killing them softly……….. 31 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.90 comments
AFP/Getty via Daily Telegraph
Lordy… after wandering thru the ObamaMessiah.blogspot.com travesty last night… and noting in a Daily Telegraph Photo Gallery, Obamarama that official Obama crap includes pajamas, called Ojamas (really, first photo up at the gallery)… it was no shock to land on this at TimesOnline:
Barack Obama’s senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week’s election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.
The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of “hope” and “change” are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy. [oh puhleeze, they did more than that, they sold him as an ALCHEMIST — Mcat]
One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, “so there’s not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair”.
I laughed like hell at this bit of sour effluvia:
The aide said that Mr Obama himself was the first to realise that expectations risked being inflated.
He managed that did he?
Yet Mr Obama and his aides are under no illusions about the size of the challenges the Democrat will inherit if he enters the Oval Office. Tom Daschle, the party’s former leader in the US Senate and a strong contender for the post of White House chief-of-staff in an Obama administration, said last month that the winner next week would have only a 50 per cent chance of winning a second term in 2012.
Quick! Triage for the BabyBama Forces… they can’t handle that! Not yet! Let them down slowly! Don’t drop the babies! They are the Future!!!!!!
Don’t worry! There’s still milk and cookies for the poor, free or discounted tickets to Obama Revivals for the middle class — and the one big big big big pimple of a Gulag will be shut (we have so many other options, you know) and they’ll be promising Universal Kinda Sorta Insurance Based Kinda Sorta Care ’til.. oh… ’til the Moon Really is Green Cheese.
Then they will stop. The promising, I mean.
Having promised “real” change, the pressure will be on him to deliver. In the Colorado interview, Mr Obama added: “The next president has got to come quickly out of the box.”
The early priorities being lined up if he takes power are a mixture of symbolism and substance. He plans to make a major address in a big Muslim country early in his first term. [I am so relieved! Tell him to leave a bucket of his trade marked DNA for them to share! — Mcat] Having pledged on the campaign trail to close Guantanamo Bay, he is also determined to make early moves to rid America of the controversial prison. Yet what to do with the remaining inmates looms as an intractable problem, as many of their home governments refuse to allow them to return. [Shut UP! This should be easy peasy for Mahatma Obama! STFU, with your blasphemy! — Mcat]
Mr Obama’s first legislative goals will be to follow through on his pledge to cut taxes for the middle class and raise them for the wealthiest Americans, and to push through a hugely expensive Bill to provide near-universal health insurance.
While I was reading the post orgasm dial back I caught Brokaw on with Charlie. Maybe Charlie could get a referral to Brokaw’s Botox Guy. I’d recommend it, frankly.
But let’s stick to issues shall we? They tell us over and over we must stick to the issues! Issues matter, yes they do!!!
They both admitted they have NO FUCKING CLUE what Obama thinks, much less plans, about FP. Do you love it? And why don’t they? Weren’t they in a position to FUCKING FIND OUT??? Because, stand back now for blood spatter from the BamaBabies as their heads and necks and all major arteries explode!!, he has no real (this is reality not prayer time) public record of federal level votes – try to remember he barely showed up in the Senate, showed up about half the time for the committees he was on — and worked hard to cause no ripples…. Among other things.
Bingo.
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So, they raised expectations a little? You think? A selection from the right side bar at Obama Messiah:
Obama Conversion Stories
“Many even see in Obama a messiah-like figure, a great soul, and some affectionately call him Mahatma Obama.”
“We just like to say his name. We are considering taking it as a mantra.”
“A Lightworker — An Attuned Being with Powerful Luminosity and High-Vibration Integrity who will actually help usher in a New Way of Being”
“What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation’s political history”
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
“Does it not feel as if some special hand is guiding Obama on his journey, I mean, as he has said, the utter improbability of it all?”
“He communicates God-like energy…”
— Steve Davis (Charleston, SC)
“Not just an ordinary human being but indeed an Advanced Soul”
— Commentator @ Chicago Sun Times
“I’ll do whatever he says to do. I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make his pathway clear.”
“A quantum leap in American consciousness”
“He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians. . . . the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century.”— Gary Hart
“Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”
“This is bigger than Kennedy. . . . This is the New Testament.” | “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often. No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event.”
“[Obama is ] creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom . . . [He is] the man for this time.”
“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. . . . He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh . . . Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves.”
“Obama has the capacity to summon heroic forces from the spiritual depths of ordinary citizens and to unleash therefrom a symphonic chorus of unique creative acts whose common purpose is to tame the soul and alleviate the great challenges facing mankind.”
“We’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth.”
“I would characterize the Senate race as being a race where Obama was, let’s say, blessed and highly favored. That’s not routine. There’s something else going on. I think that Obama, his election to the Senate, was divinely ordered. . . . I know that that was God’s plan.”
Please. Marketing. All of it.
Here is a favorite:
A few weeks ago, covered in Hillary badges, I approached a young couple in California and, as I was about to offer up my pearls of electoral wisdom, they just began singing at me. And they were singing Yes We Can, the song by Black Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am, whose video has become a phenomenon on YouTube. […]
[T]his week, the musician has put out another singalong. The new video captures a different side to supporting Obama: its fanaticism, its breathless, quasi-religious excitement, and its inherent problems. Instead of the text of a speech, the refrain has simply become “Obama”, and its message: “We are the ones.”
The Obama campaign uses a religious calling as its central rhetorical trope: “I’m asking you to believe,” reads the banner across the top of barackobama.com. His appeal to voters is an archetype of religious conversion: instead of being asked for support, Americans are exhorted to “join the movement”.
In Georgia, he directly equated his supporters with God’s people: “God had a plan for his people. He told them to stand together and march together around the city… and when the horn sounded and a chorus of voices cried out together, the mighty walls of Jericho came tumbling down.”
Later in the speech, he asked the congregation to “walk with me, march with me… and if enough of our voices join together, we can bring those walls tumbling down.”
Obama has created the impression that Clinton supporters, like the Pharisees in the temple, are obstacles to change: “I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change. They know it in their gut… But they’re afraid. They’ve been taught to be cynical.”
It’s not an argument for better government; it’s an exhortation to see the light. It’s not a plan for the Presidency, but a leap of faith.
This idea came to a head in Obama’s Super Tuesday speech, with those much talked about phrases: “We are the change that we seek… We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
We Are The Chosen Ones’: A new hymn to Obama Telegraph [UK] March 6, 2008.
Aw Shucks. One more. Another favorite:
“Obama will DEMAND that you shed your cynicism”
Barack Obama WILL REQUIRE YOU to work. He is going to DEMAND that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage.
Barack will NEVER ALLOW YOU to go back to your lives as usual – uninvolved, uninformed – you have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eights years from now, YOU WILL HAVE TO BE ENGAGED.
Michelle Obama, campaign speech at UCLA February 2008 (links to video, audio @ Protein Wisdom)
Somewhere or other in the slobber at Obama Messiah JJjr says Obama Movement, the man the whatever, requires a new chapter to the Bible. (Isn’t that blasphemy, or something?)
No, not a chapter, just a few words:
…and the years were long.
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heh… 29 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, U.S. Senate.48 comments
McCain / Obama vendor items – Las Vegas
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hedgehog days…. 28 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Divertissements, Germany, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.60 comments
A rare white hedgehog curls up on a leather glove during its presentation at a hedgehog breeding home in Heinsberg, Germany. The color occurence is caused by depigmentation on the animal’s thorns and fur. (Horst Ossinger / EPA)
I used to have what I called “hedgehog days” – meaning it was harsh out there, full of little, sharp edges. Seems to suit the days we are in the midst of…
And, what an amazing looking creature! A ball of champagne prickles… I’d like to reach thru and touch his or her toe pads or foot pads or paw pads or whatever those pink pillowy pads are…
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Day 27 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.59 comments
An Azeri man gathers salt in a lake in Azerbaijan, where people have gathered salt from May to November for more than 300 years. (Sergei Ilnitsky / EPA)
STAT OF THE DAY:
Barack Obama spent more than $105 million during the first two weeks of October, according to campaign finance reports.
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HONG KONG (Reuters) – Japanese stocks tumbled to 26-year lows on Monday and most other Asian markets fell heavily in chaotic trade as investors feared a flurry of central bank moves would not be enough to stave off a global recession.
Little that officials said could convince panicky investors that governments can stem the fast-spreading crisis that is menacing financial markets, economic growth and company earnings.
The yen continued to gain even after Group of Seven finance ministers on Monday singled out the excessive volatility of the currency, which is battering Japanese share prices.
European shares were expected to open sharply lower with losses of up to 2.3 percent, tracking weakness in Asia, while oil prices extended falls to below $64 a barrel.
“The outlook in terms of growth and exports remains shaky, so it’s hard to make a case for any sustained EM (emerging markets) rally for now,” said Win Thin, a senior currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman in an email to clients.
…
Japan’s Nikkei index swung wildly throughout the session before ending down 6.4 percent at its lowest close since 1982 as exporters such as Canon Inc slumped on the stronger yen. ::snip::
AND:
Hong Kong also saw shares routed, with the Hang Seng index plunging almost 12% in late trading – putting it on track for its biggest daily fall since 1997. And the Chinese stockmarket tumbled over 6%, bringing more pain to small investors who have watched the Shanghai Composite index fall 70% from last year’s peak.
With India’s stockmarket losing 8%, shares across Europe are also expected to fall sharply when trading begins. The Dow Jones index is tipped to fall by another 400 points, or 5%, later today.
The latest sharp falls, following last week’s heavy losses, showed that investors have little confidence that the world’s leaders can stave off a painful economic contraction.
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I’d dearly love to believe.… Kathryn Jean Lopez – premiere classe de schnauzer – and Drudgerina both have this tonight…
It Wasn’t Just a Joe-the-Plumber-Inspired Whim [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
In a radio interview in 2001, Barack Obama sounds like he unequivocally embraced “redistribution” of wealth several times, and, correct me if I am wrong, also laments that the Warren Court was not liberal enough.
Tell me this isn’t socialism. Obama is the most radical nominee for president in modern history.
Enter at our own risk.
And Drudge supplied a bit of text, for those on the fly or not near speakers:
Barack Obama on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ-FM, 2001: The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society… and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that… MORE…
As a friend emailed me back, “oh please god, if only”… and I remind myself that 2001 is the same year he said he was fine with Rumsfeld at DOD… from within the moderate to liberal, mixed race SS Chicago… fine with Rummy?
So… you know, I’ll believe in manna from heaven when it is stuffed up my nose, in my ears – and more is comin’ down. Til then…
Joy … hmm ? 26 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, U.S. House.107 comments
Representative Steny H. Hoyer, the House majority leader, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are hoping to bolster Democratic numbers. [Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times]
I see it… don’t you? All over their faces………….. It’s a recent shot too, just appearing in the Times today. Here is a snip from the text:
If Mr. Obama, of Illinois, defeats Mr. McCain, he could be the first president since Jimmy Carter to enter office with wide control of the House and 60 votes in the Senate. That in theory would give Democrats the power to overcome procedural hurdles that have bedeviled both parties in recent years.
“Whether or not the Democrats have 60 is something that is going to be a very significant factor in the way the country is governed,” said Robert A. Caro, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and Senate historian, referring to the number needed to cut off Senate debate and push legislation to a vote.
Cheer up.. I am sure the pale pink lambkins are en route. Probably the [city transit] bus broke down, but Legions of Lambchops will get here to sing songs of overwhelming Democratic majorities. Songs of joy… what else?
Democrats said they were well aware of the mistakes of the past and the overconfidence exhibited during one-party rule of the Clinton and Bush administrations that led to Democrats’ losing control of the House in 1994 and to Republicans’ experiencing a similar defeat in 2006.
Chastened by their years in exile, Democrats said they were determined to avoid those pitfalls should voters deliver them control of the White House and Congress.
The nature of the Democratic majority, expanded partly through the election of centrists and even conservatives, would also temper Democratic zeal to pursue an overly ideological agenda, Democrats said.
“We are going to get new members with a clear understanding that the reason they won is appealing to independents and disaffected Republicans, and they are going to want to continue to do that,” said the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland.
Yet even in the last two years, with a slimmer majority, Mr. Hoyer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have struggled to manage the competing demands of party factions, including antiwar liberals on the left and fiscal hawks on the right.
Buck up Democrats! Remember! You’re getting the keys to the global meat locker!
Meanwhile the lambkins are unavoidably delayed for an unknown time… they tried continuing overland, street level, after the bus breakdown, but shooting broke out… so they found space with a convoy heading up to the elevated inter-state, but a tanker burst into flames, consuming several cars and the road surface itself… so they are back down on the street level. Right now, they are hiding in back alleys… and thinking they will pass on that sing song gig with the Dems… it’s occured to them the Dems really wanted them as items for the bar b q menu…
Upsie daisie… 24 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.62 comments
William Weld has joined in with the Ob forces… 10 days left, still room! Come on over, Monte Hall is here!
I remember when Guiliani and Riordan, R mayors of the big cities, on either coast, declared themselves ready, willing and able to work with Bill.
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Quite aside from the political whateverscape… this, from Moyers last night, is well worth it. The video is up, I see…
Just for joy…
Johnson traveled around the globe and recorded tracks for such classics as “Stand By Me” and Bob Marley’s “One World” — creating a new mix in which essentially the performers are all performing together — worlds apart. Often recording with just battery-powered equipment, Johnson found musicians on street corners or in small clubs and they would in turn gather their friends and colleagues — in all, they recorded over 100 musicians from Tibet to Zimbabwe.
Flip sides of the earth………. 22 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.111 comments
Sunni Muslim women in Beirut take part in a protest demanding the release of prisoners accused of involvement in militant attacks. [AP via BBC]
Meanwhile on “our” side of the earth… Chris Hedges, from TruthDig:
[I] do not think George W. Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain or Henry Paulson are fascists. Rather, they are part of a cabal of naive, mediocre and self-deluded capitalists who are steadily weakening political and economic structures to a point where our democracy will become so impotent that it can be blown aside, probably with broad popular support. The only question is how this will happen. Will there be a steady and slow decline as in the late Roman Empire when the Senate ended as a farce? Will we see a powerful right-wing backlash from those outside the mainstream political system, as we did in Yugoslavia, and the rise of a militant Christian fascism? Will there be a national crisis [another one!? Well I suppose we are ripe for more… — Mcat] that allows those in power to instantly sweep away all constitutional rights in the name of national security?
I do not know. But I do know that what is coming, as long as our oligarchy remains in charge, will not be good. We will either recover the concept of the public good, and this means a revolt against our bankrupt elite and the dynamiting of the corporatist structure, or we will extinguish our democracy.
But, not to worry, none other than Chomsky says, OK by me to vote for the Democrat in that vaunted, drilled-in-our-ears-til-our-brains-are-dead way out, “the lesser of two evils”… over time they really do help people. (transcript, scroll down past comments)
And there’s nothing wrong with picking the lesser of the two evils. The cliché makes it sound like you’re doing something bad, but no, you’re doing something good if you pick the lesser of two evils.
Really? Or is it the barest of food for the starving so they can go on voting and hoping? That is my take. I am with Oriana Falacci who said, she’d not sneeze all over herself, voting for either Prodi OR Berlusconi (of course she sneezed massively, when meeting privately with JPII to discuss creeping Islam in Europe, but let’s not go there today!).
There are interesting comments in the thread from a reader, Doug Tarnopol. Link to his first, the continuation of three following are immediately above.
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PBS’ The News Hour managed, somehow!, to have an extremely interesting segment with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, and Benoit Mandelbrot, on our current state… and they opened with an eye popper:
PAUL SOLMAN: We sat down with Taleb and the man he calls his mentor, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, pioneer of fractal geometry and chaos theory. And even more than feeling vindicated, they’re both scared.
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: I don’t know if we’re entering the most difficult period since — not since the Great Depression, since the American Revolution.
PAUL SOLMAN: The most serious situation we’ve been in since the American Revolution?
NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: Professor Mandelbrot, can that possibly be true?
BENOIT MANDELBROT, Mathematician: It’s very serious.
PAUL SOLMAN: More serious than the Great Depression, possibly?
BENOIT MANDELBROT: Possibly. I hope not.
No soft pre-digested gibberish from them!
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I have no idea what the stress is over this election. Just one more, and I fully expect to see pale pink lambkins* in the streets as soon as Obama is declared winner, around 9 pm ET Tuesday night (too likely leading to a softening of turn out in the West)..
The lambkins will sing, Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama is our Leader! …leading to a rising crescendo … OHH BAAAA MAH!!!! — evocative of the refrains of Tomorrow! Tomorrow! is only a day away!
Hell why not. No more lunatic than anything else on public offer…
* don’t miss the pink lambkin convo thread… esp if you need a laugh.
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I don’t know about you… 20 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.25 comments
but I am pooped.
I did spy this … and got there by way of the righties — a post at Weekly Standard, think it was complimenting Tomasky, which I sure as hell won’t be doing.
In the 40 year anniversary issue of New York mag… he says this (and a few other things) about Guiliani.
No one quite understood the force of the tornado that had just hit town. By the end of Giuliani’s first year, the city was a visibly different place—made safe, Toronto-ized, starting down the road toward being Olive Garden–ized (yes, there were downsides!); a place that suddenly was no longer the city where Travis Bickle prayed to God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk and where—in real life, not the movies—display ads for porn films actually ran in the Post right alongside the display ads for Smokey and the Bandit (it’s true; a few years ago I went to the Post’s morgue and looked through old issues and saw the ads, and their blurbs screaming “Full Erection!,” with my own disbelieving eyes). That is inconceivable to us now. But it, and a score of cankers like it, used to be the reality in New York. Lots of forces combined to change that, but the biggest force of all was Rudy.
He then dutifuly chronicles some minuses… He remembers Amadou Diallo and Louima, but charges on!… to this:
The other idea, of course, was the “broken windows” theory, for which chief credit goes to criminologist George Kelling. A few broken windows will lead to a few more broken windows, which will lead to larger blights; so fix the problems when they’re small. When the transit cops started arresting people for fare-jumping, previously considered too penny-ante to worry about, they found that fare-jumpers often had rap sheets including more serious crimes. When street cops started busting people for selling dime bags, they found the same thing.
Crime had dropped by 7 percent in 1993, under Dinkins. In 1994, it dropped by 12 percent. Then 16 percent in 1995 and another 16 percent in 1996. Homicides—2,262 in 1992—went below 1,000 for the first time in decades in 1996, then down to 746 the year Giuliani sought reelection. Now we’re back to pre-Beatles numbers, and New Yorkers take it as a given. But I remember very clearly: The drops in ’94 and ’95 were so astoundingly steep that it was downright confusing. It just didn’t seem possible. Something had to be wrong with the numbers.
But people had started to believe. “We were always thinking about, ‘We’ve got to show that the city is governable,’ ” Powers says. “That was always the most important thing.”
And winds his way to this close:
No—his great destiny was to be mayor, and mayor only. And I might even say: at that moment only, when the city needed someone like him. Remember how often people talked in 1992 and 1993 about giving up on the place. Within one short year, or even less, people weren’t saying that very much anymore. For all the Rudy- craziness that later ensued and that darkened his legacy—the bashing of police-shooting victims and Brooklyn Museum artists and ferret lovers and his second ex-wife and of course Hillary—it has to be acknowledged that he was the man for the moment.
There probably won’t be a moment in New York quite that desperate again in our lifetimes. He helped make sure of it.
Good lord. He is and was a maniac! And his cops have spread out thru the nation. Kelly (running for mayor, people seem to hint), Kerick (where to begin with that one!), Timoney, Bratton and names I am sure I don’t know… Cruel, vicious mean shits, everyone of them.
Sunday… ;) 19 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.87 comments
From the sweet little Galveston beach getaway (or, it was .. pre Ike) that bay linked to the other day, Texas White Pelican B&B
You have to love the “change” that is coming, from the Politico email:
‘Like the apostles of Jesus who expected their Messiah to return in triumph before they themselves died, many liberals are almost certain to be disappointed in a President Obama. ‘I think right now people are in a pragmatic mood, not an ideological mood,’ says David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist. Perhaps, but on the off chance that ideology is on the mind of a voter or two, Axelrod’s candidate has taken care to avoid the L word.
Obama opposes gay marriage; talks about tax cuts, God and veterans’ benefits; and is spending money to try to remain competitive in traditionally Republican states such as Virginia, North Carolina and even West Virginia, where Hillary Clinton trounced him earlier this year.
‘I think he will govern a little right of center,’ says Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman and chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council. ‘He is not an ideologue.’
… Understanding the forces behind the usual Republican hold on the White House explains much about the country, and is essential to Obama’s potential success if he were to win, for the most effective presidents have had an appreciation of the nation’s intrinsic tendency toward conservatism.
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AND I do believe The New Yorker has hit bottom. Packer embraces Frum. It’s been a long and greasy slide to the magazine being nothing other than election season, shallow, party affiliated shills devotees masticating. Packer is a cowardly standard bearer and, in this, two greased pigs consummate congealment. Three, actually. The magazine, Packer and Frum – and there is not enough butter sauce on earth to make that meal taste good….
Frum is doing something that’s quite rare across the spectrum of American politics: holding his side to the same standard as the other side. I was happy to read him firing back at his new detractors on the right; I was also happy to see him telling Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC, to elevate the tone and substance of her new talk show. Having written a mistaken book about his former boss (Frum was a speechwriter during Bush’s first term), he has reckoned with a core reason for the failure of Bush’s Presidency: the White House worshipped at the false altar of strategic communications, asserting its own version of reality rather than grappling with contrary arguments and facts. The fact that Frum is now being attacked for asking his party to stop doing the same thing shows how long the road to recovery is going to be for Republicans.
This is the magazine that consistently, across the years, opposed the Vietnam war.
Bravo! Punditry, and it’s bawling baby wars, is the Colossus of the transformational New Newer Newest World.
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From bay, from the previous thread:
its a mark of “distinction” for the democrats to be lauded by a former officer who, in response to the 1968 letter informing gen creighton abrams of “routine and pervasive brutality against Vietnamese civilians” is on the record saying:
“In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”
*** close of comment ***
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And Madman had this link, I have added a snip or two… 😉
Cronytopia: What the World Knows — and Americans Don’t — About the Bailout
So while Americans looking at the nations’s “leading newspaper,” the New York Times, found a vast belching of psychobabble and personal gossip about Cindy McCain taking up the front page, the rest of the world was learning this:
Financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year – despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government’s cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.
The Guardian errs a bit in that last sentence, of coure. Almost all of the “conditions” mentioned in connection with the bailout have no teeth whatsoever, no enforcement mechanism, no real penalities. They are more properly termed “suggestions,” or rather, “PR exercises that we hope our Wall Street lords will deign to at least pretend to follow for a short time, until the heat is off.”
And Chris Floyd is right, up there, in identifying the diversion, one of the big ones this year, was Woman, in all her parts and pieces. Splayed and displayed. I don’t have to agree with them politically (and I agree with NO ONE on the political scene) to see what is happening.
As an antidote, I’d recommend renting Bardot’s Et Dieu … crea la femme [And God Created Woman]. It helps to view it with other than a scorched earth creating/desecrating American eye… It’s not a Christian film, to say the least. It’s 52 years old and, under a harsh gaze, suffers for it, but one of the reviews I popped up today had this observation:
Coincidentally, the script shares several elements with another film that came out the same year, Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. Both have at their center wild young women characters who, jilted by unrequited love, use tantrums, lasciviousness and wild mambo dancing to disrupt the equilibrium of the social network depicted in each film. (It so happens that both films locate industrial capitalism as a locus of power in which women are largely marginalized).
Bingo on the last line, and in an era of global militarisation, women (and gays and children, it is all linked) will take it in the teeth. As much as ever. We just don’t fit in (they say), no matter how hard we try — witness the thoroughly corporatised Carly Fiorina, probably wintering this year in Tulsa, or Timbuktu, shamed and absolutely banished.
And yes I know all about Bardot’s politics, known it for years, watched her be tried – for defamation, inciting race hatred – and pay fines in the French courts… I could not care less.
The caption says.. 17 October 2008
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.94 comments
Pelicans drinking the rain at Forster, NSW, Australia [Picture: NEWSPIX / REX FEATURES]
they are drinking rain water… I say they are laughing at politics… 😉
Smart of them… I don’t think I had fully lived as a mere civilian observer of politics til I stumbled upon Smerconish, hearing a reactionary, Republican, fake populist (yet another!) Philadelphia radio jock defend and promote Obama. As I recall, he endorsed him in the primary tho unable to vote for him – and now will vote for him next month.
On the other side of the room, Nancy is on with Charlie Rose – for the hour. If Smerconish gives me whiplash, Nancy has long given me a headache, rather of the sinus variety… 😉 As I slithered past TNR, I saw John McWhorter (who supports Ob) has up some sort of blither on race and Obama. Think he is saying there is no racism. Tho knowing McWhorter it will be more complicated – and if you’d rather wring your Democratic, liberal or leftischer hands down to the bone over Obamafied racism (does any other racism matter?), The Atlantic is here to serve. The schnauzers at The Corner loved the McWhorter take……. Thankfully, I cannot read it for the pounding behind my eyeballs.
Last seen, McCain had gone a bit gamey, wounded at the watering hole and dragging a leg, a pack of hyenas was seen following close behind. I’d say the same of Obama. The hyena pack, I mean…
If I could, I’d be running off to join the pelicans.
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Marisacat 