… although your mileage may vary. Joan Walsh, at Salon:
… So many brave Americans fought in vain to spread socialism in the United States, but it’s advancing in the summer of 2015 thanks to an unlikely vanguard: lazy and apolitical political reporters who love horse races and hate the Clintons.
Yes, the MSM is making sure that socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is taken seriously in his uphill run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. He’s surging in Iowa and New Hampshire, polls tell us, and attracting 10,000 people at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wednesday night.
This lifelong lefty who attended Madison is thrilled to see it – and yet a little cynical, too. I mean really, folks: If Sanders had a chance to become president, Mark Halperin would be the first in line to red-bait him, rather than shaming Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Clinton supporter, into doing it on Morning Joe.
But the rise of Sanders, alongside that of the GOP’s surging star, blustering racist Donald Trump, also shows the media the difference between the ideological moorings of the folks who make up the Democratic and Republican base. The Democrats have a lot of lefties, FDR Democrats, folks who want single payer health insurance, people who think we can learn from Western Europe not stigmatize it — and yes, Sanders excites them. On the GOP side, there is a loud, large, angry segment of the GOP base that’s frankly xenophobic, nativist, even racist. Trump speaks to them…
… Hillary Clinton can afford to welcome Sanders’ candidacy, and even endorse a lot of his platform. As Jim Newell points out here, she’s enormously popular even among Sanders supporters in Iowa. And Sanders isn’t the polarizing figure that Trump is. He’s good for the Democratic Party — and for socialism too…
***********
Apart from arguing politics, what’s on the agenda for the official start of the weekend?
Another Holocene Human
What an odd way for her to put that.
And please, he’s a Democratic Socialist. Socialist is a term with a long history and a lot of baggage (Brook Farm, anyone?), so it’s important to be clear.
I’m not a member of a Democratic Socialist Party but I’d be proud to call myself one any day.
A guy
Socialists are those who can’t or won’t compete.
Another Holocene Human
@A guy: That’s funny, explain the approximately hexatronquad-bajillion Socialist splinter parties based in Manhattan alone, smarty-pants.
shell
Bummer….it’s supposed to rain here tomorrow.
A guy
Don’t give a crap about manhatten. Compete or die
scav
There’s more to do than exalting over the charred dead bodies of about nine mulch bags worth of garlic mustard and attempting to repair the knees that got them there? Oh? Cheering on The Dreaded Zocialism? Easily makes the top of the list.
Another Holocene Human
Thomas Paine advocating for guaranteed income. (via twitter)
And also basically calling capitalism a steaming bag of rubbish.
Steeplejack
As I mentioned downstairs, cookout at bro’ man’s palatial Arlington manse on Sunday afternoon. Nothing else planned so far, which is fine. I will probably venture out to the grocery in a while to pick up some odds and ends, maybe get some Thai takeout. This afternoon I found myself looking at recipes for old-school Southern iced tea on the Interwebs, so I may experiment with that tomorrow.
Tomorrow I am recording Sundance’s marathon replay of the first two seasons of Rectify, ahead of the third-season premiere on July 9. A friend has recommended it in the strongest terms.
NotMax
Girding the loins to remain calm and ignore the fireworks noise coming this evening.
At long last (*for this week) got breezes picking up today, which helps blow out the ragga-fragga vog and ameliorate the high temps.
60+ year old hassock fan in the living room doing a superlative job of keeping the abode cooler and livable.
A guy
Thomas was trying to stay in power. Not much has changed
Another Holocene Human
@A guy: Lol, are you 12? Does your older sibling know you borrowed their computer?
Steeplejack
@A guy:
Here’s a pretty bug of some sort.
namekarB
@A guy: Oh you mean “compete” like Big Banking and Big Pharma. It is this Coca-Cola or Pepsi false choice capitalism that brings out the inner socialist of thinking people.
Baud
I agree with the statement about the bad faith of the mainstream media. As far as the rest of it, let the best person win.
A guy
Another- really that’s the best you can do?
dmbeaster
Sanders’ run is a huge positive so long as Hillary’s response is not orchestrated by a Rahm Emmanuel type. So far she seems willing to stake out a more libersl positiom, and does not show signs of relying on Penn types for her message. If she goes negative on Sanders, that will be a huge mistake.
gwangung
@A guy: 0.0.
Manhattan is the financial capital of the world, cutthroat competitive down to the underclass.
Next time, use your room temperature IQ.
shell
Slowly cooking down a batch of blueberry jam, to get it to jel. (I don’t use commercial pectin)
Friday night Noir on TCM. At 8 pm, ‘The Big Clock’
And don’t forget tomorrow at 8, ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’ James Cagney started out as a hoofer.
A guy
Namekar- don’t worry bout what others have or do, that’s an excuse. Handle your own issues and u win in competition
gwangung
@dmbeaster: Have absolutely no problem with that.
scav
O, but those front-runner Captalists competing for leadership of the guys’ party had to hustle to be born on third base! Those trust funds and connections could have gone to siblings!
JPL
@Steeplejack: Gosh.. Please don’t bother with southern ice tea.. Buy kool aid if you need a sugar fix. It’s awful.. I love good ice tea but that sugar stuff down here is swill.
gogol's wife
@NotMax:
Last night there were some unbelievably loud fireworks for about a minute. It has unnerved me, worrying that they’re going to be that loud this year. I had just about made my peace with putting up with it this year, but that was LOUD. I’ve been in a bad mood all day, dreading it.
A guy
Scav- don’t worry bout what others have and handle your own issues. You will then win. Until that point you’re just a whiner
Another Holocene Human
@namekarB: And what’s more, you name a Democratic Socialist country and they compete just fine. It’s called having an industrial policy. The US State Dep’t has one, too, but the difference between us and them is that ordinary people their can actually explain what their industrial policy is, whereas Ugly Americans don’t even know the #1 industry and #1 export for their own fucking state, nevermind the country, and since ‘us’ don’t know our industrial policy we have a really fucking stupid one that’s shaped by the most politically connected business interests like, say, US Sugar, or maybe one part of the steel industry that gave GWBush more $$$, or that douchebag who convinced the US Gov’t to pay him billions to grow cotton with free water in California. Yeah, that one was a great idea.
PhoenixRising
Staycation weekend with the Mrs. Our teen is back east with my family, which frees us to notice that once she leaves home (G-d willing) we will need to reassign her chores. The dogs reminded us of this last night, by asking for dinner until we figured out that their girl was not going to come down the hall and scoop the kibble.
My oncology team has cleared me for normal activity for the coming year, no scans.
My mom has a newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer that may be curable, but most likely will cause her death in her mid-70s (she’ll be 73 in a month).
So…best of times, worst of times. Tale of Being 40something in the 21st Century.
cathyx
Bernie Sanders is running for president under the democratic ticket.
scav
@A guy: You’re a platitudinous repeater on auto-pilot, and no, that’s not a duck-billed mammal in charge at the pointy end, so readjust your self-image.
A guy
Scav- keep crying whiney
JPL
@efgoldman: I found tears running down my cheek without warning while watching the movie. It wasn’t a sob or anything like that, just a wet cheek. My neighbor mentioned that he’d rather watch blood and guts, because the movie put him on an emotional roller coaster. Wall-E was great.
Baud
@cathyx:
Do you have anything from Bernie’s campaign directly showing that he now considered himself a Democrat?
WereBear
@PhoenixRising: So sorry about your Mom.
MomSense
@Steeplejack:
Yes!!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: I do like that and hope it becomes a tradition here!
P.S. I watched maybe half a season of Rectify and then gave it up. It seemed to rattle me in some way that I didn’t like, which might either recommend it or recommend against it.
cathyx
Here:
“After a year of travel, discussion and dialogue, I have decided to be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president,” he wrote in the email, highlighting economic inequality, climate change and the Citizens United Supreme Court decisions as key issues spurring him to run.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@A guy:
“Compete or die”? A fan of Action T-4, I see. After all, those paralyzed and retarded kids were never going to be able to compete, so why let them be a burden on society?
JPL
My son’s dog is visiting so I plan on staying close to home. Finch loves Nona but I’m not sure how they would deal with the fireworks, if I were to leave for an extended time.
A guy
Omg I’m a troll. That’s it I quit.
WaterGirl
@JPL: I can’t recall where I was, maybe North Carolina, but the person I was with ordered unsweetened tea. The waitress said: “one unsweetened sweet tea”. I thought that was funny!
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Don’t worry, I dial back the sugar content quite a bit. When I say “Southern iced tea” I sort of mean “staple beverage served without comment at every meal.” I realized I was hankering for the taste of good iced tea but didn’t want to buy overpriced bottled brands.
MomSense
@PhoenixRising:
Sorry to hear about your Mom.
PhoenixRising
@WereBear: Thanks.
My mom went right at the medical oncologist: “In 30 years as a psychotherapist, I’ve learned that sometimes people find it hard to say things that raise difficult feelings for them. So I’m going to ask again, and ask you to be a bit more candid…What will the treatments you can prescribe do to extend my life, if anything? I heard you say that there are side effects, and I’d like to understand what I’m likely to get in exchange for that price.”
She raised us to think for ourselves.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Dang, is it Gertrude Stein Day again already?
:)
WaterGirl
@PhoenixRising: That’s great news that you were cleared!
I know an 83-year old man who beat pancreatic cancer. Actually, he is now an 85-year old man.
A guy
It’s tough to be in the top 48 percent and be a troll!, lol!
Baud
@cathyx:
It’s clear which part he’s seeking the nomination of. I was asking if he has changed from his prior view that he was an independent.
WereBear
@PhoenixRising: Very admirable. And an excellent technique for getting the truth out of doctors, who often don’t get to have the luxury of truthtelling.
JPL
@PhoenixRising: What a wise woman.
WaterGirl
@efgoldman: And here’s a pretty bug of some sort.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
I know very little about Rectify, but I mostly trust the taste of the friend who recommended it. So I’m recording the marathon and will watch at least the first few episodes.
Baud
@PhoenixRising:
Good mom. Best of luck to her.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@A guy:
My friend’s sister was born with epilepsy that is not controlled by medication. How do you suggest she handle it herself, or should she just die?
We have a commenter here whose son was born with severe birth defects and cannot speak or walk. How do you suggest he should compete for resources?
I am at least glad you’re no longer pretending to be a normal person and you’re just letting your inner sociopath fly free.
Steeplejack
@A guy:
Thank you! Your best comment ever. Now if only we could believe you.
A guy
I’m not convinced you have a friend who has a sister,
scav
@efgoldman: but even in their bargin basement offerings there are the real manufacturer rejects.
JPL
@Steeplejack: Boil water, add tea bags and steep. Then add water and ice.
Not that long ago, I was in the mountains in north GA in a small restaurant. When I asked for unsweetened ice tea, the waitress asked if I was a Yankee. I was showing my brother the area and he said she is. lol
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@A guy:
Sorry, I’m not going to give you her name and address so you can go check her countertops and personally demand that she stop having epilepsy.
NotMax
Mentioning Gertrude Stein reminded me of a favorite quote of hers.
“There ain’t no answer. There ain’t gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That’s the answer.”
A guy
Ok steeple I lied, I’m in the top 11.276 percent. And I’m still a troll
A guy
Mne—- umm ok.
Elizabelle
Yippeee. Was dithering about buying a ticket to the big Foo Fighters show tomorrow at RFK Stadium in DC — they were still available as of yesterday morning, and a friend just called with an extra ticket.
So excited. Great line up; Foos headline, but also Buddy Guy, Heart, Joan Jett, Gary Clark Jr., LL Cool J, Trombone Shorty, Trouble Funk. And then fireworks, I guess.
Gonna be a tired puppy Sunday.
cathyx
@Baud: I don’t think so. The rules state that he doesn’t have to be a member to run on the democratic ticket.
MattF
Installed the update to OS X Yosemite, now at 10.10.4 (I always think of this as Yo! Semite!) and it was good. There were a couple of dysfunctions in version 10.10.3 and the update fixed them without adding any new ones, so far.
And my copy of the CMYK Gamut jigsaw puzzle arrived, all the way from some furrin country. I’ve got the border assembled, the next step, I think, is to color-sort the pieces.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
Seriously. But they all move on eventually.
satby
@PhoenixRising: Happy to hear you’re doing better but sorry about your mom. I’m impressed that she pinned the oncologist down like that too. It’s hard to face the end of life, but so many people end up in miserable, futile treatment in the hope of a cure and spend the little time they have left sick and debilitated instead of being able to do a few more joyful things before they go. Props to your mom and best wishes she gets that cure!
Baud
@cathyx:
OK, thanks.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Wow.. That sounds like a lot of fun.
Steeplejack
@A guy:
Pure applesauce.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
Partay.
Another Holocene Human
@MattF: Any reason to recommend 10.10 over 10.9?
Felonius Monk
@A guy: Your fly is open.
satby
What’s up with some kerfluffle about George Takei? Someone mentioned it in passing below and I missed it.
JPL
@satby: It had to do with conservatives and the fainting couch. He made a rude comment about Thomas in black face.
He apologized.
also.. I think Thomas needs to apologize for being a crappy Jurist.
Yatsuno
If no one else has heard: Ruemara has severe conjunctivitis, Positive thoughts are welcomed.
Baud
@JPL:
Oh my!
MattF
@Another Holocene Human: I upgraded from 10.8 because the current version of an application I use (iBank) required it. I think, fwiw, that 10.10.4 is the ‘fixed’ version, so if you’re going to go to 10.10, this is the version to install.
That said, I think it makes sense to stay relatively up-to-date in OS X versions. Apple’s policy wrt upgrades is quite ruthless.
Baud
@Yatsuno:
I hadn’t heard. I like her. Hope she gets well soon.
Another Holocene Human
@dmbeaster: Good point. And once again, fuck Rahm Emanuel.
Brachiator
I had a couple of extra days off before the inevitable Fourth of July Barbecue, and got dragged to a couple of movies. Finally caught up with “Jurassic World,” which is very enjoyable for the most part, but obviously and cynically spliced together (much like the dinosaur baddie) from bits and pieces of earlier Jurassic films. After the movie, I couldn’t recall if the movie had the courage to show any ordinary people as dinosaur snacks, as opposed to telegraphing various characters you didn’t mind watching being gobbled up. Chris Pratt is fun to watch, but strangely seems to be going through the motions as Designated Action Hero, Bryce Dallas Howard is almost given a thankless task as playing both the new standard issue Strong Capable Woman and Designated Love Interest.
And yeah, they should just roll up a truck full of money and have Pratt star in a reboot of the Indiana Jones movies. Only, use his charm, don’t just have him mug and pose.
I had more fun with a little film called “Dope,” about a black high school senior in Inglewood,CA who is also a geek who likes 90s hip hop. The movie is still in the theaters, but getting pushed aside by the steady stream of action flicks. I liked the main characters and worried if they were going to be OK as they dealt with school bullies and dope dealers. The movie has been described as Risky Business meets Pulp Fiction and Superbad, and gets its slice of Southern California right. But the movie has its flaws, especially in the middle sections, and there are a couple of characters who disappear who you really wish were on screen more. But while something like Jurassic World is entertaining, it is soulless and lacks any ambition other than to separate suckers from their money. Dope is messy and sometimes misses, but its got heart and soul up the yin yang. As always, your mileage may vary.
Elizabelle
@PhoenixRising: Hugs. I hope your mom has a treatable kind. Advances all the time.
She sounds worth keeping around!
Elizabelle
@Baud: I think the last time I was at RFK was for a Stones concert.
Possibly with Bill Wyman …
Aunt Kathy
@Steeplejack: I take the easy way out now & cold-brew overnight. I don’t do loose leaves like it says here. Just 2 or 3 tea bags, cold water, and some ice in a pitcher in the fridge overnight. In the morning you’re all set. http://www.splendidtable.org/story/you-can-cold-brew-iced-tea-while-you-sleep
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
Took the kid last night and we all enjoyed it greatly. Surprisingly moving and also, too, kind of sciency as to brain development and functioning.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
At least you didn’t say Brian Jones.
Joy in FL
@PhoenixRising: That would be the question I think I would want to ask.
I’m glad you got good news; I hope your mom has whatever she needs and wants.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Thanks, I was wondering whether Dope was worth a trip to the theater. It looked promising in the trailers.
A guy
Felonious- I’m sure you’d know that
JPL
@Yatsuno: Earlier Ruemara mentioned a problem with her/his eyelid.. Hopefully it heals quickly.
Another Holocene Human
@Yatsuno: positive thoughts and prayers for cheap and effective antibiotics ;)
come to Florida, we have chicken soup
22over7
Due to clerical error and bad luck, I ran out of health insurance. Got more as of yesterday (THANKS OBAMA REALLY), but I ran out of my asthma meds. Dr appointment is not until the 9th, and my lungs have been on their own for nearly a month now. Thank the fsm it’s a mild case. Anyway, spouse has to work and no fireworks for me. The smoke is going to make me even wheezier than now. Those of you with plans, light a sparkler for me.
Steeplejack
@Aunt Kathy:
Thanks, I’ll add that to the test database. Which reminds me that I think I’ve got an episode of Good Eats on the DVR where Alton Brown weighs in on the subject. He’s semi-reliably Southern in these matters, I think.
evodevo
@Steeplejack: YES, You MUST see Rectify – and you definitely need to start at the beginning, or you won’t get any of the nuance. It’s slow, but really addictive once you get into the characters and the Suthrun setting.
KG
I’ve never acquired the taste for tea. I’ve tried but just don’t work for my pallet. I wasn’t a coffee drinker until my mid20s, used sodas for my caffeine fix though most of college, even early mornings.
Baud
@JPL:
I thought she was a her, but I always get that wrong.
Tommy
@Elizabelle: I so hope you have a great time. But I had season tickets to the Redskins and that place is a hole in the ground!
NotMax
@22over7
Thought sparklers were outlawed now. Or maybe that’s just here.
As a wee one, learned one can get a second use out of sparklers by dipping a cooled, spent one into flour to coat it and lighting it again.
Another Holocene Human
@efgoldman: Far from it, he’s got the rageys for allllll-y’aaaalllll not respecting his authoriteh and other such crimes. He’s going to have have the cops pat you down because you look suspicious and must be guilty of something!
Germy Shoemangler
The NY Times has an article with the headline “Bernie Sanders’s Radical Roots In 1960s Vermont” but then when I click on the article the headline says “Bernie Sanders’s Revolutionary Roots”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/04/us/politics/bernie-sanderss-revolutionary-roots-were-nurtured-in-60s-vermont.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
I think the NYTimes front page headline writers want to scare the shit out of whoever is skimming the front page.
by the way, cool photo of a YOUNG Bernie, with dark curly hair and long sideburns.
KG
For those watching the friendly against gautamala, altidore just boffed a PK, and now we just scored on a Guatemalan own goal… So, yay?
Another Holocene Human
@KG: You’re better off. Most tea is loaded with tannins.
I can’t stop drinking it but I use milk to make it easier on my stomach. Seriously, though, there’s a reason the Chinese had a cultural thing about drinking tea in moderation.
Linnaeus
Gotta get some writing in this weekend between the cookouts, softball games, and other sundry social occasions.
Tommy
@KG: Strange how that works. I have become a huge coffee snob. I can make it like four different ways in my house and often pay $20 plus for a pound of beans. I’ve tried so hard to like and/or get into tea but it just doesn’t work for me.
KG
@Elizabelle: nice. I’ve got a friend that flew out from SoCal for that show
Another Holocene Human
@KG: which tourney/which team?
My Truth Hurts
Hilary’s supporters are scared. In that same day on Salon there was an article about her “hit machine” already attacking Sanders. Walsh’s BS concern troll article must have been the first volley in that attack. Careful Salon, your sleazy, wishy washy, market tested, republican lite DLC bias is showing.
In a country where most people can no longer identify the three branches of government, seemingly meaningless words like “socialist” just doesn’t have the same punch to it.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m a tea with lemon person myself, when I do have tea.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: English, please?
Another Holocene Human
@Linnaeus: It’s very tasty … but it will not stop the upset stomach :(
KG
@Another Holocene Human: it’s a friendly, U.S. vs gautamala. On fox sports 1 here in the states. Copa America final about to start
jl
Ha! Thanks to Holocene Human and some other commenters above for pointing out that Sanders is a Democratic Socialist, and should be called that, rather than the almost meaningless catch-all phrase ‘socialist’. A certain lawyerly commenter (OO here?) accused me of pedantry, but look at this confused BS in our professional media that claims to inform people about facty things.
By many measures, countries where Democratic Socialism has more dominant role in economic policy are more capitalist than the US is. Norway has consistently been better at allowing its ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks to fail when they mess up, and it has done very well, for example. Sweden was willing to let one of its major auto manufacturers to go bankrupt after the 2007/8 recession and financial panic because the government decided that it’s primary role in helping the economy was not saving individual businesses. I don’t intend that to be comment on the wisdom of US policy, since each case should be evaluated on its own merits, but Sweden is certainly not into government as owner of the means of production.
KG
@Tommy: I’ve become a bit of a coffee snob but not crazy (much more of a beer snob), like I tend to avoid Starbucks and try to get good beans for when I make stuff at home. Been on a New Orleans blend kick lately, have a can of cafe du monde with chicory and some whole beans without.
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
“@My Truth Hurts: English, please? ”
Derpity dippity doopity deerrrrrrrr
NotMax
@Tommy
Might try some herbal teas. Still occasionally drink some Red Zinger or Brazilian Breakfast tea from Celestial Seasonings.
Patrick
@My Truth Hurts:
President Obama has been called a socialist so many times I have lost count. It’s obviously baloney since nothing has been socialized under his tenure. But the stock market has gone gangbusters under Obama, whereas under Republican Bush it went down. So if Obama is a socialist (which he is not), then I will gladly call myself that too.
jl
Anyway, my gut reaction is that the news celebrity news personalities pretending to be reporters who control the conversation in US media are too ignorant and confused to play a useful role trying to explain anything. This is one cycle where I think they would do best by shutting up and just letting the GOPers rant and the Democratic candidates HRC, Sanders and O’Malley talk.
WereBear
@Yatsuno: Oh, sucky! Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Cacti
Campaigning for an increased minimum wage is a solid issue that will resonate with a lot of groups.
Single payer is a hobby horse of the left fringe.
Josie
@cathyx: I’m going to express an opinion that will probably not be very popular here. Whether the rules permit it or not, I don’t think anyone should be able to run in the Democratic primaries if they are not a registered Democrat. They are planning to use organizational tools that have been created by the party and should be a member of that party. If they have called themselves an independent for years, they should run as an independent and do the work that comes with that.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
Yeah, it’s not for those who tend to have stomach problems. That’s never been an issue for me.
Germy Shoemangler
@jl:
That’s a good policy in countries with strong safety nets/social welfare systems. In this country, a business fails, people are thrown out of work, and then there is an uptick in murders, suicides…
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: Nice article, a little snide of the Times to quote him quoting research papers from the 70s — did he claim to be a doctor? — and dismissing the notion that cancer can be linked to emotional stress. Maybe the Times should check their own Health and Science sections when they run them, because the immune system – cancer link is all the rage right now. Having seen many relatives now fight and die from cancer I am firmly convinced that emotional distress prior to the onset of symptoms is a factor.
opiejeanne
@NotMax: I did not know that trick with flour, but I know that the stuff can be flammable when airborne. When we lived near SF a truck carrying flour was in an accident on one of the local freeways in Hayward and when the flour became … is aerosolized the right word? flour dust all in a huge cloud? it caught fire and burned so hot that it destroyed the pavement in two lanes. The freeway was closed for a couple of days in that one direction while they tried to fight the fire (I think they had to let it burn itself out), tear out the damaged Portland cement, and repave. And it was all under an overpass, so that was closed while it burned. It all started during rush hour in the morning so the surface streets were a mess.
Another Holocene Human
@Josie: I think Bernie Sanders, like many progressives, saw what happened with Nader 2000 and do not want a repeat.
Tommy
@KG: I got a lot of connections to LA and Cafe du Monde and chicory are about four of my favorite words. To celebrate the 4th I am making beignets.
Oh and if you like coffee get an Aeropress. Other than really good knives best thing I ever bought for my kitchen. I will have people come over that think they have a good cup of coffee and I am like sit down. Let me show you my Aeropress and what it can do.
Patrick
@A guy:
Handle your own issues??? So you are suggesting dismantle our entire government, including our military. So we should fight terrorism, Iran by ourselves? Goodness!!!
Baud
@Josie:
It’s a minus in my book, but not a deal breaker. If it came down to Sanders vs. Webb, I’d vote for Sanders.
Linnaeus
@Cacti:
That doesn’t really bother me. Someone needs to push things a little further.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: They won’t have a choice–a good number of voters will be following this race on twitter and youtube.
My Truth Hurts
@Patrick:
“President Obama has been called a socialist so many times I have lost count. It’s obviously baloney since nothing has been socialized under his tenure. But the stock market has gone gangbusters under Obama, whereas under Republican Bush it went down. So if Obama is a socialist (which he is not), then I will gladly call myself that too. ”
Exactly. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Just like “liberal” is slowly losing it’s power as a dirty word. They have been used and abused and taken so far out of context that they no longer have any potency.
Brachiator
That’s the problem. Lefties want to party like it’s 1939. Western Europe is not a mysterious planet that only appears to us once a decade. We can learn from Europe’s successes and failures. We can also see that single payer is not a monolith, that there are numerous approaches to providing universal health care, even approaches in which private insurers have a role. And maybe we should look ahead and consider creating a North American Union with Canada, the US, Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean, maybe even coming up with a new North American currency. Or maybe not, since the Euro experiment may end up collapsing.
And somewhere along the way, we need leaders who can clearly look at contemporary economic problems without putting on ideological blinders, or simplistically insisting that we just need to do what we did during the Depression, and come up with new and innovative solutions to the issues of job loss, wage stagnation and a slow contraction of the US economy.
WereBear
@opiejeanne: Then this is a video for you to watch:
Mythbusters Creamer Cannon
That’s coffee creamer. Don’t try this at home.
Steeplejack
Also, Japanese ’50s-’70s monsterfest starting at 10:00 p.m. EDT on El Rey, starting with Gojira (1954), the original Godzilla movie, followed by the slightly Americanized do-over with Raymond Burr, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), at midnight EDT. Then on into the full pantheon. You’ve got your Rodan, your Ghidorah, your Mothra—your Mechagodzilla, for God’s sake! Looping pretty much all weekend for your inner 10-year-old.
Germy Shoemangler
@Josie: Maybe, I just don’t want a repeat of 2000 with a split between democratic HRC and independent Sanders
And then Walker or Jeb strolls in and starts making appointments.
Major Major Major Major
@Germy Shoemangler: Probably some Optimizely a/b testing or something. Slate does it all the time. The aggregators only end up picking up one of the headlines, etc. Cool article though, I thought.
@My Truth Hurts: Uh, Salon is easily to the left of Bernie. Whatever, why did I even engage.
Another Holocene Human
@Linnaeus: I only get mad when they act like divas over fighting for Medicaid expansion because it should be single payer. Thankfully that stupid tantrum only lasted a year.
It’s fine to fight for the better thing as long as you’re not sabotaging the good. Because fuck evil. There’s no win in letting it win.
Corner Stone
@JPL:
Good God. You drink boiled Steepman? Is that with or without anything added?
cathyx
@Josie: Since I support Sanders over Clinton, I’m fine with this rule.
jl
Nordic/Scandinavian model and ‘old Europe’ has larger rate of small business formation.
At least if you define a small business as an enterprise with a boss who employs people to make something or provide a service.
If you count self-employed professionals with no employees, the US is highest rate, but I don’t think that is a good definition since it includes the effect of US crony capitalism and protectionism wrt to many licensed professionals.
Think We’re the Most Entrepreneurial Country In the World? Not So Fast
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-were-the-most-entrepreneurial-country-in-the-world-not-so-fast/263102/
Patrick
@Brachiator:
Interesting idea. If we can have trade agreements, why not health care agreements? You would think it would be a win-win with more people joining.
My Truth Hurts
@Major Major Major Major:
“@My Truth Hurts: Uh, Salon is easily to the left of Bernie. Whatever, why did I even engage. ”
Yeah that’s why my comments criticizing them for their horrible coverage and centrist safe propaganda constantly get deleted and my accounts banned. I think they are up to banning my IP now. Real progressive those folks over there at Salon.
They suck. You should pay better attention to the garbage you consume.
Josie
You all make a good point about Nader and the 2000 election. It still rankles just a bit.
Davis X. Machina
@My Truth Hurts:
Anyone active in the Democratic Party when Jesse Jackson ran in ’84 — even more so in ’88 — has heard all of this before:
the ‘I’m in it to win it/this is a non-symbolic campaign’ statements,
the ‘favorite is running scared’ talk,
the ‘will the Party survive the split/withdrawal of all the new voters’ discussions.
We may even see a brief period where Sanders is the front runner in delegate counts…. Jackson was ahead of the pack for about two weeks in ’88, if anyone else remembers.
And by the second night of the convention it’s as if none of it had ever happened.
Major Major Major Major
@My Truth Hurts: Sampling of current headlines:
Yep, that’s some warmed-over neoliberal garbage right there.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
I would add the caveat that “new and innovative” solutions aren’t necessarily better solutions, and sometimes, doing what we did (or might have done) in the past is actually better.
I’m reminded of something by Mike Konczal, I think, in which he proposed what a neoliberal “public” library would look like. And he came up with a complex series of incentives and subsidies, all of which really did more to avoid government involvement than provide a public library. And that was precisely the point – the innovative set of incentives and public-private partnerships didn’t really do the job any better, but they served an ideological purpose more than anything.
Ruckus
@Baud:
She’s a she. Wonderful person.
Wish her well.
Elizabelle
@KG: Should be fun.
Was back and forth yesterday about buying a ticket (“going to be a mob scene”), but now I am so excited to be going.
@trollhattan: Truly. Did not even know who Brian Jones was during his lifetime. Remember the Beatles, though.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
That’s fair, and I agree. There is a point at which you have to maximize your gain based on the circumstances and try again the next round.
My Truth Hurts
Anyone who thinks Nader lost 2000 for the Democratic party is an idiot. They lost because Clinton only pretended to be a Democrat while governing like a Republican. Then they gave us his VP to carry on more of the same. Given the choice between a fake Republican and a real one the American public will choose the real one every time.
Remember the PMRC and Tipper and Al’s roles in that? So do I. So do most progressives with principals and a conscience. Not you fat safe middle class baby boomer “liberals”. Go eat something and leave the politics to the experts.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: What’s wrong with the New Deal? It would be nice if they could just roll back all the weakening of FLSA and the destruction of workers’ rights to form unions and advance their interests. It would be great if they would go back to regulating the fuck out of banks and investment markets.
I don’t want to re-enact the past either but on this issue like with Civil Rights the other side is making us fight these battles all over again. Shit.
Elizabelle
@JPL: I hope so too, re ruemara.
Eye problems are painful and distracting.
And she has to be better for Comic Con! Cannot miss a moment.
jl
The prevalence of small business employment is lower in US than those ‘socialist countries’ crummy Eurosclerotic countries.
An International Comparison of Small Business Employment (pdf)
John Schmitt and Nathan Lane
CEPR report
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/small-business-2009-08.pdf
There are some discrepancies between CEPR report and Atlantic article, I think because a higher proportion of people start small business as a survival strategy, and resulting high failure rate in US. (Edit: also habit of US of pushing off what should be government functions, like providing well regulated market for health insurance and medical care onto businesses)
opiejeanne
@WereBear: Wow. that’s the way the fireball of burning flour in Hayward was described. i’m not sure what was on fire after the initial explosion, other than the truck and the pavement.
Luckily, the driver got out and no one was injured.
My Truth Hurts
@Major Major Major Major:
Derpity dopppity doo doo
KG
@Brachiator: that sounds awfully utopian of you… Wanting politicians who can actually engage in critical thinking and deductive reasoning
Tommy
I don’t understand this Sanders dislike. Both Webb and Chafee were card-carrying Republicans. Sanders has always caucused with the Democrats. Doesn’t that count for something?
Major Major Major Major
@My Truth Hurts:
Ah, I see you’ve trained in formal debate. I’m outgunned here, people.
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: And Camille Paglia hasn’t written for them in eons.
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human:
I am. Join the
millions hundreds of thousands tens of thousandsthousands of members of DSA/USA today!(Member since Irving Howe/Michael Harrington DSOC days…)
My Truth Hurts
@Davis X. Machina:
A black liberal like Jackson was never going to be nominated and certainly not in the 1980’s. It was always going to be a moderate/republican lite like Obama.
Also Mr Baby Boomer, newsflash – This is no longer the 1960s or the 1970s or even the 1980’s. The same conditions do not apply.
Bernie Sanders 2016!
Baud
@Tommy:
Who dislikes Sanders? Especially as compared to Webb and Chaffee.
Cacti
@Linnaeus:
I see single payer as a dead letter at best with most voters.
In the case of Sanders, the failure of single payer in Vermont would be tied around his neck like an anchor.
Another Holocene Human
@Major Major Major Major: I’m sure there’s a Swedish Chef translator you can run your bon mots through to keep up!
Major Major Major Major
@Another Holocene Human: Nor Greenwald. And uh was it Bobby Jr. who was the anti-vaxxer they had for a while?
I’m not a huge fan but they’ve made major improvements over the last few years. Adding Reich was good.
My Truth Hurts
@Major Major Major Major:
Oy doy derpity derrrrr
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: Why the fuck would that be, he’s a US Senator, not the state’s legislative leader or the governor.
Yeesh. Try harder.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: That’s a plus.
Elizabelle
@Tommy: Don’t go getting rational on us re Sanders. True, true, and true.
I heart Bernie. Going to see him in person July 9th in Northern VA. Spaces went early.
Cacti
@My Truth Hurts:
Is this DougJ appearing as a caricature of a Sanders supporter, or did you just get lost on your way to Democratic Underground?
Linnaeus
@Cacti:
I certainly don’t see it getting enacted any time soon – and we can certainly talk about other ways to arrive at universal coverage and access. But we have to make some political space for that, and I think that at least providing some vision of where we could go after the ACA is worth doing.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: So … you’re calling people old, but you have a deep understanding of what went wrong with the Rainbow Coalition campaign. Suuuuure, pardner. Sure.
Baud
@Cacti:
“Republican-lite” has become as meaningless as “socialism.”
Tommy
@Baud: A few of the comments here. Given they are the minority but it still stuns me. I could care less his political name. He believes about 95% of what I do. That counts for something in my book.
Major Major Major Major
@Cacti: DougJ is more talented. This guy’s a fun enough punching bag, though.
ETA: DougJ, if that is you, you sir are rusty.
SiubhanDuinne
@PhoenixRising:
I turn 73 a month from today, and reading that about your mom makes me very sad. I wish her only the best, and I hope it is curable or at least manageable. FWIW, my grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when she was about 87, and she lived comfortably for another eight years.
Davis X. Machina
@Cacti: Well, then Sanders has even less chance than Jackson ever had because — and here I am backed by the Internet’s collective wisdom — that the Democratic Party is now in fact far to the right of where it was in the ’80’s, because of Clinton and school uniforms and DADT, and the DLC, and Al Gore’s wife.
Ruckus
@Josie:
That’s a very conservative point of view, if you aren’t in my gang I don’t care how much you want to be.
I’m far more interested in results rather than names. Bernie Sanders has a pretty nice resume for any politician and while I’m a little nervous about his age, I agree with almost all his policies. Actually I should say I’m a bit left of him but that’s not all that important given the field of potential presidents out there.
I’d ask a question, what has the DNC, DNCC, DSC done for you lately? How much of a machine do they actually have? I’ve replied to emails from them asking for money as to where that money would go and never gotten any answer. So it seems to me that he’d get pretty much nothing from the democratic machine, he’s going to have to do this on his own. From my point of view the democratic machine is getting a lot more from him than he’s getting from them.
Baud
@Tommy:
I didn’t notice comments that expressed any personal dislike with Bernie. People are discussing political considerations.
Another Holocene Human
@Linnaeus: Rather than “creating political space” I think there needs to be a better vision for how we go forward from here. A proposal for how to hack the political system to achieve truly universal and affordable healthcare.
I don’t think we even can all agree on what the problem is. Just because corporations administer health insurance or run hospitals or sell drugs … so what. Why are so many people not receiving care?
Diagnose the problem. Assess the landscape. Create a plan of attack.
Those things haven’t happened.
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
Sure.
Your average voter would be measured and circumspect, and amenable to nuanced explanations of why the healthcare system that failed in the home state of its champion shouldn’t be held against the concept in general, or the candidate speaking out for it.
Certainly no GOPer would put on an endless loop ad of “Socialist Bernie Sanders wants you to have the kind of healthcare that even his own state called a failure.”
What country are you talking about again?
KG
@My Truth Hurts: Gore lost because he ran a terrible campaign and allowed the “not a dime’s worth of difference” narrative to take root. If he would have won his home state of Tennessee or Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, or one of six other states that Clunton won in ’96 and/or ’92, Florida would have been a historical footnote
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human:
Were you in a cave from 2008 to 2009? We answered this.
Just blow up the insurance companies. The rest is so simple a bunch of interns could cobble it together.
WaterGirl
@Yatsuno: That sucks. But on the bright side, it’s very treatable! It must have gotten pretty bad for her to go in today instead of trying to wait until her appointment on Monday. Good move, but I’ll bet it costs her an arm and a leg. But better that than an eye!
Edit: ruemara, if you’re out there…
Get yourself a tearjerker movie, and watch it tonight. Last time I had conjunctivitis – decades ago – I ended up crying about something and it made my eye so much better!!!
Cacti
@Linnaeus:
Agreed.
Universal health care should be the goal. Insistence on single payer needlessly narrows the means to the end.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: I hate school uniforms. Giant flag to a predator “THIS ONE’S A MINOR”!! (And no they don’t help poor kids, school makes family buy those, too … better hope whoever donated to the thrift store in July had lots of ugly stuff to clear out!!)
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: So why does Consumer’s Union finger doctors as the number one driver of increased healthcare costs?
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
The two things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are mutually reinforcing. You hash out the vision of how to go forward from here once you’ve decided that you in fact want to do so. Then you diagnose, assess and all that. But you’ll have different diagnoses, assessments. etc, and if you’ve given yourself different paths to go somewhere, you’ll have a better chance of finding an effective one.
WereBear
@KG: And besides, Gore didn’t lose.
He was cheated.
Elizabelle
Did you guys see this Kevin Drum item, re Greek oligarchs who own the media flogging a YES vote on the referendum?
Independent journalist says airtime devoted is running 5:1, advocating for ayes vs. No votes.
I hope the Greeks stand their vote for the existing government and vote NO.
Here’s the LA Times article by Mr. Chu.
Greece news media taking sides in coverage of upcoming vote
Where have we seen this before? And all I see is old people standing in lines and reporting that Tsipras is flipping in the wind. Very Important Papers in this country report that. But wait:
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human:
Everyone I know knows it’s the insurance companies. It has to be. It’s just axiomatic.
Josie
@Ruckus: Much of what the parties do is not obvious. Just putting on primaries costs the state organizations money, and as far as I know, Sanders has not helped with those expenditures or organizing. Each state spends money on getting out the vote, poll watchers, etc. I am a bit to the left of all the candidates, but I still believe in the party apparatus. Nothing would get done without the state organizations. I have seen the work these people do and still think a candidate should come from the party.
Cacti
@KG:
Gore lost for a number of reasons, but most of them stemming from the fact that he was a mediocre candidate.
Candidate Gore was convinced that he needed to run away from an incumbent President with a 65% approval rating. Going even further, he decided to make his VP nominee the guy who scolded the popular President’s penis, just to show how “not Clinton” he was.
If Bill Clinton hadn’t been termed out, he’d have mopped the floor with George W. Bush.
Jparente
@A guy</a@A guy: JEZUS f’n christ buddy, your really have nothing to say. You are not insightful, witty or intelligent. From what I have seen you cannot even put together a coherent, logical argument. You are the reason no one takes anything that conervatives say seriously. If you would lay out your thesis in a logical way and back it up with real references (not rush or fox “news”, you might actually stimulate some real conversation.
Conservative? Serious conversation? I can dream, can’t I?
NotMax
@KG
He was never going to win Tennessee, regardless of it being his home state, after pushing his strong anti-tobacco policy stance.
Had he not become V.P., he very likely would have lost re-election there as senator.
WaterGirl
@JPL: @Baud: ruemara is most definitely female.
KG
@Davis X. Machina: blowing up the insurance companies would be costly. They employ a lot of people and have contracts with many more. Don’t get me wrong, I would vote for Tyler Durden, but you’re asking to put a whole lot of people out of work
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: I listened to Bernie stumping and he didn’t mention universal healthcare once. I care what he actually pummels the podium on, not some stupid purity test. Newsflash, lefties care a HELL of a lot more about that than the right does. All they care about is “moochers and looters” getting to see the doctor just like them. It burns them, it does.
But shine on, you crazy diamond. Maybe Hilary will hire you as a campaign advisor. Sooth-saying like yours is in demand.
Cacti
@KG:
Gore lost for a number of reasons, but most of them stemming from the fact that he was a mediocre candidate.
Candidate Gore was convinced that he needed to run away from an incumbent President with a 65% approval rating. Going even further, he decided to make his VP nominee the guy who scolded the popular President’s male member, just to show how “not Clinton” he was.
If Bill Clinton hadn’t been termed out, he’d have mopped the floor with George W. Bush.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I bet you don’t always get it wrong. Guess my gender. :-)
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: 73! You don’t even look (or sound) 60! And I am talking in real life.
Good to hear about your grandmother hanging in there.
Davis X. Machina
@KG: No revolution without martyrs!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
You make it easy. You are considerate.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Wow, better than Webb. That’s a pretty low bar.
Elizabelle
@KG: And never forget the Palm Beach butterfly ballots.
Had Palm Beach’s vote gone accurately, the hanging chads would not have required reviewing. Palm Beach would have pulled in a few thousand more votes.
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
Sorry for smudging those rose colored glasses, sport.
I’m sure the latest top down revolution of upper middle class white liberals will be a smashing success this time around.
I hear Presidents Dean and Warren are already on board.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
It’s a good thing Major x 4 is already taking Krav Maga, because things are getting weird in SF — a news crew was held up at gunpoint and robbed on their equipment WHILE BROADCASTING:
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/News-crews-robbed-in-S-F-camera-operator-6362833.php
And apparently it’s not the first time it’s happened, either. How do you fence a news camera?
KG
@NotMax: he lost New Hampshire by 1.27%, Missouri by 3.34%, Ohio by 3.51%, Nevada by 3.55%, and Tennessee, 3.86%.
Any one of those was winnable in 1996.
Mike in NC
We took a shortcut down a rural road today to beat the heavy holiday traffic. A bit of a rundown neighborhood of mostly trailer homes. Sure enough, one of the more decrepit ones was flying the Dixie Swastika.
Yatsuno
@Cacti:
Medicare on line two for you. That’s the thing that amuses me: WE ALREADY HAVE SINGLE PAYER. It just covers the disabled or those 65 and over. I have been on Medicare and honestly it’s fucking wonderful, even with the 20% gap.
Davis X. Machina
@Cacti:
In 1988, for about a week, Jesse Jackson led all Democratic candidates in actual delegates.
KG
@Elizabelle: ah, yes, a butterfly flapped its wings in Palm beach county and then the aughts happened.
Fuck, I wish I was joking, and I was nominally a republican back then
Kay
A major theme of Sanders’ campaign and actually his career is capture and corruption by monied interests. He’s a liberal but this is major with him. It’s WHY he believes we don’t get policy that benefits the broader public he thinks we don’t get it because many of our politicians are bought and paid for.
The ability of political media to ignore this and analyze what he’s saying strictly on a L/R scale is amazing to me
He doesn’t want to tax rich people and overturn Citizens because he’s a liberal – he wants to do those things because he thinks wealthy people are buying government. He thinks liberal policy will follow if wealthy people have less power
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Just trying to point out that it’s not a deal breaker. Didn’t mean to imply that Webb was the only candidate I’d prefer Bernie over.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: Lol, I guess I was in a cave 2008-2009. Other than turn up to vote I didn’t lift a finger, and I pretty much stayed away from the Great Orange Satan, too.
I didn’t even read Obama’s website or read his new book, because I had read his old book years ago and didn’t want to disturb my good feels from that. I did follow the race obsessively from the Iowa caucuses on. On election night I walked a couple of miles through neighborhoods across town because I felt the urge to express this restless energy. The world had changed. O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!
What also happened is that I had run for office in my union and found out doing the books was way the fuck harder than I thought it would be so even though I wanted to follow the healthcare thing instead I was fighting with Google’s spreadsheet widget because we didn’t have money for Excel. Ugh.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
We don’t talk about what happened to Great-Uncle Applejack. We just don’t.
WaterGirl
@Yatsuno: I think if you say “single payer” people freak out. If you say “medicare for all”, it’s all good.
srv
The Donald is a better democrat than Bernie
Mike J
@cathyx:
But is he a Democrat? I’m not going to vote for somebody to lead my party unless they’re actually a member. If he thinks the label doesn’t matter, why not adopt the one of the party he wants to lead?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Whew! I’m pretty sure I’d write in an earwig or a slug before I’d vote for Webb.
God help me if the choice would ever be between Webb and a republican.
jl
Social Democratic Sweden partially privatized its social security system, main difference between that and privatization disaster in UK and US style proposals in US, is that Swedish reform was not designed to be, essentially, theft and swindle of the workers.
Economic Scene; Some lessons from Sweden on the pros and cons of privatizing Social Security
Alan Krueger
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/business/economic-scene-some-lessons-sweden-pros-cons-privatizing-social-security.html
I think Swedish partial privatizations are almost never discussed in US media for two reasons. One, there are significant costs that go along with the benefits, and the most significant cost is increased pension income risk to wokers. Workers might be OK with that in Sweden, while workers in US have had enough of more risk being pushed onto them, while their Masters of the Universe Betters bear less. Two, honest discussion of the reforms reveal plainly that proposals in US are scams. But still, Cato and AEI do put out confusing BS analysis, but I don’t think anyone bothers to read them.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That would be sad. But Webb ain’t happening, so no worries.
NotMax
@KG
Will disagree only on Tennessee. Anti-tobacco (and a small but incontestable drop in support from having an Orthodox Jew on the ticket) took that state out of the possible win column long before the election.
Keith G
@Cacti:
The Affordable Care Act process as it is now and as it will be modified (slightly, eventually), is darned good compared to what had been. It seems to me that it’s best utility might be limited to the current economic space we are now occupying. It remains to be seen how all of its complicated parts can be scaled to meet the needs of the ever-increasing ranks of non full time and sporadic labor while putting sufficient downward pressure on costs.
“Medicare for all” may end up being needed more than it is wanted, but that will be secondary once the need becomes acute enough. I wouldn’t rule out single payer as the hobby horse that is ridden off into the sun set.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Breathe easy because that won’t be the choice. The worst thing that could happen is that Webb could run as an independent and take votes away from republicans in the South.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Speaking of sad, you didn’t seem your usual chipper self yesterday. Hopefully today is better!
Brachiator
@Linnaeus:
Hmm. Perhaps the example of the Depression and FDR contradicts you here.
How much of New Deal programs were new and innovative ideas which had not been tried before or had been put together in a different way, and which were needed to get the economy rolling again? And here let’s also include the World War II period. FDR was damned lucky to get Labor Secretary Frances Perkins to help implement various programs.
Let’s add to this pushing employers to provide health insurance and federal withholding of income taxes.
I read people saying “we need to have infrastructure spending, like we used to do during the Depression.” But construction requires far fewer bodies than in the past, and back then, there were more attempts just to get men to work, assuming that the average woman was a homemaker. But the population is larger and there are more women in the workplace. We also have more states actively resisting federal spending programs.
These aren’t the old days. Old solutions will not work.
I had hoped that Obama would bring more new and younger people into his Administration instead of recycling old Clinton hands. And I hoped that he would find his Frances Perkins. But this didn’t happen and Obama depended too much on Treasury in shaping his economic policy.
On the other hand, I like Bernie Sanders, but when I see people swooning over his bland rehash of old New Deal ideas, I just want to throw up my hands and despair.
Cacti
@Davis X. Machina:
Jesse Jackson actually won 7 primaries and 4 caucuses in 1988. If Bernie matched that, I’d be fairly impressed.
WaterGirl
@JPL: I wouldn’t be surprised if Webb even ran as a republican if he thought it would help him.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Had to work some today. But I had a nice nap earlier, so that’s good.
KG
@NotMax: well, I wouldn’t disagree that choosing Liberman was part of his poor campaign running. A social conservative from a safe blue state wasn’t going to help anything
Cacti
@WaterGirl:
My prediction is that Webb will follow the Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman route, and speak at the GOP convention.
But in his case, it would just be the wheel coming full circle.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Naps are highly underrated.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Not by me!
Davis X. Machina
@Cacti: I’d be impressed too — but I wouldn’t be sending a resume into his transition team.
WaterGirl
@Cacti: Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Hope your pups snuggled with you. That always makes a nap better, in my opinion.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
They completely did. Good energy all around.
Davis X. Machina
@KG:CT was a safe blue state — but Florida was not a safe blue state.
And that’s why Lieberman was on the ballot.
Gore’s people knew the bubbie and zaydie vote in the coastal southern Florida counties could swing the state — and it worked. (Also, the Lieberman pick generated Gore’s only good week of press coverage….)
Emma
@My Truth Hurts: If you were an expert you wouldn’t be spending your day commenting in a blog.
jl
@Brachiator:
” his bland rehash of old New Deal ideas ”
Other than Sanders’ proposals for a massive infrastructure spending program, what are these bland rehashes? I don’t see it. Could you name a few?
And infrastructure spending seems to me is a proposal that puts Sanders in mainstream of Democrats.
dmbeaster
@Another Holocene Human: Emotional distress equates to some degree of immunosuppression, and our immune system dispatches many if not most cancerous conditions before it can develop to the point it becomes noticeable. I had angiosarcoma which one doctor called low grade but which another indicated had been suppressed by my immune system, saying there is no such thing as low grade. My sister had metastasized melanoma and dedicated herself to health, nutrition and a positive attitude and is alive 18 years later. The likelihood of surving that long with that condition is very low.
Nutrition and generak health also contribute to supporting the immune system.
Corner Stone
@Davis X. Machina:
Lieberman was picked as a moral scold and the refudiation of Bill Clinton he exemplified.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
I’d say it’s mixed. Regulation, social insurance, etc. weren’t really all that new as ideas – they’d been pushed for and implemented elsewhere (sometimes successfully, sometimes not).
To be sure, I’m not saying that there’s never any cause for new solutions to fit the times. I just think that needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
ETA: It should be noted also that the rhetoric of new and innovative can also be employed for reactionary purposes – witness conservative attacks on liberal programs as “old, tired” ideas. But what the right has in mind is going back to an older, more unequal, social order.
Again, I’m not saying that we have to replay the 1930s. But not everything from the past has to be thrown out, either.
Karen in GA
@PhoenixRising: Well, that’s quite a roller coaster you’re on. I’m glad you’re doing well, and I hope your mom has many good years ahead of her.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator:
This is an odd description.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That makes me happy.
Kay
They did the same thing with Teachout in NY.
To do it they had to ignore fully half of what she was saying. She doesn’t think Cuomo is too far Right because he’s a principled conservative. She thinks he does what he does because he’s captured. She said it over and over and Sanders does too.
They don’t object money in politics because they’re purist liberals. They object because they think it skews policy
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
The New Deal was fine for its time. And back then much of it was actually, you, know, New. Now it would be the Old Deal rehashed.
@KG:
Odd. Some of our best politicians have actually done this. Even in the modern era, FDR, Ike, Bill Clinton, Obama, were more interested in getting shit done than in practicing philosophy. Even Nixon had a pragmatic (and sometimes surprisingly liberal) edge to his thinking and actions.
What kind of politicians do you prefer?
NotMax
@Linnaeus
There’s a wonderful old saying:
Everything old is not necessarily good; everything new is not necessarily better.
jl
@Linnaeus: The New Deal policies were very pragmatic. FDR’s principle approach was to keep trying things until something worked. His administration might have actually been saved by the SCOTUS ruling that the first New Deal was unconstitutional, since that was based on macroeconomic theories that said depressions were caused by a glut of supply rather than a deficiency of demand, which lead to ridiculous and immoral programs like destroying harvested crops when millions were hungry.
And after wandering into effective demand stimulus policies, FDR lost his nerve and cut them back, triggering the recession of 1937. WWII was the ultimate big time demand stimulus policy, with a lot of the demand suppressed until after war was over.
Anyway, there was not real modern Keynesian macroeconomic theory as a guide back then. Keynes, Hicks, Fisher were putting it together in real time.
Not sure slogans like ‘new times call for new solutions’ are helpful. If you comb through economic history, including ‘American System’, English development of central banking and early welfare state, a lot of things that sound new really aren’t. Internet and ‘puters can make implementation much more efficient and rules much more detailed, but many seemingly new innovative ideas, have at least in principle, or in crude form, have roots from recent or long ago history.
jl
@Linnaeus:
” It should be noted also that the rhetoric of new and innovative can also be employed for reactionary purposes ”
Forgot to say I totally agree with that. Newt and Ryan should have applied for a political business process patent on that approach.
KG
@Brachiator: i was being facecitous… And may or may not have been into my third pint when I said that
Brachiator
@jl:
Here, I am not separating Sanders from the Democrats. I have long maintained here that the Democrats don’t seem to have any coherent ideas with respect to the economy, and are content to settle for expanding current tax credits and deductions. They end up ceding ground to the Republicans, who have ideas, even though they are all bad. And the Dems can’t even juggle current credits and deductions creatively.
Right now, I don’t see Sanders as an improvement over any other Democrat. However, I see all Democrats as preferable to the GOP who, as I say, only have bad ideas on offer.
Also, I should note that I look forward to seeing Sanders explain himself more as he takes a national stage.
@Linnaeus:
Fair enough. And you’re right about the bad faith of the GOP in attacking Dems.
Brachiator
@KG:
Ha! No problem. Have a pint for me and enjoy the holiday.
@jl:
Fair enough. Let’s get some policymakers who will look into that grab bag of history and see what else they can pull out. Most of what is on offer right now is tired and overplayed.
Another Holocene Human
@dmbeaster: Good for your sister! My grannie had melanoma. They did surgery and she had many good years but in the end, it got her. I miss her all the time.
My Truth Hurts
@Emma:
Oooohhh Looks like I struck a nerve and ruffled some comfortable middle class feathers with the geriatric crowd.
Listen folks – it’s past 9pm already on the east coast. Slam down some prune juice, store your dentures, swallow a metamucil and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll still be here tomorrow supporting a real progressive candidate and you can come back to lecture me about shit that happened 25 years ago that doesn’t affect anything anymore but that you still think is sooo important for us younger, less educated, less politically savvy folks to consider. Good luck backing your Republican just because she has a vagina. That is definitely the most important issue when choosing a presidential candidate. Who cares about issues that matter, it’s all about gender politics and the horse race!
Baud
@My Truth Hurts:
You represent Bernie Sanders well.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Did FDR lose his nerve or did the big money men have a lot to do with it? Don’t forget he had a more hostile congress by then and that the money supply was squeezed right when those programs were cut, triggering the “recession within the Depression”.
My Truth Hurts
I love John’s posts and viewpoints and those of some of the other writers here but the comment sections are nothing but a baby boomer neo liberal circle jerk. Some of you have your heads so far up your arrogant asses you must look like a human ouroboros. Good luck with all that, I mean the last 40 years have worked out so great with that strategy. Nothing like rolling over for conservatives and never standing up for what’s right!
Keith G
I like Bernie. I am not at all certain that he should be a president.
Who is Bernie? But as important, since the president’s team do most of the day to day work in running this country…who is Bernie’s team?
Who is he connected to? Who are his whisperers who will help him run the most complex human organization that the world has known? Obama was a bit of a cipher, but I knew who his mentors were and his team was populated with Democratic establishment types.
My Truth Hurts
@Baud: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts:
There is nothing to add to this.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
Gosh, I can’t imagine why Salon keeps banning you. I mean, other than the fact that they get tired of you abusing the other commenters. Nope, it must be because they’re afraid of your politics and not because you’re a raging asshole.
My Truth Hurts
@efgoldman:
Oh you poor old babies, is the anonymous commenter being mean and hurting you wittle fee fees?
You and your kind are why the Democrats lose and lose and lose. Grow a pair.
My Truth Hurts
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
You should call your Mommy. Maybe she will give you a hug and make it feel better.
Baud
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
It’ll get worse as we get closer to the election. Warm up your pie filters if you need them.
Kropadope
@My Truth Hurts:
I don’t like Hillary Clinton, but Goddamn, could you be more of an asshole? You literally checked every box on the asshole scorecard.
My Truth Hurts
@efgoldman:
Great, so you are old and outdated and in the way. Step aside now please and let’s win some elections.
My Truth Hurts
@Kropadope:
I can actually, you ain’t see nothing yet. Better clutch your pearls a little harder, maybe then I will go away.
Kropadope
@My Truth Hurts:
I find that tone has a lot to do with winning support in an election.
ETA: For instance, not insulting every person you encounter.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: So, Millennial dumbass, it turns out, funny story, that white Millennials are only infinitesimally less racist than Boomers and Gen X.
Presumably they’re also infinitesimally less sexist because you thought it was smart to go on a liberal blog and rhetorically reduce Hilary Clinton to a vagina.
Did you come here because your peers were kicking your ass on twitter? Did you get laughed off of tumblr?
Aren’t 4-chan related back chat channels more your speed? All the true brogressives hang out there. Where you can call people f*gs and c*nts at will and without fear of banination or shunning.
My Truth Hurts
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
So you would shut me up because I offend you? What a good little fascist you are. Way to live up to your principals, “liberal”.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: Damn, another gendered insult! So it’s true! You did get run off of twitter and tumblr by your age-mates!
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
So, boomer dumbass, I am 42. Now what?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
My mother died of cancer when I was seven. But, hey, why let that stop you from being an asshole. I bet she deserved to die because she wasn’t sufficiently pure, right?
What exactly makes you any different than A Guy who was posting above? Asshole leftists and asshole rightists always makes excuses about their truth being SO important that they have to be assholes to get through to people, but it’s really just because you like being an asshole. You’d be an asshole regardless of the topic, it’s just that politics give you a handy excuse to be self-righteous.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human:
Forgive me, but I’m not seeing the genderedness.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: Did she call on the government to shut you up? No? Then not an authoritarian. (That’s the term your ignorant azz meant when you said fascist.) You are dumb. You lose. Don’t HAND.
mainmata
@Another Holocene Human: I was a member of DESOC (Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee) that later became the DSA, of which Bernie actually is a member. I assume that he has to go by Independent because the Senate doesn’t recognize third parties. Anyway, Democratic Socialists are not the same as old time Socialists and Socialists weren’t the same as Communists. Of course, all this is distinction without a difference to today’s GOP who would regard Ike as a radical leftist.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: Pearl-clutching isn’t gendered?
Even if it’s said of a man, the implication is that he is effeminate.
It’s gendered.
ETA: I’m not saying you can’t use the insult, but I am saying when someone uses several gendered insults in a row, that might say something about them.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack: I first saw Godzilla and Mothta and Dracula at church when I was about 10. That summer there was a potluck every Saturday night and when the sun started to go down the adults would interrupt our massive game of hide and seek on the church and parsonage grounds, corral us in the SS nursery while they had a meeting, and one of the dads brought a TV every week. That summer it was monster and horror movies every Saturday evening. I can’t imagine most churches allowing that these days.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Sweet of you to say that. Some days are younger than others :-)
Watch your email; I’ll be writing in the next day or so with updates on my travel plans. Very much hoping we can have a NoVa meetup around the 14-15 July; I’m still fairly loose as long as I can be in Boston by Friday 17 July.
Shana, Valdivia, Steeplejack, and anyone else in the area would just be value-added.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
Let’s be clear: I would not shut you up because of your political views. I would shut you up because you’re an asshole who has nothing constructive to say.
Abusers always have an excuse for their behavior and a whiny “poor me” story about how their problems are all someone else’s fault.
Another Holocene Human
@My Truth Hurts: You’re extremely immature and proof that some people have skulls so thick that life experience cannot penetrate?
Congratulations on being the balding guy at the radical socialist league meetings.
Joel
Jesus Christ folks, getting trolled by someone who is not even good at it.
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
The only ones who are reducing HRC to a vagina are people like you who will vote for her just because she is a woman. Personally I vote for a candidate in the primaries who are closest to representing my views. The only one less representative of my views than Hilary is Jim Fucking Webb. If anything I am more of a feminist than you because I am rejecting her not based on her gender but on her character policy views.
If I lived in a red state that was going to go for Trump in 2016 I’d vote for Hilary. Hopefully I will have Sanders to vote for. If not there’s always other parties on the ballot.
Another Holocene Human
Better trolls, please.
Kropadope
@opiejeanne:
Oh, good!!! Given your familiarity with monster films, I have a question. Is it OK to feed the trolls before midnight?
Baud
@Joel: If people are here tonight, they are probably bored.
Another Holocene Human
@Joel: I’m sorry, I was avoiding doing actual work. Please forgive me.
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
I understand what the 1st amendment protects me from. That does not mean I can’t support it fully and want free speech to be absolute. You appear only capable of supporting it when it suits you and your agenda. Who’s dumb again?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Baud:
Pretty much. I’m waiting for production of some items to finish in my SimCity. May watch some monster movies later.
Kropadope
@efgoldman:
Because neither is creative enough to create a convincing opposite-side-of-the-spectrum personality?
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
You either believe speech is free and are capable of ignoring what offends you or you are a fascist control freak telling others to shut up. Have I once told anyone to shut up? No, because your offensive and stupid viewpoints have a right to be expressed and I support that 100%.
Try again.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@efgoldman:
I sometimes wonder if there’s some kind of Asshole Hivemind or a class they all take, because they all seem to read from the same playbook, even if they don’t know each other.
Keith G
@My Truth Hurts:
What you talkin ’bout, Willis?
40 years…So Mondale and his supporters were rolling over? Dukakis, a conservative stooge?
Harkin, Brown, and Gebhart were among the liberal leaders of the Democratic Party who tested their ideas on the national political market place by running for president in the 90s. I liked them all and they never got enough traction
Just what the hell point are you trying to make? Once you figure that out, supply the facts that buttress it. Right now, you are not doing so hot, more like a Speak and Spell on meth.
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
No it is not gendered. I have no idea what your gender is. I just know you are scared of your own shadow. It’s a figure of speech that describes you and what you are doing. You can try to argue that I am attacking gender or calling a man a woman, but you would be wrong. I am calling an easily offended twit an easily offended twit. Twit.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
Yes, yes, none of us are the boss of you and can tell you what to do. If we give you a juice box and a cookie, will you go take your nap? Because somebody is cranky.
My Truth Hurts
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
It may be your opinion that I am an asshole but I have legitimate and real political views and opinions. You want to shut that up. Because you are a control freak with fascist tendencies.
Threatening me is so liberal and open minded of you by the way. Way to go!
Baud
@Mnemosyne (tablet): It would be kind of neat to take a class on trolling.
My Truth Hurts
@Another Holocene Human:
Sorry bub, got a full head of hair and only a few are grey. Try again.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
Yes, offering you a cookie and a juice box before naptime is a TERRIFYING threat. I’m surprised you’re not on the phone to the FBI right now. What other horrors do I have in store for you, Duck Duck Goose? Musical Chairs? The horrifying threats just continue!
My Truth Hurts
@Keith G:
The point is Democrats lose because they run to the right and have sold out the middle class, unions, all working people and their families. They sent jobs and manufacturing over seas and pumped up the drug war and foreign intervention. Hilary is more of that. Sanders is not. I think you are the one who needs to figure some things out.
My Truth Hurts
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
“Let’s be clear: I would not shut you up because of your political views. I would shut you up because you’re an asshole who has nothing constructive to say.
Abusers always have an excuse for their behavior and a whiny “poor me” story about how their problems are all someone else’s fault. ”
Let’s discuss this statement, break it down, and figure out together how it was or was not a veiled way of saying you want to physically kick my ass for expressing my opinions in the comments of a blog.
NotMax
@My Truth Hurts
Just a friendly reminder that your day to feed and groom the unicorns is Tuesday.
;)
Kropadope
@My Truth Hurts:
I didn’t really see anyone suggesting that you be banned, simply empathizing with the POV of people you yourself say have banned you. No one here is trying to censor unwanted opinions. Regardless of that, the first amendment doesn’t apply to someone’s website. If moderators here think you are disruptive, banning you is their prerogative, so perhaps try to have a real conversation instead of being a word-salad insult-generating machine.
Also, one could argue that trolling the way you are is a form of censorship. You drown out a conversation with a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with it and make it difficult for the other people here to engage one another.
I tell you this in the hope of helping you. You feel a certain way, make your case. Don’t condemn the entire commentariat of the website and act surprised when people act like they’d prefer that you weren’t here.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@My Truth Hurts:
Sure, let’s do that. How is pointing out that you’re an abusive asshole a physical threat in any way, shape, or form?
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes. Let’s make that happen.
I’ll be around that week.
And maybe National Harbor, and see if elmo and beloved spouse can join us? Very close to Old Town. Only across the Potomac.
And we have the $25 trivia gift cert from Murphy’s to drink up.
Life is full of possibilities.
My Truth Hurts
@NotMax:
This is why your party loses. You are all so sure that your way of the last 40 years is the right way and yet you lose and lose and lose. I am an aggressive asshole because you are all too complacent and too willing to roll over for the sake of political expediency. I understand life and politics are compromise, I am not a purity troll, but Democrats compromise before they even get to the table and have forgotten how to be Democrats and all of you old and wise baby boomers let them do it.
You people are not mad at me, you are mad at yourselves.
My Truth Hurts
@Kropadope:
Lighten up, Francis. You and all the other scolds need to take a chill. Work on your anger and control issues.
My Truth Hurts
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
How are written words “abuse” and not just, you know, written words you can ignore to read or comment on? Last I checked “abuse” was actual physical or psychological harm inflicted on another person. Not sure how my comments rise to that standard unless you are such a weak minded person that I have now emotionally scarred you.
Let me ask you, seriously, are you new to the internet?
Kropadope
@My Truth Hurts: Again, I’m not trying to control you. I’m just trying to make you more aware of what your incentives are and how you might better draw someone to your point of view. I’m not a king of diplomacy, but I know disparaging literally everyone is not a very helpful approach.
Let the Republicans be idiot assholes, I prefer my allies to be inviting.
ETA: Francis?
PurpleGirl
@MattF: Oh wow. That looks great. I love jigsaw puzzles. I want, I must have, I’m going to order one.
Steeplejack
@Kropadope:
“Lighten up, Francis” is a thing (0:41).
Keith G
@My Truth Hurts: I wish it were as simple as you state. If it were, I and so many other would be celebrating – and Nixon would have been the last Republican elected to the presidency.
The middle class, unions, all working people in the US sold themselves out by being so significantly populated by selfish, racist imbeciles who so easily fell for the hate and fear peddled by the GOP.
Read the political philosopher Pogo for a better explanation
I will give you this as a major fuck up in leadership. But again, a less racist society would not have so willingly voted for leaders selling this shit.
Those jobs were going over seas no matter what…unless you wish to pay more for your goodies. Are you?
The question is…Not how do we keep the jobs, but since the jobs are going, how are we going to restructure American capitalism to fit into this new global market reality. How are we going to account for a post industrial labor force where working for a living means something completely different that it did even 15 years ago?
See…even you are stuck in an out of date mindset
NotMax
@My Truth Hurts
My party?
Quite the glib and unsupported assumption there, bud.
What you don’t know about my party affiliation (or any lack thereof) would fill the holds of the Exxon Valdez.
Kropadope
@Steeplejack: Huh, interesting. Movie was a little before my time, but given the clip, I don’t see how it applies here. If anything, MyTruthHurts is the Francis that needs to lighten up here.
PurpleGirl
@Tommy: Have you heard of Teavana; it’s store that only sells tea and implements for making it. Ain’t cheap at all. But I tried a special comination of two teas for iced tea and bought some to make at home. They also have a web site.
MY TROOF ACHES™©®
@A guy: THATS TELLIN EM AGUY IF ANYONE ASKS HOW U HAVE SO MUCH TIME TO COMMENT WHILE BEING AN ENTRAPMANURE TELL EM U ARE TYPING WITH ONE HAND WHILE PRODUCIN VALU WITH THE OTHER THATLL SHOW EM SKOAL BROTHER!
Steeplejack
@Kropadope:
The phrase “Lighten up, Francis” has become a general blog trope identical to “Lighten up” but is considered by some to be better because it references something.
Keith G
@My Truth Hurts:
How do you account for the fact that so many constituencies in this nation are so willing to punish truth-telling, stout-hearted Democrats when those candidates stand up for lefty ideals?
One of the reasons that liberal champions are not standing up for a fight is that they already have been voted out of office when they start to fight.
The good news is that a political re-alignment is in progress. It looks like liberal political voices are increasing able in some parts of the US to get and stay elected, but the slog ain’t over. In many constituencies, your dream candidate still has no chance of holding an office.
This applies to any wish that Bernie Sander would have of holding national office. I say that without any pleasure.
rikyrah
@PhoenixRising:
Sorry about your mother.
rikyrah
@Tommy:
It should count, Tommy, even if I am not a Bernie fan.
Origuy
This needs to be said again; thanks to the invaluable Tbogg:
Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.
You don’t live there.
jl
@Another Holocene Human: Good point. Hard to say, since FDR himself talked like he was worried if deficit spending, and why did he do that? Did he really believe it? Or was he triangulating between public opinion that usually sees deficit spending like a household budget and BS spewed by moneyed interests (horrors! clearly the Clintons got in a time machine.
My opinion is that ideas have consequences, and I think it is only clear now after several tragic economic macroeconomic experiments performed on ordinary people all around the world that we can say with a lot of confidence that Keynesian macro works in the sense that it can be used to predict the effects of interventions, where other approaches, orthodox and heterodox do not. Minsky is useful, but not developed enough to be used to make a predictive theory, more a conceptual approach to building models than a theory.
Remember that current communists like Stiglitz and Krugman used to be slightly left of center Washington Consensus types. And Krugman’s last bought of Washington Consensus deficit/debt panic occurred early in Bush II term after income tax cuts that would not pay for themselves. Krugman now claims that episode was him mistakenly going ‘from the gut’ off of what he thought neoclassical-Keynesian synthesis macro models should say, rather than writing one down and plugging in that periods data to sew what it really did say. So, we know more than we did then, and intellectual habits are hard to break.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
LOL! Pot, meet kettle.
The kind of aggressively stupid lying Mnemosyne specializes in strongly suggests she’s another paid astroturfer working for the far right lunatic fringe. Your military-corporate handlers should have told you, Mnemosyne, that you need to remain likeable before you can implement the classic 4Ds of astrurfing online disinformation: “DENY, DISRUPT, DEGRADE, DECEIVE.”
@Keith G:
What the neoliberal (AKA Republican lite) doofuses like you fail to recognize is that you don’t change a political party by winning elections. You change a political party by forcing the party to change. Barry Goldwater didn’t win the ’64 election but he won big by forcing the Republican party to the far right.
People like me and the commenter My Truth Hurts are angling on the Goldwater strategy — forcing the Democratic party to the left, and if it requires doing, purging the Republican lite thugs who have been dragging liberals down the Clintonian triangulation bullshit Trail of Tears for the last 25 years. That’s the path of self-destruction, because if the voters want right wing lunatics, they’ve got plenty of the real variety to choose from, not right-wing lite stand-ins like Hillary “I never saw an unwinnable foreign war I didn’t like” Clinton.
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: Matt F: I just ordered a copy of the puzzle. It really looks beautiful. It will be good addition to my small collection of puzzles. Thank you for pointing it out, I would never have had any idea that it existed.
My Truth Hurts
@mclaren:
Yeah, pretty much.
I don’t like the Democratic Party. I grew up in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, so I know better. But they are my only realistic option. Sanders is my only realistic candidate. He kind of sucks on foreign policy but he’s great on everything domestic.
Times have changed, folks, the issues have changed. History has been forgotten by a new wave of voters. Adapt and improve or fail and die. Republicans win because they stand for something. What they stand for is insane but they are resolved to fight for it. What do Democrats stand for? What do they fight for?
Politics is a blood sport. Voters want people who are passionate. Look at the Republican Party, look at Fox News, listen to talk radio and tell me that’s wrong. Tell me voters don’t want that. Stop telling me what YOU want, stop telling me what YOU don’t want to hear, stop telling me how offensive I am and start telling me how we win.
Gravenstone
Sweet Jesus, but Troll-B-Gone is really getting a work out tonight. You can almost smell the algorithm smoking from the strain.
Ruckus
I go away for a couple of hours and there’s a troll invasion.
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
Juice box and a cookie. That’s about right, 3 maybe 4 yrs old and throwing a tantrum. Mom must have locked the basement door.
El Caganer
I guess it’s time for us olds, with our tired old solutions, to get shipped to the glue factory. The idealistic youngs, with their passion and new ideas, are ready to move ahead and build a new world. Kind of like this:
https://youtu.be/29Mg6Gfh9Co
mclaren
@My Truth Hurts:
I really love the learned-helplessness contingent on this forum who keep yodeling that voting for Bernie Sanders is “unrealistic” and “the big names in the Democratic party have all lined up behind Hillary” and “Bernie has no chance of being elected,” and every other possible excuse for doing nothing and curling up in the corner whimpering. Because that’s always so much easier than getting out on the streets and knocking on doors and talking to prospective voters. Which I have done for Obama. And will do for Sanders if he’s the nominee.
So now it turns out in New Hampshire, Sanders is down only 10 points: 41 for Hillary v. 31 points for Sanders. Now isn’t that interesting… The hopeless impossible foolish dead-end candidate keeps moving up in the polls. But that’s not possible because SHUT UP, that’s why. Pay no attention to the polls, Democrats! Your learned-helplessness nihilism contingent has spoken, and You Must Despair.
Oh, but wait–here comes another poll: among voters who identify themselves as “liberals,” Hillary and Sanders are running neck-and-neck: 39% to 39%.
Gee, whatever could have happened? Why hasn’t the constant lecturing in tones of punitive despair taken hold? Why do these foolish stupid liberals refuse to give up hope? I dunno, maybe because they look around and see that American politics in 2015 isn’t a contest between ‘realistic’ and ‘unrealistic’ candidates, but a clash between crazy candidates who propose to continue the failed and futile endless-unwinnable-foreign-wars and keep-slashing-the-social-safety-net and limitless-power-for-giant-soulless-corporations policies that have failed America so catastrophically over the last 40 years, and basic sanity.
And it’s really fucking hard to convince people to abandon basic sanity.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
You have to wonder how well this will go down in New Hampshire with the 31% of registered voters who are in favor of Bernie Sanders.
Telling the electorate that they need to grow up and stop being little babies and let the corporations have unlimited power and cheer the pols like Hillary as they embark on more endless unwinnable foreign wars may not represent the best campaign strategy.
But then, what do I know? When I say things like “The president of the United States has to obey the constitution,” and “corporations aren’t people,” I’m just being a big baby.
Ask your corporate-military handlers for better talking points, Mnemosyne. Ridiculing the electorate for being stupid ungrateful infants is really seriously not a winning plan for Election 2016.
Applejinx
Socialism: that one weird trick Washington HATES!
:D
I think people really underestimate the prospects of someone like Sanders. Hell, Romney already lost against a black guy named Hussein by trying to double down on rightwing American capitalism. Show me a righty who legitimately is pushing a economically populist message and then I’ll consider triangulating and the use of a machine candidate like Clinton. They’re looking at guys like Jeb Bush and Donald Trump, and taking special pains to piss off growing demographics.
Won’t matter who the Dem is so long as they can work the Clinton trick of ‘it’s the economy stupid’ and it doesn’t take economic rocket science to keep making moderate improvements when elsewhere in the world people are still going full austerity retard. It will be somewhat more difficult to kick off boom times in the USA but not impossible: just requires a rebirth of the middle classes and throwing a big yoke on the hyper-wealthy.
I’m told by a music industry friend (don’t know how he learned this) that financial assets of the Cayman Islands are actually located in New York City. Sort of like ships sailing out of Liberia. Go figure. There are many ‘shelters’ of the hyper-rich that are nothing more than polite fictions. They wouldn’t be so hostile if they weren’t very vulnerable. And you don’t have to rip that big a chunk off them to fix everything: look at historical demographics, tax rates etc.
I see no reason we can’t use Bernie Sanders to take advantage of these trends. He’s winning because he means what he says and is able to translate it into human terms. Back in the day, one human moment of Reagan going ‘there you go again!’ bore huge consequences because people wanted to believe in that optimism. These days, people want to believe in the hyper-rich being corrupt, decadent, and morally worthless as they wreck society and laugh. Since they ARE DOING THAT with more and more efficiency (hi Uber!) it’s a very easy sell, and it’s very easy to justify a socialist tack compared to how things are. Almost anything is a socialist tack compared to how things are.
Again: Socialism, this one weird trick governments HATE! It will be easy to see the ‘governments/incumbents hate’ part. The whole ‘throw the bastards out’ contingent, left and right, could align behind Bernie.
Hell, he isn’t even a good treehugger on the subject of guns. He’s all economy all the time (not right for all times but for right now I’m gonna say yeah). He is like a wet dream of potential teabagger crossover. I could easily see a teabagger anti-RINO crossover: to some people ‘he’s not really a faithful DemocRAT’ is not a fault.
chopper
and now he hands the baton over to mclaren! the ‘1200 meter asshole purity thread disruptor relay’ is really getting good!
LAC
@My Truth Hurts: I have always found Joan Walsh to be annoying. Her head tilt of fake concern when she would be on MSNBC would pretty much lead to a change of station. Not that MSNBC is getting much of my viewing time.
Good lord… You had to bring in mcclaren. A sleep deprived five year old makes more sense.
Cervantes
@chopper:
Speak and let speak.
On a cool day here in the Berkshires, a happy 4th to all.
Sondra
@dmbeaster:
I agree. I’m cheering him on because the party needs a shove to the left of center and has needed it for years.
As per a previous commenter, and without reading the whole article, that’s an odd way to put it…and comparing our moderate Liberal Left to Trump’s rightwing crazy is what those fools always do to tar us with the same brush and make Liberal out to be a dirty word again.
She’ll be on the bus soon enough, because Liberals are making a comeback.
White Trash Liberal
I love how the trolls are beating us up as if we are a collective uniform DLC stooge contingent.
Yeah, take that Harold Ford, Jr.!! Pow, right in the kisser!
I plan on voting for and supporting Sanders. Should Clinton get the nom, I will support and vote for her. Through all that, I will still have my bookshelf with Zinn, Chomsky, Foucalt, Wolf, Goldman, Alinsky, Bakunin, etc. I have yet to find an ideology without its glaring blind spots, nor is there a philosopher with whom I share absolute sympathy.
So much of politics is theatre, whereby we the audience watch the show, but only so many understand the composition and mechanics of the show itself. The purity trolls, especially McLaren, areobsessed with the performances, and think as the show’s number one fan, everyone else should agree with them, and if you don’t then you are horribly tragically evilly wrong.
The fact is the vast majority of commenters here form a well educated left wing bloc that try to move the country towards liberalism. We are not punching bags to be hated upon by those who insist they are the better liberals. It’s pretty fucking rude, ignorant and unhelpful to invest your leftist energy hating your peers. Disagreements are almost purely tactics and strategy, not beliefs or sincerity.
Yeah, I think Nader, Greenwald, Sorota and other figures in the liberal/progressive landscape are cranks. The left is discovering the same outrage merchandising that has transformed the right into a monster. I think McLaren huffs the merchandise from a polyethylene bag then comes here to feel the rush.
Kropadope
Damn, this got ugly. I like Bernie. I wish Hillary supporters like MyTruthHurts and mclaren weren’t trying to embarrass him in public.
Plantsmantx
He shamed her into doing that?
Here’s the video.
Cervantes
@White Trash Liberal:
Compliments on your bookshelf.