or even much gray can pierce through the darkness.
Do you people really think that Gore enjoyed standing there and shutting down Congresswomen like Maxine Waters? That’s crazy. And everyone of us would have done exactly what he did had we been in his shoes. As painful as it was, there was no alternative other than a meaningless, symbolic gesture just as we saw in 2005 when Boxer did sign the election, objection petition. Only for Gore it would have been worse — would have reinforced the sore loserman rap in the minds of the public. This country had already sent the message in the weeks following the election that we weren’t going to rise up and stop the installation of Bush/Cheney. Oh, but somehow all on his own, after exhausting all legal avenues (the only thing that has kept this country from devolving into another fascist dictatorship for a couple of centuries), he was supposed to stand up and fight. Stand there until the guards carried him away and disappeared him into some rubber room. Or killed him – that’s what we prefer to do to inconvenient politicians and leaders. In this country, when the head is cut off the political faction or movement dies with him.
I’d be the first to admit that Gore ain’t much of a leader. I’d put him on a par with JFK and RFK. Not great but better than Nixon and Reagan or their reincarnations in the Clintons and Bushes. But Gore isn’t going to run because the left chooses to believe that if they only imagine a socialist nirvana, meditate to elevate and destroy the Pentagon, that it will be realized. IOW, has made themselves completely irrelevant to the future of this country. The rightwing morons prefer active instead of passive participation in the destruction of whatever this country was supposed to be. And the corporatists are busy continuing their plunder of the country, thank you very much. They win because even though their numbers are tiny they control both parties. They win because they know that they, along with the rightwing morons and leftwing purists, will destroy any politician even a smidgen to their left. The minor ones, secure in their positions with their constituencies, they can buy off because nobody has their backs.
I once made a big error from which I tried to learn something. To be more thorough in evaluating public figures — look at all the gray and not jump too quickly to seeing black instead of gray. I wrote a bunch of letters to Senators to oppose the nomination of Souter. Was I ever an idiot. How could I not have seen that he wasn’t Bork, Thomas, Roberts or Alito? That there are some men and women that have a capacity to grow when put in powerful positions of responsibility. I submit that a nuanced and careful evaluation of such people makes it clear which category they are in. No guarantee they will grow, but a chance is better than no chance.
This country will not implode overnight. If it could, I would be cheering ” bring it on.” It will devolve slowly. And with each devolution, the collective memory or what we once were (not some revision of a time that never was) will get fuzzier and fuzzier. We will adjust to the new, lower standards. Half the country today thinks that Clinton was a good president because their basis of comparison is limited to Bush. Hillary will be a disaster and effectively wipe out the remaining goodwill of Democratic, Inc. and that a woman in the WH can make a positive difference. The next one will be worse than Bush/Cheney. And Democratic, Inc. will move further to the right and consolidate with the dregs of GOP, Inc. Perhaps it’s already too late; then again, maybe it’s not. Like with the environment, if we assume that it’s too late when it’s not, then we will be passive participants in the destruction. If it’s too late and we assume that it isn’t, we won’t change the outcome but at least we made the effort to resist it on the off chance that it wasn’t too late.
Miss D #137 – I heard that Warren Christopher urged Lieberman on Gore.
Had I been closely following politics in the late ’90s, I would have seen the selection of Lieberman for what it was in real time. It was the grand bargain extracted from Gore as the price for not having the DLC abandon him as the DEM power brokers abandoned McGovern in ’72. I doubt that Gore fully appreciated how far outside the inner circle of power he’d become by ’00. Unlike ’72, on policy issues etc., Gore was still very close to them. But distancing himself an iota from the golden boy was treasonous. Not different from how Bush/Cheney operates. Clinton cannot tolerate anyone that challenges his right to be on center stage. Clearly demonstrated by his disgusting grab for that at the ’00 convention. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill was already anticipating that GWB would be such an obvious disaster in his first term that Hillary had a chance to waltz into the WH in ’04. Gore kind of screwed that up by not losing but he was effectively and easily sidelined. Then Bush/Cheney proved to be too clever for Clinton by triangulating the DLC DEMs in Congress.
If all this is true, Marie, than clearly the answer is:
A) Run somebody outside the party and its ugly, hopelessly corrupt structure– one refined to high art by the Clintons and the DLC, of which Gore was/is a member
and
B) Run somebody who does not have a history of caving in to idelogues peddling greed-addled, Bible-thumping psychos like Lieberman.
At least it’s obvious to me. Gore is a loser on both these levels and so many, many more.
More on the Clinton-Bush financial spiderweb. Oh, what a tangled web indeed. All these people should be in prison.
Why don’t they just get their damned war on.
Blair at big Catholic dinner/fundraiser in Manhattan.
ms_xeno #143 Run somebody outside the party
Wow, why didn’t I think of that. Ms. Somebody Else could win. Too bad it’s not legal to run “None of the Above” because the phantom just might win this time around. Unfortunately, turning Somebody Else into flesh and blood is a stone cold loser.
There is no Somebody Else. The choice is limited to DLC and maybe not DLC. That’s it. Dean was once DLC but today is maybe not DLC. Edwards was DLC and is probably not maybe not DLC today. Obama hasn’t been DLC but at best is maybe not DLC. Gore might not give a shit anymore.
Must be nice to live in a static, never changing world. Much easier than what I struggle with to observe and look for signs of change, both positive and negative. To try to understand and forgive errors if they are disowned and backed up with behaviors not reminiscent of past errors. It’s a real bitch trying to sort out of this crap. Far easier to slap a coat of black paint on anyone that’s ever served in public office and be done with them. Then twiddle my thumbs waiting for the appearance of a white knight in shining armor. Yeah, someone like Nader who in thirty years on the public stage couldn’t come close to accomplishing what a short, loony bozo like Perot managed to do in less than a year. More Nader – whoo hoo. (But mustn’t look to closely or I might see his feet of clay too.)
[snerk.]
Read more carefully, Marie. I have gone on record several times as saying that I hope somebody other than Nader will run on the Left next time. Also that I hoped somebody with a real spine would run in ’04. They didn’t. That left Nader, flaws and all. I don’t vote warmongers and I don’t vote for warmongers’ stooges, either.
Yes, Gore is a new man. I guess if you’re a rich, handsome White guy from a good family there’ll always be a hard core of citizens ready to give you one more chance no matter how many times you screw them over for your own gain.
Some things should not change. One of them is having a breaking point. The serious dearth of supposed progressives who have any discernable breaking point, any core values which they will– at long last– refuse to see thrown on history’s trash heap, is what brings us Gore, Kerry and Clinton II and the rest. Over and over again.
I won’t help you with that, Marie. I spent enough time being a lapdog for the DP and its never-ending parade of thieves and killers. Ain’t never comin’ home. Home is where 90% of all accident occur.
😉
fwiw:
LOL beware October.
Black Monday. Oh, the memories. I took the PATH train between work and home every day, which meant I was saw billions of dazed yuppies going home in the aftermath. I didn’t find out why until the next day, because I worked long hours and didn’t follow the news during most of the week.
The day after, we were all called in by management and told not to worry. They’d made some “difficult” investments but everything would be all right.
Thirty days later, we all got pink slips and the company was no more.
ms_xeno – doesn’t matter, Gore isn’t running. I’ve been waiting for forty years for the left to build a bench of progressive candidates from which a leader could emerge and not waste time with vanity POTUS candidates. Hasn’t happened. They seem stuck in some time period before radio and TV existed. Hell, I’m not sure they’re not stuck at 1800 when a President didn’t even have to be a decent public speaker. They do do better than the Libertarian Party in candidate selection, but that’s a really low bar.
MitM and everyone – a new Clinton-Chinese fundraising scandal. Apparently dishwashers in NYC love her so much that handing her $1000+ checks is their dream come true.
Black Monday… LOL my mother and I went to dinner — and laughed like hell. IIRC Black Monday followed a very tense Friday, with uncomfortable losses.
Monday should be interesting.
There was an intimation it ws coming as the worst of the financial programs began touting two days ago to always be prepared to hold on and, other than that, to buy in a big dip. Standard bullshite.
have to laugh.
re: drop in Dow – chump change only down 2.6% today. Peaked at 14,164 on 10/9 and after today now at 13, 522. Compare that to 1987 when the Dow lost over 22% on Black Monday. In ’87 peaked at 2,722 in Aug and after Black Monday was down to 1,739. Would have to drop to 9,049 to be comparable. Long way to go before reaching that point. (And the big boys are more sophisticated at keeping it up than they were in ’87)
I don’t think anyone is saying the market is not propped up. Nor that it was not propped up in 87. IIRC Poppy said, watch what we do.
Marie:
You’ve been… “waiting ?”
I think “obstructing” is the word you’re looking for. At the very least, you are far more in sympathy with obstructionists than with those who want electoral system reform. Again, I would urge you one of these days to try reading some of the columns Greg Bates wrote about Nader. I don’t give a damn if you like me or the rest of us, but it would behoove you to at least get beyond the sort of snide Kos-ian insults about how we don’t understand the era we’re living in.
I think we understand it– and you– all too well. You’re in our way. And so is your sorry-ass party.
And you sure waste a lot of bandwidth on Gore for somebody who doesn’t believe that he will run.
Wow, why didn’t I think of that. Ms. Somebody Else could win.
Well here’s the problem. It’s not the personal failings of Gore or Obama, or the lack of charisma of Dennis Kucinich or the nuttiness of Ron Paul or Mike Gravel that prevents a genuine progressive from emerging.
And it’s not even the American people.
It’s the structure of the political system, the gates and sluices that keep the American people from genuinely expressing its anti-war politics.
And the key to overcoming it is (in my opinion) organizing outside of the two established parties. Once you reach a certain critical mass, Kucinich will be mainstream. Obama will start running to the left. Gravel won’t seem so nutty and everybody will think Hillary and Giuliani are completely insane (which they are).
Al Gore’s getting into the race will shake things up. I agree with you here. It will mean there’s a real primary. An anti-war progressive coalition might even coalesce around Gore. Hillary and Gore might destroy each other and allow Obama to run as a real progressive.
In other words, I half agree with Marie. Having a real primary might be a good thing.
But I half agree with Ms. Xeno. It might absorb all our energy.
Oh, the memories. I took the PATH train between work and home every day, which meant I was saw billions of dazed yuppies going home in the aftermath
One of my fondest teenage memories is the group of anarchists who went to Wall Street with a huge banner that said JUMP.
Gore is happy and making multi millions in what is rapidly becoming “green washing”. It was clear a year ago, post Davos, that big money was on board for the facade and so forth of corporatising “green”.
Gore won’t be entering, a quasi new age CEO is very much to his liking, lionised by a curious thing called the Democratic party when he goes to the hill, a mark down, sale table Peace Prize… beloved in another strange place, called Hollywood or LA…
and so on. I feel sure he is relieved. Much preferable to politics.
Ms_Xeno – What else is there? Who is in the mix? Not a damn soul – the faint, the fainter and the criminal (and I include most of both parties in the latter category, I once tried to work with the DP).
We are at a tough, painful and potentially disemboweling point in the history of These once United States. Part of our responsibility – every one of us sentient, hopeful, engaged citizens – is to find a way. No, there’s no white knight, but there have to be some folks with some degree of honesty, integrity, intelligence and understanding of what happened before our time.
I hold no candle for any of the current fartknockers but we had better damn well come up with Someone. And soon. Before we become a slave culture in toto.
Considering the fact that Justin Raimondo isn’t exactly a Democratic Party flack, I can assume he’s not engaging in Donk scare tactics here to get us to pull the level for Hillary.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/10/19/the-knock-on-the-door-at-night/
Rudy is a scary guy and his advisors are scarier. Take it from those of us who lived through him in New York. You don’t want this man as president.
How hideous. The immigrant slave labor coughing up a grand or two for Hillary….
This money is staked and bundled by human-smuggling gangsters tacked on to what?– a 35 grand minimum? A 100 grand to be “worked off” ?
So Hillary is winning the money race..the blood money race.
How hideous. The immigrant slave labor coughing up a grand or two for Hillary….
You should have seen Bloomberg’s reach into Chinatown. It was amazing. He had Chinese language material everywhere.
Well would you call Mike Davis a Dem party hack?
I have posted here it was his opinion piece in the NYT that pulled me back in 92. I have hunted relentlessly for that piece of his, I’d like to reread it.
I am waiting fro him to find a way to exhort for Hillary.
Why on earth do people think Hillary, about not a great deal is known that is good, at all… think back, the picture is not pretty. Her alliances are not favorable to much other than repression and war…
why on earth assume she is better than Guiliani?
You know that NY cracker dipshit Arthur Gilroy beats a drum she is some lefty under cover, pretending to be a rightie to get elected.
sorry, I don’t buy that Hillary is even the lesser of two evils.
But many many millions will be pulled in.
Well would you call Mike Davis a Dem party hack?
I haven’t followed him in awhile. But Kerry got a lot of otherwise very smart people to support him in 2004 because they didn’t want Bush. So it’s believable he’d pimp for Hillary.
FWIW, Rudy as president scares me considerably more than Hillary does but not enough to get me to vote for her.
You can find who you like, wozzle. So can Marie. So can everyone and their little dogs, too. I can’t stop you (pl.) and I wouldn’t even if I could.
But if s/he runs as a Democrat, I’m not on board. I don’t care how great they look and sound. I don’t care if Rudy is building a damn crematorium in my back yard and there SS officers knocking on my door holding eminent domain papers in one hand and guns in the other. I don’t care if Rudy’s alleged foe flies me to safety in Wonder Woman’s robot plane AND brings the car, the chicken, the pot for the chicken AND the damn garage out of a magician’s hat and hands them all to me once we land safely in Disneyworld’s luxury hotel lobby.
End of story.
Take a look at IRaq. “Mismanged”? what a laugh, and so many buy it.
Who is to say NO to a slave nation, here. 90% living in forms of poverty and hard menial labor. Nearly all “entitlements” gone. The naton bled for foreign war and the endless arms race… a small strata of corporatists and better wage work for large corps who have regionally dividedthe nation… then a tiny sliver at the very top. Phoning it in from Dubai.
Who is to say it is not workable?
It is brutal, killing and the end for many. But not for the oligarchy.
But if s/he runs as a Democrat, I’m not on board.
Neither am I. Just acknowledging that some of the candidates are worse doesn’t mean I’m voting for the Democrats.
OF COURSE I’d rather see Obama than Rudy.
But Obama can just as easily be pushed into further restricting civil liberties as Rudy can push everybody into doing it because he’d enjoy it.
It’s a problem with the system, not the individuals.
ms_xeno – oh, right because I didn’t vote for Nader I’m an “obstructionist.” I’d be happy to vote for a credible and viable third party candidate. (My first registration was in the Peace and Freedom Party. That didn’t work out so well.) But I’m also mindful of the fact that even if Nader had squeaked through and won, his accomplishments in office would have been close to zero. Would have made the outsider Carter look like a miracle worker.
To have any chance of being effective before there is considerable institutional support in Congress, a third party candidate would have to win in a landslide. Where is such a person? Hell, I’d even settle for a third party candidate who could barely win as an investment in the future for such a party. Where is such a person? In the meantime, our choices are limited to really evil, evil, less evil and zero. That’s why I opted out in 2004.
Snide? Moi? It’s an historical fact that Nader didn’t come close to matching Perot’s success. Had I been a SF resident, I would have voted for Gonzales, but maybe that wouldn’t have been such a good idea since he didn’t bother to stay in the game after almost winning. The new mayor of Richmond might change the political dynamics in N. CA or might be a one off, talented politician.
…reading some of the columns Greg Bates wrote about Nader. That’s what I was getting at. The candidate has to make the sale. Big name columnists can do no more than help seal the deal. The sale is made on TV and will increasingly be made on You-Tube but that is still video. Do I wish it were different? Sure. Is it going to change in my lifetime? Nope. Perot demonstrated that even a weird looking, rightwing fruitcake can gain a following if they do it on the TV. Why is that so difficult to understand? Even the truly bizarre Ron Paul can gain a following by being right on a couple of things and by getting on the TV. It’s really not rocket science. I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s done within the DEM Party or as an IND or third party. But it ain’t going to happen by whining about people who preferred the iffiness of Gore instead of giving GWB an easier victory.
I’m so pessimistic that I’m reading a biography of Picasso and comforting myself that he managed to live a relatively unmolested life in Paris under the Nazi occuption and still do his work.
I’m just assuming it’s going to be that bad. I’m not Mexican, gay or Arab. I’ll never need an abortion. Maybe they won’t bother me.
That’s what I’ve been reduced to.
Get rid of D’Amato, you get Shumer.
As an online aquaintance, a NYer, wrote me in great despair last year.
Get rid of D’Amato, you get Shumer.
Agreed. The way the Dems want us to see it is “Get rid of Hitler you get DeGualle and Adenauer”.
167
that is where most people are headed and the government, the eternal government of no parties, knows it.
People are already parsing reality to survive.
I understand this, it is human.
But I won’t vote to support the horror. I won’t vote for the killing, deadly “grey” of it all.
# 164 So, xee- your undecided I see –….[ducks]
Took a look at the Raimondo link… yes absolutely Guiliani’s loaded up wtih the Neocons. Many ntable names on board.
Or Dennis Ross and Maddie… ?
SOrry I don’t see a difference. Any that exists is illusion. They will end up the same place.
At best I would guess that the Dems might have had a different schedule for PlanIraq. More Peter Galbraithian than Ledeen and Gaffney.
No diff.
HC, the first step to changing the system, so far as I’m concerned, is to stop, even for one brief election, from feeding it. Maybe that means voting Elaine Brown, Nader, Jello Biafra. Whomever. Maybe it means not voting at all.
Maybe if people try that, they’ll get in the habit. I have been told since the day I was old enough to vote that if I didn’t go Dem the fascists would be knocking at my door. At some point I made the connection between meekly voting for these clowns and their personal stake in maintaining and growing fascism to protect their own power. If Nader had never opened his big mouth, I might have been able to avoid that truth for a few more years. All he did was rush the realization in a little bit faster.
I don’t care if Rudy is building a damn crematorium in my back yard and there SS officers knocking on my door holding eminent domain papers in one hand and guns in the other.
But this is the relatively sane liberal Rudy.
I’m afraid he’s going to show up in a black bustier with a bathroom plunger.
Note: If Pete Stark apologies, fuck him.
At best I would guess that the Dems might have had a different schedule for PlanIraq. More Peter Galbraithian than Ledeen and Gaffney. No diff.
Once again, I do think there’s a difference. Of course I’d rather have Samantha Power and Brezinski than Gaffney and Martin Kramer. Of course I’d rather have Paul Krugman managing the economy than Cheney’s energy pals.
But all that means is I’m past what the democrats think is their converation stopper.
Are you saying there’s no difference between Bush and Gore?
Nope. I’d rather have Gore.
But I’m saying it’s not enough of a difference to sink all your political energy into a corrupt system.
argh
Wish I thought Pete Stark gave shit.
Just another elderly guy who likes to hear himself rant.
IMO, of course. Maybe he meant it, but the 110th is just bozos scratching bozos as I see it.
167: If the US were to transform into a police state (and remember, we’re just one or two major “terrorist” attacks away from such a thing happening), do you not think the secret police would work with WordPress and all the other blogging ASP services, as well as with the big blogs like Daily Kos, to go through their archives and match IP addresses (and thereby names) to “terrorism-supporting” comments and diaries?
But look on the bright side! We’ll be able to hold an Opera Glasses and Popcorn reunion in whichever concentration camp we all end up in! Look forward to meeting you all in person!
Well Ron Paul’s moderating his anti-war views for his campaign ads.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/10/19/ron-pauls-big-mistake/#comments
You sir are no Mike Gravel.
The difference is santions and Miss maddie and her comment about a half million children as KIA.
Or the war.
I say they are utterly linked. Bill did not oppose the war, neither did Hillary.
S Powers, hiding behind a Black face, will just enable smaller wars.
I won’t vote for it.
Obama is just a electronic “skin” (by which I mean a shift in exterior design) for other elements in the party than thsoe who support HIllary.
The Dems are dying desperate to be doers rather than enablers.
I won’t vote it into office.
Where did Carter’s and Zbig’s grand plans in Afhganistan get us?
hmm?
HC #166 – who the hell knows who Obama is? Smart, talented guy, but wow is he ever green. He doesn’t even know who he is. I truly doubt that he’s mature enough not to easily be pushed to the right by all the people he would have to surround himself with. The best I can say for him is that he wouldn’t be worse than Hillary but there’s a chance that he could be better. Beats the hell out of me how Democrats can delude themselves about Hillary. Have none of them looked at Bill’s record — that’s who they are: neo-liberal corporatists who think they’ve found the magic keys to the economic kingdom when in fact, Bill just got lucky that some of the high-tech industry finally kicked into the economy and a bunch of bozos went out and bought SUVs that renewed Detroit. Maybe Hillary should run on “A Hummer in every driveway.”
Not sure I’m capable of fathoming that Rudy can be worse than Bush/Cheney. Then again, I don’t think the GOP is going to win this time around and neither do they. As a party, they are disengaged and disorganized. The fundies will come on board but that still doesn’t get them anymore than 30-33%.
On the money chase, Hillary isn’t ahead. And her financial support base is still much weaker than Obama’s. Too soon to read the ground conditions in IA – as we saw last time, this can shift very late in the game. Hillary has been counting on Vilsack to pull it out for her, but he might not have as much clout this time around. Otherwise, she’s got some problem in IA. Remains to be seen if Edwards can build on his ’04 support there. On the GOP side, Mitt’s going to buy IA, but it’s going to cost a lot (the GOP caucus is more like a straw poll – the DEM caucus is truly Byzantine).
Gravel’s last piece at HuffPo seemed to indicate he thinks that Edwards and Obama are worth something and would take on Hillary.
They are all on their knees.
If the US were to transform into a police state (and remember, we’re just one or two major “terrorist” attacks away from such a thing happening), do you not think the secret police would work with WordPress and all the other blogging ASP services, as well as with the big blogs like Daily Kos, to go through their archives and match IP addresses (and thereby names) to “terrorism-supporting” comments and diaries?
I’ve been pretty heavily involved with NY Indymedia and it takes up half the non redacted entries in the NYPD spying papers. So yeah, I think they would.
Would they care enough to come after me? Would it be worth the fare for the Lincoln Tunnel to come out and give me the plunger up the ass treatment? Maybe.
Interestingly enough, remember the fuss about Walt and Mersheimer being kept off Amazon. If they were really doing surveillance this extensively, wouldn’t they want to keep a list of people buying this book? Why would they want people buying it in cash?
Gravel’s last piece at HuffPo seemed to indicate he thinks that Edwards and Obama are worth something and would take on Hillary.
Mike Gravel. You are no Dennis Kucinich.
Obama is just a electronic “skin” (by which I mean a shift in exterior design) for other elements in the party than thsoe who support HIllary.
Agree but Obama isn’t crazy. Rudy’s genuinely nuts. Trust me on this one. I really don’t want to see him as president.
But I agree with you. Those 500,000 Iraqi children didn’t enjoy the 90s quite as much as the dotcom crowd at Stanford did.
175
GORE IS NOT RUNNING.
It is not 00 anymore.
It is not 04.
Congealing fuckball (and i noticed someone trying to use “little centrist fuckballs”. Be my guest hon) is the order of the day.
Last I heard Dennis was “thinking” about impeachment. For Cheney. That was just two weeks ago, iirc.
he was happy to partner with Edwards in Iowa in 04 (fine that is politics). He is a party member.
I left the party as the owrd was looking a tad too stalinist for my tast. I got ivsions of people standing and saluting when I would read the word.
The Dems, imo, want to run against Guiliani.
Tweety and Ed Rendell getting into their “we’re just a couple of gritty east coast Catholic guys” act.
Puke.
So Eddie’s Catholic now? Or did he convert just for the show?
Question I tend to think of regarding most folks these days…
Marie was caugth in Moderation….
she is a little up thread at 181
So Eddie’s Catholic now?
Tweety baptised him I think.
Stupid, I’m thinking that doom will come from my ruined kidneys and the exhorbitant medical bills that will be attached to them in ten years’ time. But I’ve been wrong before.
At any rate, it’s very freeing to have realized that neither party really has a stake in my happiness and survival. I don’t have to waste any more valuable time anxiously looking over my shoulder, carrying on and on a la’ Digby about why don’t they get it ? They don’t get it because they’re predators and I’m their prey. Very simple.
There’s always a difference – the question is it enough of a difference to matter? I screwed up in ’92 – like many, put getting a handle on the national debt as the most important issue. Actually it was – because we were getting short on time to reverse course to insure the financial wherewithal of Social Security. Where I screwed up was in not recognizing that delaying that for another four years wouldn’t be disastrous and not knowing anything about the DLC takeover of the DEM Party. Should have voted for GHB.
I’m going to blame a Hillary-Rudy GE on the morons in NYC. What were you thinking when you voted in the carpetbagger and *** (expletive deleted because I can’t think of one that’s appropriate to this scumbag).
re: Carter and Scrowcroft — why every President since Nixon (and will throw JFK into the pot) runs on domestic policy and drops it like a hot potato and focuses on FP when they get in office is because FP seems easier. The time delay from action to results is longer, after they’re out of office, and much less obvious that they’ve screwed up. LBJ got tagged for Truman, Ike and JFK decisions along with his own. Carter got tagged for Ike/Dulles decision in Iran. Clinton and GWB got lucky because they didn’t get tagged with Carter/Reagan decisions in Afghanistan even though the outcomes appeared on their watch. And they all just bumble along adding to the big pot of terrible, naive, stupid decisions of their predecessors. All still stuck in a Cold War mentality that was only slightly less delusional than their renaming of it as the WOT. One day, we the people will have to pay for all these mistakes.
Stephanie Miller just called Tweety a right wing tool. Ha. Ha.
Krugman may be terrible on TV but he does get it. And cleverly says that Hillary is GOP-lite without using that term.
Krugman’s a very smart guy but he’s the prototypical annoying liberal.
Listen to him on DN on immigration.
He’s like “well it’s bad and we have to do something about it and since I’m a liberal I feel bad about picking on Mexicans but I really don’t know what we need to do honestly”.
Why does some poor Mexican day laborer who’s got Minutemen and cops harassing him while he’s trying to make his 50 bucks to send back to his family care if Mr. tenure at Princeton gets 50,000 bucks from Enron wrings his hands or not?
Marie:
The candidate has to make the sale.
Yes and no. Without electoral reform the candidate cannot get to the public without being a fucking billionaire, something you inadvertantly let slip when you proclaimed Perot a bigger success than Nader.
And saying that the professional Left and the mass media BOTH had no hand in Nader’s failure to get 5% for the Greens is like saying that advertising does not persuade people to buy a certain brand of chips. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t get paid to do it. For shit’s sake.
If you “sit back and wait,” if the professional Left “sits back and waits,” than the failure is yours (pl), too. The flaws of the one inept (in your eyes) candidate who tried to provide an alternative voice are in part your flaws, too. Because in your zeal to undermine and immobilize him you undermined and immobilized all comers.
P.S.– Greg Bates would probably laugh at the notion that he is a nationally-known columnist. I’m pretty sure that he’s not. Good writer, though.
Do you people really think that Gore enjoyed standing there and shutting down Congresswomen like Maxine Waters? That’s crazy.
Oh my … when he tried to shut them down by citing the rules, one of them (I think it was Lee or Waters, I don’t remember) said that she didn’t care if they were taking too long, he mockingly said something like, “Well the RULES care.”
Fuck him … his voice was dripping with contempt for them. After all, he rolled over and offered his backside to preserve, as I’ve heard him say several times, “the rule of law”, who were these uppity people to not follow his example?
Sorry to reply so late, just got home.
oh, and if one of us is crazy, and as I would define “crazy” as being unwilling to face unpleasant reality, replacing it with some gauzy hoped-for fantasy, that crazy person ain’t me.
Oh, and this …
because the left chooses to believe that if they only imagine a socialist nirvana, meditate to elevate and destroy the Pentagon, that it will be realized.
… is a distortion of leftism on the par of the bullshit spewed by Hannity and Rush. Shame on you.
Why don’t you just call us all “concern trolls” and find a way to ban us … oh, wait, you can’t. MCat isn’t owned by NDN or some other party organ.
ms_xeno – I think we all agree that electoral reform is needed. Hell, would guess that a solid majority in the country agrees with that. The question is how do we get it done? As long as those with the power to change it benefit from the current system, they won’t change it. Frankly, IMHO, until their is a broad-based groundswell of something like 25 million people willing and able to kick in at least $100 each to buy half of Congress and the WH, it cannot be changed.
Will google to see if I can pull up the information on how much Perot actually contributed to his campaigns. I have a fuzzy memory that he didn’t put much of his own money into the pot. Right now everybody thinks that Romney has put $17+million into his campaign, but those are only loans that he hopes will be repaid by a bunch of little people after he wins IA. Sort of like Kerry did last time around. There are a few who have self-funded like Jon Corzine, Herb Kohl and Mark Dayton – they may not have been inherently better elected officials but that self funding allowed them to be more independent and overall somewhat better. Cantwell kicked in a bunch in her first run but didn’t need to do so in her re-election. iirc Corzine and Kohl voted against the IWR but Dayton and Cantwell voted for it; so, not so much better I guess.
Cantwell kicked in a bunch in her first run but didn’t need to do so in her re-election.
It was a good thing she did not need it, iirc her worth was around 10 or 20 percent of what it had been. She likely was not able to do it again.
Rally have to laugh at the likes of her and Corzine dumping in boom bucks. Corzine did not even bother to stay around.
Jasmina Tešanović: Neonazism in Serbia
The imagine it because people are stupid.
How can Serbia become the center for modern Nazi fans whose idol Hitler bent every effort to exterminate Jews, gypsies and of course Serbs?
Easy. Every country in Europe was fascist in the 1930s. Eastern Europe was ground zero of fascism. Nazism is just the most stylish, prestigious kind of fascism, best uniforms, army, etc., kind of the Mercedes (which was invented by Nazis) of fascism.
I heartily recommend the gloriously cynical War Nerd.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8414&IBLOCK_ID=35
Even the noncombatant states were fascist before the Marshall Plan showed dictators that there was more profit in talking nice. Countries tried to copy the big, bad fascists with little comedy monsters of their own, like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic or Peron in Argentina. And in their humble way, all these guys did their best to do their worst. Trujillo actually tried to prove that the Dominicans were the lost tribe of Aryanism, and ordered something like 30,000 Haitian immigrants hacked to death with machetes for being “black.” Even the Mexicans tried to do the Fascist two-step, only being Mexican they went for the gaudiest color they could find, so while Germany had the brownshirts and Mussolini had the blackshirts, Mexico came up with…the Gold Shirts! “And put some frilly cuffs on that while you’re at it!”
Burma on the Potomac: Another Step Deeper Into Tyranny
War nerd is great…
I love it that he is in Fresno (iirc)
pressed processed meat I am …
I love it that he is in Fresno (iirc)
Fictional persona.
It’s John Dolan with (most likely) some input from Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames.
what a pity. I liked him as some individual out in Fresno.
oh, from the war nerd:
Btw, the tribe where I live now were the Potawatomi and the Menominee mainly, with a few others. We know this because there are rivers or casinos and roads named after them.
according to wikipedia, it’s some guy named Gary Brecher … so that’s a story behind the story?
Why precisely does race drive otherwise intelligent people insane?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1673952,00.html
Watson, 79, says he is “mortified” by the imbroglio, and apologizes “unreservedly” for the offending comments, in which he suggested black people are not as smart as whites: he told the Sunday Times’ Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa,” since “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas testing says not really.” Watson also told Hunt-Grubbe, who lived and worked with him as a lab assistant in Long Island a decade ago, that even though he would hope all people are equal in intellectual capacity, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.”
I honestly don’t get it, seriously. I hate people for all sorts of reasons and I can’t say I’m free from bigotry but what would motivate a bloody Nobel Prize winner to babble on like a senile moron.
Had it wrong on the IRW – Dayton voted against and Kohl for.
Corzine probably discovered that DC and the Senate were impossible; so, moved on to Gov of NJ.
MitM – sorry that I get exasperated by the left – blame it on age and forty years of watching the haplessness of the left that is smaller today than it was back then or even in the ’30s. A microcosm in action can be seen at the Pacifica radio stations. Endless infighting and power grabs in a puddle that never enlarges into a pond. Great brand but they also manage to piss off one or more demographics and programmer hosts who move on when they can’t take it any more. Almost all of the best stuff that has ever been produced and heard on radio came out of Pacifica stations but sixty years on it remains tiny while NPR moved into that niche and grew, providing inferior radio, at much higher cost and like PBS has devolved into just another commercial station.
so, moved on to Gov of NJ.
Where he promptly assumed the position as punk ass bitch for all the local Dem bosses/Mafia Dudes, got depressed and had his driver crack the SUV up on the Parkway.
OMG … so funny:
Stephanie Miller calls Chris Matthews a “Right Wing tool.”
Too bad she backs off a little when he gets his back up.
MitM – #200 – sometimes life hands some people difficult choices with no good options. Like the doctors and nurses trapped in hospitals in NO after Katrina. Do you think they wanted to let some people die? Do you think that if they hadn’t stoically and robotically done what they could for those with the best chance to survive while ignoring the others that they could have survived themselves. And later along come those who want to second guess their actions and put them on trial for manslaughter.
So, you could watch F-9/11 and know exactly what was in Gore’s head. That he didn’t have to make a whole series of very difficult decisions from election day to the day he presided for the last time as President of the Senate. That he was contemptuous of Maxine Waters and the others who stood up to register their objections. You, know what, that’s not what I saw. I saw a man in deep pain. Doing the job assigned to him with no option to do anything else. Maxine was well aware of what would happen that day and that it was important to get it on the record that Americans had been disenfranchised in the election. The record in case anybody ever managed to piece together the full story. Not that that was likely to happen because American DOESN’T “care about black people.” America doesn’t care about anybody but white, wealthy people, preferably male.
So, go ahead, blame Gore for everything — everybody else does. I prefer to used up my quota of loathing on the Clintons, Bushes and all their suck ass enablers and buddies. Maybe I’m giving Gore a pass he doesn’t deserve but as he’s never held the reins of power, I’m can’t be sure that such loathing for him is warranted. A few weeks ago there was a diary on dKos about the death of Richard Jewell. I was stunned by a poster who admitted that he’d taken one look at him on TV and was convinced that he had set off that bomb That wasn’t my impression of Jewell at the time. But neither his nor my first impressions were worth anything — because that’s not a good method on which to determine guilt or innocence. It’s why I detest all these court TV shows. How many innocent people has that Nancy Grace convicted?
well, that marginaliziation is often by design, or did the revelations of agent provocateurs slide right by you? The co-option of “activist” groups like NARAL was pursued by party organs and corporate money. The left stupidly resorted to the courts and lobbying instead of doing hard politics, I’ll give you that, but it’s hard to build a movement when your leaders are killed or bought off.
After Gore blew off the CBC, are you suprised that so many were bought off fairly quickly? Why stand with people who stand in the rain when it’s made painfully clear that they … don’t … matter?
The “powers that be” (and yes, I understand how you’ll take that … I don’t care) killed many emergent leaders, and bought off many more. It’s gonna take years, if not generations, for leaders to emerge, and folding to the Donklephants only puts that day further into the future. Look how long Latin America has taken after Che was taken out.
Whatever, cling to your comfortable notions of being rational and reasonable and realistic. It was the Donks who approved rightist judges, the Donks who expanded domestic electronic eavesdropping, the Donks who passed “free” trade for the corporations, the Donks who started Vietnam, the Donks who funded the foundations of what became al Queda, the Donks who …
… shit, why bother?
Cling to your sinking flotation device, and make sure you stock up on contraceptives before Hillary takes office.
Come on, it’s easy to see why Gore backed down.
The Dems were going to let Bush in. People would be all pissed off because they knew Gore won. Bush would fuck things up, look like an idiot, propose some really stupid shit and maybe even get in trouble about a spy plane or something in China.
Then the Dems would come roaring back in 2002, take Congress, and get the White House back in 2004.
Too bad they couldn’t predict 19 crazy Arabs would ram a couple of planes into the WTC and some insane hicks in Ohio would get so upset about gay marriage they’d vote their own social security down the river.
So, you could watch F-9/11 and know exactly what was in Gore’s head.
I listened to his tone of voice and watched his body language. I’m no more guilty of reading his mind than you are by imparting noble motives in actions that betray no evidence of anything like nobility. He’s a child of privilege buckling under pressure … a man who plainly feels no obligation to the people who supported him, a man who takes those people for granted.
Look, I love his barn-burning speeches since. I love his propagandization of the vital issue of our despoiling of our environment. I’m under no illusions that he’s presenting straight science … he’s selling a shift of perspective. Great, someone has to, but he’s a political hack with a long history of pandering to cultural reactionaries and militarists, and a deep patrician’s distrust of the hoi polloi.
Not even sure why I’m still bothering.
Marie:
…The question is how do we get it done?…
Marie, I know how I tried to get it done. I tried to get the Green Party 5% of the vote in 2000. I vote Green or Indy wherever I can. I have volunteered for a candidate or two. Nothing big, but I had the free time so I did it. I try to keep up on issues like IRV and their progress or lack of it around the U.S.
I have no idea what you did or what you’re planning to do. I try hard not to think about it most of the time because I don’t like seeing you as my enemy any more than I enjoy seeing my partner and most of my relatives and friends as enemies. But politically, we are just that.
The DP conspires with the GOP to keep us in the eternal loop where nobody else is allowed at the table of power. Every election is Our Last Ditch Attempt To Stave Off Fascism. Until the next one.
I’m sick and tired of that shit.
BTW, I was not referring to Perot literally buying the airwaves, though for all I know he does own an interest in them. I was talking about how millions of alleged thinkers in this country — from CNN to La Nation to Kos to the guy on the bus next to me– are enamored of the extremely wealthy and of killers. In Perot’s case it was the best of both worlds: He made his fortune largely off bloated defense contracts. The irony is that Nader is also a wealthy man but I’m guessing that in terms of hard currency he was not and never will be a patch on Perot. But perhaps I’m mistaken.
In any case, I think that’s the main difference between the two campaigners and how much traction they were able to get with political tastemakers and with the general public. I realize that we will never agree on this, but it’s my considered opinion.
I’m sick and tired of thieves and killers. I’d rather spend Election Day at the fucking mall buying shoes than vote for any of them. Red or Blue.
HC #216 – is it just my impression or are NJ politicians in competition with TX for the prize as to which is the most corrupt, useless and venal? Of course there are many other competitors. Hah, no wonder DC is a cesspool; look at where all those vermin escaped from. Quite amazing that this country has worked as well as it has for as long as it has given our complete inability to hire decent public officials.
Marie:
…So, go ahead, blame Gore for everything — everybody else does…
I blame the entire machine. Gore is a poster boy and prime operator.
Marie, re Giuliani,
Yes, he could be. Trust what Hair Club said above. Given the power of the presidency I fully expect that he could us look back fondly at George Bush. I always forget that people outside of NY were not familiar with Giuliani before 9/11. He is a despot , arrogant and mean-spirited and stubborn beyond belief. Like building a bunker in Bldg 7 no matter how many people advised against it.
Those pictures of him walking through the streets of NYC after the attacks, the truth was his bunker had been destroyed and he had to scramble out of there. He did not look heroic to me or probably to most NYers. I fully expected the media to mention the controversial bunker and to suggest that he looked dazed, which is what he looked like to me, and had it not been such a tragic day, I would have laughed at seeing all the predictions, which ignored, come true.
Speaking of people standing up, why couldn’t Gore simply have opted out that day? As for worrying about labels, such as ‘sore loserman’? I don’t get that at all. Why should anyone care what they say? The public is longing for someone to stand up and as soon as someone does, I doubt any name-calling from the right, or left for that matter will sway the public.
heh.
IOZ notes the whole Mukasey pantomime, and concludes:
The DONKS helped create this mess:
Yearning to Breathe Free
Blackwater and Haditha
A Tale of Two Atrocities
MitM – Cling to your sinking flotation device, and make sure you stock up on contraceptives before Hillary takes office.
This is the same kind of crap I get from the Hill-bots; although they tell me to take my GOP talking points ass over to FR. Whereas, I think Hill and her minions should join the GOP.
Like it or not there will be a president sworn in on 1/20/09. I struggle with the obligation of being a citizen of this country and the future of it. Far easier to say, “Fuck it” – I’ll be dead before all the really bad stuff happens. Maybe I should have said “Fuck it” thirty years ago and concentrated on making a lot of money, voted GOP so that I could keep most of it, and looked forward to retirement in a cool chateau somewhere. IOW behaved like most Americans. Sadly, I wasn’t made that way. Sadly I now fight with someone I mostly agree with, but who chooses to attack me because I’ve dare to point out that the left mostly sucks like the Donks. That all Donks aren’t created equal. That each of us on different occasions will be completely wrong and make terrible decisions. Usually because we failed to gather the best or most complete data sets — or failed to recognize that our data sets are woefully inadequate. I have no tolerance for those who voted for the IWR because it was too easy to get the relevant information and make the right decision. Yet, that is not always the case. If X knew then what we know now, then X would have taken a different course. But, if there was no way that X could have known then, it’s asinine to blame them. (Which is the error many DEMS make when they attack the Nader 2000 voters.)
Maybe I should go hang out at FR — probably the only place where I won’t be mistaken for a conservative. Nah, they’ll think I’m a lesbo Hill-shill.
Forty Years After His Assassination, Che Guevara’s “Guerra Guerrilla” Survives in Mexico
Gee marie, I was only givin’ back what you were dealing out, distorting your postition as you were incessantly distorting mine.
Again, whatever, not sure why I’m bothering. I know that I’ve become radicalized, and that many people don’t share my despair and disgust and disconnection.
Still think I’m right, but time will tell.
Marie:
…Maybe I should have said “Fuck it” thirty years ago…
Maybe I should have been fighting for a 3rd Party– a real one– twenty years ago. Oh, wait. There’s no “maybe” about it.
SB #225 – but that sounds just like Bush/Cheney to me. Stupid, mean, pig-headed and ethically and morally challenged. Another variation of Nixon.
As for opting out, nobody with any self pride would call in sick on the most, of one of the most, difficult days in one’s career. That’s for wimps and chickenshits like GWB. There was nothing more or worse that they rightwing could have done to him if he had but they would have made enough noise about it that all of us would have heard. I would have had zero respect for him if he’d opted out.
ms_xeno understand. But we’ve seen candidates shooting for that magic 5% five times since 1968. Wallace and Perot succeeded but it still didn’t take them and their movements anywhere. (Can’t recall if Anderson made it. Eugene McCarthy in ’76 didn’t.) (Tried to check on Perot’s 1992 financing but on-line records don’t go back that far. Found two reports saying that he’d dumped $63 million in the race but not inclined to take the word of either of those. It’s like today when all the papers are reporting tht Mitt have contributed $17+ million to his campaign – not accurate. But there is no question that someone with big buck has an advantage because loaning one’s campaign money at critical points can make the difference. Forbes spent $38 and I doubt that he recouped that from contributors. Looking through that old stuff reminded me why Perot was unacceptable – a balance budget amendment is like what the IMF and World Bank have imposed on third world countries, terrible policy.) It’s simultaneously a tough and easy nut to crack. Absent a charismatic leader and a simple straightforward and easy to articulate and understand policy position, it’s too tough. FDR was rather brilliant on both scores. He also had to rank order his priorities which is very difficult for most of us.
For example, the war on drugs is a disaster. In a rational world this one would be near the top; in our screwed up world, has to be put on the back burner. (Newsom would like to have clinics for drug addicts to use when they shoot up. Rational because it reduces the OD rate. But it does nothing about all the crime associated with being an IV drug user. A step in the right direction? Probably. A good first step? I don’t know.)
Maybe at this stage too many Americans are so turned off to politics that nothing productive can be accomplished. That this system and our economy has to crash and burn before it can be rebuilt. Maybe societies can’t move forward until they’ve had to live under a fascist dictatorship for a while. Look at Spain today — they’re at least a decade ahead of us on social issues.
Re #229 – apologize for not putting quotation marks around “lesbo” – was paraphrasing what freepers would call me and that might not have been clear.
From Scruggs’ Greatest Hits:
…and one more
Scruggs, like Bates, is not a nationally-known columnist. Just as well. It would probably ruin his tone entirely.
ms_xeno 232 Maybe I should have been fighting for a 3rd Party– a real one– twenty years ago. Oh, wait. There’s no “maybe” about it.
Wouldn’t have worked. There was less to build on than there was in the ’60s and ’70s. In part because there were successes in those years. Not all great as they first appeared to be, but successes none the less. The only leader that I’m convinced our government destroyed and that left a gaping hole was that of MLK, Jr. Had he lived the civil rights and anti-war movements could have merged and then incorporated the emerging equal rights and environmental movements. Instead they fractured. Did get the EPA, did elect Blacks and women to Congress. Even passed the ERA – but it all seemed to stop as the Vietnam War and draft ended, Nixon resigned, and ERA wasn’t ratified.
That first wave of Black and women in Congress now looks like an embarrassment of riches. Julian Bond, Conyers, Dellums – they were great back then. Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Cissy Farenholt, Bella Abzug, etc. The second and third waves are pale imitations of the originals.
If there hadn’t been so many battlefronts all at once, we might have done better. There was the fertile soil of generalized optimism about the future of the country and an orientation towards doing better. Then greed and competing amongst ourselves took over — the country was still wealthy but at there was a psychological shift; a sense of scarcity that hadn’t existed since the ’30s. But not being real, people didn’t work together. Today we’re actually poorer but don’t know it because we’re awash in consumer goods, imported cheap crap, quantity instead of quality. Instead of investing in sustainable infrastructure and agriculture and education we have IPods, etc. Socialism can’t take root when people think they’re wealthy.
wow, Marie, when you get right down to it you’re more depressing and fatalistic than I could ever be.
At least I believe that conflict and fighting is worth it, and that something might come from it.
So , – uh, how does this work, uh – against a fucking roving band of vending machine thieves??…
You don’t get me, Marie. The problem is NUMBERS. Too many people like you insist on throwing good money after a bad party. NUMBERS, Marie. Say it with me. Or not. But Scruggs is correct: People like you are trapped in circular-logic-land, and people like me are stuck circling the bowl with you no matter how many hours we waste lamenting the stench. Because we’re just a flyspeck on your ass, proportion-wise.
No wonder I’ve finally thrown up my hands and am trying to figure out a way to blow this star-spangled popsicle stand. Sure, the odds aren’t good that some country with an actual parliamentary/multi-party system wants a gloomy, middle-aged paper pusher with bad feet, but I doubt they’re any worse than the odds that people like you will ever wake the hell up.
Fashion will save us. Dress as ordinary freedom loving liberal citizens.
Make our case. That should work – uh – unless the deal is there is a well financed ,coopted, and coordinated effort to exploit ordinary freedom loving liberal citizens trying to make their case.
BHHM, the beauty of a vending machine get-up at Halloween is that I don’t have to crash diet in order to look good in it. But I probably will need a pair of comfortable red shoes. 😉
Found both Madman and Marie in Moderation.
Think 3 comments all together…
SORRY!!
ms_xeno – what makes you think that I haven’t been awake since 1968? Go for it — make a difference – do it right and we’ll back you up with vote and maybe money. So far, we haven’t seen anything from your generation but yuppies, internet millionaire nerds, Reagan/Rambo fans, “libertarian” BBBs. Back then we knew libertarian type GOPs like Goldwater were crazy; now Ron Paul is cool. That nutcase Perot was cool in ’92. btw – I’m very selective in what DEMs get any money from me. So, stop laying this crap on me about supporting those sorry-assed DEMs in office.
MitM — just been around and realistic. But deep down I still must be an optimist because I have not yet said, “f*** it” to the whole system.
On a lighter note for anyone with HBO – apparently Gary Kasparov blew Maher and his guest Tweety out of the water. A comment and amusing response:
If you’re interested, here’s the diary link.
…So far, we haven’t seen anything from your generation but yuppies, internet millionaire nerds, Reagan/Rambo fans, “libertarian” BBBs…
You know what ? That’s it.
Fuck off, Marie. From the bottom of my 41 year-old heart. Just. Fuck. Off.
P.S.– Your generation gave us both Clinton and Gore.
Condescending asshole. You fucking deserve Kos and his Krew.
what is your problem Marie?
You hate “the left” for failing you? Frankly I truly think you missed the meaning of the killings in the 60s (it was far more than MLK that was orchestrated to redefine, decimate and kill off movement politics, charismatic leaders and a whole generation or two of hope) and slide thru the 70s to Reagan. Which more and more I have no question that Kennedy, in orchestrating votes for Anderson against a sitting president of his own party, very much helped into office.
Just as it was revealed this year, by Novak, that Eagleton was the source for the slime and slam he laid on McGovern. Even before Eagleton was mistakenly picked for VP.
What sort of party do you think you are supporting? And make no mistake, in your tortured hand wrings over who this who that, deep defences of Gore (who fucking cares by now, he truly is HISTORY) you support the party.
I think you deep down resent that people here, and similar to people here, have over the past years finally fully abandoned the party.
Why do you even care? Yo hve such dimissal for anyone who disagrees iwth you.
You remind me of the bullshite that Meteor Blades dished out here for months. Til he saw it made not difference. he too, is history.
Well, every one’s political decisions are their own. And fully equal to your political decisions.
Weeks ago you wrote off and dimissed my own personal decision to “with hold my vete” as worthless and meaningless.
Get a grip Marie.
Wothholding the vote is a political decision. You just dislike and for some reason resent it.
Deny that all you wish.
Kasparov was great, and called Maher on a lot of shit. It was fantastic.
Anyway, I agree w/ Ms_X … you’re grasping, and lumping us in with caricatures that have nothing to do with anything we’ve written, here or in the past.
I’m not saying fuck it to the overall system, just the present one. After all, my favorite founding father made it quite clear that periodic revolutions were necessary for a truly free Republic.
Know this, though … I expect nothing of the wingers. They are either ignorant or evil. But appeasers, pathetic donk clingers on … they are the real problem, the real monkey wrenches in the way of the machinery of change. Hang on, cling to those remnants of a myth of your precious status quo … it will gain you nothing, and you will drag the rest of us down with you.
btw, scahill was on with Moyers on his journal program… they recapped all the recent Eric Prince interviews…
It was about the best appearance i have cuaght of Scahill’s — will put the transcript up when it is available.
LOL Scahill called the recent interviews wtih EP worthy of the soviet era. he is right…
ms-xeno – let’s see you blamed me for the pathetic state of the Democratic Party today and I point out that your generation hasn’t done any heavy lifting and you tell me “fuck off.” Nice.
Oh, yes, there was the struggle to get birth control and abortion for women. Access to jobs that only men were allowed into. (And I had to pee in a cup before being hired — not to check for drugs but pregnancy.) Let me tell you that if many of us, the first women that we’re allowed in the door, hadn’t worked our butts off to demonstrate that women were perfectly capable — no not capable, we had to fuckin be better than the guys to demonstrate that we were capable, those doors would have been closed and locked before the next generation knocked. We were happy to do that for ourselves and those that followed us — but we didn’t appreciate being kicked in the teeth by younger women who went — ooh, yuck to feminists. (Not accusing you of that sentiment, only women in your age cohort.) In the meantime, we also had to battle with men in our age cohort — the ones that appreciated our participation in trying to end the war and draft but as soon as they discovered that they had competition for those jobs that they expected to be reserved for their white asses, they didn’t like us so much anymore.
I recognize that every generation has unique struggles, challenges and opportunities. And we all do better if we listen and learn from each other. We couldn’t wait until we were old enough to vote. By the ’80s when I was teaching, young adults couldn’t be bothered to vote; we’ve satisfied with an old man that I knew was bad news at the age of 14 when he began his political career. So, don’t blame me for the mess or tell me to fuck off — talk to your peers and those younger than you. 1980 wasn’t Morning in America but the beginning of the long dark night.
Just a thread for the night and Saturday – for any one who wants one.
LINK
How have you all construed my more nuanced perception and analysis of Gore (and I have repeatedly said that he has two incompatible political persuasions in his psyche and there was no guarantee in 2000 that the populist Gore would surface and be dominant if he won — it was a coin toss which is why I never engaged in the bashing of Nader 2000 voters) to mean that I’m a “Kos Krew” loyal Democrat? Stated that I erred in ’92 in voting for Clinton – loathe the Clintons. Didn’t vote for Kerry – withheld my vote, not that I thought it was a political act – nothing more than a refusal to vote for someone who voted for the IWR. I think it would be great if they held an election and nobody showed up. Just as it would be great if nobody showed up for their bloody stupid wars. But I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that withholding my vote means anything to the powers that be — they probably would say, “Good.”
Marisa, when I start urging people to gather in front of Chevron facilities and singing Kumbaya for the democracy movement in Burma while this country is slaughtering and destroying another country then you can liken me to MB. The sixties were very complex – and I don’t happen to share your views that a generation of powerful leaders in this country were assassinated. Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and MLK, Jr. had much more to offer and I’d like to think that we’d be much better off had they lived. Perhaps should include Fred Hampton. The Kennedys were Cold War warriors and we have no more idea if either of them would have grown into something more and better than we do Gore. Gore Vidal would say , no about RFK; I don’t know.
Have to take a lot of what Novak says with a grain of salt. Wouldn’t surprise me that Eagleton was part of the inside/backroom crowd trying to take down McGovern. OTOH, it doesn’t make much sense that he would have been doing it before he was selected VP – more likely that he did it after being dumped. But it was McGovern’ and his team that was responsible for the selection, and they either blew it or behind the scenes negotiations went on to put Eagleton on the ticket. Maybe something like what I think took place in 2000. Maybe McGovern was set up – but not by Eagleton – because his psych history came out very quickly after the nomination and essentially ended McGovern’s campaign.
Ted Kennedy in 1980 was pathetic. I felt so sorry for Joan having to drag herself around and act as if all was well. The DC DEMs never liked Carter. They may have been content to run Congress and let the GOP have the WH for all I know. But as we’ve already noted in this tread, Carter was no prince either and brought a bunch of sleazebags from Georgia to DC with himself. Bert Lance? The precursor to BCCI.
All I look for is “good enough” elected officials. Would grudgingly vote for a “good enough” GOP if ever one appeared which I doubt I’ll ever see. At this stage IMHO both major parties are unsustainable. For all practical purposes the Pub-donks rule now. This country has been screwed up on FP since the end of WWII, no difference ever between the two parties since then. On domestic issues, DEMs were better until 1980 and had enough power to hold the GOP in check. Now we’re all just one big mixed up stew of offal.
have you all construed
There is no “you all” here Marie.
Tho it is many comments back you bitched about “you people”.
You need to re read your comments.
and you need ot read the devolution of the Eagleton Novak conversations. It all came out over several days a few months ago.
AND Eagleton was whispering the big slam (a slur at McGovern that Eagleton told Novak was the sentiment of many in the party, that he was ”the candidate of abortion, etc”) to Novak before he was selected.
It was not party then, is not a party now. A broken set of factions that works in concert with the hard right to deny people in America. THEN and now. The party should have split decades ago. It did not. So we get weak things like the OoI group in the House. USELESS.
Go back to when Novak’s book came out. Read the releases, the interviews and his appearnce on MTP at the round table. I believed him.
It was discussed here in real time, I recall I ws far more upset at Eagleton than was JJB… and we are roughly (I think) contemporaries (as I believe are you and I) and I am no one’s fool Marie how ever you dismiss my political decisions..
Marie:
…ms-xeno – let’s see you blamed me for the pathetic state of the Democratic Party…
I blame people of all ages for the pathetic state of the two-party system, Marie. From voting age on up. Which you would realize if you read my comments carefully.
And you know nothing about what “heavy lifting” I and others have tried to do, because you didn’t see it on the nightly news and it wasn’t ordained and blessed by the Big Chill so it doesn’t exist. I am not interested in playing Gen-Gap Twister with you. I think that’s 99% a crock of shit, and again, I have said that before both here and elsewhere.
FUCK.
OFF.