The biggest difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that Democrats believe that western culture is bad and all other cultures are good.
This is why Obama bowed to the emperor of Japan.
One finds this in all Democrats from Howard Zinn to Allen Ginsberg to Ward Churchill, and it's what they have wanted taught to all children from gradeschool through college. In the 1960s when the "Hey hey ho ho western civ has got to go!" chant first began I was astonished at the lack of history even though I was still a schoolboy. Aztec gods were respun, and the Mayans revived, and human sacrifice was back. In th poetry of Charles Olson, he actually goes to Mayan civilization to revive these gods, and their thought. Matriarchy: back. Now desire was the name of the game, and love (which really meant sexual kicks), and principles of any kind were out. Charles Olson was not the worst. Did he not know that Cortez put an end to human sacrifice? Did he not know that the Spanish were alarmed when they found the Aztecs eating human babies for breakfast?
White American history was condemned by the new left as being solely the province of the KKK. Ginsberg condemned western culture as the province of Moloch. Meanwhile, he went to Morocco to indulge in molesting boys and bragged about it in his most famous poem, HOWL, a paradigm-defining poem that celebrates madness and a return to the animal state. Now Democrats kill babies without blinking. The left love animals, because they consider us to be nothing but animals.
Republicans on the other hand tend to place Protestant western culture above all others. Catholics themselves were suspect (especially after the allegations of molesters in their sepulchers) -- (the Kennedys the only Catholic clan to reach high office --) -- but Protestantism is making a comeback, and is proving to be a sturdier ideology than thought -- and is growing worldwide.
Scott Brown's rise in Massachusetts has something to do with a return to the Protestant work ethic. While Coakley lazed about, sunning herself in the adulation of her anointed rise in the appointed hierarchy, Scott Brown drove a pick-up truck, and asked for votes. Obama found the pickup truck ridiculous. Here is a guy who can't replace a light bulb, but who can talk circles around everyone including himself, going like a balloon let loose, circulating through the stratosphere, and his party is beaten by a white guy in a pick-up truck.
The left runs after strange gods. Ginsberg turned to human gurus who claimed "enlightenment" for themselves (Choygam Trungpa was a severe alcoholic). In the universities western literature such as Shakespeare is slighted in favor of "global literature" which supposedly has superior wisdom in it. Shakespeare is just too Christian. John of Gaunt is superior to Falstaff. Republicans want people to slim down and to be lean. Democrats celebrate the fat of the matriarchies.
Nietzsche is the new standard bearer for much of the left. Nietzsche condemns Christianity as a religion based on resentment, and calls himself the return of Dionysos. Charles Manson celebrates Dionysian rituals near Hollywood, with the participation of the Beach Boys. Fun is now everything. Kicks, fun, and enjoyment. Hollywood Babylon goes wildly for the Democrats.
It's a rout.
How is it then that the Republicans still garner votes? How is it that Scott Brown has won, and Obama is staggered by this, and will not be able to kill babies with public funding? How is it that people still read Shakespeare, and consider his writing superior to Toni Morrison's, or the gory folk tales of the Aztecs? Why is Christianity still 80% of American culture, and why are Catholics and Protestants bonding with faithful Jews as they create a deep pocket of resistance?
How is it that young people still want the divine sanction of marriage, instead of the fun of the anonymous orgy? Why is it that most of us still don't take drugs, and look down on those who do?
Why is it that we still look to Lincoln as our greatest president? Lincoln, who uttered the Emancipation Proclamation, and insisted on the principle of equality for all? Lincoln, who derived his principles from his encounters with Baptists, saw that there should be one law for all. Some think he would be a Democrat today. Would he really be hell-bent on abortion, and would he hate America, as the Democrats do? Would Lincoln have bowed to the emperor of Japan, or to the gods of the Tibetan plateau, or those to whom the young were sacrificed in ancient Mexico?
70 comments:
Kirby, stop conflating terms! "Democrats" and "extremely left Marxist academics" are not equivalent terms.
Pretending the fringe is the mainstream is such an old, worn out, toothless, limp tactic.
It's growing tiresome.
Yawn.
Brett, could you list ten of each variety so I could get a sense of the spectrum here?
to me, Obama and ayers, Tom Hayden and Chomsky, Biden and Ward Churchill are just six heads of the same hydra that has something going on 50 million heads at this point.
Between Chomsky and Churchill -- just for example -- can you really make a strong distinction between the two? Do they actually believe something different?
Where would someone like Howard Zinn fit? I see them, and people like Andrea Dworkin, and people like Al Gore, as all believing basically the same things.
Isn't Zinn's thinking the thinking of all Democrats?
can you give me an example of a Democrat who wouldn't be down with Zinn?
Michelle Obama seems to be on the same page with Zinn: neither one has any reason to be proud of America.
Would she be very very different from her husband?
Kirby, the burden is on you - Democrat politicians say over and over and over again that America is the greatest country on the planet.
Just because the angry tattooed hippie at your local coffee shop and that a few wacky professors might say they hate America, doesn't mean that Democrats hate America.
If you ever actually listened to Obama this would be clear, but you seem unwilling to do so.
So it goes.
p.s. - yes, Democrats have this weird thing where we like to point out what was wrong with Americas past, and what was right with it, and learn from that. The right just seems to want to turn a blind eye? I don't get y'all
And you and I both know that one off-the-cuff and poorly phrased remark from Michelle Obama does not an entire-party's-viewpoint make.
Kirby,
As I demonstrated earlier, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Democrats are fiscally responsible. Look at those GDP/Debt curves, and how well the correlate with political party, especially from Reagan onwards.
The truth hurts.
I think there is a growing rift between Democrat politicians and Democrats in general. Kirby is making Democrats sound very far to the left. This might not be true of Joe Democrat, but it's much closer to true of the politicians now than it was 20 years ago. Democrat leadership has become extreme. That's not to say that it will stay that way. I hope not.
Stu, you really should be doing stand-up. That line about fiscal responsibility... it's comedic gold.
Brett, is it really just a "few" professors?
The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is the flagship journal for all of higher education, and one to which almost all college libraries subscribe, had an article in September 18, 2009 issue -- it was on the cover, in fact:
TAKING THE RIGHT SERIOUSLY: ACADEME HAS TREATED CONSERVATIVE IDEAS WITH DERISION, WHEN BOTHERING TO CONSIDER THEM AT ALL.
It was written by a prof at Columbia named Mark Lilla. He makes the argument that throughout academia the hardest of all assignments is to be in the ideological minority. It's the one minority that is never honored, and which faces very tough tenure battles.
This is a 100% Marxist climate. If it is not as hellbent an environment as say, that under Stalin (there are no actual Gulags, although sometimes the universities themselves seem to me to be becoming such an archipelago of stifled thought and people serving time for reeducation).
Like GM, it is almost funny when you and Stu and JH laugh at the enormous effect that the left has on students. Almost 90% of students ahve to go through four years in colleges and universities, and although half of them go in as conservatives, it's probably fewer than 1% who come out as conservative.
Lilla's subheading: "Conservatism is a tradition, not a pathology."
Very few people in academia are that open-minded.
There are enormous centers of power to push their ideology. The Obamas are the figureheads of this ideology.
The Center for the Comparative Study of Right-wing Movements is housed at UC-Berkeley.
"the unfortunate fact is that American academics have until recently shown little curiosity about conservative ideas, even though those ideas have utterly transformed American (and British) politics over the last 30 years. A look at the online catalogs of our major universities confirms this: plenty of courses on identity politics and postcolonialism, nary a one on conservative political thought. Professors are expected to understand the subtle differences among gay, lesbian, and transgender studies, but I would wager that few can distinguish between the american enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato institute, three think tanks that have a greater impact on Washington politics than the entire Ivy League" (B6).
I am myself a comparative newcomer to the right. I have heard of the institutes Lilla names, but they were never once mentinoed in graduate school or in undergraduate school. However, I heard about Marx from the first day, and every day from then on, until the last day.
Foucault, Nietzsche, etc.
The difference I describe between the two parties IS the real difference.
I can't understand how you can call Michelle Obama's remark tangential. She made it as part of a prepared speech in front of a large academic audience. She knew who she was speaking with, and she gave them the kind of red meat they wanted.
But her husband's phrase about wanting to redistribute Joe the Plumber's income is quite similar.
Lilla asks how many of us have read Ayn Rand, Burke, Maistre, Buckley, Irving Kristol, and Peter Viereck.
I've read all but Kristol (I've probably read a few of his essays), but I've also read Genet, Ginsberg, and hundreds of leftists.
Very few students are ever introduced to Viereck's work.
But I would wager than one in two has read something of Ginsberg's before they graduate. And almost all undergraduates are reading Howard Zinn at some point.
His books have sold 20 million copies at the least.
The Wikipedia page says that zinn's People's History "routinely sells more than 100,000 copies per year."
Mostly to high school and college classes that use his book as a textbook.
Zinn visited Hanoi during the Tet Offensive with one of the Berrigan's, as a diplomatic overture that wasn't sanctioned by the government.
At that point, the Democratic party was in office. However, Zinn is now down with the Democratic party.
so I think there has been a change in the Democratic party.
It's hard to keep all the numbers straight, and it's hard to understand how the Republicans survive.
I think part of it is that students go through college and do what they're told, but many of them spend much longer in their churches -- going weekly or bi-weekly to prayer meetings, and that this swiftly erases whatever they were forced to endure in college.
Plus the pressure of the business environment forces many to move to the center, and to think about costs.
Plus most people watch Fox.
there are lots of other outlets, but Fox is relatively fair and balanced.
Given all this, it's surprising that the Democrats can survive.
What's most important is that the two different groups can go on arguing, and that we not outlaw one or the other.
I'm on the side of western civilization, and for Jesus!
Kirby,
It's hard to keep all the numbers straight, and it's hard to understand how the Republicans survive.
And I thought you were a pessimist.
I'm on the side of western civilization, and for Jesus!
Me too!
there must be some strange connection between having one's mind opened up to history and literature adn social thought and art that makes a person take ownership of his or her role in the world...there is a delightful naievete in the left...they are sort of dreamy they want a better world
i had a brilliant critique of the thought of kirby olson all worked out and it was zapped probably by david horowitz again
howard zinn made more than one democrat uncomfortable
i didn't use foul language or make any slanderous comments about anyone except tyrrannical overzealous lutherans
this edit with a cynical smile thing that eats my prose is really difficult
i am almost at the point where i am saying
i 'm sick of this blog
and maybe if i went away for awhile
kirby would be able to influence more people in his derangement of the world...i think i'm going to to take a break from these programemmmmemmmed cyberidiocy venues
it gets to be too much at times
well
ed is right
it is all a crock of shit anyway
jh
Ed isn't right. Ed is wrong.
We have to argue about these things.
Ed is dead wrong.
Front page story in the IHT this morning. That lefty Anwar Ibrahim has been sodomizing his underlings again. Seems like it happens whenever his party gets viable enough to thwart the will of the powers that be. Power corrupts.
The Malaysians must have heard what KO thinks about sodomists and didn't want to be confused with North Korea, Cuba or Mainland China. The prosecution plans to recite Ginsberg at Anwar's next trial. His defense team will counter the prosecution's case with readings from Kahlil Gibran.
We have never heard BO's take on native Hawaiians and whether they deserve their land returned to them with interest. You'd think he'd be all volcanic about it in one way or another, dancing out his expression with a cape.
We need to get back to the main point, Kirby - and I think I did a poor job of being explicit about the phrase I was attacking - that Democrats believe that Western Culture is bad and all other cultures are good.
That's just not true. Even Michelle's statement doesn't point to that, and that was an isolated, vaguely-in-that-direction quote.
Marxist literary professors do not equal all Democrats.
I'm okay with making sloppy generalizations about 'all' if even Most of a group fits in with a label...
'Most Democrats are pro-choice.' That's fine, and if you say 'Democrats are pro-choice,' I won't argue and make you be more specific with your language.
But saying 'Democrats think that Western Culture is bad and all other cultures are good' is just an unsupportable argument.
Democrats have the ability to say that some aspects of our culture are bad, and need improvement - this just seems like an intelligent approach, instead of saying 'we all good, they all bad.'
And WB, which party had the law that says you have to pay for a spending increase? Oi vey, the Democrats, when they were in power in the 90s - and they are trying to reinstitute the same fiscal responsibility.
It's just true. You can pretend to point to this year as indicative of all Democratic policy, but that would mean you would pretend ignorance of the most severe recession (an inherited recession) since the 30s.
And I know that you are not ignorant of that circumstance.
A better gauge, you must admit, would be the 8 years that we had a Democratic president.
Just look at those numbers!
And the Democratic party is not very extreme - much less Marxist than, say, Eisenhower in the 50s, when the top marginal tax rate was 'round 90%.
And now y'all get in a huffy when it bumps up a few percentage points, screamin' 'Extreme lefty!' or, even worse, 'Commie!'
Look, Kirby, I Agree with you that academia in the humanities is too 'lefty.' But your generalization of that to the greater Democratic party, well that's just irresponsible and self-centered of you.
I recognize that they have some influence - but apparently not the influence that you think, since Democratic politicians espouse the virtues of the West (any negative comparison to another country is made to Northern Europe) and, as WB admitted, the Democratic people ain't all that extreme.
Show me a small number of quotes where major politicians on the Democratic side have said that Western culture is all bad and Other cultures are all good, or even something approximating that in a specific circumstance (we might say 'our health care system isn't as good as Canada's,' but politicians never say 'we need a health care system as good as North Korea's')
It's just a small section of the Democratic party, that you fail to recognize is small.
They have an effect.
But don't get in such a tizzy. It's not that big.
And there're less of Them on the left
than there are teabaggers on the right.
Any independent observer would acknowledge that those groups tend to be equally extreme.
Just be specific with your language - 'a small group of knee-jerk liberals believe that all other cultures are good and ours is bad.'
Just like I can say 'a small group of knee-jerk conservatives believe that we need to go back to the gold standard.' But I wouldn't say 'conservatives say we need to go back to the gold standard.'
That'd just be pigswill.
WB,
Stu, you really should be doing stand-up. That line about fiscal responsibility... it's comedic gold.
On the contrary, it is the notion of Republican fiscal responsibility that is a joke. Look at the GNP/Debt curve since WWII. Here's the link again.
Wiki: US public debt
Notice how the line trends down except during the Reagan administration and the two Bush administrations. It seems to me that the case is pretty clear that the Democrats have been better financial managers than the Republicans. But I'd be willing to consider a fact based argument to the contrary.
A friend who's gaga over Obama (still) brought his daughter over to play today. We have had some blow-ups in the past. I trust him with blow-ups so I find it funny to taunt him a bit.
But he started talking about the healthcare insurance problem of government bailouts for individual emergency care visits in NYC in which the street people use the emergency room for colds and hay fever since they have nothing else.
Forcing them to have insurance or else go to jail seems mean, but it would also bring down all of our insurance costs. So I thought we actually had a point of alignment.
It was odd, and contrarian that I am, I kind of hated it, and began searching for a fissure.
I decided to let it go. If the victim in chief would talk about that sort of thing in a sensible way, I'd go for it.
Stu,
Consider public entitlement programs enacted by Democrat presidents with Democrat congresses. Take Social Security for example. This little gem of a program soaks up 21% of the U.S. budget according to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Budget.) Medicare and Medicaid, also enacted by Democrats (correct me if I'm wrong) soak up another 23% of the budget. All of these programs are facing solvency problems.
So just three social programs gobble up almost half of our budget every year and the costs are rising. No doubt there were good intentions behind these programs. But they have grown the government tremendously and they are difficult to pay for. And, here's my point, Republicans get saddled with the costs of these programs too.
I would argue that entitlement programs such as these are, by and large, the fault of Democrats. Of course many would argue that these programs are good. Perhaps, but they are prohibitively expensive. I think this points to a fundamental insouciance on the part of Democrats regarding future costs of their present good intentions. Not fiscally responsible.
Unfortunately, Republicans have sometimes gotten into the act (the prescription drug benefit), but I think Democrats are clearly the ones who push this envelope.
I think it's legal in most states for doctors to perform abortions. I can live with that. As a doctor's kid I don't like laws that make them parties to extortion.
Brett, you wrote,
"Show me a small number of quotes where major politicians on the Democratic side have said that Western culture is all bad and Other cultures are all good, or even something approximating that in a specific circumstance (we might say 'our health care system isn't as good as Canada's,' but politicians never say 'we need a health care system as good as North Korea's')"
I don't know if Sotomayor would count as a major Democrat, but her statement to the effect that she has more wisdom than white males because she is a "wise Latina" would point to this belief-system.
It seems that when I am listening to Democrats this is their MAJOR theme, even if it is not said outright. I'll try to rustle something up for you.
First, let me get the parameters right.
Does Dennis Kucinich count?
Howard Dean?
What about the Democratic National Platform?
Would President Obama count?
I would be willing to guess the new loudmouth from Florida has said something along these lines.
Politicians are hard to catch at saying anything outright. Even Obama in his book Audacity is amazingly timid at actually saying anything outright. It's more mutterings that you catch when they are off guard, like the Joe the Plumber moment, where you suddenly see their cards.
Mrs. Obama's remark.
Reverend Wright's remarks, "GOD DAMN AMERICA! GOD DAMN AMERICA!"
That was after all Obama's pastor for decades.
Picklesworth in general is much better than I at finding actual facts. I sense a general tendency, but it's harder for me to find actual facts. His findings wrt social security and medicaid and how they currently eat up half the budget amazed me.
Maybe Picklesworth could address this issue: Picklesworth do you also get the sense that Democrats (at least some of them) despise America and look to other parts of the world for wisdom?
It seems to me that Obama looks down on the heartland of America and looks instead to the socialist states of Europe for his convictions.
Again, this has to do with his remarks that are often meant to be hidden. His remarks for instance about the blue-collar people of Pennsylvania who "cling to God and guns" because they are unemployed, when of course they should get on his train to ultimate success, point in this direction.
At any rate, give me some clear parameters for who counts as a major Democrat. Does Obama count? Would his book Audacity count?
Would someone in the house of representatives count?
Would a female senator suffice?
The poet Charles Olson worked high in the Roosevelt Administration and you can see his work for yourself (it's an area I feel a lot more VERSED in --) -- he was looking to Mao, to the Mayans, and to matriarchy, for his muse. This is all over the place in his writings.
I forget what Olson's precise position was in the Roosevelt Administration.
Would he count as a major Democrat? Do you need an elected politician or would a poet like Charles Olson suffice?
What about Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton?
There is a female senator I'm thinking about, too, but can't remember her name. Carol, I think, was her first name.
my sense and i say this humbly for now i know that there is a true ruler of this blog he uses the edit key with glee delete is a common household word over here
but just my two cents this morning
then i'll be done i won't go on adn on and on and on and on and on and on about some ridiculous tengential ludicrous inanity i'll get to the point
obama is a centrist
ask e j dionne
obama is doing what a good president should do
he's tryin' at least he's tryin
t ride herd on the fat cats
ever tried to herd a bunch of cats?
what is the collective adjective for cats? i know a pride of lions
but anyway
ever tried to herd a bunch of fat cats??
obama believes with warren buffet that money is like manure the more you spread it around the more good things grow
who are the far left lefty's
well the reproductive rights amazons they are far left
but i think they are more like fascists and would fit better on the right...they scream the loudest they are the most hysterical...and they should be...i mean it's a womb issue isn't it
and the serious tree huggers are far left they wake up every day and think about how to help clean up the planet and they see industry as the nemesis and they vote for a better world
we don't have the radical left much anymore we don't have the followers of that crazy writer out in colorada who offed himself hunting in the thompson mountains it comes to me slow we don't have writers like that anymore there's some pretty avid hollywood people who are avid dem leftys but there's soem rich entertainer republicans too i don't know any of their names i just hear about these things...i follow britney spears pretty closely simply because i think she is the paragon of the new feminism...but that's all
obama should settle for a new bill in health care one that simply subsidizes free clinics for people who can't pay no insurance just free clinics and with good care and eveything else can go along merrily as it is..serious minded doctors getting filthy rich insurance drug pushers getting filthy rich and all kinds of people flitting about in the health care industry getting good money a lot of people work in the health world i just don't think it should be called an industry anymore call it health care
so the biggest difference is leftys hug trees and not their bibles
severe leftys are brazen enough to say if it means snuffing the life out of fetuses for freedom well that's got to be OK
severe rightys face these people down and say NO we're not going there and that 's the only political issue
regular rightys are govt critics but they are generaly charlatans who speak out one side of their mouth and whisper out of the other
these people start wars they can't pay for and they swing deals with lobbyists in tow and they fenagle all kinds of big money all around the world and they run a huge police state for instance has anyone noticed that america is now a police state so these people are the business managers
most poets are leftys
most musicians are leftys
except perhaps in texas
most profs are leftys
good leftys think that farms are institutions which should serve the local community with food and benefit from the local comunity rightys think farming is an industry and the more money made off of corn the better
it's probably true that most sexually focussed people that is peopel who boil everything down to who they are as sexual people these peopel are generally leftys because they feel they can be lefty and be sexual social beings and it's OK and it must be OK under the constitution these people are generally leftys and some rightys too depending i suppose on the degrees of severity they wish to express...i'll leave it at that
the rightys live in plastic houses and they go through 15 wives and they golf a lot and they sip martinis at the club with their pals and swing business deals and they're doing OK but it is all nothing in a no place world
we need more parties
the ones we go to now are really boring
or have i said that already
that's all i'm saying today o and
screw the editor
jh
Picklesworth do you also get the sense that Democrats (at least some of them) despise America and look to other parts of the world for wisdom?
You rang? I wouldn't put it that baldly. I think that there are aspects of America that they scorn and seek to change: the profit motive, individualism and American exceptionalism, which are perceived as greed, selfishness and jingoism (and in fairness this charge is sometimes true.)
On the other side of that coin, there are elements of the American character that they identify with and seek to elevate: fairness (equality), liberty, brotherliness. I wouldn't argue that these are goods, but I think there is a tendency to force these goods through government. For instance, there was a tremendous outpouring of authentic brotherliness following Katrina, but the governmental element of that came under scrutiny as not measuring up (and I felt at the time that the generosity of individuals was not sufficiently appreciated.) Stu would certainly know how well the ELCA does with such things.
But what about the idea that other cultures our superior to our own? Thomas Sowell has a good essay in his book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" that touches on this. He talks about how "visions" (which are in service to good intentions for America) will tend to trump actual history.
Otherwise put, I think liberals have great zeal for the good and want America to be even better than it is. But in order to pursue this they need to illustrate vividly how much we need to improve. To this end, they use other cultures to illustrate how we need to get better and/or to prod us out of complacency and self-satisfaction. So America ends up getting criticized (often unfairly) in the pursuit of a better America.
Does this count as despising America? No, I don't think so. But conservatives certainly perceive it as such because things we hold to be central (individualism, profit motive, American exceptionalism) are vilified.
I think all of this gets back to the basic idea of how good we can hope to be. Conservatism, generally speaking, is more pessimistic about just how much we can accomplish to this end and thinks it better to defend certain principles which, though they won't eradicate problems, have at least proven to produce pretty good results. Liberalism, generally speaking is more optimistic and actively seeks to solve problems, eradicate evils, and build a world we can be proud of. But I don't think they sufficiently appreciate the unintended consequences of idealistic solutions.
That is to say, again, I don't think liberals hate America, I think they love it very much. But I think that their best intentions often denigrate America and create difficulties for us.
Of course there are extremists on the left who do hate America, but I think they are few. And I haven't given even one example of what you asked for Kirby, because I've been blabbing. I'll try to think on that today.
in a land of free speech
shouldn't a prophet be able to sing out
GODDAMN aMERICa GODDAMN aMERICa
is patriotism mandatory in a free country
why cannot one be sickened by a real perception of hypocricy
i mean i'm sickened by those once far leftist jewish hacks who now think they are the new bright clearest speakers for the right right right and they talk like they know they're right..but i don't question their desire to be good americans..or, do I? well maybe i do a little
karl marx earned the right to be a part of the discussion in the politics of the west
that's all there is too it he earned it and as long as the discussion continues he wll be a part of it and i think those talking bonker brains over on fox fox bushy tail foxy news should just sit down and read marx say OK listening audience i'm taking a break this month and i'm going to do an intesive study of the works of karl marx and i'll be back in a month or so and we'll have some television discussions about how wonderful america is and how there'are all these terrible threats out there eating away at the divinely ordained social fabric of this divinely ordained country one nation under god by gawd
all i really know for sure is that anyone who doesn't think like me is probably in danger of being a very bad american for most people in the know know that i set the tone for american domestic and foreign policy...in a police state it's hard to get the points across
but once all the cops go to the donut shop of cognitive narcolepsy i am able to take a few moments and speak the truth..with not perhaps the same abount of zeal the omniscient blabberers of fox news have but just as much genuine feeling underneathe the words...and that counts for almost everything
i think there should be weekly tug- o- wars on the big lawn in DC...tug- o -wars over a big mudpit everyweek and we could have national betting on paypal and pay for health care reform that way
you see
i think these things through
jh
How much money did Thomas Jefferson have in his pocket when he told Napoleon he was willing to pay $30 million smackers for Louisiana?
Washington spent eight years in office printing up phoney deeds for land in Ohio that he'd never seen and didn't really own so he could start paying off the war debt. He'd already maxed out the credit card buying Picks for Micks. The plan was to dig a trench all the way to Peru, Indiana, and it was going to cost roughly a hundred times the gross national product.
Do you know what Napoleon used to do to people who got behind on their mortgages?
I wonder too if Jacques or Emmy could help me with an identifying passage from a video that would show Bett the kind of thing I'm looking for. What about Carol Mosely-Braun? It seems so prevalent, but I still don't quite what he will accept.
The thing where Mrs. Obama said that she had never before been proud of America seemed to say it all, and to express a whole attitude common to that entire weltgeist.
Obama, of course, counts as a major democrat. His preacher, however, doesn't (preachers on the left And right all say really silly things).
And the comment he made about 'clinging to God and guns' was kinda-true, poorly phrased, and not really applicable to the current argument.
WB's post is much more realistic than your own, Kirby, and gets to the heart of the matter - though it's, obviously, a bit more confusing than that - when it comes to individualism, leftys tend to want more Personal freedom and less Corporate freedom...
(let me smoke weed and marry who I want to, but don't let the big bad businesses pollute/use slave labor from China with overly open trade agreements).
Democrats believe in American exceptionalism - especially Obama - we just don't think everything we've done has been right, or that everything everyone else does is wrong...we believe that being first requires a certain amount of humility and diplomacy, and that these approaches are necessary for our dominance. The 'right' sometimes thinks that being culturally sensitive means we're being pussies...we disagree, believing that to spread our basic, better principles (democracy, liberty) we have to understand the nuances of the cultures with which we are dealing.
When it comes to profit-motive, Democrats are for that - though we view it ethically, weighing private corporation's profit against the public good. Is it good to make profit? Yes. Is it good to make profit because of egregious business practices that strip dignity from employees or destroy the environment? No. There should be laws against such evil.
Of course, in the above I'm talking about mainstream democrats - of course there are lefties who think that 'evil white men destroyed the world,' but they are not the majority either in the populace or the politicians.
That being said, kudos to WB for being willing to acknowledge the good intentions of the other side.
I want to also point out a basic tendency, which I believe I've pointed out before. People tend to think 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' - certain liberals tend to think the grass is greener in other cultures, certain conservatives tend to think the grass was greener in our past.
Both approaches are mostly-mistaken.
WB,
Consider public entitlement programs enacted by Democrat presidents with Democrat congresses. Take Social Security for example.
Indeed, take Social Security. It is funded out of Social Security taxes, and is accounted for on that basis. Yes, there are, have been, and will be arguments as to whether or not the taxes raised are adequate to ensure program solvency on time scales of decades. There were tweaks in the past (e.g., Moynihan), there will be tweaks in the future.
But the upshot is that there is defined benefit pension program into which everybody pays, and from which everyone benefits. The program is not redistributionist in any fundamental sense, as benefits are tied to contributions. [Although the case is occasionally made that it is redistributive from poorer to richer, because there's a hidden longevity tax associated with being poor.]
What we have here is a program that provides an essential social service, and moreover, which is really only possible at the scale of the state. To say that this "gobbles up our budget" is demagoguery. If we didn't provide the benefit, there'd be no justification for the FICA tax. It should be a wash.
As for Medicare/Medicaid, the whole point behind Obama's health care reforms is to put those programs on a similar, sound, long-term basis.
What Republicans seem to have difficulty with is the concept that there is a connection between income and spending. Democrats spend, but also tax. Moreover, the Democratic social programs have typically benefited the economy, and can reasonably be considered infrastructure investments. The Republicans believe in tax cuts, but there's essentially zero evidence at the federal level that they believe in spending cuts. Recent (Reagan onward) Republican administrations have driven the budget tremendously out of balance through irresponsible tax cuts, building up huge debts. Look at that curve!! What they're doing is de facto stimulus, albeit without the distinct counter-cyclical lean that is the hallmark of sound Keynesian economics.
I would argue that entitlement programs such as these are, by and large, the fault of Democrats. Of course many would argue that these programs are good. Perhaps, but they are prohibitively expensive.
You're simply asking the wrong question. If we expect people to provision for health care and retirement (and we do!), it is going to be expensive for them whether they do it through the public sector or the private sector. The question is which way will result in greater efficiency (where compliance is a term in the efficiency calculation). If each of us has to pay for these services (as we do), why should it matter to us if those checks go to the treasury or to a private sector company?
The relevant questions are value (will the service cost less through the public sector or through the private sector) and guarantee (will the service actually be available when I need it?).
Given our recent experiences with the financial sector, I think it's clear that private sector guarantees are pretty weak, and the government will have to step in when private sector companies fail. In effect, a part of the policy reality that the government has to face is that it is a de facto insurer of last resort. As such, it is rational for the government to prefer a program like Social Security (where costs and income can be modeled decades in advance, and adjusted on a rational basis) to S&L and TARP style bailouts.
If we didn't provide the benefit, there'd be no justification for the FICA tax. It should be a wash.
But it's not a wash. Taxation has consequences. It takes money out of tax-payer's pocket and out of the private economy and puts it in the public one. Far from being more efficient, it is just the opposite. Instead of millions of people making decisions for themselves (which will be more efficient because because such decisions are contextual) you've got a limited number of people making decisions for everybody.
Add to this the effect it has on politicians; it puts more money in their hands. Just yesterday my wife and I got an unexpected check for $325. Immediately we started plotting about how to spend the money. By nightfall it occurred to me that it should go to the car repairs that we paid for last month. Less sexy, but better for us. Politicians have no reason to exercise such restraint. In fact, they have every reason to go out and spend money so that they can show everybody what they bought.
Question:
Why are we talking about retirement at all?
Isn't that something families should take care of?
Brett, they say that actions speak louder than words. Did you see the vid in which Obama refused to cross his heart during the National Anthem?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU9iCANi02o
There was also his much-publicized refusal to wear a flag-pin.
I admit that Picklesworth's interpretation of the Democrats is quite good, and gave me a different way to see their hatred of America not so much as a denunciation of everything America is and stands for, but as a criticism that it isn't living up to that.
You may be right that hunkered down in academia where I see the actions of a Ward Churchill and his call for a "thousand Mogadishus" as more or less what I hear every day (more at the University of Washingon and at other campuses aside from this one, which btw is pretty good and tolerant). It may also be that that viewpoint was more regnant in the 1990s, and that it is no longer quite so prevalent.
We are all something like the blind men and the elephant, and we can't see the whole thing, and are dependent on others for their viewpoints. Thanks for chiming in to both Brett and Picklesworth.
It's very hard to get much of a broader picture without many people working together toward the truth.
I would say that within the poetry realm there was a lot of America hating over the last 50 years. I tend to pay more attention to that than to the remarks of senators and presidents who to my mind are largely bureaucrats who reflect the prevailing trends.
When Michelle Obama said her famous sentence, I thought, she is trying to get that kind of wind into her sails. The hate America people, in other words. She wanted their love.
But she may nevertheless have been speaking to their ideals.
I wouldn't know.
Even Mrs. Clinton said that SHE was proud of America as an attack on the Obamas.
getting back to michelle obama that girl knows how to wear the threads doesn't she i mean i step back and my eyes bug out and my heart is taken over with a feeling of disbelief...i think in fact michelle is runnin the country at the kitchen table in the white house she say honey in the mornin mornin honey here we iz in the white house and they both laugh over coffee and then michelle tells obama what he's going to do that day and he says yes dear and they smile at one another and then then then then then then well i won't go into it but the doors close the phones get shut off and they dance a little and then barack (which means - white horse warrior of prayer) hussein (which means to love god is to struggle) Obama (which means - in your face honky MF - in swahili))saunters over to the oval office does a little fred astaire and then gets down to business
so my take on michelle is and it might sound a little selfcentered is that she understands how difficult it is to feel good about her country unless her man is running back and forth between the rudder and the wheel - let this be a stern warning to you - i mean i get it i mean i could be a better person for all i know had i had to grow up in argentina in the 60s poor and oppressed and hunted down by milton friedmans' goons it would take me awhile to feel good about my country again and the same is true for people who identiy africa who transpose the world of africa to the free land that is america i mean it is crazy but it is hip it is a resolution of sorts - now the africans have a share in containing the sick white european inbred dysfunctional corrupt weltanshauung of the west - they're up and we just have to take the pitches as they come over the plaste or at our heads or whatever
it's a new ballgame
and i feel good about it i feel good about michelle she warms my heart whenever i see her i didn't like fashion before but i dig this big woman warrior of africa i dig her smile i dig her style i dig her pinache i dig everything about her and i especially like her idea of making the white house into a real palace of african hospitality and i am hoping that she will allow me to use the back door for some of my international investment deals - more about that later
dems have a better sense of clothing themselves than repubz do
barack might be standing up there talkin the walk but i bow down to michelle she's the queen of my country
jh
craig
what did napolean do to tardy mortgage holders
use them for weapon testing??
what?
jh
It was about fifteen years ago in Tonga when I first had a chance to meet a few Peace Corps volunteers. They were 22 years old, fresh out of school, and it was kind of a shock to realize that these kids had no recollection whatsoever of what the country had been through in Viet Nam. I found it odd at first, but really quite refreshing.
I never particularly liked the left or the right. During my junior year in high school I debated the topic of unilateral military intervention in foreign countries. We had a case prepared for both the negative and the affirmative and we'd find out which side we were on about fifteen minutes in advance. My partner and I won 73% of our debates that year and that was a good winning percentage for first year or novice debaters as we were the top team from our school and that meant many if not most of our opponents were 2nd, 3rd or even 4th year debaters. We went to half a dozen different universities to compete in some big tournaments, and we were spared the effort of visiting the campuses at our own expense. But for me it never really translated into academic success.
The closest I ever came to academic success was in my last quarter as an undergraduate when I was given and took the opportunity to read at Castalia. I had written all of about about five poems for a beginning verse writing class and for some odd reason the professor wanted me to read them out loud on a stage with quite a few other people who had been striving for years on end to write verse. The problem for me was that by then I was already thirty years old and it wasn't until then that I had first encountered Theodore Roethke.
Except it wasn't the first time. I first visited the place where Roethke died when I was about twelve years old. I just didn't know it at the time. I didn't realize that that's where I'd been until about two or three years ago, after my eyes already had wrinkles and my hair had slowly turned gray.
JH,
If you're going to start talking clothing, the First Lady was recently on national TV disguised as a traffic cone.
Jackie Kennedy she's not.
Kirby, Sept 11 did take wind out of many sails. However, the sentiment still stands--as does the fascination with government as the solution. How else do you explain a 3.8 trillion dollar budget built on a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit?
Oh, by the way Stu, please stop claiming the Democrats have a hold on fiscal responsibility.
Clinton+Gingrich was a time of great fiscal responsibility. Other than that, not so much in the recent years for either party.
In other news,
or to the gods
of the Tibetan plateau,
or those to whom the young
were sacrificed in ancient Mexico
is a very fine start at metrical poetry, Kirby.
I say keep it up.
Kirby, there is no direct line between "Barack Obama, this one time, didn't put his hand over his heart during the singing of the national anthem" and "Barack thinks Western culture is bad and other cultures are good."
Barack didn't Refuse to put his hand over his heart - he just didn't on this occasion. On other occasions, he did - and always when saying the pledge of allegiance.
The tendency may have come from the fact that his grandfather was a WWII vet, and uniformed military personnel do not put their hands over their hearts during the singing of the national anthem.
Do you see the kind of labeling minutiae the right has you focusing on, instead of things like policies and principles? Do you really believe wearing a flag-pin equates to loving America, and not wearing a flagpin equates to not loving America?
GM, there is a good book by Annie Finch called The Ghost of Meter in which she shows that when a decent writer wants to push it and lay it on thick meter tends to reappear.
This thought is already in Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter and Poetic Form which was published in the 70s, but Finch shows it all over the place even in places you don't expect at all like Charles Olson's poetry. Fussell shows how Marianne Moore does it, too, even in her most bizarre syllabic exercises.
Finch is a Wiccan, but she was right about this, I think.
I did want to lay it on thick here at the end and naturally went into stronger meter.
It struck me that the Incan image at top could be used as a symbol of Obamacare, and that the guy on the bottom is giving the thumbs up sign.
Brett, I can't find any content of any kind in Obama's speeches.
The guy is Mr. Mystery to me. I watch him, and if I have trouble with facts, I would say his problem is far far worse. I can rarely find anything factually or simply stated in his speeches. It's like he's six feet over the ground.
Putting his feet to the ground should be the job of some Czar or another.
Anti-mystification Czar.
At least with Bush I always knew what he just said.
With Obama, I very seldom have that experience, and so details like the ones mentioned tend to take on greater significance.
I also lean on other sources and decoding experts. Not just Fox but Newsweek or any other place where someone cares to decode what on earth this individual has said, and what he means, or might mean.
Part of his genius has been to be all sound and fury, and now we know that it doesn't signify nothing (it signifies new trillions down the tubes) but how he got there is anybody's guess.
He sounds good, but he's not a real communicator.
Reagan, and even to an extent, Bush, got their message through, loud and clear.
Clinton did.
I think even Osama does.
But I have no idea what Obama is saying or how he gets there.
Kirby - if you took the time to listen to what he says, I would take what you say seriously - watch the question-and-answer session he had with the house in its entirety, and then we can talk.
Otherwise, I'm just confused by the fact that you don't have more than two minutes to listen to him, yet you complain that you don't know the context of what he says.
Brett, I've listened to him for forty minutes at a clip in the past but it's just for show. There's no content, ever, it seems.
The content seems to be a behind the back pass to Pelosi, that we can't ever see.
This other stuff is some kind of show.
I did watch the first two minutes of the clip you sent and saw no content at all. I don't know why he can't get on with it and say something but I have come to the conclusion he has no business he wants to conduct in public.
I will try to spend ten minutes again on the clip tomorrow starting at 22 minutes. I have no more time today but shall try to push comments through once more before midnight.
Thanks for sticking with me, everyone. I appreciate your attempts to enlighten me.
you're on to him brett don't let up
jh ;={)
With all the curmudgeons around here, I thought this might be relevant:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFQkMAPVoIo
Annie Finch is a Wiccan?
Oh well. She is a very nice person. I didn't get Wiccan from her though.
Source?
About two years ago on Silliman's blog he published something positive about her, and I somehow guessed that she was Wiccan, and she said that yes, she was.
It's in the comments, I think.
the post has a photo of her in the doorway of a small store in New England with her mother, I think.
Wiccans aren't all bad. they're no worse than Unitarians, are they?
Or Episcopalians, or what have you?
She came off to me as ok. I think there is such a thing as white magic, and then there's black magic.
I assume she doesn't go in for the black magic.
There are lots of Wiccans in academia. it's the fastest growing religion in America. Faster even than Marxism. It doubles every year.
gm
a traffic cone really??
i missed that
but it proves my point i
mean she's willing to get out of the form
and do crazy things too
it just makes me love her all the more
i like girls who do goofy things
michelle in a traffic cone
man
she makes surrealism look fine
i love this girl
i love her
my main point was not what she wears but how she wears what she wears and what that means for the executive branch of govt
i hope she takes whole days to simply lounge around the white house in a bathrobe
barach honey yo you know you should really quit smoking
come on over here and kiss me
hey baby lighten up i've only had two today
don't you have to go to work
i guess i do but i could think of something else to do right here that would be a lot more fun
where's you get that happenin bathrobe hmnh hmnh hmnh
now barach baby you have a homeland security meeting in about 15 minutes and i want you to be on top of that game
go on now
i'll be hanging around here this afternoon...i like lounging around this place all day
we can make some whooppee then
now get back out there and rule the world
OK mama
i'm outta here
let's do lunch
mmmmnh
smoochalicious
go get em my black muslim christian warrior king
jh
Brett, I liked it! (the Craig Ferguson that is.)
what did napolean do to tardy mortgage holders
use them for weapon testing??
what?
When Jefferson lifted the blockade that his predecessor, Adams, had used to prevent the French from putting down the slave uprising in Haiti, Napoleon promptly shipped in 50,000 troops. Once their boots were on the ground he told Jefferson that he had firmly and politely told Spain that the original deed for New Orleans belonged to France. And Spain gave it to him. No questions asked. Oh, and by the way, he said, when the boys are done here in Haiti they'll be stopping in at New Orleans for a little R&R. Permanently. As in in perpetuity. Hope you don't mind. That's when Jefferson started fumbling for his wallet.
Spain wasn't even in arrears. They'd been doing the French a favor by running the place for the previous thirty years. Before that the French had lost money on New Orleans fifty years in a row. Napoleon wanted it back when he saw that the Spaniards were finally turning a profit. If Jefferson had had his wits about him, he'd have whipped out a copy of the Treaty of Paris. Let me get this straight, you want $30 million for a swamp that you signed over to the British forty years ago? And the Brits didn't want it? I'll take it. Where do I sign?
well of course you're right about all that craig but the cultural consequence is more significant than how it all came about -- jefferson did eventually make the purchase (or are we still paying that one off too??)
but the positive consequence of the louisiana purchase was the creation of a catholic stronghold in the new world and out of that came jazz and the important cultural attribute in the very monicker given to the city "the big easy"
what i find far more disturbing is the engineered established routing of the mississippi delta - the flow of the end of the river would fan across the delta over the course of 200 yrs or so back and forth but now they have worked it out so the channel is stabilized or so they hope...my sense is that if some negligence sets in if they can't pay to keep the flow going straight into the gulf anymore it will return to swampland inundate the cities and everyone will either adapt to a new primitivism or move north...no matter what my money is on nature reclaiming what man has so deemed his own
i think the fact that we have new orleans jazz is reason enough to think that the financial shenanigans of the early 1800s were somehow necessary
i wonder if napolean went to confession to a priest before he died on st helena?
a midget on a very big horse can cause a lot of problems
jh
why do i think that tudor rose
is more scarey and grotesque than the sketching of an innocent indian ritual of life
Sublette says the first five thousand slaves brought to New Orleans between 1720 and 1740 were mostly Senegambian, the part of Africa that's now Senegal and Gambia. Their religion was a hybrid of voodoo and Islam. They were the solid citizens in that era and they had to make allowances for the French and to some extent German colonists who had graduated from French penal institutions. Their music is what we now call the blues, played mostly on stringed instruments.
The next wave of slaves were Congolese and they came in during the latter part of the Spanish era, when the turmoil in Haiti produced a sugar bonanza in Havanna that was extended into New Orleans. The Congolese were animists overlain with a veneer of Catholicism. Their music was more energetic with an emphasis on drums and all of the rhythms associated with Latin dance beats.
The distinctive sound you get out of Preservation Hall is some horns and a piano trying to bridge the gap between Congolese drums and Senegalese strings.
African slaves in the French and Spanish colonies of the Caribbean were contracted on terms that were more like indentured servitude. If they survived the climate and the rigors of the cane fields, they could buy their freedom.
African slaves of the British brought to the American colonies were slaves for life and their children were born into slavery.
Sundays in the Caribbean were devoted to dancing. Skill on a musical instrument improved your chances of buying your freedom. New Orleans, like Port au Prince and Havanna, consisted primarily of free people of color, a concept that was foreign to the other American states that depended on slavery.
New Orleans fell to the Union as soon as Lincoln found a ship that could pass as a navy vessel. Nearby Mobile didn't budge until Lee had surrendered at Appomattox.
Kirb:
I come to your site to get a little exposure, and you spill this drivel on me!
Brett's absolutely right.
I know you post this stuff to provoke and incite, but it's tiresome. If you want real debate, you have to start from a reasonable position.
the senegalgambia roots meme is necessary to understand the cultivated sense of polyrhythm that african people could and can hear they do not have a musicology of what they hear or play or sing they just do it...however i think jazz was truly born between the church and the graveyard during funerals the people taking church hymns normally sung on the procession to the grave and they started pumping these old french dirges up with rhythm and things started to swing and the french just loved that shit...and then the french to their credit insited on educating african young men many went to academies in france and studied baroque music and they came back and sat to jam with their old homies and then they had all sorts of new tricks the form of jazz iz african drumming the heart of jazz is the guitar the soul of jazz is the spirit of christianity that emerged out of the churches and richly harmonized much of what later became standard jazz melodies...dave brubeck and others have written on this
but your run down craig on the senegalgambia thing is pretty righteous pretty damn righteous and i'm surfin on that shit today
curtis
are you actually asking kirby to be reasonable???
most of us here have given up on that long ago
he's hell bent on proving to the world that lutherans can have a sense of humour...so...i mean...just take it from there
looking at lent
jh
Thanks for the support, Curtis - though we should also take note of Kirby's personality and inclinations...
I have said he is a 'contrarian,' which is one way of putting it - he also likes to 'fill in the gaps' for something that is missing.
So, in the humanities in academia, conservative, righty Christians are in short supply, so he's a conservative, righty Christian.
Now that W.B. is around to more-often-than-not give the reasoned, reasonable conservative viewpoint without too many hasty generalizations or baseless ad hominems, Kirby doesn't feel the need to fill the 'reasonable, polite conservative' hole, and with Jacques both here less often and less frothing-mouthish, Kirby is naturally slipping into a more aggressive approach.
Which all goes to show, perhaps, that Kirby's stances - or at the very least the ways he expresses those stances - are based not on principle, but on environment. He has admitted that his beliefs would change if he lived in Dallas or Alabama. All of this makes it interesting how much he talks about principles, while at the same time virtually admitting that his positions are not principled but, rather, social.
Weeee!
Brett,
I don't know about that. I think Kirby is playful and doesn't take himself too seriously. It's not a lack of principle, but a sense of humor. That's my take at least.
o
i forgot to mention juke joints
and whore houses
jh
W.B. - That's kinda true, but kinda not. Kirby oft made a point of condemning lefties for exactly the kind of behaviors and rhetorical strategies that Kirby is using.
And, Kirby will admit, he's not naturally funny - so some of his points have the barb, broad strokes, unsubstantiated viewpoints, and 'gut-feelings' of a humorous statement without even being funny.
Humor goes beyond just saying something outrageous or inflammatory.
At least, it should...
"Democrats all think other cultures are good and western cultures are bad."
Funny haha?
I think not...
Brett, I want to make Democrats and leftists stop doing the western cringe thing, or at least to make them aware of this tendency.
Some days I get 4000 readers or more.
So I'm hoping the meme will spread. I grant that I was being a bit broad in my brush stroke, but I wanted people to catch my drift and sometimes if you are overly subtle, this will not occur so readily.
Kirby, is your next project to then get extremist righties to stop doing the 'America is always and ever was and ever will be right about anything and everything always and if you say otherwise you hate America and are a traitor' thing?
Because, to be fair, That line of thinking is much more mainstream and on the flatscreen than the anti-Americanism in the far-left.
I suppose it's a matter of placement, but I almost never hear that line of thinking in academia. I'm very grateful to hear it on television.
It's like the cavalry has arrived.
People can say that all that they please.
I suppose "fair and balanced" has to do with what I hear. And I hear way too much of the other.
America has been pretty good in my eyes.
It's China that's wicked. We should ban all trading with that country immediately.
They have taken over all our markets with slave labor.
I was just over at Empire Vision getting my glasses replaced and every pair of frames in the entire shop (some thousand or more) were ALL made in China. I bought a pair. I couldn't believe it.
They are framing our entire economy. Obama is losing focus. If he had the keen eyesight he claims he should pierce into the human rights violator of the universe: China, and ban em and ban em good and completely.
Oh my goodness. There wasn't a single other choice.
The commies ARE coming. First they frame everything. There are probably microphones inside the frames that report back to their party bosses, telling me now what to think and what to type!
Kirby,
There are probably microphones inside the frames that report back to their party bosses, telling me now what to think and what to type!
I suppose it's as good an explanation as anything.
Brett,
I think we all tend to see the failings of the other side.
Log in the eye and what-not.
stu
i'm starting to understand from you
why basic logic is so vital
in LS discourse
here come the chinese folks
jh
Yes G.M. , it is easy to see the failings of the other side.
That's one of the reasons I come here, so I can have reasoned debate from the other side about the failings of my 'side.'
If the dems have a log in their eye, that's fine. Tell me about it. Describe all its roots and leaves, and how to trim them, and take them away.
I'm cool with that.
But when you start calling the log in someone's eye a hurricane of nuclear bombs, well then you're not being as helpful as one might like.
Again, Kirby is smart enough to know that he says something inflammatory, I or Stu will respond, and WB or someone else will provide the more realistic perspective on the criticism...
But after having been here for a number of years, calling logs nukes just gets tiresome, ya know?
Time for a new SchTICK
By the way, I'm offended that no one praised me for the subtle and awesome humor of the three-way meaning of 'SchTick' (as in Stick, which puns on the logintheeye lines, Schtick, which is just natural useage,, and Tick, which refers to Lyme's disease, one of Kirby's favorite Schticks...a punnish punchline for the ages!)
Brett,
I notice the first time FWIW, but felt that this was the sort of verbal play that it was unwise to encourage. Let's all stick to poetry, and leave the puns aside.
In the meantime, you asked me about GM's data, and I did a lengthy analysis that hasn't gotten a single response either. It's clearly too much to expect that our comments will be noted :-).
Brett wrote "Pretending the fringe is the mainstream is such an old, worn out, toothless, limp tactic. It's growing tiresome. Yawn."
So the mainstream are the useful idiots of the fringe, and Brett, as the orally and phallic-centric gatekeeper needs to make sure no one leaves the plantation thinking they have been duped.
I was a radical-in-the-streets-Dem in the late 60's, and a more "moderate" Dem active with my $ and time in the 70's.
EVERYONE ON THE LEFT KNOWS that the Democrats are simply a fake mainstream acceptable vehicle for tearing down America and rebuilding it in Stalin's/Lenin's/Mao's image (pick one).
Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or a fool.
And no, the Republicans aren't perfect, but they are populated with more people who REALLY care about PRESERVING the good and changing the bad, as opposed to simply DESTROYING WESTERN CIVILIZATION to remake it into some bullspit workers paradise fantasy.
And finally, we Republicans have more guns, so if you don't back down on voter fraud and creating "irrevocable" legislation / trying to steal this country, we will give you the CW2 you are dreaming about, and you will lose.
Badly.
Ya' follow?
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