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So… what nostalgia-tinted holiday delights are on the agenda for the evening, or the weekend?
Anne Laurie has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2009.
“The Myth of the Middle”
Via Greg Sargent, Mark Schmitt at Democracy Journal intelligently eviscerates the threadbare whinging of “centrists” in general, and the Fonzi of Freedom’s new book in particular:
The last three years have brought the dysfunction of the political system into sharp relief, and, not surprisingly, the fantasy third parties and independent candidates-to-be-named-later have sprouted like mushrooms after a rainstorm. There’s No Labels, an organization that promises to recast American politics without partisanship. There’s Americans Elect, which seeks to secure a ballot line in as many states as possible and then use the Internet to nominate a presidential candidate to occupy it. The books have just started to appear, with The Declaration of Independents by the libertarians Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie the first of them. But just as in previous years, actual candidates willing to play the role of savior are scarce on the ground…
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The refreshing thing about this year’s first entry in the category of books promising political independence is that it breaks the first of the rules: Its authors, both of Reason magazine (Gillespie edited it from 2000-2008; Welch is the current editor), are not successful lobbyists or political consultants. Welch and Gillespie “declare independence not just within politics, but from the politics.” Unlike the careerists of Americans Elect, they don’t much like politics, and it shows. Their purpose is to make politics small enough that we don’t have to give much thought to it, and can return to “the pursuit of happiness” through loose, decentralized activity, which is their real topic. Early on in their book, for example, we’re treated to a well-executed ten pages about the Velvet Underground and its influence on Czech dissidents in the 1980s—a fascinating subject, but one only tangentially related to American politics in 2011. (A later digression about the characters in a 1988 video game called Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf is hilariously even less relevant.)…
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Libertarians do have what Americans Elect can only dream of—a ballot line. The Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket generally appears on the ballots of 45 to 50 states. But Welch and Gillespie mention the party only twice, in passing, with no explanation of why they don’t see it as a vehicle for their independence. While the book promises an optimistic alternative vision of politics, in form it adopts the conventional argument for the mystical independent or third-party candidate. That starts with the Friedmanesque litany of “Amazon, iPod, drugstore.com,” but Welch and Gillespie extend that riff into the bulk of the book, with only minimal effort to connect it to politics. These chapters are mostly interesting case studies in various businesses or individuals who broke down established structures through individual initiative—free-agent statistical blogger Nate Silver, Southwest Airlines, microbreweries. These anecdotes have their own shortcomings—very few people have the nerve, genius, and luck to be Nate Silver, and the microbreweries struggle daily against the price-setting power of the two multinationals that control four-fifths of the American beer market. And here’s where the implied analogy to politics shatters: If you start a microbrewery that gains 1 percent of the U.S. beer market, you’ll become fabulously wealthy, but if you start a political party that gets 1 percent of the vote, you are, even in the best-case scenario, Ralph Nader. In 1996.
(Of course, a rude reviewer might wonder if Gillespie & Welch are not “successful lobbyists or political consultants” the same way Willard Romney is not “a professional politician” — it’s not that they’re too pure for the task, just that nobody’s been willing to pay for their talents.)
But do go read the whole thing; because Schmitt’s assembled his assault on flabby centrist thinking so tightly, it’s really hard to do justice by excerpt.
Open Thread: We Had A Good Run, While It Lasted…
Because I’m in a maudlin mood, and two hours is about as long as the general commentariat should be expected to keep our language clean and our shoes on, I share. Charlie Pierce at Esquire, on the Ryan-Wyden “compromise“:
In the rush of holiday preparation, it may have escaped your notice that this is National Sellout Day, when we celebrate the arrival of baby Jesus into this world so that the Magi can show up at the stable, pay him homage, present him with gifts, and then peddle his location to Herod for 25 denarii and a bucket of oats for the camels.
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The Democratic party certainly has gone to great lengths to remind us what day it is. They have made great preparation. They have cooked the goose (their own, naturellement, and ours) and placed it on the table in the traditional manner, with a knife stuck in its back. They have rehearsed all the traditional holiday songs, including Ploys to the World, Hark the Deceitful Scumbags Sing, and Angles We Have Played on High. They have filled the wassail bowl to overflowing with the customary holiday libation, Hot Mulled Blood of Constituent. And later, we will all gather around the fire while our party elders read the famous story. I particularly like the part at the end when Scrooge realizes that reformation has its limits and sells the Cratchit children into indentured servitude so that the other men of the Exchange won’t think him weak, or mired in the past.
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Oh, they have made a day of it. First, the pillars of Jell-O in the Senate roll over on the itty-bitty surtax they wanted to lay on the plutocrats to pay for a payroll tax cut for the rest of us. Then, the president announces that he’s not going to veto after all the bill in which 400 years of Western jurisprudence is pretty much torn to ribbons and tossed to the wind, albeit slightly less deeply into the wind than the original monstrosity would have liked. And, finally, Ron Wyden of Oregon steps forward to give cover to zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan’s latest attempt to “reform” Medicare in the same way that Arthur (Bomber) Harris “reformed” the building codes in Dresden. It’s a Very Special Holiday Episode of the long-running hit comedy, Ah, Who Gives a Fk Anyway?…
Open Thread: We Had A Good Run, While It Lasted…Post + Comments (49)
Fox News GOP Debate Thread
The livestream is here, but my PC is (very sensibly) refusing to load the Faux News player…
Richard Adams’ Guardian liveblog is here:
8.30pm: Welcome to the GOP presidential debate, brought to you by Fox News and the good people of Sioux City, Iowa – the final slugfest between, well, a pack of slugs.
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The Iowa caucuses is on 3 January and between then and now this is it: the last chance to impress voters nationwide.
Have at it, y’all…
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9.16pm: Asked why he is so rubbish, Rick Perry claims that like star quarterback Tim Tebow – actually not a very good quarterback but he somehow still wins games – he can be better than he looks. “I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses,” says Perry. Perry will be lucky to be the Forrest Gump of the Iowa caucuses.
Paging Mr. Tbogg, Mr. Tbogg to the red courtesy phone….
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Roger Simon @politicoroger
I met Saul Alinsky. I interviewed Saul Alinsky. And Saul Alinsky would not have considered Obama a radical. #iowadebate
15 Dec 119.22pm: If you had “Saul Alinsky radical” in tonight’s debate drinking game, then chug, because Newt just dropped that.
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If you don’t know who Saul Alinsky is, join the 99% of the American population who are with you.
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9:35pm: Asked about taking bucketloads of cash from mortgage facilitator Freddie Mac, Gingrich somehow claims that he was “a private citizen” when he did so, and that doesn’t count. Also, he then goes into a weird self-defence, claiming that he loves people buying houses. So he was just trying to help. By banking cheques for $1.6m.
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And yet, not so long ago, Newt Gingrich wanted to shut down Fannie and Freddie. But now it turns out they are just brilliant.
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WIN:
141. David – December 15, 2011 | 9:55 pm · Link
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“I’ve been having affairs since Obama was in high school!” ~Newt
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10.07pm: We’re onto Iran and the nuclear weapons. The question in essence: why, Ron Paul, will you not bomb these dangerous fanatics? “It’s war propaganda going on,” says Ron Paul. “The greatest danger is that we’ll have a president who will over-react.”
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For bonus points he also called Iraq “that useless war”.
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Moderator Bret Baier says Ron Paul would be running to the left of Barack Obama on this matter. “What did we do on Libya? We talked them out of their nuclear weapon and then we killed him,” says Paul. Hmm.
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Paul appears to be running for President of Iran. Which is a novel tactic in a Republican presidential campaign.
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Original Wonkette may have the best summary of the debate (& it ain’t over yet!)
Ana Marie Cox @anamariecox
I want us all to mark this moment when crazy met nuts and crazy won. #iowadebate
15 Dec 11
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Facepalm:
10.26pm: Our correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg is at the debate venue in Sioux City, Iowa, and she sends this analysis of the debate so far:
… Perry has spent a little bit too much time staring slack-jawed into the camera to dispel the impression that he does not have the intellect to be president. But he did get applause for his idea for a part-time Congress, working just 140 days every two years…
Because running THA WORLD’S GREATEST COUNTRY IN HISTORY EVER PRAISE JEEBUS should be a part-time job. Hey, it works for Wal-Mart!
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WINNER of tonight’s debate: President Obama.
LOSERS: Everyone who paid any attention, including those of us here at BJ, each & every one of the candidates, and I strongly suspect Faux News, because while all the participants ladled out a sufficiency of Crazy, there were no “meme-making” moments to enliven two hours of squirming tedium…
Thursday Evening Open Thread
(Jeff Danziger’s website)
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This would, of course, be dreadfully offensive to my Wiccan friends, if only they’d had their sense of humor surgically removed as a condition of membership.
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What’s chafing the shorts of the dominating monotheist practitioners or other victimology addicts in your area this evening?
Early Morning Open Thread: Lucky
More calendar pics; I think I fell for this guy because the youngest of our rescue papillons has the same one-ear-up, one-ear-down profile (which is why the Spousal Unit renamed him Sydney — he said it looked like a bushranger’s hat). Commentor Chad S describes his canine companion:
Dog that we rescued last year. His name is Boner. My wife calls him Lucky.
Open Thread: Crystal Bridges to Nowhere
As further evidence that we are living in the Second Gilded Age, Jeffrey Goldberg, on Bloomberg View, has an eloquent little class-war assault on the “Moral Blight” of the “Wal-Mart Heiress’s Art Museum“:
… Alice Walton, who is worth about $21 billion, has achieved her dream of building a top-tier museum that unabashedly celebrates American art in the American heartland. Crystal Bridges, in many ways, is an aesthetic success.
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It’s also a moral tragedy, very much like the corporation that provided Walton with the money to build a billion-dollar art museum during a terrifying recession. The museum is a compelling symbol of the chasm between the richest Americans and everyone else. In 2007, according to the labor economist Sylvia Allegretto, the six Walton family members on the Forbes 400 had a net worth equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans. The Waltons are now collectively worth about $93 billion, according to Forbes.
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The museum, which opened last month, sits in a wooded ravine a few miles from Wal-Mart headquarters. Two main buildings, referred to locally as the armadillos, for their rounded and ribbed roofs, are linked to a series of galleries that ring what will eventually be a spring-fed pond. Crystal Bridges was designed by Moshe Safdie, who is a fine architect, and his museum in some ways resembles a handsome Scandinavian airline terminal. It is certainly the handsomest building ever built with Wal-Mart money. I suspect it is also the only building associated with Wal-Mart that is devoted solely to American-made goods…