And we’ll start things off with Paul Krugman’s latest:
Yet that’s the less important reason this election is all about party control. The really important reason may be summed up in two words: subpoena power.
Also, yesterday was “Liberty Sunday”, which, as the Rude Pundit puts it, was
where pissy, priggish evangelicals can get their prayer on and intermingle in the barely sustainable queer tension of talking about gay sex with like-minded evangelicals. ’Cause, apparently, if gays get married, now it’s actually gonna cause churches to burst into flames and ministers to tear off their own genitals in front of their congregations, who will roll around in the dirt as hidden demons fuck them from behind.
Meanwhile, there’s this rundown of certain House races, including Randy Graf, from Arizona. Randy’s campaign manager slept with two underage girls, crimes which Randy describes as “no more serious than providing a teenager with a beer.” Then there’s the guy from Indiana, who wanted to rename Interstate 69 b/c it was deemed, “too risque.”
oh yeah, and these two:Curt Weldon—Pennsylvania-07
Curt Weldon is perhaps the lone voice in Congress for conspiracy theorists and others who think outside the box or don’t even believe there is a box at all no matter how many government commissions with their “experts” plot to make everybody think there is a box. Believing that “the jury is still out on WMD,” he tried to organize his own personal mission to go to Iraq and find them until he was stopped by the State Department. Weldon, who was one of six lawmakers granted the honor of attending the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s “coronation,” wrote a book detailing his shadowy correspondence with an Iranian dissident who claims that Iran is about to attack the United States. He also believes the government is covering up the fact that it had identified some of the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks before they happened. Although the National Journal wrote an article about him that begins with a quote from Gnarls Barkley’s song “Crazy,” it’s likely that the National Journal is part of some vast conspiracy against him that includes the CIA, the NSA, the 9/11 Commission, the Trilateral Comission, Freemasons and his opponent, retired Vice Admiral Joe Sestak.
—
Michele Bachmann—Minnesota-06
Michele Bachmann sincerely wants to help homosexuals deal “with the very real issue of sexual dysfunction in their life.…It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan.” She believes that gay marriage is the “biggest issue in 30 years” because “the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.” She also believes that “the number one issue for our country right now, how are we going to deal with this threat of radical Islam.” And of public education, she says, “That’s my number one issue.” Her opponent Patty Wetterling doesn’t even have a number one issue, as far as I know, while Bachmann has at least three!
I like the part where he complains about satire not being properly identified
and shit like this where rightwing bloggers are going on Harold Ford’s party at the Playboy Mansion and writing shit like
if nothing else it undercuts potential voter worries that Ford is a goodie-two-shoes or — post-Foleygate, a risk for any unmarried male member of Congress — gay, which would seem to do his campaign more good than harm.
another nice Glenn Greenwald bit, about the power of anger & passion, esp. in the campaign of Joe Sestak running about the batshit Curt Weldon, and the Democratic consultants & pundits who told him not to press on the war issue.
What would you do without hyperlinks and the italics tag, kingfish?
curse more, of course
i mean, what else am i gunna post about? how i worked a film festival two weekends ago and met some cute 6’3“ jedi chick that I’m trying to hit on?
that story’s got legs only if she ends up being a dude
right, exactly. So I have fun operating in my “dudes, check this out” mode.
i appreciate it
I’d rather hear about the Jedi chick.
You post some good links, kf. And we think along the same lines politically. But if I wanted to read metafilter.com, I’d go to metafilter.com.
You’re a good guy who probably has much more to add than blue hyperlinks. More zombie pictures and stomach ulcer stories, thnx.
Yeah, but i consider my editing and maven abilities to be strongers than MF. But I do have more to add: silly photos ripped from the AP wire service. Good for all occasions.
And no stomach ulcer stories from me, tho i will have zombie pics at the end of the week.
Good to hear re: no stomach ulcer stories.
lol
not yet, anyway
meanwhile, in (South) American politics, Lula wins a 2nd term in a landslide vote.
meanwhile, did anybody hear anything about this thing, signed into law a coupla weeks ago?
on the other hand there’s this.
the nsfw link there isn’t nearly as entertaining as it should have been.
has the trading markets thing been linked?
Christ, 7 more days before all this shit is over with
Air America Given Until Nov. 22 To Find Buyer
The “For Sale” Sign Is Out
At a bankruptcy hearing TUESDAY, AIR AMERICA RADIO lawyer TRACY KLESTADT told the court that the network is talking to several possible buyers and hopes to have a deal in place by THANKSGIVING.
KLESTADT said that there is a “significant amount of interest” in the network, which has been given until NOVEMBER 22 to find a buyer, although no potential buyers were identified. The court approved the network’s temporary financing plan that requires a deal to be in place by NOVEMBER 22 to allow the financing to continue past then.
Meanwhile, a “no-buy” list of advertisers who have instructed ABC RADIO NETWORKS that their ads not run on AIR AMERICA RADIO is rapidly circulating in the liberal blogosphere. The list of about 100 advertisers is similar to much longer “no-buy” lists for other talk programming, including most top conservative talkers and “shock jocks.” MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA and THINKPROGRESS.ORG are among the liberal websites circulating the list.
hang on. teeny, you were in radio. how does that list work?
way to fuck up the momentum, mr kerry.
enh, whatever. it was a bullshit story for a day, and even guys like Dick Armey are calling it as such.
former WH speechwriter finally lets it all out. Ned linked to that one before, but it’s fun to actually read the entire thing, where the guy goes on about his self-proclaimed hatred for Harry Belafonte, et al.
really good Juan Cole bit about current american politics and the occupation, and what happens when you have NRO-types who didn’t know shit then and don’t know shit now somehow making grand pronouncement about it all.
Robert J. Samuelson in an WaPo op-ed:
The trouble is that public opinion is often ignorant, confused and contradictory; and so the policies it produces are often ignorant, confused and contradictory
no-buys work like you would expect, advertiser doesn’t want to be associated with certain shows. Like say Ford wants to reach 18–34 men, they can buy time on a certain show or whatever, or they can go to a network like premiere or abc and get a better deal by asking the network to run their spots in such a way that they would reach x # of guys with y frequency for z dollars—the type of show doesn’t matter as long as the desired demographic makes up at least part of the audience. But say Ford doesn’t want to associate with Stern, that’s a no-buy, they do the contract specifying the spots can run anywhere but Stern.
that thing I quoted above was from allaccess.com, a subscription radio website.
here’s the list: http://mediamatters.org/items/200610310008
which leaves the GOP field without a Southerner other than the sweaty runner dude, less’n you count Jeb. we’re quite likely gonna end up having to play hard on the bluer side of the purple states (but we might also get a better shot at the redder purples too).
The list of about 100 advertisers is similar to much longer “no-buy” lists for other talk programming, including most top conservative talkers and “shock jocks.”
and includes an advertiser or two, like REI, that donates 100% to Democrats
oh, there’s also ‘candidate’ Gingrich and Condi
really? My cousin & his wife works for REI. Hmm.
xp
A nice little anecdote, about what happened when Dubya met with senator-elect Jim Webb(whose son is a Marine Lance Corporal over in Iraq).
the point is, while some of the businesses on the list advertise on rightwing talk shows or are otherwise conservative-identified, some, like Cingular, avoid such shows entirely.
So whatever happened with that cute 6’3“ jedi chick?
Chick had a girlfriend. Figure that one out.
“fresh face”
Hitchens talking to Hugh Hewitt, and Hitchens starts going off about Harry Reid as a mormon, Robert Gates as nominee for SecDef, then just religion as a whole while HH is calling him an “equal-opportunity bigot” etc
Chick had a girlfriend. Figure that one out.
TESTOSTERONE: IT’S NOT JUST FOR MEN
hee hee, the one guy I’ve ever known named Houssein was an iranian engineering student who played guitar in a local indie group. We’d take breaks from project working sessions to go see shows.
I think he left for San Diego to go work for IBM.
My podiatrist is named Hussein — nice guy.
so it’s pretty safe to say that the hussein talking point = not the most effective in Dearborn.
The group made up of people who won’t vote for Barack Hussein Obama because of his name is 100% a subset of people who wouldn’t vote for him anyway.
OTM.
i forgot how far Frist had his dick into that whole SchaivoGate thing until reading that CNN peice.
The group made up of people who won’t vote for Barack Hussein Obama because of his name is 100% a subset of people who wouldn’t vote for him anyway.
that’s not how it works—the Hussein thing will be brought out here and there to reinforce other things more relevant to people who don’t have their minds made up.
but anyway, I think some other parts of the world might think differently about us if we elect a guy with Hussein in his name.
So this is the same as Sean Hannity pretending that Robert Byrd’s middle name is “KKK”?
Barack Hussein Osama more like it
What do you guys think of Rick Perlstein’s thing in TNR today, talking about both how the GOP has maintained control of much of the South, and how pundits always seem to ascribe more conservative leanings to “Middle America” than any evidence actually proves. I don’t feel too solid to comment on the bits connected to the south, but I do agree with the other part of the article, talking about the foibles and fucked-up existences of pundits.
The thing is an interesting read, but it’s a forced reg site, so here goes. I
The New Republic Online
THE UNSPOKEN TRUTH ABOUT THE GOP.
Southern Discomfort
by Rick Perlstein
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 11.29.06
In the days after the 2004 election, the same CNN exit poll was on every pundit’s lips: Asked about their most important issue, a plurality of voters cited “moral values.” Eighty percent of that plurality voted for George W. Bush—no matter that cooler heads soon demonstrated these findings to be statistically meaningless. For “most of the last 100 years, politics has been defined by economic interests,” Bill Clinton’s former press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, pronounced on MSNBC. “That’s no longer true.” And so, a refrain developed: Without making significant inroads among churchgoing Southerners, Democrats could never hope to win a governing majority.
But this month’s election yielded data that, unlike CNN’s exit poll, was irrefutable: For the first time since 1953, the party that dominates the South is the minority party in Congress. November 7, 2006, may well go down in history as the day the modern Republican Party became a mere Southern faction. There’s only one problem: No one’s talking about it on TV. Instead, Heath Shuler became the cable news bookers’ new favorite guest, as if the election of a pro-life Democrat from North Carolina was the election’s most important trend: As Bob Schieffer announced, “These Democrats that were elected last night are conservative Democrats.” Meanwhile, the one man whose book predicted the election’s actual revelation—that the South and its conservative ways were irrelevant to the Democrats’ victory—has been shut out. “I managed to squeeze onto Chris Matthews once,” says Thomas F. Schaller, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, “but we didn’t even talk about the book.”
Schaller’s book is Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South. Published this October, it argues, “The South is likely to become more Republican in the decades ahead,” that Democrats can make and keep the Republicans a mere regional party, and that the best shot at a Democratic majority “in the immediate term is to consolidate electoral control over the Northeast and Pacific Coast blue states, expand the party’s Midwestern margins, and cultivate the new-growth areas of the interior West.” That’s exactly how it went down November 7. The last prognosticator of structural shifts in American politics this accurate—Kevin Phillips, in his 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority—became a household name. But, because he is a friend, it pains me to have to make a prognostication of my own: Tom Schaller will never become a household name. The reasons are ideological.
The people who have paid most attention to Schaller have been hysterics. Former Representative Glen Browder, a founder of the Blue Dog Democrats, was asked in the Anniston Star what he thought of Whistling Past Dixie. Browder, also a Ph.D. in political science, replied that Schaller was spouting “foolishness,” but that “fortunately, most national leaders today understand that the road to the magic 218 number inevitably runs through this region.” He said this oblivious to the fact that Schaller’s “foolishness” had, in fact, just come true.
Still, Browder will always have an easier time winning a seat alongside Schieffer on Face the Nation than Schaller. TV punditry is not a meritocracy. Points aren’t awarded for being right. (If they were, how many talking heads who saw only rosy things ahead in Iraq would still be on air?) It is an ideological system, with perverse ideological rules. And Browder has just honored one of them: Glorify what the French call l’Amerique profunde—the “heartland,” of which the South is the sacred center.
Schaller speaks ill of the South. The very heart of his argument is a taboo notion: that the South votes Republican because the Republicans have perfected their appeal to Southern racism, and that Democrats simply can’t (and shouldn’t) compete.
But, among scholars, this is hardly news. Schaller builds this conclusion on one of the most impressive papers in recent political science, “Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South,” by Nicholas Valentino and David Sears. Running regressions on a massive data set of ideological opinions, Sears and Valentino demonstrate with precision that, for example, a white Southern man who calls himself a “conservative,” controlling for racial attitudes, is no less likely to chance a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate than a Northerner who calls himself a conservative. Likewise, a pro-life or hawkish Southern white man is no less likely—again controlling for racial attitudes—than a pro-life or hawkish Northerner to vote for the Democrat. But, on the other hand, when the relevant identifier is anti-black answers to survey questions (such as whether one agrees “If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites,” or choosing whether blacks are “lazy” or “hardworking”), an untoward result jumps out: white Southerners are twice as likely than white Northerners to refuse to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. Schaller’s writes: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters ... the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”
What’s more, if Republicans have succeeded by openly baiting a region of the country not really American (the latte-swilling Northeast), Schaller says, “The Democrats need their own ‘them,’ and the social conservatives who are the bedrock of Southern politics provide the most obvious and burdensome stone to hang around the Republicans’ neck.” Democrats should cite “Southern obstructionism as a continuing impediment to the investments and progress the country must make in the coming century.” There’s just one problem: You can’t do that on TV.
Once upon a time, of course, pundits used to say what Schaller says: The South, sometimes, is backward. Since the late ’60s, however—not coincidentally, around the time Kevin Phillips rose to fame—a new, unspoken set of rules evolved.
It happened in a moment of trauma. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, all the top news executives sent a wire to Mayor Richard J. Daley protesting the way their employees “were repeatedly singled out by policemen and deliberately beaten.” Such was their presumption of cultural authority they couldn’t imagine how anyone could disagree. Then Mayor Daley went on Walter Cronkite’s show and shocked the media establishment by refusing to apologize to the beaten reporters: “Many of them are hippies themselves. They’re part of this movement.” Polls revealed 60 percent of Americans agreed with Daley. For the press, it triggered a dark night of the soul. In an enormously influential column, the pundit Joseph Kraft, shaken, wrote, “Mayor Daley and his supporters have a point. Most of us in what is called the communication field are not rooted in the great mass of ordinary Americans—in Middle America.”
That air of alienation—that helpless feeling that we have no idea what’s going on out there—has structured elite discourse about the rest of the country ever since. A set of constructs about what “the great mass of ordinary Americans” supposedly believes—much more conservative things than any media elitist would believe, basically—became reified. Pundits like Kraft—a social class that spends much of their time among people like themselves, inside the Beltway—learned to bend over backward to be fair, lest they advertise their own alienation from everyone else. On subjects that chafed them—say, the relevance of certain ugly folkways of the South in electoral politics—they just had to bend harder. Or ignore the matter altogether.
It can produce in today’s TV talking head a twisted kind of neurosis: an instinctual distrust of the political appeal of anything that can be categorized as liberal, even in defiance of the actual data; and an inability to call a spade a spade—say, that people shouldn’t have been beaten indiscriminately in the streets of Chicago in 1968. That’s why nobody on TV says Democrats can’t win in the South in the short-term—and Schaller, it has to be said, is optimistic about Democrats winning Southern gains in the long term—without playing to white voters’ inclinations to see blacks as lazy. It’s much easier to say that Heath Shuler represents a trend. That offends nothing but the facts.
RICK PERLSTEIN is the author of Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, 1965–1972, which will be published next year.
can i just say that i heart jim webb, more and more every day?!?
Carville predicts Gore will get in. I’m not especially a fan of his, politically-speaking (though I might well pick him if personality were irrelevant), but I gotta say he did a pretty great job, at least against expectations, on Leno last night.
Gore actually does really well in entertainment settings. His appearance on Saturday Night Live was great—“The Bachelor” parody of his VP search that included him in a hot tub with Joe Lieberman.
It’s only when he has to “act like a politician” that he turns into Gorebot.
the hot tub was the also a very clear statement that he was out of politics for the time being. the talk shows are about more than entertainment. he was entertaining, sure, but he also had more command and ease than I’ve seen in his other appearances. maybe, though, he’s more relaxed because he isn’t going anywhere or he longer needs to be president (i think he could be running for veep).
http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/11/the_2008_democr.html#more
the air america bankruptcy hearing is tomorrow.
This oughta be fun. Yeah, Ed Schultz just announced that his show is moving to mid-days from 12–3pm, going up against both Rush and Al Franken.
Someone tell Gore that presidential debates ARE entertainment settings.
a surprise candidate? my guess is in that post, but it isn’t the same as his.
(i think he could be running for veep)
Interesting thought. Maybe after another 4 (or 8) years of Gore as VP, the country might be ready for a Gore presidency.
Sy Hersh’s latest, about how the WH(i.e. Dick Cheney) might be/is still gunning for attacking Iran, election or no election.
Gorebot is going nowhere. Easy to be Mr. Cool when you have nothing to lose. If anyone’s openly running for VP, I’d hand that card to Vilsack.
so now romney hired wetback gardeners and everyone hates mormons anyway. mccain despite his best efforts is still unloved by the christian right. gulianlli hearts fags etc.
who else we got? former fattay huckabee?
i am confused. how’s this play out? is there a candidate for the loco religious 35%? someone to syphon them so mccain squeaks by? or is it that mccain is just a figment of the media’s wild minds and once people really get a load of this pork-chop-hued psycho they’ll run into the bland waiting arms of daddy romney?
i don’t know.
gorebot is serious, riding the sensiblenostalgiaregret wave. that is unless obama is in—then no one else is serious. and it’s looking like he’s in, no?
re whistling past dixie: i enjoy the insight into the racist south, but disagree that they’re the perfect boogieman for the dems. this kind of scapegoating inspires apathy, playing right into the hands of those nihilistic starve government types. democrats should go for the warm, idealistic, inclusive angle using those same bellicose right-wing nihilists (or rather their attitude, without targeting actual people) as their boogieman.
and while i do agree that the south is likely lost for a while on the presidential level, it doesn’t mean there aren’t congressional seats, governorships etc to be had there.
Asked by a reporter yesterday about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart [the lawncare company], Romney, who was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami, said, “Aw, geez,” and walked away.
the locoreligious are not 35% and likely aren’t enough to beat Giuliani, whose national image is exactly the sort of authoritative, non-permissive, non-elite persona many on the the right like. which isn’t to say that wouldn’t fall apart, perhaps quickly, under the scrutiny of a real campaign, which is why he’s running for veep, secure in the knowledge that he’s the party’s biggest asset.
i’ve heard the loco religious aspect is around 35% of the gop, but maybe you have to throw in a few secular psychos or something to reach that number.
i have full confidence that a significant chunk of the electorate will see what an unappealing ass guliani is once they get a good look at him—he’s ugly, he’s a jerk, even his voice is gross.
plus the homo-lovin wife-cheatin thing doesn’t play too well in the gop primaries.
Is America ready for a lisping president? I don’t think so.
oh and there’s this guy
once they get a good look at him
if he’s the veep, they probably won’t
plus the homo-lovin wife-cheatin thing doesn’t play too well in the gop primaries.
who says he’ll be in the primaries, or that, if he is, the other candidates will attack the guy they most want on the ticket, or that attacking the Saint of 9/11 won’t blow back on whoever goes down that road?
yeah maybe i could see vp. more likely he turns radioactive sooner than later.
so you think he’s not gonna run at all, just wait for the nod?
if it were actually a problem for him, why are all the people who are talking about what a problem it is democrats?
also, as i mentioned, this guy:
he’s mob connected and he’s rudy’s best friend.
if it were actually a problem for him, why are all the people who are talking about what a problem it is democrats?
which problem?
i haven’t the faintest idea what he’s gonna do. but he’s said that he might not announce until August. sure, he’s got high name id, and can only benefit from avoiding scrutiny, but it hardly suggests that he’s serious about the top spot.
no one gives a shit about bernie kerik.
i could see that continuing or it could turn in to a foley-like quagmire. the only reason guliani’s avoided much kerik scrutiny up to now is because he’s been in the private sector.
and it’s exactly the sort of thing that makes a presidential candidate think aw fuck it let’s go huckabee.
“It’s a two-way contest between McCain and Romney.”
—Rich Galen, strategist for Newt Gingrich, admitting his candidate doesn’t stand a chance yesterday at a forum of GOP strategists. Galen spoke of Gingrich’s potential role as a candidate who could pitch ideas and affect the debate, but had little optimism about an actual victory.
heh
Obama’s on Leno tonight
anyone who can get me to watch jay leno should have no problem becoming president.
A neat little run-down about all the shit said about Brandon Mayfield, the oregon lawyer who got released and paid $2 million in damages for wrongful imprisonment, ‘cuz one of his fingerprints was allegedly connected with the Madrid train bombings and circumstantial evidence for everything else. The LGF posts are particularly amusing.
Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter is pregnant! Congratz!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/06/AR2006120600221.html
didn’t watch the leno—not sure what this means.
huckabee forgets he’s republican, advocates kindness, hospitality.
why does anyone consider clark a serious candidate? dude shoots self in foot @ every opportunity.
Bill “Cold Cash” Jefferson wins runoff election—Louisiana in being tolerant of corrupt pol non-shockah!
Looks like Obama’s getting set up to go.
Unfortunately, the experts have spoken, and Jesus would not vote for him. Oh well.
I don’t think Armstrong makes much sense here, but generally I haven’t found his instincts to be very sound
why is chuck’s eyeline about 15 degrees askew from his jaw?
Too bad there’s no one with Kucinich’s positions who has all the non-positional things Obama has.
reagan: war-on-drug
__________________
a marvelous achievement this is
― Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, December 27, 2011
alfred speaks like a man holding a whole sheet of lsd drops on wax-paper.
clinton: state children’s health insurance program; adoption and safe families act; foster care independence act
this is pretty pathetic next to the far-reaching implications of previous term’s successes: telecomm act, welfare reform, changing FDA rules, NAFTA, reversing the Glass-Steagall act, Commodity Futures Modernization Act Family Medical Leave Act, DOMA...
this is reminding me how much I kind of hate Clinton
xp
Bush II wasn’t a “20th century president” btw
this is pretty pathetic next to the far-reaching implications of previous term’s successes: telecomm act, welfare reform, changing FDA rules, NAFTA, reversing the Glass-Steagall act, Commodity Futures Modernization Act Family Medical Leave Act, DOMA..
...raising the top rate by nearly 9 points, EITC expansion, community block grants...
there you go.
Noam Scheiber @noamscheiber — What I appreciate about Ben Nelson: He spent lots of time making Dem policies crappier to aid re-election to a seat he’s giving up. Thanks!
sounds about right
That’s certainly a fair characterization of what actually happened. But I might suggest that his intent was to make Dem policies sufficiently politically palatable for his and perhaps others’ reelection, and that he/Obama ultimately failed in that regard. Not knowing him personally, I can’t say.
Public support of HCR has turned up now that it’s beginning to kick in, but it’s too little too late for many in Congress, which is why they feel abandoned by the WH.
The WH should have fought back against the Tea Party attacks on health care better, but the DNC and others should have also. Nelson and others who changed it in an alleged effort to make it more politically palatable and then failed to stand up for it themselves did not help in the gaining public support realm
Public support of HCR has turned up now that it’s beginning to kick in
lol how is this remotely true, this is counter to all the polling data I’ve seen reported as recently as last week
Nelson and others who changed it in an alleged effort to make it more politically palatable and then failed to stand up for it themselves did not help in the gaining public support realm
yes but they helped themselves in the “cravenly begging for support” realm.
a second-term obama can aim high, since he doesn’t have to worry about re-election. i’m not saying he will, but it’s certainly possible
Jesus God Almighty, you people are literally posting my old jokes.
Nixon term 2: “Peace with honor” in Vietnam; detente w/ USSR; save my phony-baloney job
(xpost) If you track the numbers on that chart going back a year, when they often showed repeal up in the high-50 and into the 60% range, there does seem to be some improvement. I also assume there’s some overstatement in general, being a Rasmussen poll.
Jesus God Almighty, you people are literally posting my old jokes.
this is a dirty lie.
got this one from dennis perrin.
The WH should have fought back against the Tea Party attacks on health care better, but the DNC and others should have also.
One and the same, really, but you’re right on both scores.
The problem with selling HCR to the public is that the one provision that everyone knows about and thinks they understand is the requirement to be covered, which most people perceive as negative. The only positive provision that most people know about and understand is the elimination of exclsusions for pre-existing conditions.
As far as I can tell, the other 98% of the bill is too technical for most people to understand or too marginal for them to care about—so that even when they hear about those parts they forget about them an hour later.
The problem with selling HCR to the public is quite possibly that the administration hasn’t spent much time doing it, or doing it well. That’s understandable from the perspective that they had other agenda items to work on, but less so, perhaps, from a political perspective.
does dennis perrin know he’s a meme on ilx?
I always forget that obama passed “universal health care” lol
I just looked at his site for—yes—the very first time, and what do you know, I’ve read his book on Michael O’Donoghue.
I always forget that if Obama had just been a cagier negotiator—if he’d started out by demanding an outright ban on guns, dismantling of the Pentagon, and free gay marriage for everyone—he could have then worked his way back to a much better deal.
c’mon clemenza—gabbnab is back. u can just be the wild gossipy political horserace fiend you’ve always wanted to be and leave the obama apologetics to him.
Duly shamed, I shall skulk away.
And to think, I defended you on that thread about which words were permissible and which weren’t...I want a refund!
:(
Maddow really “killing it” tonight.
all pretty interesting in a political sense
6 is the most directly worrying, 3 is the most scary to me personally, based on where i grew up, and i had absolutely no cognizance of 2!
we should poll the five points
i guess total depravity is kind of the clear winner
we have enough metal poll threads i think
hehee
2. Judaism and Real Estate
No one to my knowledge has written authoritatively in mainstream publications lately on the intensity of internal conversations about the essence of Judaism at a time when more and more Jewish leaders appear willing to follow the ultra-Orthodox in sacralizing the possession of land. There’s an argument going back decades—back at least to Richard Rubenstein’s 1966 After Auschwitz—on the theological/ethical problems relating to land possession. Mainstream media show us the fanatics, of course, but they don’t show us the extent of Jewish unease with land mania.
I don’t think this is real, unless he is trying to obliquely refer to settlements in Israel w/out explicitly discussing it.
yeah i wondered. i really doubt a writer for this magazine would use the phrase “land mania” to stand in obliquely for (settler) zionism, but who knows. has there been a real estate crisis in israel as well? those protests in the summer were about the stagnant economy but like i said i am unaware of anything like this at all.
It’s also kinda weird to talk about Jews + the ultra-Orthodox w/out saying that you’re referring to Israel. Huge communities in the United States + France that this seems to have nothing to do with. Unless you see Kiryas Yoel as somehow being related to this theme (and maybe it is? it’s certainly the only example of this I can think of outside Israel).
my landlord is jewish
i am kiryas yoel
Maddow really “killing it” tonight.
oh, I bet. Clooney-style clucking about what a “success” Bam has been?
do you think gabbneb painted his torso the night Obama slayed Osama?
http://robertreich.org/post/14932718385
I’m Bill Clinton, and I approved this message.
oh, I bet. Clooney-style clucking about what a “success” Bam has been?
Hello?
IF there’s a switch, Biden will just be put out to pasture and Petraeus or somebody will be the new SoS.
Petraeus as SoS? Makes sense in a way, because our army is now the diplomatic arm of our government.
Has been since 1945.
Wrong thread probably, but there isn’t an economy shitbin here, is there? Related to CORPORATIONS, so I’ll chance it.
Anyway, my old old, in Norwegian terms pretty rightwing stepfather loves his Dictums (Dicta?) gathered from a long life, repeated to anyone who will hear at any time. One of them is: “Everyone leading a major corporation seems to have – not necessarily strong, but very clear – psychopathic features”.
I’ve heard this for at least 15 years.
So it’s nice to see it Proven By Science, or at least somewhat corroborated. Part of the recruiting process, woah.
you don’t have to be a psychopath to work here but it helps
also helps your prison guarding if you’re a “bad apple” but it has nothing to do with why prisons are a problem.
that article is pretty terrible by the way? completely anecdotal, no definition of psychopathology, then pinning a massive systemic problem on it. uhhh
Yah, agreed. There are sources mentioned, so I guess I should.
the problem isn’t really that the corporations are run by psychopaths although i’m sure plenty of them are; it’s that they are psychopaths and their worldview and value system is totally psychopathic, which would be fine if we hadn’t made them the defining institution of our whole socioeconomic system, whoops
(This being the *sole cause* of anything is obv a massive overreach; the need for attenuated sense of empathy in heads of major corporations seems to me a tautology, sort of.)
if there is indeed a preponderance of psychopaths working at corporations it shouldn’t be taken as the source of the problem but just as evidence that the institutions we trust to provide social good are totally fucked in the head
i read a kinda pulpy book about sociopathy/psychopathy the other day and it was ok but one of the weird things it kept implying was that the nazi gas chamber attendants were psychopaths, when it seems pretty clear that the lesson we should all be taking from the nazis is that it doesn’t actually matter if you’re a psychopath or not if the entire social system that employs and teaches you is itself irredeemably psychopathic
dlh XPOST I hear you but NB I do not live in the thread-titular country here; which ones are the “institutions we trust to provide social good”?
oh well to some extent this is global but in america many have decided to believe that The Market is the most efficient and trustworthy source of general prosperity and that the corporations (as the creatures born and evolved in The Market) are the institutions that are best at providing that prosperity and should to some extent actually be the organizational model for society — the role that other cultures at other times have assigned to the State or the Church or the Party. which all had their problems too of course but at least they were theoretically capable of having values beyond profit and power.
i read a kinda pulpy book about sociopathy/psychopathy the other day and it was ok but one of the weird things it kept implying was that the nazi gas chamber attendants were psychopaths, when it seems pretty clear that the lesson we should all be taking from the nazis is that it doesn’t actually matter if you’re a psychopath or not if the entire social system that employs and teaches you is itself irredeemably psychopathic
A circular argument, though: social systems are created by men who are...psychohpaths.
right! but once you’re in charge you can use your ability to construct the Normal to infect people who would otherwise just be hanging out taking care of their kids. milgram experiment n everything.
so really the rule should just be, don’t put psychopaths in charge? which is harder to enforce than you’d think! cuz they’re pretty good at taking charge!
i get what dlh is saying and i don’t think it’s circular; i think it’s just simplistic. that’s why i have a problem with convenient labels like “psychopath” in the first place. i know there are definitely people who meet the theoretical criteria of “psychopath” pretty strongly but i think it works better as a description of a tendency or a pole than a state of being.
i want to say something about performativity here but i don’t know enough about it other than to say that i think there is a complex sort of interplay going on here that magnetizes certain aspects of people in the context of organizational culture which is shaped by material realities and progress narratives etc etc.
Much (not necessarily all) empiricism pretty clear that
i) you gotta find some *really* fucked-up people to torture other people
ii) people that *really* fucked-up aren’t extremely hard to come by
:(
xp oh i would agree re: “a tendency or a pole”. what we’re calling psychopaths here are really just the people in whom the standard human drive to Explore Expand Exploit Exterminate is at its purest — and this drive has done a lot for us, has contributed hugely to our runaway success as a species, but as pretty much every prophet of every religion has now told us about 829579238592 times it will be what eventually destroys us if we can’t give precedence to our concomitant drive, as social animals, to love and empathize and nurture and shepherd, which is the drive psychopaths don’t have, or at least don’t have much of. and if our social systems are built along psychopathic lines, that second drive withers in lots of normal non-pathological people.
i dunno though i’m making this stuff up.
simplistic undoubtedly.
I’m reading Wodehouse now and am thinking that a world run by Jeeves would be very close to the society in Mein Kampf.
it’s that Auden line re how any society run by artists would be the worst sort of fascism.
there’s a short story narrated by jeeves (bertie takes it into his head to marry and have children, jeeves arranges for a traumatic experience to “cure” this spell of irrationality) that’s a really unsettling reading experience, because without any overt acknowledgement of what’s happening, jeeves is unmasked as thoroughly evil.
it’s called, chillingly, “bertie changes his mind”.
While it’s an interesting idea, I think it’s probably a little facile to call any single-minded focus psychopathy. And I also think that truly sociopathic traits often become apparent and problematic, whether in politics or business.
Somewhat relevant in more specific fashion to this discussion is Xgau(‘s conveniently responsibility-free, but not incorrect voice of objection) in an article today:
One advantage of my fluency is that it buttresses my right to voice my disdain for those who turn human beings into abstractions by making abstractions the substance of their private subcultural argot — who think primarily in numbers. But it also buttresses my admiration for an economist like Chang, who takes care to deploy numbers humanistically.
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Dark-Night-of-the-Quants/ba-p/6525
With respect to vocabulary, I’d echo/respond that you can quantify lots of things in policymaking, but also recognize that some benefits and costs must be considered even if they are unquantifiable.
I’m talking about something different, though, I imagine.
or they have the desire to be non-pathological, to tell themselves that they’re doing the right thing! but they’ve been led along a certain path. it’s hard for them to go back, like it is for all of us. so they trick themselves into thinking that they’re actually helping people when they aren’t. people aren’t that smart about themselves, looking at themselves in a larger context. confirmation bias and context create the illusion that a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him. hive mentality in the face of a harsh world. i think it’s the same thing with someone directing a waterboarding, or the person following orders during a waterboarding. and i think it’ll take some major material crash and burn before we start to 1) realize that we’re eating ourselves alive and 2) face the hard-as-hell way out of it.
i guess what i’m saying is i don’t think psychopathology/death drive/body without organs/whatever you want to call it can be isolated and quarantined, or i’m suspicious of the move to do that, or i even think that labeling/isolating/blaming can actually be a feature of psychopathology in the first place, or certainly abet it.
xposts
btw i didn’t mean simplistic as a jeer, i’m totally making all this up too and when it comes down to it i completely agree with you
xposts it’s not the single-minded focus, it’s the literal inability to perceive other living things as anything except sources of profit — like xgau says, thinking in numbers. to actual clinical sociopaths other people are just pieces to be manipulated in a search for personal pleasure/comfort/power. and like i (sort of) said, i think the majority of corporate executives, even the stereotypical gordon gekko cutthroat raider guys (and gals), are probably totally normal and loving w/ their families and neighbors and naturally value all kinds of things that don’t have dollar signs on them. but the machines they serve don’t.
so they trick themselves into thinking that they’re actually helping people when they aren’t. people aren’t that smart about themselves, looking at themselves in a larger context. confirmation bias and context create the illusion that a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him.
yeah this is key i think.
making so much up lol. hay out of straw. call it whatever you want, that uhhhhhh “single-minded focus” is definitely fucked up. xxp
a middle manager is doing his best and providing for those who are closest to him. hive mentality in the face of a harsh world. i think it’s the same thing with someone directing a waterboarding
Outside of the rest of the discussion: I just don’t get this part. The responsibility levels seem so different to me. Torture spoken of as somehow equivalent to the place of a middle manager, not, like, an executioner or something?
We’re all talking about Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia aren’t we
well torture, at least as far as i understand how it works currently in the us military, is just as bureaucratically entrenched, with a shared responsibility among many people and policies (some more than others), as fucking people out of their mortgages is. xp
the visionary is protecting the nation and the executioner is just following orders.
best illustration of how distant people can get from other people w/r/t u.s. military torture is still don rumsfeld’s scribbled margin note next to the authorization request for “stress positions” at guantanamo: “i stand for eight hours a day! why only four?”
(don rumsfeld in general a pretty rich seam for this sort of thing)
rumsfeld is a psychopath
haha otm
yah but
but
gnnh
welcome to Indefinite Detention Land btw
(with “serious reservations” of course)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-signs-military-spending-bill.html?_r=1&hp
Happy New Year!!!
dexneb can tell us how it was politically necessary.
http://news.yahoo.com/republican-candidate-romney-veto-immigration-dream-act-023856783.html
To be fair, his defense of it is pretty sound:
“If I’m the president of the United States I want to end illegal immigration so that we can protect legal immigration. I like legal immigration.”
smh
pandering at its best
I mean you’d think even the most hardened anti-illegal people would see the ‘serve military’ caveat in lieu of school and at least appreciate that but noooooo
there’s a GOP thread
nothing like starting the new year off with a nice hit piece: http://exiledonline.com/failing-up-with-joshua-foust-meet-the-evil-genius-massacre-denier-who-shills-for-war-profiteers/
calling a dude who was bullied a twerp and making fun of his height maybe not the best look but other than that
ive been seeing that feud play out on twitter over the last couple weeks... really hard to take any of these people seriously when they are all so bad at zinging
yeah that dude is trying so hard to be taibbi
foust is a dick though i remember him being all “occupy wall street should get a job” stick to foreign policy bro
yeah he def seems like an idiot
heh kev you know that ames and taibbi co-edited the exile for years
no! that explains so much though seriously
that actual signing statement is like unabashedly evil. “I personally won’t use these powers, think they’re wrong, but let me sign them into law in case somebody more bloodthirsty than me becomes President at some point”
otm