Another ‘natural conservative’ has publicly recanted. Here’s Thomas E. Ricks, “journalist who writes on defense topics“, in Politico:
In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward…
…[S]ince leaving newspapers, I have again and again found myself shifting to the left in major areas such as foreign policy and domestic economic policy. I wonder whether others of my generation are similarly pausing, poking up their heads from their workplaces and wondering just what happened to this country over the last 15 years, and what do to about it….
His triggers include Iraq (“I believe that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, not only launched on false premises but also strategically foolish”), torture (“I never expected my country to endorse torture”), “intelligence officials run amok”, “growing income inequality”, and gun massacres… among others.
… Not long ago, when I mentioned my unease to an old friend who is a Pentagon official—not in a political job but a professional one—he surprised me by confessing that he was feeling the same way. Exploring the thought, he mentioned in particular how disturbed he had been by the trend of “stand your ground” laws that seem to permit angry white men to gun down black youth who frighten them.
Where might this all lead? I am no better at predicting the future than anyone else. I think there are many others like me who are just as puzzled about where our country is at now, and how we got here. No doubt there are many reasons, though I believe there are clear signs that the Reagan Revolution, which made incentive-oriented, free-market solutions the default mode of both parties, is now finally petering out. I anticipate calls for more federal intervention, especially in areas where the public good is suffering, such as transportation and the cost of higher education. We may yet see a leftish generation of senior citizens, a group of aging Baby Boomers who can make common cause with a squeezed middle class and a generation of millennials whose careers have been damaged by the Great Recession while the top 1 percent have grown even wealthier…
Remember — this is in Politico, not the Nation or Mother Jones.
***********
Apart from sensing a shift in the prevailing winds (and, of course, wishing our Blogmaster better luck), what’s on the agenda for the day?
OzarkHillbilly
Concrete. Not much, just enuf to make my back wish my mother had never met my father.
Baud
Judging by the excerpt, Ricks still can’t bring himself to condemn Republicans (notwithstanding the passing reference to the Reagan Revolution). Oh, well. No one said progress was swift.
Cervantes
@Baud: Baby steps.
Ricks is the guy who pointed out a few years ago that “Fox News” is a wing of the Republican Party — while Fox was interviewing him on the air.
So there’s that.
raven
Jamey
I’m sure this is a great article, but I’ll never know. Because: Politico…
Ramalama
I wonder how future Americans will think of Reagan.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ramalama: Spit on the ground when his name is mentioned, that’s how.
JGabriel
Thomas Ricks:
What happened to the country over the past 15 years? One of the major parties, the GOP, followed the rightward roadmap inherited from the Reagan administration, Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America (i.e., it’s corporations), PNAC, the Powell Memorandum, and the Southern Strategy to its natural destinations.
If you’re looking at a 15 year timeframe for America’s troubles, your lens is too short.
I’m always mildly dismayed, and find it vaguely ridiculous, when conservatives who change their views act like the party left them. No, it didn’t. They were active participants who voted for the politicians and policies that led us here.
Ricks’ essay is better than most in that respect, since it does outline some of this history. But, c’mon, the GOP didn’t change overnight, or even in just the past 15 years. I’m glad when conservatives change their views, become progressives, and come over to our side of the aisle – but a sense of their own compliance in the extremist right direction the GOP has taken, a slight sense that maybe some personal atonement is in order, would be appreciated.
satby
I read the whole article, and Ricks, who admitted he didn’t vote at all most of his career, details a litany of things he finds disturbing but fails to note clearly which party was responsible for the majority of them. Good little villager that he is, he needs to call out Democrats for several failings. Both sides do it!!!
Cervantes
@raven: Right, and not long afterwards he told MSNBC that they were “just like Fox, but not as good at it.”
Tommy
Totally not political. I just got this thing called the Jawbone. This wrist band I wear and it tells me my heart rate, temp, how many steps I take. Integrated with many fitness and health apps to track your workouts and what you eat. Why I got it, it monitors your sleep patterns. As somebody that is an insomniac, I can’t wait to see those results. We live in a brave new world …..
OzarkHillbilly
@Ramalama: They’ll fly to Baltimore and take a cab just to avoid his airport.
Gindy51
We got here because other lazy people like Ricks (lazier than most because he didn’t vote at all) voted the letter at the end of the name on the ballot (R) instead of using their brains to find out wtf the candidate stood for.
JGabriel
@Baud:
Ricks doesn’t actually come out and say “both sides do it”, but the tone is certainly there:
Maybe it’s just a transition tic, an I couldn’t have been that wrong about everything state of denial before reaching acceptance.
Keith G
Down here in hurricane country, you learn that some pretty strong walls can be built to withstand winds, prevailing or not.
They can call for more federal intervention all they want, but until the mentality of “increasing shareholder value above all other considerations” is reveled to be the social cancer that it is, we will continue rolling down the slope into greater dysfunction. That mentality is the Dark Lord behind most of our ills.
Example: What is the modern NRA but a vehicle to increase shareholder value of those invested in weapons manufacturers.
Baud
Is there no way to stop conservative ideology without making common cause with the browns and the poors?
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL. I lived 15 years in DC and flew out of that airport once. 9/10/2001. Last plane out. The next morning, well you can imagine what we woke up to. My mom shaking me and saying you got to see this. Took weeks for me to get my car out of that parking garage, well days just to fly back home. I don’t have fond memories of that airport!
Randy P
I know a lot of Quakers, most of them 50-80. I think they’d be surprised to learn this is the direction they’re expected to be moving.
I’m in my late 50s too. Pretty sure I’m not going to suddenly become a Glenn Beck fan anytime soon.
Yes, I know there are some sad stories here of BJers whose parents started watching Fox and got sucked into the Borg. But it doesn’t happen to all of us. Maybe not even to most of us.
Bobby B.
Man, is this guy ever not gonna get invited to “Meet the Press”. OTOH he’s in his late 50s and this “recanting” is probably no weirder than coming out as a Brony.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gindy51: For the record Gindy, I do exactly the same thing except the letter I look for is a (D). I can never again vote for anyone who would belong to a party that stands for positions as hateful, loathsome, and despicable as today’s Republicans. I don’t care what their “personal position” is. Lie down with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas.
Keith G
@Baud:
Condemning Republicans as truthful as the event would be, is not the best initial step down the path that Ricks seems to want to travel.
I work and otherwise deal with Republicans every day and when I have had success in moving opinions it has been by vigorously focusing on outcomes and never mentioning ideology. Condemnation locks in defensive postures, even in those who have only a marginal connection to the ideology.
OzarkHillbilly
Heh. For the Irony Today file:
Vladimir Putin signs law requiring mass storage of Russians’ personal Internet data
Tommy
@Randy P: I just turned 45 on July 12th. I find myself getting MORE liberal as I get older. Not the other way around. I’ve always been somewhat liberal if not totally liberal back to my teens. But now I feel myself being pulled more and more in that direction.
SFAW
Today: visiting efgoldman-land for a bit, maybe Buddy C. will ask for my campaign advice. Hey, ef – anything I need to know about Coventry? (No, I won’t be looking for Lady Godiva, that’s the other Coventry).
Re: the article: Bruce Bartlett preceded Ricks in his come-to-semi-rationality moment. I think he was more closely associated with Reagan (too lazy to look it up at the moment). He seems to have stayed semi-rational since then, but I don’t track that stuff closely.
I keep hoping that enough Rethugs will have a “Col. Nicholson moment,” but I’m needing more and more pharmaceutical help to maintain that hope. More likely that they’ll attempt a coup.
Baud
@Tommy:
I’m more liberal than I was in my youth. I chalk it up to being less ignorant.
JGabriel
Keith G:
Good point. You’re not going to get anyone to change their whole political outlook, to accept that they’ve been wrong about everything political for the past several decades, in a day. I’ll try to keep it in mind next time someone tells me the party left them.
Randy P
Agenda for the day: work.
Agenda tonight: Attend a new play festival in Philly. I wonder if other towns have this? Several theater companies here (and there are many MANY thriving companies) run staged readings of new plays and hold workshops to develop plays. The one we’ve been going to last week and tonight is called Playpenn. They select 6 playwrights/plays and this year staged 2 readings of each, giving the playwright the opportunity to rewrite in between.
Randy P
@Randy P: Also the acting talent in this town is just jaw-droppingly awesome. All ages. Equity (dues-paying pros) and non-Equity.
Deen
It’s not uncommon indeed to start yearning for the good old days as you get older, but at this point in history, the good old days was a much more progressive society. I think we’ll be seeing more of this.
Ramalama
@Randy P: That sounds like fun.
SFAW
@Gindy51:
Oh, most of them knew, which is why they pulled the “R” lever. Because they new that it’s a scary world out there, what with all them browns and poors and wimmins trying to steal their hard-earned cash and wimmins, and only the Rethugs can protect them.
You realize that the attempted destruction of America’s public education system was not an accident, don’t you? Because low-information voters have a heavy tendency to vote for Rethugs, and if you keep ’em stoopid, you guarantee re-election as far as the eye can see. Or did you think it was educated people who happily voted for someone who called evolution/Darwin “lies from the pit of Hell”?
And, yes, I realize that “uneducated” does not necessarily equal “stupid.” But if they start out stupid, and you don’t educate them, they’re guaranteed to stay that way. If you actually DO educate them, they might overcome their stupidity.
Tommy
@Randy P: Let me rant and tell you a happy story. My parents are Republicans. You couldn’t pay them to watch Fox Noise nor listen to Rush. They are sane. My mom runs elections in her district. My father, well he sits on the board of directors of a few things, including the local community college. He is often told he could win a Congress seat running away if he’d run.
As a kid growing up there were a few rules. One was at 5:30 EVERY DAY we sat down as a family for dinner. You had to talk about your day. You could talk about whatever you wanted, but alas if you said something stupid you were called on it. Saying something stupid or not factual was just not allowed. Those dinners are are a thing of the past, I am 45, but when I have dinner with my parents you still can’t say stupid shit and get away with it.
I have epic political conversations with my parents. Funny thing, we are on about the same page more times then not. I know there are not a lot of sane Republicans left in this nation, but my gosh we ought to be able to get some shit done. But as I say to my parents all the time, you got to go and take your party back from the crazy!
Aimai
@JGabriel: also he seems completely unaware that there are and always have been liberals–and even radicals-/the same age as he is. Lots of fifty plus year old democrats out there who were never going to move rightwards. He should try to get out more.
Randy P
@Ramalama: Yeah, and the price ($ZERO) is right.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
What can it tell you about your sleep patterns and what do you hope to learn? Just curious.
Tommy
@Aimai: I was at my grandfathers funeral years and years ago. Not sure how it happened, but I got into a conversation about politics with somebody I didn’t even know. He said something like my grandfather, who was nothing close to a liberal, would hate me as a liberal. This is his fucking funeral I might add.
I tried to explain to him that I’d had this conversation with my grandfather. That he and my parents have told me time and time again they are kind of proud as Republicans they raised a hippie liberal. The phrase I use is my parents let me figure out shit for myself. Politics. Religion. You name it. And then when I did they supported me. You fucking suck.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Me too. At one point in my life, I occasionally voted for an R but never again. I don’t think I was more conservative. I think the Rs were much less mean and crazy. Reagan was a disaster for this country. I recently heard Elizabeth Warren point out that the slide toward greater inequality began during Reagan’s reign.
Botsplainer
I’m 52, and grew up in the same placidly deep blue precincts of Louisville as did Hunter S. Thompson. My “good old days” were marked by record stores, bars, restaurants, head shops, hippie fashion shops, ubiquitous hormonal birth control, bicycles, religious tolerance, the feeling we’d gotten past race issues, gay bars and “no big deal” abortions if you needed them.
Then Reagan got elected, and the country outside those sane areas turned to shit.
Baud
@Tommy:
Sounds like a second funeral was called for in that situation.
raven
August 68 sitting in the barracks in Ft Lewis waiting to ship out and watching the convention. I was leaning but that was it.
Iowa Old Lady
Also, I have to judge what “conservative” means by watching the actions of people who call themselves conservative, so it’s become a synonym for “mean and crazy.” Is Glenn Beck conservative? Is Steve King? Is Louis Gohmert?
Jado
I take comfort in the idea that if and when the dramatic shift to the Left happens, blogs like this one will be regarded as wise precursors who knew what was happening before everyone else. Praise, acclaim, and respect (not to mention lucrative Sunday morning TV gigs) will be heaped on them until they need to hire people to prioritize the schedule.
Cause that’ll happen. Totally.
Tommy
@Baud: Yeah. My parents are about my best friends. They got no problem throwing me into the mix as a person far more liberal then them. I think they are proud they raised a hippie liberal as a kid. As I said they let me figure stuff out for myself. I would always love my parents but I love them more cause they let me decide things. Then they never second guessed me. The story I could tell of me becoming an Atheist when I was 16 and them standing behind me as our church shunned me, well you can only imagine.
Schlemizel
@Iowa Old Lady:
I grew up in Minnesota where even the Republicans were mostly sane. I have on occasion voted for a Republican over a Dem when I felt they would have been a better representative. But I would never do that today and for 2 very good reasons.
1) There are no moderate, sane Republicans even in MN running for office. Look at the shit that passes as sane, Eric Paulson. He represents a white, wealthy, suburban, socially liberal CD west of Minneapolis. He supports all the hate of the GOP but is rarely caught uttering the words out loud. Joe Kline is identical to Batshit Bachmann except he is smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Both are portrayed as moderate, both are on record as saying horrific shit.
2) any Republican elected adds weight to the total power of the GOP and the wingnuts. If Jesus and Buddha had a baby that was raised by Gandhi and running as an R today I would not vote for them because when they got to their job they would find themselves hemmed in by the crazy and they would end up saying and doing the worst things imaginable to our once great country.
So, no Rs ever no matter what. Maybe some day in the future but I have a hard time imagining it today.
SFAW
@Jado:
Had me goin’ for a minute, ’til I read that.
Nicely done.
Tommy
@Schlemizel: I sleep about 3-4 hours a day. Most not REM sleep. Tossing and turning. I hope to have a better idea of my sleep patterns. Then off to a sleep clinic. I often joke I would not wish my sleep issues on my worse enemy (if I had one). It sucks.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
Bad news for birfers: they’ve lost the will of the
peopleRW Noise Machine:http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/general_lifestyle/july_2014/have_we_got_a_conspiracy_for_you_9_11_jfk_obama_s_citizenship
23% doubt Obama’s citizenship is below the crazification factor. Also note this is a Rasmussen telephone poll which tends to skew more conservative/old.
Honestly, Rasmussen could be making this up to make GOPers look better because his polls are terrible the last few years.
Don’t worry, I’m sure there are still 27% who believe in Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.
Schlemizel
@Tommy:
I’m just not understanding what the thing can tell you about your sleep. I probably should just google but I am lazy.
Schlemizel
this made me laugh:
Giant Yellow Toad Shrinks Online After Resemblance to Chinese Leader Is Noted
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/23/giant-yellow-toad-disappears-online-after-resemblance-to-chinese-leader-noted/?_php=true&_type=blogs&emc=edit_tnt_20140723&nlid=48457235&tntemail0=y&_r=0
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: My parents were life long Republicans with liberally social points of view. My (Southern Baptist converted to Cathlicism) mother had each of my sisters on birth control right after their first period because… reality. As a phone counselor at Birth Right she told a # of women, “You need to get an abortion.” because… reality. After retirement my father volunteered as the CFO for ROW (Redevelopment Opportunities for Women- an STL organization set up to help low income women) for about a decade because…. reality.
Those were the kind of conservatives I grew up with. For years I kept looking for them. It all ended during W’s tenure in the White House when I realized they don’t run for office anymore. Shortly before she died my mother told me she would never again vote (R).
Botsplainer
@Schlemizel:
Same here as to your “no R votes, ever”. If somebody is loathesome, I may on rare occasions decline to return them, but I’m certain I’ll never cast an R vote again in my lifetime.
rikyrah
The Future Looks Bright
by BooMan
Wed Jul 23rd, 2014 at 06:10:19 PM EST
I can’t blame Stu Rothenberg for bitching about a polling firm that won’t show its work, but I think he’s just annoyed that polling keeps coming out that doesn’t look good for Republican Senate candidates and governors. In the end, Rothenberg doesn’t even really doubt that the race in Montana has grown closer and he lists it as a Toss-Up/Tilts Republican race, which is maybe even a little more of a pessimistic assessment than is warranted by the polling. I’d say that Montana Leans Republican right now, and the only toss-up part of it is that a lot can change between now and November.
A look at the latest polls shows Gov. Scott Walker in real trouble in Wisconsin, Gov. Rick Scott trailing in Florida, Udall and Hickenlooper up narrowly in Colorado, Sen. Kay Hagan up in North Carolina, Gov. Andrew Cuomo up by 37 points in New York, Michelle Nunn crushing David Perdue in Georgia, Rep. Gary Peters up by nine in Michigan, Mary Landrieu up in Louisiana, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen comfortably ahead in New Hampshire. People have already written obituaries for Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, and the Republican governors of Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, and Michigan aren’t looking like they’re in too great a shape, either. The last poll out of Maine has Democrat Mike Michaud win a narrow lead in a three-way race.
The news isn’t all good. Some races are scarily close, for example, the Senate races in Iowa, Arkansas, and Colorado. But only in Arkansas does an incumbent look to be in truly serious danger. Unless these races all tilt against the Democrats in the end, the GOP is on course for a galactically bad election night.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/7/23/181019/256
Schlemizel
Ah, moderation – FYWP
Its a funny story, I was trying to lighten things up with a laugh
rikyrah
What’s on course for today?
Hoping that it was better than yesterday, which sucked.
New dawn. New day. New possibilities.
WereBear
@Tommy: I’m doing a Sleep Hygiene program. It’s a developing theory that all the bright light with blue overtones beamed into our eyes (computer people are especially prone to this, but a lot of jobs use screens now) screws up our circadian clock and it then messes up our sleep pattern.
I now:
Dim the lights at sunset, lean towards redder hues (put the f.lux program on my laptop) shut TV an hour before bed, use a sleep mask.
All of this has let me get rid of that 2 AM to 5 AM gap that used to torment me. Also, get out in the sunshine during the day, first thing in the morning especially, and try some pushups or other short, intense, exertion right before turning in.
This is all to help reset that clock in your body. In case it helps.
Thunderbird
@Botsplainer: Same here. Last R vote I cast was for Dick Lugar in his primary against Mourdock. Never again.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: I remember when my parents found out I was an atheist. 14 sitting at the dinner table I just told my old man I wasn’t going to church anymore. Really pissed him off. Looks at my mother and says,
“What do you make of this?!”
“Well,” she replied, “it’s honest.”
Mike J
@Tommy:
Does it actually give this info to you, or does the hardware give this info to its corporate mothership, whom you will then have to beg to get your data? That’s the way the Fuel bands work, and the main reason I didn’t buy one.
I expect my hardware to talk to me. I shouldn’t need an account on a web site run by a company who is going to do god knows what with my data to get the band on my wrist to talk to my computer or my phone. I don’t want a relationship with a company. I want to give them my money, they give me a product, then they fuck right off and I never have to see them again.
Thoughtful David
@Ramalama:
I’ve always thought that Reagan’s big thing, defeating the Soviet Union, actually caused more damage to the US (and it’s damage that’s still ongoing) than the Soviet Union ever could have done short of launching a nuclear attack.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m still thinking about “conservative” having come to equal “mean and crazy.” The great Yogi once said, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.” Conservative theory may be fine, but we live in a world of practice.
Thoughtful David
@Gindy51:
That’s not quite true. They do vote for what their candidates stand for: hating melanin, and therefore anything that might help the melanin-possessed.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
Liars and the rubes who fall for it…
How the fuck does the WisGOP get away with calling D Mary Burke an outsourcer and jobkiller when Scott Walker killed the insourcing of Talgo in Wis? Under his watch the jobs markets of MN and WI decoupled (they used to track beautifully) and WI has had the worst job growth in the Midwest. IL isn’t doing great but just drive around, they’ve had heavy manufacturing move back into empty facilities.
Also, how does Forbes get to tout some nonsense that FL and TX cities have the best job potential as if this is validation of their tax policies when FL has lagged on job growth for the four years Rick Scott has been governor and is only now recovering while TX is depending on fossil fuel revenues, which Forbes’ fellow finance rags thinks is going to stagnate in price due to the big increases in supply? The only reason FL isn’t in worse shape is that the AFL-CIO put an item on the ballot, which passed, to raise FL’s minimum wage so it is higher than neighboring states such as Georgia.
GOP thinks we have the attention span of mayflies. Guess they know their base.
J R in WV
@OzarkHillbilly:
My Mom was that kind of Republican, both of my folks were. Common sense and honesty were required, and they were on the side of conserve, keep things clean, like the air and water. But my Mom was bedridden with COPD, poisoned by Pall Mall her last 8 or 10 years.
She fought to stay alive to vote against Bob Dole, an honest conservative, because he was against free and accepted abortions when needed. She said “Don’t tell your father!” but she would never vote for another Republican, back in the 90s when she was in her 60s.
She voted for Bill Clinton, because he wasn’t a Republican!
I have never voted for a Republican. If there wasn’t a Democrat running for a post that I tgrusted to be honest, I left that vote blank, because I won’t vote for ANY Republican, ever. The party stands for evil. Not for conservation, not for old fashioned values, not for the good of America, but for greed, hate and evil.
People who feel bad about me calling them greedy, hateful and evil can change parties and work for the Democrats. After a couple of decades of hard work for the Democrats, I’ll will concede that they have turned away from evil.
Thoughtful David
@OzarkHillbilly:
Me too. After the early 1990s, when conservatives decided to overthrow the duly-elected government (that would be the Clinton presidency), I swore I would never vote for a Republican again in my life. If that’s all that’s on the ballot, I write in or don’t vote. Anyone will to associate himself/herself with the Republican party, for whatever reason, does not deserve my support. You are evil if you associate willingly and knowingly with evil.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly: Funniest thing about that: when the Republicans were clamoring in the ’90s to rename Washington National after Reagan, they explained that the airport in our capital city ought to be named after a great American president.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: They wanted to name it after FDR? That’s kinda surprising.
MomSense
@WereBear:
I was having sleep problems, too. It is much better now since I started waking up really early and going to the gym first thing. Then I go to work and do the dinner/chores production and then I crash hard. I sometimes wake up once or twice but I go right back to sleep.
The first week was brutal because I couldn’t get to sleep early enough and then would be exhausted in the morning but I pushed through that and I’m really glad I did.
I hope that you can sort out your sleep and feel much better!
Mike J
@Cervantes: Washington was British.
Cervantes
@Mike J:
!
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW: anything I need to know about Coventry?
Well, efgoldman usually only shows up later. But there is nothing of interest in Coventry.
WereBear
@MomSense: The improvements are dramatic over these last couple of months. The theory made a lot of sense to me because I used to stay up all night programming or writing or just coming down from weird work shifts.
I also eat a big breakfast first thing in the morning, after years of skipping it because I had no appetite. Also helped.
Nethead Jay
@OzarkHillbilly: Mom knows what’s up. I’ve heard variations on that theme from several US friends, so you and your family are not alone in that.
Gin & Tonic
@Tommy: You fucking suck.
Gosh, that’s surprising.
Kay
We had a little of this locally. We have a statehouse candidate who was never really engaged before, although unlike this guy he did vote and generally voted for Democrats.
Anyway, he met with us and although I really liked him and we’re honestly lucky to have him (it’s no fun running in heavily R districts) he has very mainstream D positions and he seemed to think he’s this big populist maverick.
He’s right in line with D voters here. They all sound like him. There were actually a group to the LEFT of him in that room, maybe 20%.
I just thought it was funny because apparently when you’re “disengaged” ir trying to be “a centrist” you come to believe these very popular ideas and positions are somehow new or unique and they’re of course not.
He’s in his late forties and I wanted to tell him “these older Democrats you’re lecturing have had these positions you just ‘discovered’ for the last 30 years, they’re just too polite to tell you”
tesslibrarian
@WereBear: I recently started to do similar things, and the difference in quality of sleep is incredible.
I used to read on my phone to fall asleep, since my eyes would get tired after about 30 minutes. But then I was dealing with the 3-6am period of frequent insomnia, often after very light, fussy sleep.
I started to read just paper before bed, even though it meant I read for longer, so sometimes didn’t turn out the light until 1am. But that’s fine with me if it means I don’t wake until 6am and have no memory at all of waking during the night. (and can go back to sleep for a couple of hours)
I swear, deep sleep is like drinking water after walking through the desert. And not having all those thoughts during the night? The obsessive stuff, the futile worry, the rehashing…not dealing with that has to be at least as refreshing.
Baud
@Cervantes:
I’ll admit, the residual teenager in me wants to paint the Washington Monument black and rename it after Obama, just to piss people off.
Gin & Tonic
@Iowa Old Lady: The great Yogi once said, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.”
Sorry to be pedantic this early in the day, but he didn’t.
Hillary Rettig
Here’s a basset sighting for Senor Tbogg and other bassetphiles:
http://cuteoverload.com/2014/07/23/the-ballad-of-waldo-longfellow/
Eric U.
@Gin & Tonic: he should have.
I think Dem politicians play into people like Ricks because they shy away from fully embracing policies that Dems have held for decades. There certainly have been hopeful signs that is turning around, but its frustratingly slow.
Brian R.
@Tommy:
At my grandfather’s funeral in the early 1990s, the priest spent much of the eulogy ranting about Bill Clinton and Jocelyn Elders. Even the conservatives were pissed off. There are things you don’t politicize.
Botsplainer
@Cervantes:
The more I think about his 1980 kickoff in MS, the more pissed I am that the media utterly failed to really point out what that meant to the families of the slain voting activists a mere 16 years later, considering how justice had been denied.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
At 15 my son told me that he wasn’t an atheist because that would require accepting the theist construct in order to reject it.
low-tech cyclist
I’m 60 years old, and I was somewhat ahead of Ricks in my leftward move. Throughout my 20s and 30s, I’d been the sort of centrist beloved by Broder and his ilk.
But the Gingrich Revolution made it quite clear that this was not my father’s GOP anymore. I wanted nothing to do with those nutcases, and there was clearly no splitting the difference with them. So by the time Ricks started his leftward drift 15 years ago, I was already the stalwart liberal I am now.
And with Bush – c’mon, if you were paying any attention in 2002, it was clear that the need to invade Iraq was no more urgent than it had been any time in the previous decade. And the Bushies themselves went abruptly from “no, we’re not talking about going to war with Iraq” in the summer of 2002, to a hard sell for the war by September. By February 2003, their total absence of planning for what to do with Iraq once they’d gotten it was a matter of public record. The whole thing was obviously a crazy fuckup before we went in.
To anyone paying half as much attention as Ricks was, this should have been a clue-by-4 of Gargantuan proportions.
And yeah, I’ve got disquiet about both parties, but for vastly different reasons. The GOP is blatantly evil and destructive and really hates the vast majority of American people; it’s not like they’re hiding this. The Dems’ failing, OTOH, is that all too often, they’re still the Scared Rabbit Party, afraid to directly take on the evil of the GOP. But they’re not evil; they’re just ineffectual in opposing evil. That’s a rather huge difference.
MomSense
@Botsplainer:
Yeah I was pissed then. Still pissed now. I feel like spitting every time I hear his name.
raven
How studying fruit flies and zebrafish might unlock secrets of the human brain
TriassicSands
With all of the obvious evidence of the utter failure of right wing policies, I have to admit I’m surprised we don’t see more admissions of this sort. No, I don’t mean I expect a tectonic shift to the left among a majority of aging wingers — they’re far too selfish and ignorant (self-deluded) for that to happen. But among people with ready and constant access to the facts, people who may even have thought themselves into conservatism, as opposed to embracing it out of a visceral desire to pay lower or no taxes and at least a suspicion of, if not an outright hatred of minorities and immigrants. It’s always good to see it when it happens, but it’s far too rare.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Cervantes: The best part is that the name of the airport was the “GEORGE WASHINGTON NATIONAL AIRPORT”.
Now it’s the “RONALD REAGAN GEORGE WASHINGTON NATIONAL AIRPORT”.
All the time it was GWNA the Metro signs said “National Airport” (DC has a lot of “National” stuff because it’s in DC, like the “National Cathedral”, yadda yadda), but when they added Raygun they forced WMATA to redo every sign in their system at their expense (f*ck brown people and their bus service) to add “Reagan”.
Pissing on General Washington to prop up that fake Reagan. The only thing more perfect would be if Reagan had busted up a airport worker’s union while in office OH WAIT.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Mike J: Except for that, ya know, treason against the British crown thing.
Kay
@Eric U.:
It’s a little annoying because there are a lot of people who never embraced “trickle down” and who have watched this unfold with real regret and increasing concern and they’re now in their 70’s.
They would be the group who were NOT “Reagan Democrats” and were unfashionable and drowned out by pundits and political operatives.
Just on general fairness grounds they should get a nod for being right about a lot of this stuff all along. That never seems to happen.
Brian R.
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
The other big push by Grover Norquist’s crusade to name everything after Reagan that took place in D.C. was naming the largest federal office building after the guy who complained the federal government was too big.
Apparently, Grover understands irony as well as Alanis Morrisette did.
some guy
pleased as punch to hear my favorite American Zionist, aaron david miller, on the radio this morning outline steps to Steve Inskeep on NPR,on how Kerry might possibly maybe bring Bibi the Babykiller to heel.
when you are rationalizing/explaining/pleading, you are losing!
solidarity with the people of Gaza, solidarity with the Resistance.
Mike J
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): I didn’t say he was a *good* Brit.
Botsplainer
@Brian R.:
At my great grandmother’s funeral sometime in the early 80s, the hayseed preacher from the fundamentalcase church a few hundred yards from her previous home (who had no idea who she was- she’d been in an apartment in a nearby village for several years and a nursing home here in the city for two before she died) had an altar call at her fucking funeral.
There were about 15 people in attendance, all family, and none of us living in that hellhole.
I remember being incredibly pissed off about that. Fuck him and his pharisaicism.
Betty Cracker
@Brian R.: The priest at my father-in-law’s funeral devoted part of the sermon to ragging on atheists. It was more condescending than mean-spirited, but it was annoying all the same to the several atheists (including myself) in the family pews. Still, when you enter a church, I guess you have to expect that sort of thing. An overtly political rant at a funeral? That is wholly inexcusable.
Dr. Dave
More evidence that Republicans recanting isn’t an isolated phenomenon. An NPR report this morning says that more than 100 current or former (R) state legislators in Kansas aren’t happy that Gov. Brownback’s “Red State Model” of huge tax cuts has nothing to show but huge deficits and lower-than-the-national-average job growth, leading them to endorse the (D) candidate for governor. The report also cites a poll that has the (D) candidate up by six percentage points. Baby steps…
Betty Cracker
@Dr. Dave: Wow. If a Democrat gets elected governor in Kansas and Georgia elects a Democrat to the US Senate, that would be just astounding.
Ben Cisco
@Botsplainer: No votes for a Republican, ever. For me, they ceded their opportunity to be considered that day. Further, in all the years since they’ve done nothing to atone. Indeed, their behavior over the last six years in particular has rendered them completely and absolutely unworthy of consideration to serve as anything other than subjects of a cautionary tale.
Woodrowfan
@Ramalama: well, a lot of locals (myself included) still call it just “National”.
And Congress didn’t own the airport. As was noted up-thread, they forced the actual owners to rename it.
PaulW
just ranting down here in Florida… http://noticeatrend.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-ethics-of-rick-scott.html
Also, there’s another missing jet liner. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/air-algerie-jet-chartered-spains-swiftair-vanishes-africa this sh-t’s not funny, God, stop this…
Glocksman
As this is an open thread, I’ll ask my question here.
My sister bought me a vape pen because she wants me to quit smoking.
I agreed to try it, but the mango flavored oil that came with it tastes awful.
I tried a hit from a friend’s disposable tobacco flavored e-cig, but it just had a hint of taste and wasn’t satisfying at all.
Any recommendations on oil flavors to try and/or specific brands?
PaulW
@Betty Cracker:
Here’s the thing, though: WE GOTTA GET THE VOTE OUT TO MAKE SURE THAT HAPPENS…
MomSense
@Dr. Dave:
Jeez, it’s like they are shocked that supply side economics doesn’t actually work.
Kay
There’s another piece I’ve noticed about what I consider nostalgia for the “old” Democratic Party and that’s a blindness to how it’s gotten BETTER.
It’s gotten better because it’s more diverse. The period between 1960 and 1980 resulted in a less-white, less-male Democratic Party and that was and is for the good. Maybe they moved Right on economic issues but a lot of the old guard were also busy excluding whole groups of people from leadership all the way down to the county level and THAT change is for the good.
Democrats may have gotten trounced by Reagan’s trickle down and too many of them bought into it but that also forced them to become more diverse and that is all to the good.
The people who want “their grandfathers” Democratic Party can’t have it back, and I for one don’t want it back. It was not a very “progressive” organization, as far as diversity.
MomSense
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Are you saying that Washington was also an anti-colonialist just like Barack Obama? Does D’Souza know about this outrage???
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
You know, I remember when it was called “Washington-Hoover Airport.”
But I don’t think there ever was, or is now, a “George” in the name.
Please don’t get me started on Reagan and the air-traffic controllers (or anything else). His presidency was an awful time. And the thing is, I’m not sure how much he understood about it even then. As the late, lamented James Garner said, Reagan was always an idiot — and then in later life dementia got him.
Glocksman
@MomSense:
Well, in theory supply side or ‘voodoo economics’, as it was called by Bush the Elder, should work.
In reality, instead of investing their tax savings into productive enterprises in the US, the wealthy either invest overseas or engage in Wall Street chicanery that produces no jobs and can endanger the world economy.
Gordon Gekko lives on and the Laffer Curve is more accurately called the Laughter Curve.
Cervantes
@Baud:
@Tommy:
Whereas:
@Bob Dylan:
Mandalay
And Ricks also said this earlier this year:
So he has definitely burned his bridges with the government. Perhaps he lost all his insider access and privileges once his hero Petraeus got caught, and so now he is saying screw it, I’m going to just write what I think instead of being a dutiful stenographer.
Well you are a bit late for that party now, asshole.
Paul in KY
@Tommy: Your parents unfortunately enable the non-sane republicans. IMO, they should at least switch to ‘Independent’.
Cervantes
@Glocksman:
No, there’s no “theory” there at all — nothing at all that “should work.”
It was nothing but wishful thinking at best — and more like a transparent attempt at propaganda in service of selfishness and stupidity.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: Succinct recap of what happened :-)
NotMax
@SFAW
Well, there’s the Churchill Coventry conspiracy.
Paul in KY
@Jado: I’m just counting the days, myself.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: I’ll say!
Glocksman
@Cervantes:
Oh, I’ve definitely become more liberal as I got older.
Shit, if I’d gone any more rightward, I’d be somewhere to the right of Mussolini.
As it was, when I was a teenager during the early 80’s my heroes were Gordon Liddy, Ronald Reagan, and the Contras.
I was also an avid reader of Soldier of Fortune magazine and thought Jesse Helms’ When Free Men Shall Stand was the Bible of good governance.
If anyone asks why I’ve changed my outlook, I tell them that a liberal is a conservative that got mugged by reality.
Chris
@Baud:
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt: it often takes time to change politics altogether. Took me a few years to get from “you know, I think I like these Democrat folks better” to “holy shit, these fucking people in the GOP are ALL psychotic!” I got there eventually.
Kay
@Cervantes:
It really was pervasive, though. It was everywhere. The Kerry organizers in ’04 told us not to mention taxes. I got questions from Democrats like “but is going to raise MY TAXES?”
These are people who don’t make enough to pay federal income taxes, as in, make a payment to the IRS in April. It was just this complete brainwashing, like a Third Rail for Democrats.
At least now it is discussed.
debbie
@Dr. Dave:
Yes, I heard this. I especially loved Brownback’s crowing over his chat with a small business owner and that one job that might be created there. Sounds a lot like John Kasich’s boasting about all the jobs he’s “retained” for Ohio.
MomSense
@Glocksman:
Horse and Sparrow, Supply Side, Voodoo, let them eat cakenomics–whatever the name it has never worked.
Laughter curve is right. Too bad the joke was on us.
ruemara
I get a New Car! A new to me car. I leave the 80’s & head into the 90’s. This one has so much fancy stuff; windows that role down with buttons, that there magic car locky thing, maybe an alarm or something. A friend is letting me give a down payment and pay the rest off in installments. Very exciting.
geg6
@Tommy:
I’m 55 and, if you had told me back in my teens and twenties that I’d move ever further left the older I got, I’d have laughed you out of the place as I thought I was pretty left.
But I still supported the death penalty, with what I though only needed some tweaks, then. I also had some pretensions to being a “fiscally responsible” liberal back then.
Not any more and never again.
Cervantes
@Thoughtful David: You could look at it this way: the Cold War hurt us, hurt the Soviets, and hurt the rest of the world. By far the worst damage was done to the Third World. And everywhere, we are still living and dying with the consequences.
And as for:
It’s true that our insane deficit-spending on weapons hurt the Soviets, to the extent they tried to match it — but so did other things they did to themselves — and I would not give Reagan all the credit (if that’s the right word) for defeating them.
Yatsuno
Richard Mayhew alert!
lurker dean
@ruemara: Congrats, very exciting indeed!
rk
I went from being non political in my 20s and 30s to being one hundred percent anti conservatism as practiced by republicans. I don’t consider myself a liberal because I quite honestly don’t really know what that means. I was against the Iraq war because it was obviously stupid. I believe in evolution and global warming because it’s a scientific fact. Not believing in global warming and evolution does not in my opinion make one a conservative. It just makes you an idiot, the same as railing against the govt while depending on social security and medicare. Republicans are not conservatives, they are a bunch of greedy thugs who cater to a lot of fearful delusional psychotics. Only in the US is the opposite of delusional psychotic considered a “liberal”.
Cervantes
@Kay:
Sure. That’s where successful propaganda is: everywhere.
And yes, it has harmed us immeasurably.
All I’m saying is that it never contained a single element of actual economic theory. It was utter nonsense. If I may quote a Nobel-winning economist:
Could not have said it better myself.
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: Woohoo! I got a “new to me” car awhile back, and I still get a kick out of driving it. Congrats!
geg6
@Thunderbird:
Technically, my last one was for Senator John Heinz (Teresa Heinz Kerry’s first husband) before he died in a plane crash. In reality, my last one was for Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey (who is actually a distant cousin of mine, but we don’t talk about that in my family). The fact that Specter had only just become a Dem didn’t make him a Dem in my eyes, but he was miles better than that asshole Toomey has been.
Cervantes
@Glocksman: Teenagers are allowed to make mistakes, even big ones. That’s practically their job.
Punchy
What’s all this hubbub about some missing plane in Africa? Does this mean CNN is going all Missing Plane, Yo on their viewers, or because it’s in Africa, they’re not going to give a shit?
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Brian R.: He thought 1984 was a political playbook for flawless victory.
I used to walk past that Reagan building a lot. It’s biiiiiig.
Cervantes
@Glocksman:
Sorry, I have no relevant knowledge whatsoever — but I did want to CHEER YOU ON!
As difficult as quitting tobacco appears to be, know that it’s critical and keep at it!
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Cervantes: It was written out along the side of the main terminal building. You could see it from the Metro embankment.
Davis X. Machina
@Mandalay:
Ricks’ misgivings about the defense establishment and its culture actually go back a ways….
His controversial 1997 Atlantic piece The Widening Gap Between Military And Society, for example.
You don’t write at length about the prevailing military culture becoming similar to ones that have produced coups if you’re completely in the tank for the Pentagon.
ellie
I don’t know about conversions, but I am and always will be a liberal. I am 49. My dad was a socialist and my mom is still a liberal who recently started questioning the Catholic Church, something that I never thought would happen.
Cervantes
@Kay: Half or more of the political establishment in this country is delusional. I don’t mean “a little crazy”; I mean “stark, raving bonkers.”
Waiting for acknowledgements, or gratitude, never mind apologies, from that crowd is a fool’s errand. The best we get, and even this only rarely, is the kind of thing Ricks is saying now. Savor it if you will.
Eric U.
@MomSense: widely disregarded thing about the Laffer Curve is that there is an inflection point beyond which any further tax decreases are counterproductive. Nobody knows where that is, but it’s clearly not at zero tax rate. And actually, it might be at a fairly stiff tax rate with progressive marginal rates. I think Bill Clinton showed that to be the case. Reagan showed that cutting taxes on the rich while simultaneously raising taxes on everyone else (through SS taxes) is a bad thing. The economy under Reagan/Bush was anything but great. Clinton raised taxes and the economy took off.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina:
Yes, that’s true. He’s written more than one book about it. What’s new are the more general remarks he’s been making recently.
bemused
@Schlemizel:
As a Minnesotan, I totally agree with everything you said.
Family and friends who have always been Republican voters used to be mostly sane too, not your nutty 27%ers, Now I’m just not so sure about that anymore and truthfully, it scares me a lot. I guess I’ve been avoiding finding out if they, even those who have always been wonderful caring people, have gone over to the crazy, dark side.
Cervantes
@Eric U.:
No, what’s truly widely disregarded about the Laffer Curve is that it is gibberish. Codswallop. Poppycock. Twaddle. Malarkey. Moonshine. Hogwash. Tommyrot. Piffle, even!
All this irrelevant talk about an “inflection point” just shows how far the madness went.
moonbat
I don’t know if it was precocious political awareness or just a gut feeling but I hated Reagan passionately as a middle school student and remember being not at all upset to hear he had been shot. (I was a mean little critter at the time.)
Gex
Wondering what happened over the last 15 years? HE happened. How much did our foreigner wars, our culture wars (women, gays, browns, poors) get a boost while he was voting for the CEO president? A metric fuck ton.
I had been saying all along during the Bush years that it would change when it started to actually affect straight white (culturally Christian) men (and they bothered noticing, hey, thanks for finally “looking up” guy!!!) and not a moment earlier. Lookie here. We need those guys to finally pull their asses out of their heads and stop hurting themselves just so they can hurt everyone else more.
Notice the utter lack of discussion about immigration, police brutality, gays/religious “freedoms”, and birth control/abortion.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): Yes, I remember that, but I don’t think it was official. (I could be wrong, obviously.)
gene108
@Ramalama:
I think Reagan is very similar to Andrew Jackson.
He did some things that were popular in the short term, but were not sustainable in the long run. He did some things that were brutal to people (ignoring the AIDS epidemic, Jackson had the Trail of Tears).
But at the end of the day both were very impactful on how American politics developed in subsequent years, which is what they will be remembered for.
NonyNony
@Eric U.:
Widely disregarded about the Laffer Curve is that it’s a diagram about real tax rates that then gets used to justify a decrease in marginal tax rates and a lowering of tax brackets.
While the Laffer Curve’s “hey look – if you tax people at 100% your revenues drop to zero, and it’s the same if you tax people at 0%” napkin drawing is obvious in that “common sense” sort of way, there’s no indication at all that this has any meaning for what marginal tax rates should be or where the tax brackets should be set at beyond “hey your lowest marginal tax rate probably shouldn’t be 100%. Also it shouldn’t be zero.”
It’s political sleight of hand and it’s been sleight of hand since it was first introduced. It should have no credibility, except that rich people have a vested interest in keeping it credible and people who aren’t rich in the USA are all convinced they’re just moments away from striking it rich themselves.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Agenda for the day: Another cup of coffee, bike to work (work 11:30-8) Catch my weekly AA meeting, then maybe an episode of Lost, then blissful sleep.
Paul in KY
@ruemara: Congrats! Always nice to get a new ride.
marian
@Kay: Why thank you :)
More seriously, it’s really really hard to see people who empowered Reagan and his ilk to be all surprised to find out that their roads are full of potholes, their children illiterate, their courts politicized, etc etc just like we kept telling them would happen.’
Better late than never, I guess.
CarolDuhart2
I associate the Reagan era with the physical deterioration of America.
Dr. Dave
@debbie: I laughed at that, too! Somehow this one small business owner and his (maybe, eventually) one job is PROOF that the fancy statistics are wrong and Brownback’s Red State Model is correct. Supply side economics can’t fail, and so on.
What pushed me past just preferring a (D) to the point of not even considering voting for an (R) was the utter disregard that most of their politicians express for facts that contradict their theories on how things ought to be or their belief that things aren’t what the facts say they are. Economics, health care, gun control, climate change, all with tons of solid data that refutes most of what the (R) side believes to be true. When they are ready to start dealing with reality again, then maybe I would consider voting for one, but until then, forget it!
Gex
I mean, yay conversion and all. But Jesus Christ. Having been so wrong for so long maybe a little humility and possibly an apology to the people who suffered under policies you supported would be nice. Yet no mention of any minority groups even though he is discussing a time period that covers the heart of the gay marriage fight and a time when it is not just abortion but it is also birth control under attack. Dude, you made that happen. Got ANYTHING to say about that? Nope? Just concerned about how your vote is hurting you and people like you (white men)?
He’s no liberal. He’s a conservative who isn’t in the part of the tribe that benefits from conservatism and it makes him sad. That’s it.
KXB
At 41, I’ve become liberal on some things. I’d like to see a pullback of US overseas military commitments, which costs us money we don’t have and encourages freeriding by our allies. In economic matters, I’d like to see finance shrink as a percentage of the economy, both in terms of people employees and % of corporate profits. Finance is necessary in a modern economy, but finance can make money through good economic activity, like launching a popular new product or service or it can make money through negative economic activity, like breaking up good companies just because the fees are so tempting. I’d like to see a carbon tax – since it is the most straightforward way to allocate cost and change behavior. When it comes to guns – I don’t want or need one. I grew up with guys whose dad’s maybe had 2 or 3 guns tops. Not piled high waiting for black helicopters. If a guy has a clean record, he should be able to get a gun, from a selection approved for civilians – no need for combat ready weaponry. He ought to prove he knows how to use it safely. If he fails at target practice – sorry. In Illinois, a guy who loses a gun is not required to report it lost. That should be changed. And increase insurance requirements for houses with guns in them. Ending the drug war would save lives & money.
But there are some matters where I find myself leaning right. Education – I am not swayed by appeals of “More money for schools”. Most public schools are quite good, and if you have students who are driven & encouraged by their families, they often have excellent resources & to advance a kid’s education. My public high school was the definition of average. Most went onto community college. For me, I got a better bang for the buck from my high school education than I did from my high priced college & MBA. But I’ve spoken with too many teachers who complain about parents who never show up to believe that more money will be key.
Ksmiami
@Cervantes: ha ha reminds me of the conservatives who were afraid that massive Hispanic immigration would mean major cities like Los Angeles would have Spanish names… There are no smart nice people within the GOP control center… They are evil, dumb and mean as shit and I will never vote for anyone with an r for the rest of my life barring some vortex altering reality shift
Mnemosyne
@Glocksman:
I don’t have any recommendations, but if you need motivation, they just found a tennis ball-sized mass in my 50-year-old stepbrother’s lung. He quit smoking 3 years ago, but obviously not soon enough.
When we go to Illinois next month, I will be putting heavy pressure on my same-age stepbrother to quit smoking, too. I was already pressuring my biological brother because our dad died of smoking-related illnesses in 2013, but now I’ve got more work to do.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As far as the article goes – that’s what all the rage is about from the Right, an attempt to force the doubters like writer to shut up.
Peter
@Cervantes: I don’t give Reagan any credit for the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had been gradually defeating itself for decades; Reagan just happened to be the one in office when it finally came to a head.
Mandalay
@Davis X. Machina:
True, though the (fine) article you linked to was in broad general terms, and hardly enough to rock anyone’s boat on a personal level. And certainly not enough to jeopardize his contacts within the DoD.
But Ricks also repeatedly handed over his own column to Petraeus’s lover, Paula Broadwell.
Now does that mean that Ricks was in bed with Petraeus and Broadwell? No, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if he brought them their coffee and newspapers in the morning.
Mnemosyne
@Deen:
This is a really good point. My Fox-loving parents grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, so they had a hard time adapting the the Brave New World of equality (racial, gender, and GLBT). They found Fox News to be a comforting return to the world of their childhood and adolescence.
Younger Boomers (people in their 50s) grew up in a more liberal time, so I can see that, as they grow older, they start wondering where the world of “Free to Be You and Me” went to even if they were seduced by Reagan. They watch their old nostalgic TV shows like the original “Battlestar Galactica” and wonder where all of the African-American characters on TV went.
I just turned 45 this year but I’ve been a liberal all my life — seriously, I was talking up the Equal Rights Amendment when I was 8 years old. But I still have some hope that my older brother and stepbrothers will eventually come around.
catclub
Funny. I thought Reagan revolutionized crony defense contracting. SDI!
Cassidy
We all know where this is heading; we’ve seen this movie. The country will continue to move leftward with the right becoming more and more fringe until the day they grow enough nutsack to organize into violent rebellion.
Betty Cracker
@moonbat: Ha, me too! I wasn’t glad Reagan got shot, but my blasé attitude was enough to piss my father off.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Mandalay:
Do you say that to Cole and the others who moved from right to left? I confess that I often wonder how seemingly intelligent people couldn’t see through things like trickle down economics or Bush’s WMD lies, but I say better late than never. OTOH, I am not sure just how much praise is warranted for simply waking up.
Mike in NC
Reagan and Bush the Elder had about as much to do with the collapse of the USSR as a rooster has to do with the coming of dawn. At least the Cult of Reagan seems to have abated in recent years; fewer calls to name stuff after him, put his face on our currency, expand Mount Rushmore, etc.
Cervantes
@Ksmiami:
I’m thinking I could use some of that.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
I also have f.Lux on my laptop and wear a sleep mask every night and both things helped me a LOT. My favorite sleep mask is this one by Sea to Summit, but the 40 Blinks by Bucky is good, too.
I’ve started doing a yoga DVD at night, but I think I need to do it earlier, because I think the TV light at 10:30 is restimulating my brain and making me stay up later than I should. The TV light is also a known problem for people with ADHD (it tends to be extra-stimulating to our brains), so I should probably be trying to do the DVD at 9:00 pm instead of 10:30 pm.
Richard Bottoms
Only the most deluded would have thought the election of Barack Obama meant we HAD overcome. If fact the opposite is true.
Naked racism may no longer have the full force of law but 35 years of Rush seems to have erased the unspoken deal blacks had with whites. Hate us all you want at home or among your peers, but in public be civil or be silent and we in turn would do the same.
Yet these days I am experiencing a sense that it has never been this acceptable to act like a racist jerk even if you no longer have dogs and truncheons to back it up.
This hostility is helped in part by white folks who are so militantly colorblind that they are effectively color blind. I communicated with Paul Carr via email regarding the almost entirely white Pando staff, saying essentially if the result of your color blindness is you never hire a black person then something is wrong.
I am not the least surprised to see that PandDaily’s accurate and devastating attack on the Paul’s has drawn more “open” racists to their domain. Armed with the anonymity of screen profiles some folks are just going to town.
Only that town is Johannesburg thirty years ago.
Since deleted user MMinCC and me had a back and forth where at one point I said I was sure he was chapped that no matter how angry he was, he could never just come out and say n****r.
Man was I wrong.
…
“New San Francisco billboard warns workers they’ll be replaced by iPads if they demand a fair wage”
http://pando.com/2014/07/17/new-san-francisco-billboard-warns-workers-theyll-be-replaced-by-ipads-if-they-demand-a-fair-wage/
rbottoms MMinCC Can’t say wha? Nigger, yamean, I can’t say nigger? Maybe you mean, I don’t know how to use it properly. Tell ya what, tell me if I have it right mmmmK?
Adult, male niggers are about 4% of the population in America and are 40% of prisoners. Adult male niggers are incarcerated at 6! times the rate of whites.
An analysis of ‘single offender victimization figures’ from the FBI for 2009 finds niggers committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks while we outnumber you almost 7-1.
Interracial rape is almost exclusively nigger on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study. Imagine that huh? White men would just as soon let you gorillas keep your bitches.
Though Niggers are outnumbered 7-to-1 in the population by whites, and that doesn’t eliminate children and women leaving adult male niggers as about 4% of the populace yet they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2009 numbers, a nigger male was 40!! times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.
If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides — in America?
And if the FBI stats for 2009 represent an average year since the Tawana Brawley rape-hoax of 1987, over one-third of a million white women have been sexually assaulted by black males since 1987 — with no visible protest from the civil rights leadership. But that’s just fine with a racist like you, right?
One more fun fact, throw in hispanics with the niggers and you guys account for 98!!% of all gun assaults in America-well done pal. And you wonder why I live in a community with only a sprinkling of blacks. You’re welcome to the urban shitholes you’ve destroyed.
Today, 73 percent of all black kids are born out of wedlock. Growing up, these kids drop out, use drugs, are unemployed, commit crimes and are incarcerated at many times the rate of Asians and whites — or Hispanics, who are taking the jobs that used to go to young black Americans.
Are white vigilantes or white cops really Black America’s problem?
Even Obama seems not to think so.
Yeah, all my fault because I’m white. As I like to say, 95% of you are ruining it for the other 5%.
There, did I get the usage correct?
Reply.
…
You have to wonder, if the Klan finds it worthwhile to continue recruiting among law enforcement what they could do in the Bay Area as long as they strictly follow David Duke’s advice concerning “that” word.
Imagine recruiting among people with access to millions of dollars and the power to dole out six figure jobs by the dozen. If zero participation by women & minorities in the workforce can now be labeled as proof of your colorblindness and doing anything about it is itself racist, then juvenile delinquents with the flimsiest of resumes, who have demonstrated misogynistic & racist attitudes, can openly do dirt and still get hailed as heroes.
The Libertarian contempt for “moochers” and especially the working poor is like a steamy comfortable swamp for denizens who until recently had to hide their racist attitudes completely, now all they have to do is change “that” word to thug and they say pretty much anything they want.
I mean how could your attitudes be wrong when your boss rigs it so you never have to see a black person and you get to make $100 grand a year to boot.
aimai
@Betty Cracker: I attended a friend’s catholic wedding a few years ago. The priest began with an incredibly long calendar review which cracked me up because it was so perfectly bureaucratic. It was like attending a business meeting instead of a wedding. Then he launched into a long rant about how Hollywood and the ACLU don’t understand what love is. My mother and I, cradle ACLU plus Jews (can it get any worse) just exchanged amused glances and felt sorry for our friend.
tybee
Heads Up: malware attacks on WordPress sites.
http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/07/malware-infection-breaking-wordpress-sites.html
could explain some issues….
Eric U.
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): the problem with people that moved from right to left is when they start hectoring me about something, particularly if Bush started something that Obama hasn’t managed to dismantle quickly enough for their taste. Dronze and national security state as two obvious examples. I’m all for radical change, but not if it leads to Republicans getting elected.
In general, I have nothing but positive thoughts about ex-Republicans though. They are often the most energetic and committed Democrats
gwangung
@Randy P:
I think every town has ’em, and usually have multiple ones. I actually participate in one here in Seattle and got invited to participate in another this year. Fun, if a little harrowing (as the writer)…
(And I’ll be in your neck of the woods for a theatre conference in October…_
Mnemosyne
@KXB:
Frankly, it really depends on where the schools are. Schools in middle-class or upper-class areas have plenty of funding. But here in the working-class parts of Los Angeles, the ACLU is suing the LA Unified School District because they’re sending kids home in the middle of the day because they don’t have enough teachers to teach all of the classes needed. Detroit Public Schools are getting ready to increase class sizes to 43 students in junior high and high school. Those are the schools that would really benefit by having a bunch of money thrown at them to hire enough staff to teach all of the kids.
Mandalay
From a speech he gave today, Marco Rubio has an interesting perspective on the legality of gay marriage:
Rights simply cannot be overturned by judges!
Rubio/2016! Please.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mike in NC: Fucking lieberal propaganda. Everyone knows that if the rooster does not crow, the sun will not rise.
ruemara
@Richard Bottoms: uh, fucking wow. Sad to say, I’ve always found Silicon Valley tech population to be just searching for a way to say the n word, but in SQL.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Eric U.: My pet peeve is being lectured at for being insufficiently pure by recent converts. Rather similar to yours, I would think. But, otherwise, yes, come on in, new liberals, the water’s fine.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: I got the Bamboo Breathe Eye Mask. Really is light and breathable, and this week has tested it with serious heat in our attic apartment.
The contrast helps me notice just how much electronics are in the bedroom, and how many of them have stupidly bright lights, too.
Sorry to hear about your stepbrother.
Davis X. Machina
@Eric U.: “And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, ‘This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.'”
Betty Cracker
@ruemara: The subject’s not funny, but that last line made me smile.
KXB
@Mnemosyne:
In those cases, money will probably help, but how is current money allocated? How much money is spent on teachers vs. administrators, facility maintenance, insurance? What are the working conditions like? If the current allocation reflects misplaced priorities, Also, what is the family situation like. Urban districts with a greater percentage of single parent households face different challenges than suburban school districts that have 2-parent households.
Corner Stone
@Eric U.:
The only ex-R’s I know are all now “Independents”. Or, to hear them tell it, they were always an Independent. Even though they voted straight R ticket for 30 years.
“I vote for the man, not the party!” Uh-huh.
As for the actual converts/converting, it’s tiresome to see them advocate for positions that drag the only viable alternative party closer to their comfort zone, and farther from where it could do the most good.
Corner Stone
@gwangung:
Any suggestions for a starting point to find something like this in the Houston area?
I’m assuming it’s flourishing somewhere here.
Kay
@marian:
It was funny to listen to him when I’m surrounded by all these 70 year old precinct-walkers in my very red county.
They were great because they are great people. They said “how can we help?” and then he told them the partisan breakdown in the county, which they all know because they walk it every four years :)
We have two really strong older women and I felt he shut them down a little in favor of the men. He’ll have to cut that out. That’s not okay in our group, although it may have been okay in 1956 or whatever Golden Age he’s yearning for.
Matt McIrvin
I’m in my late 40s. For the past decade or so my attitudes have been shifting from comfortable totebagger liberalism to something more like democratic socialism. I don’t see it stopping.
Mandalay
@Mandalay: More pearls of wisdom from Marco Rubio’s speech:
I think I’ve detected a similar intolerance to lynching and separate drinking fountains lately.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. But Marco can save us!
Rubio/2016!
Cervantes
@Corner Stone: Deadline September 15.
mai naem
I have a friend whose parents are Ukrainian and moved to the US after WWII. He says one thing he always heard from his parents and their Ukrainian buddies after the Soviet Union fell apart was how did the US not know it was going to fall apart when they couldn’t even provide basic necessities such as toilet paper, bread and milk to their population. I am beginning to think the military and military contractors intentionally overstate the threat. This is all over the world. It’s an easy way to suck money out of a government and at the same time keep money out of needy people who may actually go further in their lives.
Corner Stone
@KXB:
Good God. This reeks of IGMFY. I could not disagree more with the mentality and perspective behind the quoted statements above.
Eric U.
@Matt McIrvin: echoing your post and Richard Bottoms’ post up-thread, there was a story recently about a police chief and policeman in Florida that were members of the KKK. The article I saw quoted someone saying that the “radical right” laughs at the KKK. I always wondered where are radical left is. I suppose they are out there, but it seems they are kookoobanananuts and ineffectual. The radical right gets things done.
Corner Stone
@Cervantes: I wonder how a 12 page script could run for 10 minutes?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@KXB: @Corner Stone: The schools in my old hometown were excellent. They are still good at many things, but arts, music, and anything else deemed nonessential are being cut to the bone to pay for the basics. Many things that were provided as a matter of course now have user fees. It cuts out the poor kids from a well rounded education and, as a result, wastes a shit load of talent.
Mnemosyne
@KXB:
LAUSD closed the libraries in half of its schools because there’s no money for library aides to supervise.
This year was the first time in 5 years that the LAUSD budget stayed the same year-to-year rather than being cut.
It’s money. They need money. For the past five years, they’ve been cutting teachers, nurses, librarians, and other staff. There is nowhere else to cut. There is no more fat, no more waste. They need money.
Anoniminous
@Richard Bottoms:
I’m not surprised. There were some cold stone racists working in Silicon Valley when I was there and some of the shit they’d spew when it was just us Special Snowflakes was appalling. And profoundly ignorant.
Corner Stone
@mai naem:
They knew it was falling apart but needed it to be seen as monolithic. How useful is a boogeyman who doesn’t scare the kids any longer?
the Conster
@Gex:
I’m in total agreement that as frustrating and ridiculous as it is, progress for all of us non-male non-white others will come when white men begin to see that the privilege they swim in and enjoy is going to get us all – including their children and grandchildren – killed, either in stupid wars like Iraq, poisoned food and water, and/or drowned in debt with no prospects to live a middle class life. I have started using the term white male privilege more and more around white males. As a middle aged white female I can, and I always connect it to Obama’s election as the point at which it has all become manifestly clear – the moment at which white male America all lost their shit. I don’t get much argument, because of the mass psychosis that now defines conservatives – whom everyone knows at least one.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Betty Cracker:
Sounds like the priest at my grandmother’s funeral. This particular priest happened to be the third choice to lead the mass. The first two choices were unavailable. The guy was a real asshole.
And he still is. I know because he showed up at our family reunion. He’s my mom’s first cousin.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
“tribal Narcissism”
The raging amygdalae of the Nativists.
SatanicPanic
@Cassidy: We’re heading into a period of time like the 1970s when a handful of kook leftists started kidnapping people. Only this time it will be the right and it will be the John Galt Liberation Army or some shit.
Calouste
@MomSense:
I also don’t call myself an atheist, because I don’t want to define myself in terms of something I am not.
So I call myself a rationalist. And yes, that does imply that from my point of view people who believe in a deity or deities of which there is no prove are irrational.
Kay
@marian:
I’ve also never been involved in an R landslide Prez election and I would have a hard time with that.
I don’t know how people go thru the motions when you-all must have been thinking “we are going to get KILLED”
I find that admirable.
mai naem
I had a client who was a staunch Republican who was a small home builder and stopped voting Republican when Reagan changed some rules that apparently killed a lot of small home builders in the 80s. This guy had been a Big 3 executive, had the country club memberships, lived in the wealthy burbs etc., was not a liberal and said the GOP was only for big business.
@Mandalay: NPR did a couple of long pieces on Rubio in the past few days. He sounded stupid. “We need to help the single mother who is working and doesn’t have the time to go to school by opening up the education system, giving them credit for life experience la la la la” He was totally pandering to the teabaggers because he was absolutely not going to mention grants or financial aid. Most somewhat lucrative college majors are not going to give you “life experience” credits, not to mention that private colleges will never do that anyway because they want to suck as much money as they can out of you.
catclub
@Corner Stone: The tipoff for me was the line by KXB “money we don’t have” which is a line that never came up when the US was going into Iraq, but NOW is a problem.
Violet
@Kay: To be fair, we’re now seeing some people who were all in for the Iraq war saying they were wrong. They’re not usually going so far as to say those nasty liberals were right–although I think maybe Glenn Beck did–but there’s a steady stream of people admitting they were wrong.
That’s not the same as admitting being wrong about trickle down economics and Reaganism but it’s something.
The media never admits they’re wrong though. The media can’t fail; it can only be failed.
El Caganer
@Randy P: PlayPenn has some wonderful classes, too, that are very affordable.
Anoniminous
@Eric U.:
The short answer: after 100 years of murder (Joe Hill, Frank Little,) expulsion (Emma Goldman, Bill Haywood,) red-baiting, oppression (Hollywood 10, etc.,) and ostracism (removal of “commies” from the CIO) the radical left was ground to a nubbins. Meanwhile, faction fighting put paid to such national organizations as existed in the 1910s and 20s and ensured none could arise.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy: Well, obviously, if they let you figure things out for yourself, they couldn’t have been true “conservative” parents. True “conservative” parents don’t let their kids think for themselves…because that leads to, well, not being “conservative”.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: The Hindu priest at my FIL’s funeral performed a rite wherein my husband had to apologize for being late to perform his father’s last rites. This is after he left by the first available flight to India (on the very next day) after he received the news of his father’s death (at 11pm at night). It takes almost 16 to 20 hours to reach Bombay from the east coast, plus you lose 10 hours because you are flying east. That in no way is his fault, so I didn’t see why he had ritually apologize for something that he could in no way prevent.
For me religion is mostly a stick the TBTB use to beat you with.
Calouste
@Mandalay:
Small donation? The now ex-CEO of Mozilla donated a grand! $1000! It’s a week of average wages in this country.
marian
@Kay: I can’t tell you how fabulous it was when Clinton won. And won again. No way we would listen to anybody whine that he wasn’t liberal enough. He wasn’t a supply side Republican, that was enough–even though he did things I disagreed with and still do.
By the way, you might look for bitter enders in the 50s and 60s as well as 70s. We’re all old enough to remember the horror of Reagan’s election.
KXB
@Corner Stone:
Hardly, but feel free to continue smelling your screen to determine what what caused the post to “reek”.
As far as school spending – ahem:
“the Los Angeles Board of Education unanimously approved a $6.6-billion budget Tuesday that features the largest funding boost in years and the first-ever blueprint for spending millions of new dollars to improve the academic performance of the neediest students.”
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-lausd-budget-20140625-story.html
Yeah – money is tight alright.
Corner Stone
@El Caganer: It sounds like you really like a lot of things about PA. Why the move to FL?
Kay
@Violet:
I think it’s easier for conservatives to move on foreign policy because they always had a non-interventionist wing.
I don’t give them credit for that. It’s not new at all. The polling is like 70% for no new wars. That’s easy.
I want domestic. I want something that involves THEM personally. Abandon fucking Milton Friedman, not Dick Cheney. Everyone hates Dick Cheney. Duh.
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
Horrors! Those CEOs should shut up and
singchiefly officiate the executivness!Horrors! Let the poor persecuted CEO speak his mind!
Davis X. Machina
@Anoniminous: The radical — and not so radical — left disappeared right across the first world beginning in the ’70’s. This is one of the themes of books like Tony Judt’s Postwar, and Donald Sassoon’s One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Amen sister. Did you see in yesterday’s NYT, Clintonite Gene Sperling was advocating for a Universal 401 k for all. I wonder which Wall Street bank has him in their pocket.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure you’re correct in this case but what kills me is that when education is being cut, they always cut program services, direct education to students, and the wages of support staff, never administration and administrative/executive salaries. Especially in higher ed.
In some parts of the country, add that they never cut football.
I remember a time not too long ago where at least in some parts of the country education was seen as the prime directive and literally everything else would get cut (repairs to physical plant, “free” sports, new books, superintendent raises) before they axed teaching hours and the custodians, child psychologists, nurses that kept the kids together body and soul.
Corner Stone
@KXB:
Re-read that little bit above. Then tell us what you do with the students who are not driven nor encouraged by their families. And the ones who may be driven and encouraged but do not have excellent resources.
SatanicPanic
@KXB: You’re missing what the real problem is there on schools though. Schools in poor areas are bad. That’s not really arguable. But for the most part, our schools are quite good and I’m happy with an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it policy.” The biggest problem is that our cities are segregated into rich and poor and white and black/brown. There’s a case to be made that no amount of fixing the schools will benefit those who are going to the worst schools, but it’s not primarily due to bad parenting.
El Caganer
@Corner Stone: I think PA and Philly are great. However, the other half of a 20-year long distance relationship lives in Sarasota, and we’re both getting a bit long in the tooth for long distance relationships.
Corner Stone
@KXB:
We’ve cut our ISD budget approaching double digits for 5 years in a row. We’ve seen class sizes increase, art being eliminated entirely, music held one session a week, no school nurse or paid librarian, and two aides for PE sessions of over 60 kids.
And I live in a solidly middle middle-class area.
What do you think is happening elsewhere to all the “quite good” public education in places with even *less* resources?
patrick II
I also am drifting further to the left as I get older, but I started out near the middle and now, according to thay online test someone from here linked to, I am to the left of the Dali Lama.
Cervantes
@KXB:
You’re right about [1].
About [2], look at Chicago where the Mayor just found more than $50M to purchase land for a private stadium while public schools are being starved and shuttered in his city.
More generally re allocation, consider that state education budgets are (a) unfair across the nation and (b) not distributed fairly within each state. You can guess which school districts get less help than they need. To see this maldistribution in action, look at Bruce Baker’s work at Rutgers. Here are two reports:
Let me know what you think.
Corner Stone
@El Caganer: Good luck!
Mandalay
@Chyron HR: Yep. In Rubio’s world there should be no free markets, no free speech (unless he agrees with it), and no consequences for actions.
It’s close, but I think Rubio may be even dumber than Perry.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
I didn’t see that. Thanks.
I worry about the 50 – 60 crowd here and 401k’s.
DC knows tons of them lived on or borrowed on those in 2009-2011 right?
They are going to NEED Social Security. It scares me. They did it to keep their houses. I would like some measure of this. Maybe it was just here, and it’s anecdotal.
Botsplainer
Cue the freakout over the ISIS female genital mutilation order. As I’m pointing out, the very large, well-trained, organized, and disciplined combined US forces had trouble occupying Iraq. The 15,000 fighters of ISIS can’t even make up a coherent battalion at any given time, much less enforce their will on the residents of the regions they’re trying to “govern”.
Look for ISIS fighters to be hanging from lampposts in short order.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Anoniminous: Not sure what you mean by factional fighting (your sentence was unclear) but it seems to me that Stalin and the Comintern he controlled destroyed what of the American Left, especially the popular proletarian movement, ie not privileged upper middle class scions in academia, that pervasive state persecution on all governmental levels until the dismantling of COINTELPRO in the 1970s failed to crush.
But let’s not dismiss COINTELPRO yet because it seems that JE Hoover had a hand in traumatizing and discrediting the white intellectual “vanguard of the proletariat” left when they attempted to make common cause with radicalized young Black activists. Whether that took murder, provocateurs, staged vandalism, whatever.
As for the labor movement, let’s be real, the construction unions fucked themselves (because racism) and took most of the ship down with them. But the Teamsters, let’s go back to the 1990s when the NLRB tossed out their election and emplaced their chosen candidate, Hoffa Junior. I may not know much, but that stunk to high heaven.
Cervantes
@KXB:
That’s not an argument. You think $6.6B is too much? What makes you think it’s even sufficient?
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Adopt Adam Smith. After you’ve read his fucking books.
Oh, wait. That won’t work for these people.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Yes, that was outrageous — and many tried to fight it at the time.
gwangung
@Corner Stone: Bet that the the University of Houston hosts something. And I’ve heard there’s a 10 x 10 short play festival.
Not sure that everyone is networked, so there may not be a one-stop source for all of these things, but these places are probably starters.
Tommy
@SatanicPanic: I’ve said it here and will keep saying it. My little rural town can’t build houses fast enough. 5,700 citizens in 2000. Almost 9,000 in 2010. I got no idea where we are going. You know what we have, maybe one of the best school districts in the nation. People want to move here. Funny how it seems parents care about sending their kids to a good school. We have them. People move here.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodinger’s cat: Well, your husband shouldn’t have been 16-20 hours away from his father at any time, just in case his father died suddenly.
There, that problem is solved!
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Um, compensation for the CEO is job #1 in any modern American organization. There is no higher priority.
El Caganer
@Corner Stone: Thank you. Got two pulmonary embolisms to get cleaned up, then I’m on my way.
Mandalay
@Eric U.:
Infesting the White House. Duh.
Corner Stone
@gwangung: Googling 10 X 10 short play festival Houston led me to this, which looks promising and is in August. So thanks.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@SatanicPanic: Actually, I think some school “fixes” would work, but what they inevitably propose (cash out school property, funnel money and “good” students to charter schools, fire teachers on a whim, destroy teacher’s union and hire untrained scabs, replace teachers with DVDs, force teenagers into compulsory “volunteering”) are worse than the status quo.
More funding for Head Start. Fully funded, quality, safe daycare and preschool. More resource personnel in elementary schools: bring back the full time custodial staff, nurses (LNPs), child psychologists. Pay “aides” to disabled children proper FT wages so they don’t burn out in 18 months from working round the clock to pay their rent (school + caring for high energy child + the real job that pays the bills). Funding for art, music, physical education and other enrichment proven to enhance academic performance and help the self esteem of children who may struggle in formal academic subjects or whose talents lie elsewhere.
Quit high-stakes testing and tracking for elementary school students. Redirect the funds to identify and intervene with young children with dyslexia and other learning disabilities so they can keep up with their peers.
Sure it would cost more and not create any overnight millionaires who could contribute to school board race campaign funds. I guess it will never happen.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: I can be a resource on this. I live in Montrose. I work in Montrose. A good deal of the staff I work with are from the University of Houston theatre department. One of my co-workers has had several plays produced here in Houston.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Villago Delenda Est: It was an Un-American hell on Earth. Thank goodness Ronnie Raygun’s tax reform was there to “trickle down” the warlord’s code to every public sector organization and liberate us.
Mnemosyne
WTF? I’ve tried to post a comment with links three times and it’s not working. I guess KXB will have to Google for the links — sorry!
@KXB
Well, let’s do some basic math, shall we? There are approximately 640,000 students enrolled in LAUSD (via LAUSD website). A budget of $6.6 billion allocates about $10,300 per student.
The average per-student expenditure in the US is $11,826 according to the federal government. So your expert opinion is that kids in LAUSD getting about $1,500 less per student than the national average is plenty of money?
Just out of curiosity, what do you think the ideal per-student expenditure should be, when you include buildings, maintenance, administration, teaching, and services? Just in round numbers would be fine.
Davis X. Machina
@gwangung:
Ten minute play festival is out of Louisville.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
I disagree. People complain about “throwing money at the schools,” but we’ve never actually tried it when it comes to struggling urban or poor rural schools. In addition to AHH’s list at #238, I would add free after-school care with homework help (with teachers getting additional pay for tutoring) and reducing class sizes down to 18 or less.
Mandalay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yep, and the most important part of that CEO compensation is the bulletproof golden parachute to give you a soft landing when you get fired.
gwangung
@Mnemosyne:
Nick Hanauer mentioned that rich people pay an average of $20-22K per student for their children’s education. Wouldn’t $15K be better for public?
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Villago Delenda Est: A no-longer-GOP-voter who still believes some of their shit made a total bitchface at me last week (but couldn’t say anything b/c she was ignorant of history) when I started talking about how far FEWER regulations we live under than English subjects during the Elizabethan era. How tax inspectors would go in your house and count your windows, valuables, and so on. How the monarch set the interest rate and businesses (not to mention labor) was regulated out the wazoo.
I didn’t mention the Church courts in Medieval Europe prior to the Black Death. That would have really blown her mind!
The difference between regulation then and now is that under monarchy regulation was largely about the powers that be getting a cut out of all economic activity and basically running affairs to their benefit* whereas the “novel” regulation that so-called conservatives hate is all about forcing the powerful to not trample the little guys, whether it’s “don’t dump toxic chemicals in our water” or “take down those ‘Irish need not apply’ signs because everyone needs a job”. Henry VIII didn’t give a shit about that kind of stuff….
*-even the famous Bavarian beer purity law should probably be seen in context of authorities regulating, taxing, setting prices on and limiting production of beer by authorized beer brewers during the Medieval era and also the record of prosecution after prosecution for illegally brewing extra beer and selling it under the table
Adam Smith talks about the regulatory environment in the 15th and 16th centuries a LOT.
Cacti
@Kay:
When it comes to bread and butter issues, I’ve become considerably more liberal in my 30’s than I ever was in my 20’s.
Only when you’ve experienced extended unemployment and/or prolonged poverty as the parent of young children, do you fully appreciate how much “fiscal conservatives” wish the lot of you would just drop dead.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): You pay for what you get. I recall in an election where my city voted 57% for McCain over Obama (I live in Illinois BTW) we voted 63% to raise our taxes to build a new $60M high school. The place is something like out of Star Trek. Stunning in how amazing it is. Two years later we voted to raise our property taxes again to build a new primary school.
If I could bring you to my town and show you our schools, if you are a parent, you might shed a tear and wonder how it is possible. A little rural town with schools like this? I guess, and I don’t have any kids myself, but am involved in local shit, we just don’t mess around with our schools. We want them to be the best of the best.
Not long after the new high school was built I drove my father around it. It was like this seems like a college and not a high school. I was like dad we are not fucking around!
SatanicPanic
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer): after school and preschool care would be the best thing we could do. I’m not convinced that it would benefit the kids’ ability to learn (not saying it won’t just saying I don’t know), per se, but it would benefit the parents, which would, in turn benefit the kids in terms of their ability to attend school and not be stressed as out. But I agree with the other things you said. The way we’ve been teaching for decades is mostly just fine, we just need to decouple it from property taxes.
Jeffro
I remember being out with two other couples last year, and we got onto the subject of politics for some reason or another. It was pretty clear that one other guy and myself were the political ‘inside baseball’ guys of the bunch, so one of the wives asked us both, “So when did you really start getting into following politics?”
We both said, “During the Clinton Impeachment and the 2000 Florida recount”. For a split second we marveled in how it was the same events for us both. A minute later, though, we realized it’d made him much more Republican and me much more firmly a Democrat…didn’t talk a whole lot of politics the rest of the night!
On a serious note, though, I think that 1-2 punch was the major turning point for the country becoming more divided. Rs (including obviously 5 Supremes) were willing to cheat to win after getting spanked for impeaching Clinton. Ds clearly saw what happened in terms of tax cuts that bankrupted the country, Bush’s failure on 9/11, his/Cheney’s lies to get us into Iraq and so on. Rs have doubled down at every turn, unable to admit they were wrong…unless you count calling themselves the Tea Party as a tacit admission of guilt over the failure of conservatism.
Anoniminous
@Davis X. Machina:
As I wrote, “the short answer.”
(Thanks for the reference to Sassoon’s book. Somehow I’ve missed that one.)
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: I’m just saying that if you plopped the greatest school ever in the middle of the poorest, most hopeless part of town, you’d still end up with mostly poor results
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: You are right, one should never leave the land of your forefathers. That is the orthodox Hindu tradition.
ETA: There was also a ritual to apologize for having non-Brahmins touching the body, i.e. attendants at the
crematorium etc.,
SatanicPanic
@SatanicPanic: IOW, the most important things you could do to improve schooling for kids would be things you’d do for the surrounding community, not just for the school
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Kay:
They have a war wing and an isolationist wing with no options in between.
Keith G
@KXB: As has been pointed out by others, money does matter in public education. And usually within reason the more money the better.
One reason why our public education is so much more expensive than other similar societies is that we endeavor to provide a basic education to so many different types of children regardless of their emotional, or physical, or cognitive abilities.
The second building I taught in was an older structure that had to be retrofitted with an elevator in order to allow handicapped students to be able to be educated in their neighborhood school instead of big bussed to a special facilities.
The third building I taught in had a nurse’s clinic that had to be extensively remodeled so that it could provide very intensive services to a student who had been born with cerebralpalsy.
I won’t bore you with a continuing list of modifications I have been part of an order to better serve special needs students. It is a very intensive job and parts of this country does it as well as, if not better than, anyone else in the world, I believe. It is a very expensive set of tasks. And actually, even we could be doing a whole lot better than we do.
**dictated during a series of red lights without other editing.
Tommy
@SatanicPanic: I don’t have any children. But close with my niece. Wonderful little lady. She went to daycare the last few years, starts school this year, cause her mother works for the Federal government and that is kind of a perk. Funny cause, well her mom is a far right Republican. She has found friends. Learned to socialize with other kids her age. It is a win/win across the board IMHO.
SatanicPanic
@Tommy: It’s probably good for the kids in some way, I’m just not sure that we can say definitively that it helps kids learn. But regardless, I think it’s something we should be campaigning for. Probably the next big liberal issue- daycare for all
Corner Stone
@SatanicPanic: Or, alternatively, the students could see it as a beacon of hope in an otherwise drab reality.
Even a few of the washed out and washed up parents might see it as something to hold on to.
But we’re never going to know because no one wins when fighting for the poors.
different-church-lady
Well, that self-awareness rules out blogging as his next step.
Davis X. Machina
@Anoniminous: Get the 2014 edition of Sassoon, if you’re shopping or going ILL — it’s updated with a substantial section on the last decade and a half. (The original is from 1998.) It’s a doorstop — 700 or so pages — but one of my favorite books.
Sheri Berman’s The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century is also very good.
The reason why we don’t have a social democracy here is because we don’t have enough social democrats. These books are vy. good on where actually-existing social democracies come from…
schrodinger's cat
I have been a liberal on social issues all my life but I find myself leaning to the left on economic matters since I figured out how little rooted in reality our current economic conventional wisdom is. Till the financial crisis hit, until then I was more or less a centrist in the Clinton mould.
Corner Stone
@Keith G: Heck that sounds interesting.
Now put down that mobile device!
Cervantes
@Mandalay: Quoting Rubio:
Er … Articulate speech, issuing from the larynx, without involving the higher brain centers at all.
Anoniminous
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
From about 1820 to World War One we in the US had our own Left Wing traditions and ideologies. Two examples: it’s impossible to understand the Progressive Movement and some underpinnings of the New Deal without some familiarity with Henry George and Hull House, won’t understand the rise and successes of the CIO without knowing something of the IWW. Following the Bolshevik coup-de-etat the organized US Left, e.g., The Socialist Party of America, the IWW, and drove a sharp wedge between the radical and center Left, e.g., The Progressive Movement. I note it was during this period that the hotbed of populist Socialism in the US – Oklahoma (!) – started slowly moving to the Right.
I agree with you re: Stalin and the Comintern. His manipulation of the CP line to further (1) his own power and (2) the Real Politic of the USSR shattered any lingering moral creditability of the CPUSA and by extension the Left in general. The result was, what organizations managed to stagger through the 40s and 50s, such as League for Industrial Democracy, became totally insular, buried in the past, and as centered on anti-Communism as anything else.
Tommy
@SatanicPanic: I am not sure she learned anything. I come from a family of PhDs and pretty sure more shit was going on at home then in her daycare by like a level of 10. But she learned to socialize with other kids. There is a video of her dancing and singing with the other children. Stunning. An experience I didn’t have as a kid. My daycare as a kid, and I wouldn’t change any of it, in the 70s was me by myself in the yard playing.
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
Technically, you’re right. He already has a blog.
schrodinger's cat
WP won’t let me correct the garbled syntax in my earlier comment. Now, I has a sad.
Cleaned up comment:
I have been a liberal on social issues all my life but I find myself leaning to the left on economic matters, since I figured out how little rooted in reality our current economic conventional wisdom is. Till the financial crisis hit, I was more or less a centrist in the Clinton mold.
Anoniminous
@Davis X. Machina:
Thanks again.
(and now I REALLY have to get to work.)
Suffern ACE
@Brian R.: I am finding that difficult to imagine. “Dearly beloved. We are here to remember the deceased, who was probably a good man. Now let’s discuss masturbation, which is really what we’re thinking about.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mnemosyne: I’m guessing shitforbrains’ answer will be a very round number: 0
LA Unified is an underfunded shithole of a district whose teachers haven’t had a raise in years. Never mind the deferred maintenance backlog, which amounts to tens of billions of dollars. The new budget doesn’t begin to address that. And the insult that said teachers are getting for one this year would lead workers in any other industry to flee en masse. Good thing for the taxpayers and students that most teachers actually give a shit about teaching. That they don’t want to do it for free is apparently too much for some people.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Anoniminous:
Oklahoma? Not Wisconsin where the largest city elected a series of Socialist governors?
@schrodinger’s cat:
That explains your virulence against neoliberal economists.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina:
Original was 1996. Length is closer to a thousand pages, and it’s not even his mightiest tome: The Culture of the Europeans runs to more than fifteen hundred printed sides!
I also like a little thing he did — a mere 350 pages — on the story of the Mona Lisa.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: The good news is…I am back at work. I was delivering a few flourless chocolate cakes to the Galleria area. Ya gotta love Post Oak Boulevard at noon.
Bob In Portland
This.
Davis X. Machina
@Cervantes:Even door-stoppier. (I was guessing from shelf-inches). I have the older book across the room from me — I got it in ’98 & thought it was new then. It was my beach book for the summer….
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
What do you mean? What gets me is their (many if not most professional economists) utter inability to question their theories, even after reality hit them in the face with a two by four.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Ed over at Gin and Tacos was discussing that very thing this very morning.
BruinKid
Yet another passenger plane has crashed, this time an Air Algerie flight with 116 people on board somewhere in a remote region of Mali, probably due to a sandstorm in the area.
Cervantes
@Davis X. Machina: The new edition adds 300 pages.
Of the finest prose, needless to say, hand-crafted, organic, free-range, and most definitely single-source.
SatanicPanic
@Bob In Portland: Oh FFS
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@schrodinger’s cat:
Exactly this. You subscribed the the views they put forth until empirical evidence show the views to be, if not completely wrong, at least a bit off. At which point, you followed reality while they did not.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland: So your point is that she asserts the existence of non-social-media evidence but then refuses to say what it is? Is that it?
Bob In Portland
@SatanicPanic: Not sure what FFS stands for.
However, you may have missed this in Pravda.
Even if the NY Times doesn’t address, you may eventually want to. Also, what’s going on with the Ukrainian Prime Minister resigning? All not happy in Kiev?
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: Over and over. I’ve been saying there is no evidence that the rebels did it, or that Russia did it. Everyone here was ready to mount their horses and go off to war. Follow the link and read the whole press conference. The State Department keeps claiming it has proof but offers no proof. Is that good enough for you? Of course it is, because the US has never, ever, ever lied us into a war, has it?
Elsewhere there is an analysis of the fake recording that the rebels were bragging about shooting down the plane. I haven’t tracked it down yet, but my sources have been more accurate than the NY Times, so we’ll see.
Plus, none of you seem concerned that a Ukie fighter plane was accompanying the airliner when it was shot down. Curious, no?
Plus, I’ve been saying for months that the coup, this regime, and the civil war in eastern Ukraine are being orchestrated by the US. Their Kiev puppets are just following their puppeteers. This may explain why Yatsenyuk bailed. He may actually have a conscience.
Give it a few more days. Look at the evidence. If it turns out that this was just another Operation Northwoods, then what are you going to demand from the Obama Administration?
schrodinger's cat
BiP is quoting Pravda for truth. Irony is dead.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: The Russians are denying involvement and casting doubt on the US analysis? Quelle fucking surprise. I would expect them to do exactly that whether covered in blood or completely innocent. What is this supposed to tell us? What is tells me is that the Russians made the kind of public statement that I would expect them to make.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland:
Who here advocated going to war over Ukraine? Provide links.
Bob In Portland
@schrodinger’s cat: And you’re believing the State Department on faith? You’ve read all the evidence that the US has, right, as enumerated at the State Department press conference, right? I think irony died awhile back. Cat, you can sit next to Betty C. and cacti on the bench of the clueless. It’s July 24. How long until you figure out you’ve been punked by the war machine yet again?
FlipYrWhig
@Davis X. Machina: I’m following up on some of these suggestions and I’ve already found a way to get from your conversation with Anoniminous to some current research on something else entirely (that I was teaching today), which makes me very excited… Thanks!
Chyron HR
None of you seem concerned that the bodies in MH17 were drained of blood, as though they were actually killed by Ukrainian Nazi vampires. Why is that?
Trollhattan
Hodor!
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Yeah, the Russians released radar tracking of that Ukie fighter. You would think that the US would offer the radar of the rebels shooting the plane down. And if you study the State Department news conference you can see the proof, that is, there is no proof.
You are willing to go along with the State Department lies, which means that you are willing to be part of the lie. When you are part of the lie you own a little piece of it. Enjoy it. You enabled them.
But before you get the popcorn ready for the war news you might ask yourself why is the US involved in Ukraine? For Freedom?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Chyron HR: I blame that on Brody Dalle.
Bob In Portland
@Trollhattan: You can sit next to cacti. Still denying on the 24th.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: Why are you telling me what I believe? Why do you think I support a war in Ukraine? Being dismissive of the propaganda that you spout doesn’t mean supporting anyone. It means that I am dismissive of the unreliable information that you offer as received truth. Nothing more, nothing less.
Trollhattan
@Bob In Portland:
Hodor! bin Hodor!
Bob In Portland
@Chyron HR: Was that another State Department story?
You understand how propaganda works, right? You’ve got Alex Jones for the right-wing conspiracy theories, and then you’ve got the wacko explanations for the people who like Lestat, or whatever his name is. Who knows? You may see a forged picture of a Chupacabra as the pilot on the plane. Then you’ve got the WaPo villagers for the neo-liberal cold warriors. Then you’ve got the NY Times for the people who didn’t notice Judith Miller.
But you couldn’t have been fooled, because you’re too smart, right?
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
For fuck’s sake …
At this point the investigators are still gathering evidence, so no one has come to any conclusion. Even the US government is careful to state that it’s only likely — not certain yet — that MH17 was mistakenly shot down by separatists. Presumably, it and the Russian government will be happy to share any pertinent information like satellite data with the investigators. If not, we should all expect to hear about it.
In the meantime, I’d like to know: who do you, Bob in Portland, think shot down MH17?
Raven
300!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Amir Khalid: I doubt you will get a straight answer. BiP works by innuendo and implication.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Plus, none of you seem concerned that a Ukie fighter plane was accompanying the airliner when it was shot down
Proof? If I recall correctly, I’ve asked you three times for evidence.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: That’s what has been said over and over on television. I’d say the confidence that Russia gave the missile unit to the rebels, or the Russians fired it themselves, or created the “conditions” (Obama’s fallback Tuesday) is pretty much what the general public believes. You can test this simply by asking people around you. Ask them, “Who do you think shot down that airliner over Ukraine?”
It’s a pretty easy effort in case you didn’t watch any TV over the last week.
schrodinger's cat
@Raven: Is this Sparta?
Chyron HR
@Bob In Portland:
What, like releasing a photo of a guy with a swastika tattoo and claiming that it justifies the total extermination of the Ukrainian people because they’re all Nazis? Is that an example of propaganda, sir?
Raven
I’m sitting in my lawyers office signing Mw will . Y’all ain’t getting shit, specially bob!
Davis X. Machina
@FlipYrWhig: Social democracy and social democrats have been a hobbyhorse from high school days…
Every young person needs a hero and mine was Michael Harrington — our freshman religion class all had to read The Other America and I was shocked how it split the class. I’m the son ot two passionate union-member grandfathers, and a union grandmother, and a Red-listed mother — all active in the Boston archdiocese’s Labor Guild . It never occurred to me you could root for the other side, no more than for the Yankees.
I’ve followed the comings and goings of socialists and social democrats in this country all my life — was actually a DSOC member right before the merger…
Anyhow, these things interest me.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Look at the Russian press, if you are allowed to. I bet you can even find it in Ukrainian. Sorry, but the fascists’ fun time is unraveling.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@schrodinger’s cat: Not Sparta, Athens.
Trollhattan
@Bob In Portland:
So you DO understand what happened. Will wonders never cease–All hail the BJ miracle!
johnny aquitard
@Gex:
He’s been busy drilling holes in the bottom of the life boat all these years. He thought he was going to be up in the crow’s nest watching everyone below panic like ants frantic for any floating wisp of straw as the boat settles. Now he realizes he’s on the deck with just about everyone else, and he’s gonna get wet.
He probably still believes climbing the mast will keep him from drowning when the boat finally goes under, it’s just that he realized out he’s not going to get a spot in the crow’s nest.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: +1000. Agreed. I’d rather not vote at all than vote for a Republican. I don’t see that changing in the near future.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I doubt it too, but at least I did offer him a chance to give a straight answer.
@Chyron HR:
Ah yes, the maximal weekend-at-Bernie’s scenario, where none of the the people who boarded the plane alive — and posted to social media while doing so — noticed the dead body in the next seat. I’m still wondering what our Bob makes of this story, promoted by the good Ukrainians.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Davis X. Machina: Growing up in a family where the default assumption is that the union is right makes a difference. One backs the union position, one never crosses a picket line, and one doesn’t take a position with a management side law firm no matter what it pays.
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: What is the Greenwald/Snowden position on this?
Mike G
@Ramalama:
He generated comforting myths for millions of magical-thinking goobers who very badly need myths to get through life, people predisposed by religion to being authoritarian followers and believing fairy tales.
The y love him because he didn’t demand that they think, or face geopolitical or economic reality like that tedious scold Jimmy Carter; just bathe in an infantile haze of nostalgia and solipsistic American exceptionalism that told them they were awesome, and Big Strong Daddy would make the world go away.
As far as actual decision-making and administration of the government, he mostly sucked.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: I suspect that the Ukrainians shot it down. They had the most to gain by blaming it on the rebels and Russians.
I would guess that someone in Langley gave the go-ahead, a la April Glaspie style, but preserved enough plausible deniability to give Kerry and Obama enough space when this inevitably collapses.
If the fake recording of rebels was made the day before the incident, as has been said in the international press, then you’ve got premeditation.
Let’s say that it turns out that the Ukrainians did it with the US’ blessings. Entertain that thought for a second. What do you do? Do you demand Kerry’s resignation? Nuland’s? Obama’s?
Who was saying that there is no CIA in Ukraine?
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
OK, and, by your standards, is there evidence for anyone having done it?
That’s not even wrong.
Are you asking or answering?
OK.
I’ve seen it asserted that not only MH17 but all civilian flights in the area were being escorted by Ukrainian fighter jets. No idea if that’s true, and not interested in speculation. If you have evidence or proof, one could look at it.
Orchestrated, instigated, influenced, encouraged, not discouraged — all possible. Yet even if true, it per se would prove nothing about the attack on MH17.
No idea.
Or weeks and months, even. Whatever it takes, yes?
Northwoods was planned, yes, but, from what I’ve seen, never implemented. By analogy, if the Joint Chiefs planned the attack on MH17 and Obama nixed the idea because of its bright, shining stupidity, then what I’d demand is that the President take a bow and be given a standing ovation. How about you?
Chyron HR
@Bob In Portland:
I’m not sure why you’re tying yourself up in rhetorical knots over this. Can’t you just arbitrarily decree that everyone on board MH17 was a Nazi, and therefore richly deserving of death at the hands of the anti-fascists?
You can even throw the Nazi passengers of KA007 in there as well.
Seanly
@Schlemizel:
That’s my reasoning for not voting for any R’s.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: I’m lazy. Post a link.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Chyron HR:
For a lot of conspiracy theorists, the convolutions are part of the fun. They prefer a tangled mess to Occam’s Razor.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: YAY!! Hopefully those numbers hold up through November.
Dog On Porch
“..the Reagan Revolution, which made incentive-oriented, free-market solutions the default mode of both parties, is now finally petering out”.
Wrong. It has matured, and is more dangerous than ever.
Hell, I’m Ricks age. The man is taking both his time (which is his to take) as well as the long way around reaching some pretty simple simon conclusions about power in America. And who knows? This column may represent the apogee of his understanding. Count me among those less than impressed with his awakening.
Emerald
@Eric U.:
I’ve got a few radical left friends. Kookoobanananuts is an excellent description. One of them hates “Obummer,” believes in “chemtrails,” and currently is highly suspicious that the Malaysian aircraft tragedy in Ukraine might have been faked (by us, of course). The other is a 9/11 Truther. Facts are things they do not recognize, unless said facts support their established positions. They function on emotion.
They go to teensy tiny rallies and believe that they’re changing the world. The Occupy movement was a godsend to them, but, being full of radical lefties, it fizzled.
But if you stay off politics they’re fun folks.
Bob In Portland
@Chyron HR: It would require you reading seventy years of history about the US involvement with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but so far you’ve managed to avoid it.
Want a list again? BLOWBACK by Christopher Simpson. It might also give you a clue as to why Gin & Tonic is reading Ukrainian. Also, his book on US post-WWII propaganda, THE SCIENCE OF COERCION. Russ Bellant had stuff on the US-eastern European connection with Nazis in the late 80s, early 90s. They’ve been mostly connected to Republicans but at this late date I think that there is no difference in State Department goals no matter who’s in the White House. Simpson’s books are, I believe, in PDF form online. Bellant’s stuff is on the net, it’s not too hard to find. Then there’s Carl Oglesby’s THE TREATY OF FORT HUNT, to understand how the Dulles et al adopted the Nazis and Nazi-collaborators for their war against the USSR/Russia, or more precisely, for the oil and gas in Central Asia. How much of that have you read?
I’ve gotta say, though, I still don’t understand who put up the Confederate battle flag in Kiev’s city hall after the coup. Maybe it was a symbol recognizing the downtrodden of the world. Or maybe that they like the idea of slavery.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: OK, so your position is that someone with enough authority to do so in the CIA ordered the Ukrainian Air Force to shoot down a passenger airplane, and the Ukrainian Air Force said “sure, boss”, and that order went down the chain of command to a fighter pilot who, in broad daylight, shot down a passenger jet flying on autopilot in a well-established international air corridor, at an altitude and heading approved by Ukrainian air traffic control? Just want to make sure I have a clear picture.
schrodinger's cat
@Emerald: My experience is the same as yours, they are the leftie version of the glibertarians, in that they too live in La-La land.
Bob In Portland
Also, Christopher Simpson’s THE SPLENDID BLONDE BEAST.
Trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Occam’s Pubes.
FlipYrWhig
@Emerald: By any chance does one of your friends post here on certain of those topics, especially in threads that are nominally about something else?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: Come on, Bob. Come straight out and tell us why you think G&T knows Ukrainian.
You do know that there were fascists in every European country in the mid-20th century. Does this mean that my knowledge, in descending order of proficiency, of English, French, German, and Romanian makes me a fascist stooge/Gehlen Org. agent/etc.? Are you that anti-intellectual and anti-cosmopolitan? But now, there are also well known anti-fascists who speak/spoke those languages…. Gosh, this is confusing.
Chyron HR
@Bob In Portland:
Well, if four whole books say that the Ukrainians must be slaughtered en masse by helicopter gunships, who am I to disagree?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: No, reread what I wrote. If you still don’t understand, go back and read April Glaspie’s problems with the truth.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Were the “Ukies” targeting MH17, or did they really think they were shooting at Putin’s presidential plane? Because the latter would be a crazy-stupid escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: I’m slow. Explain to me exactly what happened to MH17. Use small words and no question marks.
Bob In Portland
@Chyron HR: Nothing like misquoting me to dismiss me. Chyron, remain ignorant of the US-Ukrainian post-WWII history if that’s your choice. Just remember, your choice is to not know something. Your motivation, at least from your last post, is that you are going to ignore these books and articles because then you can dismiss me.
But it’s not me. It’s not about Putin either. You avoid looking up any of this because the Obama Administration is about to be revealed to have the same State Department goals that go back to the end of WWII, and you can’t admit that. Not to yourself.
With liberty and justice for oil.
Chyron HR
@Bob In Portland:
It just kills you that the only country that’s expressed any interest in invading Ukraine is Russia, doesn’t it?
With anti-fascism and Nazi-killing for oil.
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Try this. Tell me what you believe.
Did you believe we invaded Afghanistan and stayed for a decade and a half to catch Osama? Yes or No. Maybe so that women have equal rights? Democracy? Freedom?
Ever hear of TAPI? What’s north of Afghanistan? What’s to the east of Ukraine? Hint: The same thing that’s in Iran, Iraq, Libya. Think hard, Omnes. Maybe you can’t say it, but if you can try real hard I bet you can type it.
Also, since you have such a delicate ear for propaganda, perhaps you can share what in the news in the last week about Ukraine, the airliner, etc., wasn’t propaganda. Name what parts of the American/Ukrainian story you believe to be true.
I know, you won’t. But at least you now realize that you won’t.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: The Ukrainian government had the most to gain from the downing of that airliner, as did their American handlers. But you don’t believe in handlers, not in Ukraine.
Where did you learn to speak Ukrainian?
Mnemosyne
@Chyron HR:
Because he can’t admit that the side he chose just murdered almost 300 innocent people. If he did admit that, he would have to admit that his worldview of US Bad, Everyone Else Good is too simplistic, and once you allow that heresy in, then all of the conspiracies collapse, which means his entire worldview collapses.
It’s like the Scientologists who hear the Xenu story and stick with the religion anyway. Once you’ve invested that much time in a worldview, you have to maintain it no matter what, because admitting you were wrong means you have to take the time to examine everything about your life, every belief you ever held. And very few people are willing to do that.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Like I said, I’m slow. Explain to me in words of one syllable what happened to MH17.
While you’re at it, post me that link to your proof the Ukrainians had a fighter shadowing the plane.
Oh, and why doesn’t it discomfit you that I understand Russian as well?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
And here we see Bob’s conspiracy mindset at work. There is no such thing as a coincidence, ever. There is no such thing as an accident, ever. Every incident is always pre-planned with a specific purpose in mind and every plan always comes off without a hitch to the exact specifications of the planners.
In Bob’s world, human error doesn’t exist. IMO, this is why people find conspiracy theories comforting — yes, the world is being controlled by evil forces, but at least someone is controlling it. There are no accidents that kill innocent people, there are no errors that cause death, diseases don’t strike people at random. There’s a controller out there, and believing that is more comforting than admitting that shit happens that no one can control.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Shitstain is citing Pravda now.
geg6
@Mnemosyne:
Or he’s just your average batshit nutcase who sees CIA conspiracies the same way wingers see UN conspiracies in every. fucking. thing. that. happens. in. the. entire. world.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: It’s also the precise explanation for why all shooting sprees are OBVIOUSLY “false flags,” because who stands to gain, the gun-grabbers, that’s who! (Even though the people who genuinely gain every time appear to be the gun-pushers, but shut up and reasons, that’s why.)
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
I know. I’m not too proud to admit that I totally LOLed over that one. Too fucking funny.
I’m finding him more and more entertaining every day and I’m ashamed.
FlipYrWhig
@geg6: You know, discussing obvious CIA conspiracies is just a ploy to distract the rest of us from the deeper NSA-oil-lizard people conspiracies, which means that Bob is PART OF THE REAL CONSPIRACY AAIIEEEEE!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland:
Of course not.
Does a need for oil have an effect on US foreign policy? No shit, Sherlock. All countries, the US and Russia included, act in their perceived national interest.
I am still waiting to see how it all works out. My operating theory at this point is still that it was a major fuck-up on the part of a separatist unit.
Your turn.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland: You know, asking Cui bono? is a useful forensic tool, but the answer by itself can’t be a proof.
What if it rains in Dryvale and a hundred farmers benefit? Do you conclude they all joined together to cause the rain? Or that one of them did it alone?
Or what if two Malaysian Airlines flights are lost and, predictably enough, people start choosing to fly Singapore Airlines instead?
catclub
@Mnemosyne: well, they do call it the sunk cost fallacy, after all.
Emerald
@FlipYrWhig: Oh no. They wouldn’t have heard of Balloon Juice. Far, far too rightwing/centrist for them.
No, I’m sure neither of them were the former Ted and Helen.
Carl Nyberg
I interview Ricks in 2000 for a journalism class. I was interested in people doing journalism on military issues.
Ricks was gracious to give the interview.
I don’t remember either playing up or playing down my own military experience.
But Ricks was a bit full of himself boasting of the dangerous situations he had been in (not the stories he broke).
In 2001, I ran into him at Wash Post. I was with Kenneth Bacon, so Ricks spent most time talking to KB.
I’m glad Ricks has come around. But he was very comfortable being the type of reporter he thought he was expected to be.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
Mine as well. This has trigger-happy fuckup written all over it. Now they’re trying to make excuses, toss up diversions, to evade their responsibility for it. Putin KNOWS how bad this is, and of course is joining the responsibility evasion conga line.
Bob In Portland
Marie Harf. The State Department spokesperson.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Do you believe that recording that allegedly had rebels bragging about shooting down the airliner? There are stories that this was made by splicing older conversations together a day before the airliner downing. I don’t have the expertise to understand how the video itself can be time-stamped.
But if the recording is a fake and was created the day before the crash, then I guess your fig-leaf for fuckup is gone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob In Portland: You do realize that no one benefits from an intentional shooting down of a third country’s civilian airliner, right?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Do you believe Khodakovsky’s Reuters interview, reported on in real time and backed up by audio recordings made available by Reuters, where he says they had Buks?
Omnes and VDE have shared their theories of what happened. Your turn.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: There are ways to seed rain clouds. In absence of that, no, the farmers can’t create rain in Dryville.
However, who has the most BUK missile batteries in Ukraine? Hint: The Ukrainian army. There is still no actual proof that the rebels ever had the missile bank, nor the people to operate it, nor the radar system to target anything at 30,000 feet. The Ukrainian army does. Then there’s that Ukrainian fighter plane that was accompanying the airliner in the moments before it was shot down.
So who is the most likely to have shot down the airliner?
You may also want to check out the various stories pointing to the recording of the rebels bragging about shooting the plane down, that it was a fake. People have said that the video was time-stamped the day before the crash. If true, and someone was creating anti-rebel propaganda of the airliner being shot down the day before the crash, then the Ukrainian true believers have a very serious problem.
Hungry Joe
@Bob In Portland: Really? “There are stories that this was made by splicing older conversations together a day before the airliner downing.” Well, if there are “stories,” then I guess that’s that.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
OMG, it was SIA! This theory had never occurred to me!
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: You mean this guy?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Then there’s that Ukrainian fighter plane that was accompanying the airliner in the moments before it was shot down.
Still waiting for the links, Bobbo. Any time you’re ready, feel free.
Khodakovsky is here.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amir Khalid: And SIA is just a hop, skip, and a jump from CIA – and you know what that spells? Trouble, oh we got trouble! Right here in River City! With a capital T and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool.
Thus, I blame Fast Eddie Felson.
weaselone
Weren’t there also tweets made the day of the crash where separatists boasted about downing a plane, which were quickly deleted?
Gin & Tonic
@weaselone: Some Tweets, and some postings on VKontakte, sort of like a Russian Facebook.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Idiots engaging with a stone-cold pro-Russian troofer. This has been the most entertaining post here in days.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
The number of SAM batteries doesn’t enter into it. You might as well say that the likeliest suspect in a shooting murder is the one who owns the biggest gun collection.
Suffern ACE
I agree. If I haven’t seen the evidence, it must have been the CIA.
Amir Khalid
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I explained this to everyone only yesterday: we Balloon Juice commenters are like kittehs. Bob in Portland is like a little red dot.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
I dunno, Rte 117 seems like a hoppin’ kind of place.
If I were 132 years old, that is.
But thanks for attempting to put me wise. Even though I didn’t see your note until an hour after I returned.
SFAW
@Carl Nyberg:
So, you were like one degree of separation from him? Without having been in Footloose? Outstanding!
Groucho48
@Another Holocene Human (now with new computer):
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
You said the following:
X had the most to gain, therefore X must be responsible — was that the implication of the above?
Assuming so, I pointed out that such reasoning can only take you so far, but not to a proof. I gather we now agree about that.
Now you respond with other assertions and questions:
I would say that [1] and [3] comprise a reasonable line of inquiry; [2], [4], and [5] are assertions without supporting evidence; and [6] is an inference based on these unsupported assertions. You can pursue each of these things as you see fit, obviously.
SFAW
@Cervantes:
I thought “Some people say.” and its variants, were considered proof of a thing. Get with the times, will you?
Origuy
How about the Italian press?
James E. Powell
@Davis X. Machina:
Every young person needs a hero and mine was Michael Harrington
I met and talked with him at a lefty gathering of some sort in Cleveland sometime in the mid to late 80s. Nice guy, easy going, encyclopedic knowledge of the New Deal years – the gritty details and odd personalities. To me it was a sad affair because everything we talked about was in the past.
Mnemosyne
@SFAW:
I’m wondering how many people making the claim of the audio being “time stamped the day before the crash” understand how time zones work and know that Ukraine is in the Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) right now. So is the “time stamp” they’re looking at in local time to Ukraine or in local time to their own location? It makes a pretty big difference.
Davis X. Machina
@James E. Powell: You were very lucky. MH was a fellow Holy Cross grad. He graduated from a very different school, though. In those days it was famous for producing Navy officers and FBI agents. By the time I had graduated, it was a liberal institution. Changed with the changes in the order.
Villago Delenda Est
@Groucho48: If you ACTUALLY read The Wealth of Nations it becomes painfully obvious that the Adam Smith of the libertarians, of the wingtards, of the Village, has nothing at all to do with the actual Adam Smith. Marx was inspired by Smith. You can post passages of The Wealth of Nations, without attribution, on the intertubes, and be attacked by aforementioned fuckheads as being some sort of diseased anti-business radical. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s hilarious the reactions you get once you do the reveal.
The Wealth of Nations is right up there with The Bible in the “books that are cited but have never been read by those citing them” category.
Denali
Here’s whodunnit: Ukrainian jets have been shadowing civilian flights. They can divert to avoid missiles. MK15 was ordered by the Control Tower to a lower altitude – closer to the flying altitudes of the Ukrainian jets. The jets were a decoy to attract the missiles. The jets have, after all, been bombing targets in eastern Ukraine. The downing of the civilian plane was intended to discredit Putin. The goal was achieved.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Denali: Since there was the possibility of civilian flights in the area, any ADA units should have been in a “weapons tight” posture and should not have fired at anything other than a identified hostile target.
Denali
@Omnes Omnibus
Should, being the operative word, is often not what actually happens. Mission Accomplished is what actually happened.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Denali: Assuming the fact pattern you described, the people firing the anti-aircraft missile would still be at fault. But nice try at offering another convoluted explanation of why it is the Ukrainian’s fault.
Groucho48
@Villago Delenda Est:
Can’t say I’ve read it but I have browsed through it. He’s a lot more liberal on economic stuff than he is conservative.
Here’s another quote I like tossing at conservatives from time to time.
The general response, if there is one, is a pantheon of logical fallacies. Straw man, diversion, and moving the goal posts are the most common. Cries of socialism and coddling the poor are also heard. No one actually tries to engage the quote.
sm*t cl*de
Speaking as someone with a fragile grip on reality, I resent the way BiP is making the rest of us loons look bad.
The argument seems to be that G&T has better-than-average access to information about Ukraine, therefore G&T must be a fascist, therefore we should only heed people who don’t have that access. This is (a) contemptible and (b) feckin’ stupid.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@sm*t cl*de: Your grip on reality may be fragile, but it appears that you have one. It puts you a step or five ahead of BiP.
WaterGirl
@ruemara: You’re probably long gone, but that’s so great! I’m excited for you. Sounds like a highfalutin mobile you’ve got there.
P.S. I have never written the word highfalutin before, and I was sure I would spell it wrong, but I sounded it out and got it right. Yay!
Seriously, it’s about time some good things come your way!
Mnemosyne
@sm*t cl*de:
Actually, BiP has even gone beyond that in the past and implied that Gin & Tonic must have learned Ukrainian from a grandfather, who of course would have been one of the Nazis rescued by the US after the war (it’s in one of the books he keeps touting). Because, as we all know, the only people who fled Ukraine in the chaos during and after the war were Nazi collaborators. It’s a true fact, y’all.
ETA: Also, too, people have noticed in the past that this was the exact rationale for the Bush administration to fire/refuse to hire anyone who spoke Arabic as their first language — the mere fact that they learned Arabic as children was proof positive that they were Islamist spies. BiP has a lot more in common with Bush and the Republican mindset than he seems to realize.
Cervantes
@Denali:
Do you have this from a disinterested third party?
polyorchnid octopunch
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, that’s fantastic. Going to be very useful up here in Canuckistan, where the Prime Moron wants legislation like this for Canadians.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Ukraine exists. That’s why it’s their fault.
sm*t cl*de
Announcing right from the start that you’re going to ignore anyone who can access the original sources without translation, because anyone with that access must be guilty of familial wrongthink… this is
(a) No way to go through life, and
(b) a luxury I cannot afford. Never turn down a reality-check.
LanceThruster
http://www.quotesworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/winston_churchill_quote_2.jpg
LanceThruster
From: http://www.petitiononline.com/SaveGaza/petition.html
The situation in Gaza has reached emergency levels — inadequate water, electricity, and medicine; widespread hunger, poverty, and unemployment; schools and other services rendered inoperative; constant bombardments and attacks by the Israeli military.
This humanitarian catastrophe is man-made: It was brought on by the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip by Israel and the sanctions imposed by the international community on Palestine, made worse by repeated IDF attacks. If this situation continues, we will see spreading disease, malnutrition, and more violence. Under these conditions, negotiations — the only way to reach peace between both peoples — also become an impossibility.
We call upon Israeli leaders to end the siege of and war on Gaza. We call upon world leaders to end the political and economic sanctions of Palestine.
The siege and sanctions are sowing chaos and death in Gaza. They must come to an end.
Bob In Portland
Attention all Juicers: From the coup in Maidan, Gin has resented that I call some of the people in the junta, and a lot of the people on the street, Nazis. One of his strategies was to post articles written by Ukrainian nationalists in Ukrainian and then insult me because I don’t speak Ukrainian. Well, I took five years of Latin in high school and college and all these years later I can’t read the mottos on plaques on government buildings. Not having been Catholic and aiming for the priesthood, it was probably a bad career move.
Gin has been asked where he picked up Ukrainian (and his steadfast support for the coup regime and his denial of the fascists’ role in the coup, or, for that matter, the 70-year history of our intelligence services in bed with Ukrainian fascists).
In 1945 army intelligence made a treaty, The Treaty of Fort Hunt, basically a deal to absorb Reinhard Gehlen’s Org, his network of fascist spies in eastern Europe, because it was a readymade for Cold War considerations. And the US financed a guerrilla war in Ukraine using those Banderistas to fight the Soviet menace. Google “Nightingales” and “Ukraine”. Those people.
But not only did the military intelligence (and soon thereafter the CIA) use these scumbags for spying, a number of them (thousands) were in trouble for things like, oh, genocide. You’ve probably heard about the ratlines, how as E. Costello once sang, “South America is coming into style.” Nazis were also hidden in South Africa and other cozy places around the world. In the early fifties the CIA began a program, Congress For Freedom, although they didn’t admit to it being theirs for years, as per their norm. CFF resettled fascists and Nazis in the US, and those with leadership skills were supported by the CIA. The Republicans actually thought this would help to push immigrant communities to the right politically. Ronald Reagan was the spokesman for the CFF program and gave the standard talk about freedom fighters when what he was doing was enabling the importation of Nazis.
You may not think that there were any consequences from this. Certainly, some of these imports and their children got onboard the good liberal American way and were essentially no use to the CIA. Some of them were caught, some led prayers in front of Congress (Valerian Trifa). However, if you remember Hans von Spakovsky, his parents’ official story was that they came to the US in 1950 to flee Nazism. The big problem with their biography is that WWII ended in 1945. Whatever they were fleeing it wasn’t Nazis. Why? Because the von Spakovsky family settled down in Huntsville, Alabama. Now see if any of you can connect “Huntsville” and “Nazi.” Anyone?
I bet some of you remember Hans’ work in the Bush Justice Department where he fought hard to rid the system of voter fraud by trying to eliminate black voters. Recall? Well, his folks came over in that wave of Nazis and fascists and settled down with the Nazi rocket scientists down in Alabama. Not quite the Devil went down to Georgia, but close enough for government work.
One of the things that the CIA did was steer money to various communities within the US. Croatian, Hungarian and Ukrainian. The folks who fought on the side of the Nazis.
So where did Gin & Tonic learn Ukrainian? Maybe the Latin classes were full and Gin isn’t Ukrainian and just happens to like the fascists there.
I don’t know. That’s why a little biography on his part would be fascinating. Granted, I have absolutely no right to know why he speaks Ukrainian and won’t admit to the fascists in Kiev. But he’s been particularly hostile to me from early on, and after he flaunted his Ukrainian fluency in my face numerous times I thought it might be interesting to find out where he picked up a language that is not exactly the lingua franca of the world. I encourage and support Americans learning languages from around the world. But in this case, the convergence of Gin’s language skills and his political leanings regarding the fascists in Kiev strikes me as interesting. For as many times as Juicers have accused me of being a Putin apologist you’d think that one of you might have asked yourselves, “Ukrainian?”
But you don’t. You don’t recognize American propaganda, as if Afghanistan and Iraq never happened. I realize that some of you are amused by my posts. “You think they’re so dumb. You think they’re so funny…” as Costello sang in another one of his songs. (Did anyone see him in the late seventies “Farewell, America” tour? He did the Dallas version of “Less Than Zero.”)
And I know people like Betty Cracker just want me to go away. I’m somewhere between a pain in the ass and vaguely threatening to her. And I would have if I hadn’t been reading this site since Cole was a Republican. But I find it incredible that so many people here who seem to be able to understand some of the okeydokes run in Washington, DC are oblivious to the propaganda game. And most of you are. That’s why I keep coming back. I am offended that people who call themselves liberal are so easily sucked in by the basest of propaganda campaigns. That’s why I’ve asked about all the other past lies of our government, when did you know that the Gulf of Tonkin was a false flag, that the WMDs didn’t exist, that we didn’t invade Afghanistan to capture bin Laden. I note that most of you don’t answer, understandably.
Ah, but this time they’re telling us the truth! you say. Sadly, no. They’re still lying to you, and they’re fighting these wars not for you but for the corporations that own our government.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Maybe the one who owns the biggest gun collection, has the crew trained to use the gun, and who has the radar to target above 30,000 feet, unlike the other guy.
And has a motive. Otherwise, your analogy is right on target.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: You’re using the Costello lyric completely out of context.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
And the reason you did not seek out your own translations of those articles is … ?
Because, see, that’s what a normal, non-obsessed, non-conspiracy-minded person would have done. Huh, this other person has information from the actual country I’m interested in — perhaps I should pursue this lead that he has given me.
But, no, apparently the problem here is that Gin & Tonic did not respect your AUTHORITAH! and (correctly) cast doubt on your claims of expertise, now so you have to go to desperate lengths to try and discredit him. He can’t just be wrong in this specific case, he must be the grandson of actual, real-life Nazis!
By the way, Bob, you seem a little confused about Hans von Spakovsky’s parentage. His mother was German, but his father was — wait for it, because this gets interesting — Russian. Not Ukrainian. In fact, he was a White Russian aristocrat. My source on this? Von Spakovsky himself.
Please, present your evidence that Von Spakovsky is lying about his family and he’s really secretly Ukrainian and not Russian at all. We’ll wait here while you go find that.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Mnemosyne: I am still having trouble getting past his misuse of Night Rally. Some things are unforgivable.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Also, I actually came back to say that I bought that sleep mask and I’m also going to try their blue light-blocking screen protector for my iPad. Thanks!
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: One of his strategies was to post articles written by Ukrainian nationalists in Ukrainian and then insult me because I don’t speak Ukrainian.
I wasn’t “insulting” you, I was pointing out that a lack of knowledge of either of the two primary source languages places you at a disadvantage. If I was “hostile”, it’s because you called me a Nazi, directly. That brings out some hostility, yes. I told you to fuck yourself, and will do so again if the circumstances are repeated. At least one of the FP’ers had the common sense (or good taste) to delete the more tendentious of your posts.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Gin & Tonic: But why do you know Ukrainian?*
*It was necessary to ask.
ETA: I don’t know either Russian or Ukrainian. It means that I am entirely dependent on translations. With a language I know, I can at least check to see if a translation makes sense to me. BiP doesn’t seem to notice this.
gian
@Chyron HR:
you do realize Doug would turn that into a less than zero Elvis Costello reference
but really, the Ukraine nationalists had been making gains recently due in part to air power. Is it a shock that the Russians would give the Russian backed insurgents anti air weapons? Is it more of a shock they couldn’t tell a civilian jet from a military one?
the best case I can imagine for the Russians is that the Ukrainian nationalists are spoofing civilian transponders
but then I’m not Baghdad Bob from Portland
sm*t cl*de
Passive voice? Really?
Ramalama
@Iowa Old Lady: That’s brilliant.
Ramalama
@Woodrowfan: I did not know this. Holy crap.
Denali
@Cervantes
Russia released radar showing military jets in the area of MH15. Nothing beyond “social media” data has been released from the West. Why is that?
For the record, I don’t support Putin or his actions in Ukraine at all.
Cervantes
@Denali:
Thank you.
1. Do you have a reliable source for this?
2. You saw that I asked for a disinterested third-party source, yes?
No idea, assuming you are right.
I do not know what his actions in Ukraine have or have not been, but I do not support him in general.
Cervantes
@Ramalama: Congress regularly interferes in what you might think are DC’s prerogatives.
John M. Burt
@Deen: Yes, I definitely yearn to return to the country I grew up in.
It was a country where we built spaceships that went to the Moon, and where politicians who failed us were forced to retire and resign, a country which was at least moving in the right direction on issues of race and gender.
Hell, yes, I want my country back.
I actually am becoming more conservative in my old age. I grew up in a Democrat family, became a Socialist, then an Anarchist, and now I’m a Democrat.
eyelessgame
Wow. I gotta say -this is one well-fed troll.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Do you know anything about Russian aristocrats during WWII? They weren’t Stalinists. Remember that anti-Soviet cabal of White Russians in Dallas surrounding, peculiarly, Lee and Marina Oswald? No, you are apparently ignorant of the White Russian community in the US imported and supported by the US intelligence community. Do some reading on the White Russian community in Dallas and get back to me.
Bob In Portland
@sm*t cl*de: Okay, no besides me here wonders about Gin’s interest in defending the Ukrainian junta and the fascists therein. Is that direct enough for you?
Bob In Portland
@eyelessgame: Stay eyeless.
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Check out why Costello at the beginning of his career he called it his “Farewell America” tour. And listen to the Dallas version of “Less Than Zero.”
Yes, the “dumb and funny” line is about fascists which are ignored or dismissed as dumb and funny. You know, like guys with tattoos of swastikas on their chests.
Speaking of unconfirmed reports, I hear that people are disappearing in Kharkov. You know, the Argentine kind of disappearing. But that couldn’t be true because you expect Jimmy Fallon to make a joke about it and the New York Times to write about it and someone from the State Department making a statement about it.
Well, if the downed airliner doesn’t work then you can create a border incident against Russia. You’ll get your war, don’t worry.
And yet another day passes and none of you Juicers can articulate what the US’s goals are in Ukraine. It’s like you guys aren’t allowed to even think about US interests in a war zone (created by the US) until the first hundred thousand are dead. Amazing.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: Be aware of the reports. The US should have been able to prove they were fakes, those radar readings, right? The US only has to release its radar, or Ukraine’s radar, or their satellite photos. In the meantime you just trust our government, okay.
I wonder if Carlos disappeared too. You know, the Argentinian way.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Gin, I don’t think this will iron things out between us, but I suspect that either your father or grandfather came over here under one of the CIA programs, CFF or something similar. That would make your parentage part of the CIA fascist importation programs. They may not have been actual Nazi Party members. Heck, Gehlen wasn’t even officially a Nazi. Maybe a fighter under Bandera and his ilk, which were the anti-Soviet fifth column. You either learned Ukrainian within your family or you were sent to a school that taught it, which very could have been funded off-the-books by the CIA and friends. You were raised to hate Russians.
Now there are plenty of reasons to hate Russians, just as there are plenty of reasons to hate Ukrainian fascists.
Or, alternately, you don’t have a dog in the fight, you learned Ukrainian for a military or State Department role.
Or Latin class was full.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
I’d love to “be aware of the reports.” I asked for a source; you have not provided one.
Sure. This is where we began, with that press conference you were complaining about.
You’re confusing me with someone else, I imagine.
What are you talking about?
Denali
@Cervantes,
For links see the Wall Street Journal 7/21/14 Russian Response to the downing of MH17.
Panurge
It won’t end until we stop calling it a “revolution”. (But it alliterates so elegantly, you know, and has such a rhythm, kind of like “Democrats in disarray”.) :-/ No, it was a multipronged counterrevolution, especially against the real DFHs, with the collusion of the creative class and the establishment Democrats. If you want the Reagan Era to end, fix that.
Panurge
@Mnemosyne:
I’m not so sure about the men, though. The men have been indoctrinated into neo-traditional butchism (especially as a function of age–“hey, you’re this old now, time to stop that young-guy stuff and start doing this, which we’ll tell you is really hip these days so you’ll be OK with it but we’ll let you keep your classic rock soundtrack because the music’s what matters blah blah blah”) that by 50 it might not be possible to reach them. What are they gonna do now?