"There's no I in team," the coach shouted.
"Well, there's also no Q," the players responded.
"Which means what?" the coach demanded.
"Well, there's no IQ, perhaps," the players said.
"Why are you speaking in unison?" the coach asked.
"We are a team," the players said. "We resent your speaking as an individual in order to represent the collective. You tax us with workouts, but there should be no taxation without representation."
"IQ in this instance stands for Imbecile Quotient," said the coach.
"Says you," said the players. "Let's talk about your I for a minute. You say there's no I in team. But are you erasing I from the language? I is also the initial of the Individual. Are you erasing the individual? Think of the word, 'kiss.' There is an I in 'kiss,' right?"
"Right," the coach allowed.
"Well, in a kiss each kisser remains an individual, each signs on, and has to feel the kiss, but also when the kiss is over they go back to being an individual, right?" The players said.
"You are making my point. In a kiss, each player melts into a fine union in which the two partners anticipate one another's motions. They align with one another. In short, they become a team." The coach stood back rather proudly. He had not bossed the players, but had retained his control over the talking points.
"So you're not going to drop the I from the language?" The players asked. They wanted to be certain of the coach's intentions.
"No, I will keep all the letters of the alphabet," the coach said. "Let no letter be left behind."
"Well," the players said, advancing the argument. "Prostitutes don't kiss. It's quite individual, and requires a lot of intimacy. We, ahem, are not really like that on this team. But we are willing to learn more about emotional intelligence, so long as you are willing, as well."
The coach took a step back and pawed the ground with his foot.
"If I stands for individual, and isn't in team, what do the letters in team stand for?" He looked playful.
"A is for aardvark," the players responded. "And for animal, and attitude adjustment. Are you willing to go back and forth on the attitude adjustment part?"
"What do you mean?" the coach asked, sensing insurrection.
"Let's say that T stands for Time. And M stands for the many. E stands for excellence. You see, we are very much on the same page with you, coach." The players said. "When you spoke about the I in team, we had begun to sense we were dealing with a communist dictator who tries to control feedback loops with PR."
The coach looked confused. "Go on," he said.
"It is rather Orwellian to hijack language and excise vowels, or to give them new meanings! There is no I in team! This is clever. But we could just as easily say there is no C or D in team. This means no communist dictator. The I could just as easily stand for It, as in 'It Takes a Village.'"
"You can't make one letter stand for so many words!" The coach objected.
"We can make it mean anything we want," the players said. "We are the authors of our lives, and thus the authority is ours. LANGUAGE belongs to us. That was the point of the LANGUAGE poets."
"That was NOT the point of the LANGUAGE poets," the coach objected. "I knew many LANGUAGE poets and you are not LANGUAGE poets. LANGUAGE poets argued that the language speaks us. It's a thought that came out of Lacan and Wittgenstein among others. There was never a sense that the INDIVIDUAL could control language in the LANGUAGE poets."
"Then why did they sign their books as individuals?" The players asked, confused.
"We are living in a system that is still capitalist, and capitalism is individualistic," the coach said. "But we are moving toward communism, in which we will accept the collective nature of language. Ultimately all books will be written and signed by the collective."
"We are not moving toward communism," the players said. "We demand a space for the individual! A team is only as intellectually strong as each player. We demand the right to not merely follow orders, but to have our own authority, our own risks, our own alley oops and behind the back passes. You can't legislate from the bench. That's groupthink."
"Sometimes we have to see that the a in team for instance takes the leadership of the e, as in dipthongs the second vowel is silent if the first vowel is long. I still insist that you are an extension of me, the coach. 'I' still exists, as in 'I call the tune.'"
"We," on the other hand, said the players, "Believe that you have some freaking unbelievable nerve. What good are silent players, or supporting players, when you are the true star, the light that shines from above. God gave us intelligence to do as we wish. Now you propose to take it away, and do all our planning for us?"
"Not all," the coach suggested, moving sideways and folding his arms behind his back while sweeping the ground before him with his shoe while holding his tongue to one side of his lip. He wondered if he would be able to come out on top of the players.
"In a democracy every person is accountable for their actions which means that every person's self-image is on the line at every moment. With responsibility like that, we have to also have our own agency to protect ourselves from bad coaching. You're not a bad coach. But there are some bad coaches. Some get their players creamed in bad matchups. It's like what the president and the Secretary of State did to Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi. Stevens warned he was outmatched and the coaches didn't listen. Then they pretended that someone else was responsible. Now we say that Benghazi should become a code word for to scapegoat and cover one's ass while denying the truth to the polity in order to finesse the electoral process."
"Boys, don't use bad words such as 'ass' when talking with your superiors," the coach said, letting his hair fall about and beginning to comb it down. "Benghazi can also mean to redistribute responsibility away from ourselves and toward others. The i at the end of Benghazi means to never locate an individual, but to hide it behind a lot of incomprehensible verbiage, to insist that there was a collective process at stake, and that no individual ever said, 'the buck stops here.' With myself as the coach, you will never have that problem. When I hurt you, or make a mistake, I will step right up to the cameras and say so."
[At this point, they all join in a chorus line, turn toward the audience, and recite the following couplet]:
"Each fears the other is a control freak, but
Cooperation and not conflict is what we seek."
Sunday, January 06, 2013
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167 comments:
I only took one course in verse writing. I got a 4.0 and an invitation to read at Castalia, though I only wrote five poems and ten were required for the course. After my second poem I attended the evening workshop with the seasoned poets instead of the beginner's class. I would have written more, but I did all my work on my Smith Corona electric. After my fifth poem the i-key jammed. I trled substltutlng lower case l for upper case I whlch worked well, but lt jarred too much on words that needed a dot for the lower case i.
Kirby,
Benghazi is just one more pathetic attempt by Republican true believers to deny the reality that Barack Obama is the President of the United States. Shall we review? Let's see what I can come up with off the top of my head.
He's Muslim.
He wasn't born in the United States.
There is no birth certificate.
The people who voted for him are not real Americans.
The oath of office was screwed up, and so he's not really President.
He lost the popular vote!
If we abstain from voting in the electoral college, it won't make quorum.
Benghazi.
I wonder what other commentators might add?
Pathetic. Let me spell it out for you: the American people voted for Obama as President. Twice. By significant majorities. And if the constitution did not prohibit them from doing so again, they'd likely do it a third time. Vote for Barack Obama. Barack HUSSEIN Obama. As President of the United States. Because his ideas are more American than your ideas. Because he appeals to hopes rather than fears, because he appeals to initiative rather than entitlement, because he brings ideas rather than jingoism.
As for your side, the Republican brand is shit. It does not need to be so, but it is so. It was not always so, but it is so now. It may not always be so, but it is so now. The Republican party lacks the courage, intelligence, and integrity to change, and so it will be so for a long time.
Don't say that Brett didn't warn you. If this is what you want, I have more.
Stu this really was funny. It seemed like a non sequitur. I say Benghazi and you say Obama is a Muslim! Has anybody made this connection? It would be wonderful if Obama were An aardvark or a Tasmanian devil in disguise but Muslim? I never see this kind of remark. Have legislators talked about this? I don't think even Hannity believes BO is a Muslim. We are turning into a poorer country and that in a sense will enhance equality.
Do you think we should not care about the Bengjazi massacre?
Kirby,
Stu this really was funny. It seemed like a non sequitur. I say Benghazi and you say Obama is a Muslim! Has anybody made this connection? It would be wonderful if Obama were An aardvark or a Tasmanian devil in disguise but Muslim? I never see this kind of remark.
Gee, Kirby. I don't know. There's this stupid blog I read where the idea keeps being put forward by its author and a few leading commenters. Here are a few posts:
President Obama: a Ninja?
MURDER IN AMSTERDAM: The Theo Van Gogh Case
OBAMA'S SPEECH AGAINST THE COMMUNISTS!
GOD IN AMERICA
I don't doubt I could find a more mainstream source, if you like. You know, it's like, "I'm shocked to find out that there's gambling going on here."
Do you think we should not care about the Bengjazi massacre?
We certainly should care. The perpetrators should be hunted down and killed like the animals they are. Obama's done this before, he'll do it again. We should study what happened, and figure out weaknesses in preparation, co-ordination, etc.
But making political hay out of a tragedy? That's just asshattery.
Hiding what really happened until after the election is wrong I think. Waiting until the day after the election to sack Hillary. It's all very calculated to protect Obama who is the incarnation of the idol of race gender and class. These Marxist constructs are part of a widespread new belief system that has nothing to do with America. It comes out of an alien Marxist consciousness. I grant that there is an idealism to Marrxism and that this has pulled in billions. It always ends in slavery. Whether they are Stalin's slave labor camps or Hitler's it doesn't matter. I prefer that old time religion. It was universal and kept the two kingdoms separate. It functioned well though admittedly not well for certain groups. It woild be a lot better for me if you didn't use vulgar language that refers to private parts or to private bodily functions. I thc nk what the prey blem is is a problem in terms of what an economy is supposed to do. Is it meant to redistribute income via the government? Is it meant to only ensure no fraud and that products are safe? There is also the question of America's role in the world. I think the two parties see these questions differently. Last night on BookTv there was a program about Whoittaker Chambers. A professor from Yale said he outted Alger Hiss in his book Witness. No one believed Chambers for a decade. But Chambers prevailed. Appparently Henry Wallace was also one of Stalin's agents and was in contact with the Kremlin. He was FDRs VP. Wallace visited Siberia but thought the gulags were collective farms. People can reframe the world in erroneous ways that lead to collective misery.
The right's claim that Obama believed that he is winning against Al Qaeda in Libya and therefore didn't believe Stevens is worthy of attention. All over Africa Christians are getting massacred. It's not jist Egypt and South Sudan but Mali and Nigeria. The bloody borders thesis of Huntington was decried as racist. What happens when good people believe in a cult like the Jim Jones cult and there is no way to get alternative information out? RGC is kool aid. Universal human rights is the better way. Bush got this. South Sudan's existence is due to Bush.
I don't think race gender and class matter. What matters is religion.
Gee, and I thought I was angry.
My biggest sardonic sigh of the last two weeks is the radical right's insistence on keeping the Benghazi issue alive.
I guess it's all they have. They lost the election, and their obfuscating tactics in the Congress took us over the cliff. People can see now what they really stand for, which is not cooperation and progress, but selfish stubbornness in the face of crisis.
So they lost, and they're bitter, and they're looking for scapegoats.
Now that the economy is finally coming back, they've lost their biggest issue. What's left? Guns? Fetuses? Immigration?
Actually, they've run out of issues. Their only issue that mattered was keeping the rich out of the poor house. A tough job, for sure.
Maybe the whole Republican Party should just resign and start new careers as lobbyists. That's what they eventually end up doing anyway.
All the commentators on all the talk shows over the weekend refused to come clean on guns. Everyone said "it's all so confusing and complicated and counterproductive and unAmerican and why don't we just study the problem for a few months and maybe it will die down and we can get back to talking about immigration and fetuses again?"
And the American people went back to work, shaking their heads in disbelief. The NRA had won again.
Amazing.
Does Kirby think about his children's safety these days, when he sends them off to school?
Does Kirby ever own his opinions, really take responsibility for them? Or does he just throw them out for laughs here?
Kirby,
Hiding what really happened until after the election is wrong I think.
What do you think was hidden? The assault at Benghazi was in the news consistently from September 11th through the election. That this was a planned military attack by terrorist groups, and not a mob action, was public knowledge by 9/18. The affiliation of these terrorists with Al Qaeda was publicly acknowledged by Hillary Clinton on 9/26. These disclosures all occurred six weeks before the election, and as far as I know, there have been no material disclosures of fact since.
Waiting until the day after the election to sack Hillary.
When Hillary was appointed, it was well understood that she continued to have aspirations to the Presidency, and so would only serve one term as Secretary of State, leaving her free to run if she wished in 2016. She was not sacked.
kirby stands up in class and states the same kind of rhetoric out loud for his students although they are naive and they sit there agog wondering if life is as strange as this guy sees it and then they go out into the world and see that why yes it is every bit as strange so then kirby comes here and we take him seriously if only to debate the goods and bads of blubber and blabber and blah blah blah blah blah commies this demos that and we oblige because he owns his blog and he believes in the social virtue of private property even in the realm of ideas
think of this 'curtis' as a thinktank
with quite a bit of cognitive freedom
what i don't like about teams is that they make these huge stated objectives whereas on the other hand in distinction to that and somewhat controversially the individual can stand agoof aloof alone and think for himself that is important that is the only real freedom to feel free to think freely
what i appreciate about the football coach allegory i mean it is allegory isn't it kirbyeez not reporting something that actually happened i mean nobody talks about wittgenstein in the huddle do they i remember in high school talk of the footballteam smoking weed in the huddle
i've heard that football coaches make more than doctors...is that true
i wandered on the margins alone with my guitar serenading tumble weeds
i hope hillary gets better i mean she had a tough job i think if she has some time at home to do home things like cook and clean for bill she'll recover quite well
she needs to work on some domestic policies
where was i
o yeah war
we're talkin about war that's what the allegory is about training young minds for war becaue that's what sports training is all about isn't it it's just this huge suurrooggaattee policy to offset the normal human propensity to engage in violent warfare at the behest of well dressed madmen
i was told recently that there is a form of girl football that is played in lingerie'
i continue to admire the developments of the culture in which i am immersed
if not completely disgusted
what is going on here
with this story
somehow it seems there's a summing up the roosters come home to chicken up to the bar
it is only the human i guess who can say i will be "i" despite the team...other animals are either loaners or integral to the pack...perhaps it is only the human who can stand desperately helplessly frighteningly vulnerably alone on a deserted hiway with no direction home and feel somehow at peace...humans can reserve the right to tell the team to stand too close to the edge of the fiscal cliff
road runner
the coyote's after you
with the team there is always planning and execution
that's all i'm going to say about that
it's a wonderful day in the neighborhood
my grandfather was lutheran and he appears as a surreal image of rugged western independence run amok
jh
jh,
i've heard that football coaches make more than doctors...is that true
I'm doubtful that this is true in any meaningful sense. I don't doubt that the salary ranges substantially overlap. But what I expect is happening when people say something like this is that they're comparing the salaries of football coaches in the upper 1/4 of the FBS (the college teams that are always on TV) and the NFL (we're talking salaries here in the $1-6M range) vs. the average salary for family practitioners (we're talking salaries here of about $250K).
But there are a lot more high school football coaches (for whom $100K would put you near the top of the Texas High School range) than there are college coaches, and a lot more college coaches in the FCS than FBS, just as there are a lot more family practitioners than there are cardiologists, let alone Deans of Medical Schools.
So I think it is more misleading than true.
jh:
I did a blog on the New Orleans Saints here--
http://compassrosebooks.blogspot.com/search?q=new+orleans+saints
which addresses the abuse of authority in professional sports. It's a little harsh, but appropriate to the case.
I don't think football coaching has much to do with political leadership.
The American electorate, on the other hand, seems to feel that acting is a probable training ground for politicians--as evidenced by the rise and success of Reagan and Schwarzenegger, among others.
I never could figure out why people voted for Dubya. A complete dunce.
We're coming to the end of an artificial period of economic stimulation in which massive amounts of government funding have gone into various programs over the last four years. This delays the inevitable crisis in which reality comes to roost and the problems reassert themselves with greater enormity. We can't go on with any more stimulus since we've already reached the debt ceiling. We can lift the debt ceiling once perhaps. Not twice.
Republicans want to begin paying off the debt and getting real. Democrats do not believe that money is real, or that our credit rating is real. Or that our money has been spent bailing out bad mortgages and bad banking practices and bad people with bad ideas, and of course the salt marsh harvest mouse in Pelosi's district (30 million for the mouse).
You can increase employment by having folks manufacture stuff nobody wants (American cars) and then give huge tax breaks to people who buy them and then also pay huge amounts to some to turn in older cars that are still functioning and then employ people to crush them and fill up landfills, but all of this is artificial and doesn't really an ecosystemic monetary system make. Ultimately all this will run out when we've hit the debt ceiling.
We've hit it folks.
This is the real world, and this is the unpalatable truth.
Keynes suggested we constantly pump money into the system to keep it working. That works until the government goes broke or until the bubble bursts and the credit rating begins to deflate.
Republicans are thinking realistically. Democrats think our credit is infinite.
But nothing in this world is infinite.
The credit cycle has hit the wall.
I haven't followed the close discussions of the Obama-Boehner camps, or the McConnell sidesteps. I don't want to deal with it. Too busy dealing with my own debts and trying to catch up on economic theory.
But Hayekian economics suggests that artificial stimulation only postpones the day of reckoning.
It's just like in your own house when you run it with a credit card. Eventually there is collection.
In this case it's the Chinese and the Japanese.
Our economy is still pumping out widgets that the government is paying us to buy, but how long can such a nonsensical feedback loop last?
In many ways I wish we had gotten Ron Paul or someone with the wherewithal to confront the debt head on and start the fire sale. Someone at WSJ suggested we still have assets to sell such as Yosemite and Yellowstone. We could sell them to bidders. No one really wants to do this, but what else does this government have to offer?
We're now officially out of money.
W. had the right idea to at least spread human rights around the world. That worked to an extent in S. Sudan, and to a lesser extent in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It worked way back in the day in Japan and Germany but we were dealing with different kinds of people.
Afghanistan is an endless sinkhole of corruption.
Everyone there can be bought, or at least rented.
Iraq is just as bad.
In Germany we had the remains of a Christian population.
In Japan I have no idea why or how they transitioned to a democratic society.
Bush at least had this ideal.
Now what we've had under Obama is Egypt, and Libya -- going from very bad to worse. Unstable countries that are now run by thugs under the Muslim banner. Qaddafi was a quack, and Mubarek was just as bad and the leader of Syria is never going to cave and has Soviet backing. Somehow these countries have now become staging areas for Muslim militias intent on driving us out of the region and closing down the electoral process instead of opening it up.
I don't really know if Romney would have been better. He would have had a better understanding of economics. He might have been able to understand the foreign realm better than the current administration which has seemingly caved in on both wars, and is on the retreat now everywhere.
Soon the military itself will be downsized as the economy continues into freefall as the day of reckoning comes due.
I predict we will lose most of northern and central Africa to the Muslim militias over the next four years. Meanwhile, the party rages on in DC.
It will be slavery or death for African Christians. Will Israel fall, too?
We are now powerless to prevent any of this. We have been strait-jacketed by Obama having made our economy into Bedlam.
jh,
i was told recently that there is a form of girl football that is played in lingerie'
i continue to admire the developments of the culture in which i am immersed
if not completely disgusted
I'd say that you should do a Google Image search for "lingerie football," but perhaps not. It's NSFW, perhaps especially, for your work. But yes, there's a lot to admire there, even if there's a certain amount of disgust attached to the basic concept.
And lingerie is a bit of a stretch. I'd describe the outfits as being "combat bikini with shoulder pads" rather than as lingerie per se. There's no gauze, no transparency, no seductive ambiguities as to what is revealed intentionally vs. what is revealed unintentionally. What they're showing (clevage and a lot of leg) they're showing to everyone.
wow stu
thanks alot
i'll be busy now for weeks
:)
jh
The problem in Benghazi is not only a local matter. It has repercussions throughout the consular archipelago. It demonstrates how insecure our consulates are, and this will in turn mean that they are more often picked out as points of attack worldwide. This will mean less influence worldwide as we begin to shrink.
Such an attack was thought originally to have come from outrage toward an obscure video (the Obama Administration has tried to walk this back and change the timeline, but there is evidence to the contrary for anyone interested in the truth and the whole truth, rather than the partisan truth that Stu represents).
Requests for additional personnel, for reinforced doors, and personnel traps, and other amenities were all denied.
This is due to the shrinking economy and the emergency level of debt as we reach the fiscal cliff, but it is also due to a systemic failure as massive self-esteem was not permitting in any poor feedback. At this point we have a completely destroyed consulate.
There will be many more.
Every one will be blamed on local factors, and those for whom Obama is a cult, will never be able to accept that there is something systemically wrong in his approach to problems. He must be right because by definition he is the avatar that his cultists have waited for.
No one thought that Bush would be a demi-god. Instead he was simply efficient from time to time. He acted with dispatch. We don't really know if he deterred any problems in Iraq through the invasion.
The alternative history doesn't exist.
It was meant I think to create a domino effect in which Islam caved to modern demands for democratic reform accompanied by jobs and work and decent living conditions as well as a free press (this exists to some small extent now in Iraq and Afghanistan along with an enlarged literacy within Afghanistan). But what is there to read? Have those societies become significantly more multicultural? Have the societies in Egypt and Libya become more susceptible to outside influence, or less?
America at this point is two teams. We are Democrats, and Republicans, and anyone in between is in no -man's land. Democrats and Republicans are barely speaking with one another, and when we do, we do so with considerable contempt, and without actually listening.
A house divided is hard to stand.
If the lights go off due to nonpayment of the bills it will become a moot point. At this point, we simply can't pay our bills any longer without agreeing to extend the credit line even further into the pockets of our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.
We can now ransack the pockets of the wealthy and of our future population to pay for the expenses that infinite idealism calls for.
Or we can stop molesting other people to pay for ridiculous expenditures that help no one in the long run and realize how dangerous our situation is, and pull back. I wish Romney was making the decisions. 48% of Americans wished the same.
But we lost. It may not be as big a loss as when Germany elected Hitler and it almost certainly isn't. It's more like the mistake of electing Carter again.
Unlike Curtis, I don't see the Republicans as protecting "the rich." I see them as protecting "capitalism" itself. It's the only decent system in the world. Communism is slavery.
It is so not only in a metaphorical sense, but often in a realistic sense, in a literal sense. Think of the slave laborers in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, or in the Ukraine (worked to death without even food in this case). Something similar happened in China, and is even today happening in North Korea.
We at present are only moving in that direction. But we risk losing our best producers if we create situations that discourage them. France is beginning to lose its industry as are many other European countries. Our one great resource has been fair laws that protect the entrepreneur and private property and the right to defend ourselves from government takeover. We are losing all of this under Obama.
I want to bring back the Puritans.
Everyone else seems to want lingerie football.
Alas!
Kirby,
We can't go on with any more stimulus since we've already reached the debt ceiling. We can lift the debt ceiling once perhaps. Not twice.
Clearly you're not an economist. Under GWB, the debt ceiling was raised -- without controversy -- every year except for 2005.
What you fail to understand is that the economic arguments against the stimulus are lies.
Presidents in general like stimulus because it is politically popular, and by and large they've gotten the stimulus they've wanted. I can't think of a single President who hasn't proposed major stimulus. A quick google search reveals that even Gerald Ford, the unlikeliest President, used stimulus as a economic/political tool. Indeed, I think there's a good case to be made that Republican Presidents have pushed harder for stimulus than Democratic ones, if only because stimulus usually means either a tax cut, or a wealth transfer from the government to private enterprise.
Moreover, stimulus, if it results in a growth in the economy, pays for itself. So it's popular and good, if done well.
No, Republicans oppose stimulus now because they believe by doing so they can make the President and/or the Democrats unpopular because of the economic damage that ending stimulus will cause. If Romney were President-Elect rather than last year's fish wrap, I don't doubt for an instant that you'd be jumping up and down in favor of his stimulus proposals, assuming he finally got his act together enough to say what they were.
Republicans want to begin paying off the debt and getting real.
Bullshit. Republicans want power. They only give a damn about the debt now because they're not the ones spending the money. Give them control, and "the deficit doesn't matter."
You can increase employment by having folks manufacture stuff nobody wants (American cars) and then give huge tax breaks to people who buy them and then also pay huge amounts to some to turn in older cars that are still functioning and then employ people to crush them and fill up landfills, but all of this is artificial and doesn't really an ecosystemic monetary system make. Ultimately all this will run out when we've hit the debt ceiling.
Government incentives for auto purchases are a thing of the past, yet GM's and Chrysler's sales continue to grow, for which their existence as going concerns is a precondition. I don't know why I bother saying so, but you have no behind your claim here, nor any notion that having facts might be the responsible thing to do. You're too lazy and sloppy to bother fact checking anything.
In many ways I wish we had gotten Ron Paul or someone with the wherewithal to confront the debt head on and start the fire sale. Someone at WSJ suggested we still have assets to sell such as Yosemite and Yellowstone. We could sell them to bidders. No one really wants to do this, but what else does this government have to offer?
The government secures its debt via the future value of its tax collections. This amounts to about $2.3T. Interest on the national debt amounts to 6% of total expenditures. The recommended maximum personal debt/income ratio is 36%. So, if you're looking for an appropriate household analogy, the federal government has only 1/6th the debt that family financial planners and loan originators believe is affordable. This is not an argument for taking on more debt willy-nilly, either as individuals or as a country, but it is an argument that the "affordability argument" is pig-swill after it's been processed by a pig.
The numbers are big because the government is big.
Here is part of the timeline of the Benghazi attack. It was compiled by the Annenberg Organization that is often connected to PBS. Thus it is Democrat-friendly. And yet it still reveals serious discrepancies between what the Obama Administration says it said and what it actually said. Meanwhile, the media conspired with the Obama Administration to withhold problematic material until after the election.
Candy Crawford also covered for Obama during the third debate. Like most of the Marxist media, she was not interested in a fair debate, but in one in which Obama would win.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/
Everything was tilted for Obama and yet he still barely won the election. Romney blinked when Candy covered for Obama and the moment was lost. Obama stuck Romney in the neck with a bayonet and the election was his.
Some say that Obama was too busy with fund-raising parties the night of the attack to be able to appropriately respond. I don't know the timeline of Obama's whereabouts or his true thoughts. No one does. He's a man of great mystery that probably no one understands in spite of the many attempts to do so.
He has accepted responsibility for the attack and says the ultimate blame must rest at his door.
But what exact decision did he make that made the attack possible? Was it choosing Hillary for Secretary of State or was it something more tangible: a memo directing others to spin it until the election?
Will something like that eventually surface? Who is likely to know the truth on this matter?
All we have now are smoking consular compounds and a desperate attempt by the left to distract us from the truth with any good news they can muster, or with strange new sports in which the goal is unclear.
Where is Carrie Nations?
Kirby,
Such an attack was thought originally to have come from outrage toward an obscure video (the Obama Administration has tried to walk this back and change the timeline, but there is evidence to the contrary for anyone interested in the truth and the whole truth, rather than the partisan truth that Stu represents).
Then provide some citations. In the meantime, I'll put forward Wiki: 2012 Benghazi attack as a useful background source, and refer specifically to the section "U.S. goverment response" in support of the timeline that I gave.
Requests for additional personnel, for reinforced doors, and personnel traps, and other amenities were all denied.
We've been through that. Funds for US embassy protection had been cut by the Republicans, resulting in the usual bureaucratic fights to preserve crucial assets. These requests have to be understood in a context where the Republicans had made it impossible to respond to all, or even most such requests, no matter how well-founded they might have been. That's the way these things work. There are tradeoffs between budgets and lives. It is extraordinarly hypocritical to argue that we can cut the one without sacrifices in the other. But not surprising.
This is due to the shrinking economy and the emergency level of debt
And the Republican overreaction to it...
as we reach the fiscal cliff,
An entirely artificial construct, intended to force Congress to act, and which was timed so that the will of the people, as reflected by the elections, would have an effect.
Here is part of the timeline of the Benghazi attack. It was compiled by the Annenberg Organization that is often connected to PBS.
Annenberg is good, and I've often cited them. But I do see some specific reasons to criticize the article, mostly because it's pretty dated by now.
In particular, the Annenberg article doesn't know about Mohamed Bishari, and his report that Ansar al-Shariah launched the attack "in retaliation for the release of the anti-Islamic video, Innocence of Muslims." It is reasonable to assume that Obama did. As for the fact that there were timely reports that terrorists were involved, I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt that there were timely reports that martians were involved. Sorting the truth from disperate, unvetted sources of information in real-time is extremely problematic.
We could be having a conversation about the relationship between the individual and the community - between diversity and unity, between the strength of coming together in a group and the strength of the individual being able to act of his own accord.
And we could talk about how to balance those all that stuff, in our own lives, in religious life, in political life.
We could be talking about the ingenuity of the states and the power of the federation thereof.
We could talk about what princpiples we use to decide when a smaller group makes decisions, and when a larger group does - and how one supports the other.
But Kirby just couldn't help but throw out the Benghazi Bomb - and Stu couldn't help but respond by pointing to why he thinks the Right likes to throw Benghazi bombs, instead of focusing on the facts of the Benghazi bomb.
Kirby wrote a nifty little surreal piece of prose, and then threw a piece of dog shit into the last couple of paragraphs.
And now everyone's hanging around the dog shit, in some weird version of the Cheech and Chong joke.
Brett,
Kirby wrote a nifty little surreal piece of prose, and then threw a piece of dog shit into the last couple of paragraphs.
And now everyone's hanging around the dog shit, in some weird version of the Cheech and Chong joke.
Seems about right. You have a problem with this? ;-)
Yes, like I said, the problem with conversation is that you need a lingua franca. I'm off in my own world with the surreal prose, or the Edward Hicks puzzle (which I finished by doing the bear yesterday afternoon with my soon who was just throwing the pieces in as fast as he could go!). I know it's the lingua franca.
Surreal prose is very hard to follow.
I have been thinking: well, maybe I should try an Onion type piece once a week.
Two Muslim Militia Groups Meet at Consulate to Discuss Why They Should Kill the American Ambassador, can't agree, and go home.
The Benghazi thing is something I think about, but politics is a weird abnormal language for me. I watch Fox for laughs, but only for about ten minutes every few days. I avoid all the other stations because I can't stand the look of decency on the newscasters' faces. I hate Brian Jennings and his look of concerned decency. I love the demonic look on the Fox station news anchors.
It's so voluptuous!
I wish I could get people to talk instead about aesthetics, or to talk with humor. But self-righteous anger over political topics is what the left wants to do. They all want to be Robespierre or Danton.
Nobody wants to be Benny Hill any more.
Or Red Skelton.
Still, I learn stuff this way. I am reading my way through Keynes Hayek. Stu said that every president raises the debt ceiling. I will have to check on that. I also read up on the guy who claimed a video WAS involved in Benghazi.
Has Fox spent too much time on the incident?
Often they are the only ones to carry a story for a long time, and then suddenly another station will carry it, and then whammo, you get a flood of reportage. Van Jones was like that. At first it was just Glenn Beck yammering away.
Then, Van Jones caught on and it was in all the papers. Van Jones a member of a Maoist splinter group. He was gone in minutes.
Maoist Guerilla Lives in White House Basement for Years. Says He Lived on Ginger Nuts That Fell Through Floor from All Night Bingo Parties Given by Michelle.
Well, Stu, I am now teaching SAT verbal prep. classes to fund my writing habit...
So if y'all could have high-minded discussions about individuality vs. unity, then I'd have lots of material to guide my kiddoes with.
So, ya know. Do that.
What is the outcome of the SAT class, Brett? What are they supposed to learn? give us some examples.
Woman: I find that about every four hours or so I am hungry.
Man: You Democrats are all alike!
Woman: Well, I don't use food stamps.
Man: Oh, so now that's a virtue among you folks? To not use food stamps?
Woman: You aren't hungry ever?
Man: Well, yeah, but it's more like every three hours or so, and I am not such a pig as you, grovelling in your trough with all that multicultural food you like. I just eat a steak three times a day.
Woman: You like it bloody, probably, so that you can imagine it's the head of a poor person.
Man: No doubt. I am a cannibal.
Woman: What business are you in?
Man: Surreal estate.
Woman: Fits.
Man: Are you going to finish that frittata?
Woman: I'm going to throw it to the poor while feeling noble.
Man: I am hungry and have no money!
Woman: Too bad, you're a Republican! (Throws frittata to the poor!)
Crowd: Thank you, Michelle! We will vote for you! We wish you could be first lady forever!
Michelle: Are you the 47%?
Crowd: We are the 8% unemployment rate.
Michelle: Hi. You seem to be mostly women and blacks. I thought my husband treated you well.
Crowd: Not well. He took away our Tasty Cakes as part of Obamacare! We miss Tasty Cakes! Better than bread any day!
Man: I am going to reopen the Tasty Cake factory under a new sponsorship. Just be patient.
Crowd: Ok, but we will not vote for you. You are the Republican!
Man: Once I thought of gender assignment transition in order to multiply the dates. Now I think of party transition.
Crowd: Hurray! Just don't hit your head on the debt ceiling.
Crowd: Through a process of indefinite inflation we, the poor, eat too much, eating up the fat of the land, while demanding that the government continue to bail us out with food stamps. But if you're to join us, Republican Man, or if too many of you join us, there will be no productive producers, and thus less food to redistribute into our endless gullet. So someone should remain a Republican.
Man: I'm tired of it. But ok, I guess someone has to grow things and work a ten hour day so that fat pigs like you can shove down grease.
Woman: That was rude and evidence of your feeling of superiority.
Man: What else do I get if not a feeling of superiority? What is my work ethic about if not feeling superior?
Woman: How about compassion for the endless hunger of the poor for good food, plus compassion for women who have no power. Why don't you throw us a pity party in addition to a check?
Man: I would rather throw the window out the window, or open the door to the door.
Crowd: We are not well educated enough to understand this surreal humor. Let's get back to party politics, and to compassion for us. We are hungry every minute of the day! Feed us bacon and shrimp and avocados. Don't scrimp on the shrimp.
Man: I feel so unappreciated. Ok, here are food things for all of you poor people. Remember to appreciate me.
Crowd: You're awful because you are so rich. Please die. On the other hand, please don't, because where else can we get tax receipts to redistribute? Please live, but don't live it up. We can't take it. We feel vengeful.
Woman: I have so much compassion for the poor!
Crowd: Hurray for the poor! We are now the majority thanks to Democratic policies! They give us just enough to keep us poor forevr, so as to solidify their voting bloc!
Man: So clever! I should join you.
Crowd: Please don't. We need someone to work.
Woman: Yes, work. We need to bite the hand that feeds us.
Brett,
I think a reasonable starting point for a discussion of collectivity vs. individuality is the notion of enlightened self-interest. For the health and prosperity of each requires the health and prosperity of the other. No individual can long stand alone, and each of us is magnified by the society we keep and which keeps us. No society can long prosper that fails to serve the interests of its individuals, or fails to benefit from their individual gifts.
A well-known form of this argument is found in 1 Cor 12:4-26:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
God does not bless us as individuals to magnify us, God blesses us as individuals for the common good. If we apply our gifts to raise up the community, we honor him who gave those gifts to us. If in doing so, we raise ourselves as well, we do not sin, but are indeed twice blessed. But if we use our gifts to enrich ourselves without first benefiting the community, we do sin, and we do dishonor him who gave those gifts to us. And if we harm the community in our efforts to benefit ourselves, we have doubled down on sin. The other members of our community are our sisters and brothers, children with us of our Father in heaven.
it takes a village to raise an idiot
A whole nation of idiots growing up in a million villages decided to discuss the free rider problem and decided to offer a free linch to anyone who could assemble an economoc system that allowed everyone to do nothing and yet still receive full benefits equal to those who worked fifty hours a week or more. One group proposed socialism and one proposed capitalism. The socialists built roads out of the bodies of slave laborers who had once been middle class citizens. They were proud of these roads as you could get from Moscow to Siberia in a fortnight. The capitalists built factories in which millions sweated and dreamed and raised eager little children who readhe Bible and loved Spongebob. Socialists said this was not really working out evenly as their system had. You could drive from San Franc
isco to Nyc on a twenty dollar bill and some change and then go to New Orleans and on and on. There were bison on the nickels and on the other side the head of a Natal American.
I liked Stu's beautiful use of Paul. At the same time I am reminded of Orwell's admonitions. I don't think we can afford to be idealistic when realism says that selfishness is the way that a great number run their lives. I feel sorry for Stevens. If I were an ambassador in any troubled country I would think to myself that this president only cares about himself and his image and cares nothing about me or anyone else. It sends a disturbing message.
I liked Stu's beautiful use of Paul. At the same time I am reminded of Orwell's admonitions. I don't think we can afford to be idealistic when realism says that selfishness is the way that a great number run their lives. I feel sorry for Stevens. If I were an ambassador in any troubled country I would think to myself that this president only cares about himself and his image and cares nothing about me or anyone else. It sends a disturbing message.
Kirby,
I don't think we can afford to be idealistic when realism says that selfishness is the way that a great number run their lives.
Do you think we're called to live as other people live?
We are called to behave well in the community but also to call others to behave well. This can only be done within a very small circumference perhaps. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3-6:
"Our orders—backed up by the Master, Jesus—are to refuse to have anything to do with those among you who are lazy and refuse to work the way we taught you. Don’t permit them to freeload on the rest. We showed you how to pull your weight when we were with you, so get on with it. We didn’t sit around on our hands expecting others to take care of us. In fact, we worked our fingers to the bone, up half the night moonlighting so you wouldn’t be burdened with taking care of us. And it wasn’t because we didn’t have a right to your support; we did. We simply wanted to provide an example of diligence, hoping it would prove contagious."
2 Thessalonians 3 goes on, and is quite strong in thinking about the reality rather than the surreality or idealism of a community. He gives us the absolute truth of an ideal in Corinthians, but here he talks of means of rebuking. You have to do it with complete love for the one you're rebuking. You can't reject them as you do it. If you already reject them, or think of them as feces (which you seem to think of the entire Republican party which makes up 48% of the last vote and more in southern states), then I don't think you can do this.
You think of the rich as freeloaders and I think of the poor as freeloaders. It's possible that they are both freeloaders. I have to talk like this with my own family members as we clean up for instance. I have to talk with myself about it, when I myself don't want to do something. I have to do things all the time like fix the basement sink, which requires a new faucet, but which also requires me crawling into a spider-web like crawl space, and hurting my back, just to get the dripping to stop (the pip is cracked in the cold water side).
Getting someone to think clearly is also an admonition of a kind. I think that's the salutary thing about this blog. We call one another to think more clearly, and to broaden and clarify the focus.
We all have beams in our eyes. It's just how it is.
But here at least Paul says you can't let slackers go either.
Of course sometimes slackers have a demon. We don't know always why someone is slacking. Maybe their heart is broken. Maybe they're on crystal meth. Maybe they really are lazy. Maybe they just don't have a brain. Maybe they're down with cancer. Nobody knows. Communities are bizarre.
I'm following the Knicks. Stoudemire is great, but his back is always going out. Carmello is great, but he can't beat LeBron. LeBron is just bigger and stronger and faster. Jason Kidd is excellent for a forty year old but he is forty nevertheless. Tyson Chandler is always playing at his optimum ability I think but he's no Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I like JR Smith, but he's no Kobe. They're having a good year and might be able to outdistance the Lakers this year. I'm sure they have discussions of who's slacking. Novak can hit threes and he plays defense, but he just can't get inside without having the ball stolen. What will it take for them to make the championships? A miracle.
We are called to behave well in the community but also to call others to behave well. This can only be done within a very small circumference perhaps. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3-6:
"Our orders—backed up by the Master, Jesus—are to refuse to have anything to do with those among you who are lazy and refuse to work the way we taught you. Don’t permit them to freeload on the rest. We showed you how to pull your weight when we were with you, so get on with it. We didn’t sit around on our hands expecting others to take care of us. In fact, we worked our fingers to the bone, up half the night moonlighting so you wouldn’t be burdened with taking care of us. And it wasn’t because we didn’t have a right to your support; we did. We simply wanted to provide an example of diligence, hoping it would prove contagious."
2 Thessalonians 3 goes on, and is quite strong in thinking about the reality rather than the surreality or idealism of a community. He gives us the absolute truth of an ideal in Corinthians, but here he talks of means of rebuking. You have to do it with complete love for the one you're rebuking. You can't reject them as you do it. If you already reject them, or think of them as feces (which you seem to think of the entire Republican party which makes up 48% of the last vote and more in southern states), then I don't think you can do this.
You think of the rich as freeloaders and I think of the poor as freeloaders. It's possible that they are both freeloaders. I have to talk like this with my own family members as we clean up for instance. I have to talk with myself about it, when I myself don't want to do something. I have to do things all the time like fix the basement sink, which requires a new faucet, but which also requires me crawling into a spider-web like crawl space, and hurting my back, just to get the dripping to stop (the pip is cracked in the cold water side).
Getting someone to think clearly is also an admonition of a kind. I think that's the salutary thing about this blog. We call one another to think more clearly, and to broaden and clarify the focus.
We all have beams in our eyes. It's just how it is.
But here at least Paul says you can't let slackers go either.
Of course sometimes slackers have a demon. We don't know always why someone is slacking. Maybe their heart is broken. Maybe they're on crystal meth. Maybe they really are lazy. Maybe they just don't have a brain. Maybe they're down with cancer. Nobody knows. Communities are bizarre.
I'm following the Knicks. Stoudemire is great, but his back is always going out. Carmello is great, but he can't beat LeBron. LeBron is just bigger and stronger and faster. Jason Kidd is excellent for a forty year old but he is forty nevertheless. Tyson Chandler is always playing at his optimum ability I think but he's no Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I like JR Smith, but he's no Kobe. They're having a good year and might be able to outdistance the Lakers this year. I'm sure they have discussions of who's slacking. Novak can hit threes and he plays defense, but he just can't get inside without having the ball stolen. What will it take for them to make the championships? A miracle.
I meant to say that they might be able to slip past the Celtics this year. Paul Pierce is verifiably old now, at least for the league. Even Garnett is slowing down a tiny bit. You can see it in the pick and roll. Carmello is probably at his best right now. He's still hotheaded but he can also get hothanded. He must know that it's now or ever. At most he has two years left to take the team to the championships. He has to know this. He's had many forty point games. But diving into the stands for a loose ball? Not so bright at this point in the season. He just plain loses perspective. So does Stoudemire. Can Kidd keep the team focused? I worry that once Nash gets into the mesh with the Lakers that they will start to steamroll the opposition. The Hawks are good this season for the first time in a long time. Teamwork is a major puzzle. It's a very delicate thing. You have to call each other out, but there is a rope tying all together. If the rope snaps, there is no future. There are limits to what you can do.
It all boils down to great friendships, and no major internal rivalries. The Stones have this friendship. The Beatles broke up over internal rivalries. But those internal rivalries if not pushed too far can pull the best out of others.
Stu's citation of Corinthians brought tears to my eyes it was so beautifully put. But I tried to still think sensibly. There are other passages in Paul that can be placed against that one in Corinthians. Now the left will try to say: but that's not Paul. Or we don't know for certain that that's Paul. I think we have to accept the Bible as it is whole hog at this juncture. It's not a buffet.
It's one vast interlocking text, with many figures inside one great text, and all the different stories vie with one another. And the tradition, too, since then, has repercussions. Luther changes some elements, as does Aquinas. Niebuhr places a profound emphasis on some places and not others.
I love the Walton Reporter's Looking Back Page. It offers letters from a hundred years ago. (Walton is a tiny village next to ours which is presently having a stalker go to Facebook pages of children and threaten to kill them. Many parents are pulling their kids out of school until the stalker is found.)
On December 19, 1913, an eighty-four year old woman (she was born in 1827), wrote this letter to the paper against the female vote:
"If they only wish to vote, why, let them if they must, but it is the offices they are working, as every one can see. Would not the President of the United Station in a hobble skirt be a pitiful sight?
...
She was only an afterthought in her creation I suspect -- intended as a companion and sometimes safe counsellor for man..."
Mrs. E.M. Kline --
It's fascinating to get viewpoints that are no longer extant but which reach back into other histories such as the one that still took the Creation seriously, and still sees Eve as flubbing it with the apple routine.
Most would now quote Paul on the oneness of a marriage as an unbreakable team. Now divorce is far more common (fifty percent about, and higher in some communities -- up to 80% of black kids are born out of wedlock now -- some think the Democrats have made this possible).
Without the teamwork of a family people are atomized and perhaps only the State is their friend. I would hate to have the State as my partner.
But the State wants to cripple marriages and take over peoples' minds. The Democrats have always done this since Tammany. It is wrong, but there is a mighty inducement: power. I want all the stays against state power to remain. I want divisive parties, and voting factions, and I want the State to stay out of news reporting, as they always steer it toward their side.
Maybe she was born in 1829 rather than 1827. I know nothing else about Mrs. E.M. Kline. Who was she? Back then women took their husband's name. Now many men take their wives' names or there is a hyphen. All these things interest me. It's a team, but who is dominant and in what area of endeavor?
Kirby,
You do know that "The Message" is a loose paraphrase, what its translator calls "an idiomatic" translation. It's great if you're looking for a fresh take on an old text, but it's not appropriate for theological disputes. It is time to put aside your childish Bible, and to read scripture like a man:
Now we command you, beloved, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you. This was not because we do not have that right, but in order to give you an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living (2Thessalonians 3:6–12 NRSV)
It's not at all clear whether the freeloaders here were rich, poor, or of intermediate means. What is clear is that they were burdens on the community, the kind of people who expected to be served, rather than to serve others, and the kind who expected others to support them, rather than to support themselves.
Indeed, Paul's reference to himself specifically seems to hint that the freeloaders were people who presented themselves as spiritual leaders to the community, although they were in fact no more than busybodies.
Certainly, though, I agree with Paul that people who choose not to work should not expect the community to provide for them. Paul, after all, uses the word "unwilling." Bonhoeffer said much the same in "Life Together," which I continue to recommend.
But I'll note that "unwilling" does not apply to people who are willing to work, but for whom no work is available. Nor does it necessarily apply to the retired, although they should be expected to contribute according to their (presumably diminished) abilities.
If you already reject them, or think of them as feces (which you seem to think of the entire Republican party which makes up 48% of the last vote and more in southern states), then I don't think you can do this.
I spoke of the Republican brand with specificity, not of Republicans as individuals.
You think of the rich as freeloaders and I think of the poor as freeloaders. It's possible that they are both freeloaders.
Some of the rich are freeloaders, as are some of the poor. As a practical matter, I expect that there are more poor freeloaders than rich freeloaders numerically, if only because there are a heck of a lot more poor people than rich people, but that they constitute a smaller proportion of the poor population than the rich population. After all, it's a lot more comfortable to be a rich freeloader than a poor freeloader.
Jesus said we should become like children to get into heaven. To read "like men" is not that childish. So I think we should reconsider exactly how we read. What would it mean to read "like an animal," or "like a woman," or "like a Christian" or "like a birthday cake"? Just saying.
Can we ever read like anything other than ourselves? It's probably important to try to do so.
Maybe somewhere some scholar has pinned down who these freeloaders were.
Interestingly, this passage appears in the Soviet Constitution. It's easy to forget that Stalin was an Orthodox scholar in training before he went whole-hog into the carving oiut of the Marxist state in Russia.
An amazing program last night on Halogen took us on an adventure through Siberia. One highway was paved with the bones of the middle class. Stalin was afraid they would rise up against him in revolt so he transported them to Siberia and worked them to death, using their bones to help firm up the roadway. 300 kilometers of highway are paved with the bodies of the middle class.
It's quite possible to see the middle class, not just the rich and the poor, as freeloaders.
Everyone has everyone on trial all the time.
Curtis regularly condemns me to death. It's about every month that he does it at least once. In his most recent post he avers that I should be scalped for questioning the narrative thread of ethnic studies.
Otherwise known as resentment studies.
I resent resentment studies because it seeks to build resentment rather than knowledge. It knowingly looks for indictments of white middle-class America and seemingly cannot find any other truths.
In that sense, it is much like CNN to say nothing of MSNBC or even very much like the president and his wife. He knows he needs the votes, but as soon as he doesn't he does everything he can to pave the way toward a new communist future with the bones of the white middle class.
How could he do anything else? This is what he learned in Wright's church for twenty years.
It's now the main stock in trade of most historians at universities.
I hold out for an alternative history in which cooperation rather than murder was the norm. John Brown was a white middle-class man, as were most of the northern soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They had doubts in some cases, but I really don't think that Lincoln did. He had to play along with those who didn't -- just as Jefferson and Madison did in their own day, but the idea was that ultimately the institution of slavery had to go.
Government control of the economy is slavery.
Government control of the arts is slavery.
Government intrusion into the churches is slavery.
Government intrusion into the Zimmerman case or the Crowley case is unfair, too.
Obama can't micromanage everything. He should let the planning come from the ground up.
He should listen to the periphery. He should have listened to Stevens or put in place a Secretary of State who was more responsive.
Our empire is now quite farflung and this may be very difficult.
We also don't want government to silence the periphery as Stalin and Lenin did in order to manufacture total consent. Dissent is the nature of a democracy.
Jesus said we should become like children to get into heaven. To read "like men" is not that childish. So I think we should reconsider exactly how we read. What would it mean to read "like an animal," or "like a woman," or "like a Christian" or "like a birthday cake"? Just saying.
Can we ever read like anything other than ourselves? It's probably important to try to do so.
Maybe somewhere some scholar has pinned down who these freeloaders were.
Interestingly, this passage appears in the Soviet Constitution. It's easy to forget that Stalin was an Orthodox scholar in training before he went whole-hog into the carving oiut of the Marxist state in Russia.
An amazing program last night on Halogen took us on an adventure through Siberia. One highway was paved with the bones of the middle class. Stalin was afraid they would rise up against him in revolt so he transported them to Siberia and worked them to death, using their bones to help firm up the roadway. 300 kilometers of highway are paved with the bodies of the middle class.
It's quite possible to see the middle class, not just the rich and the poor, as freeloaders.
Everyone has everyone on trial all the time.
Curtis regularly condemns me to death. It's about every month that he does it at least once. In his most recent post he avers that I should be scalped for questioning the narrative thread of ethnic studies.
Otherwise known as resentment studies.
I resent resentment studies because it seeks to build resentment rather than knowledge. It knowingly looks for indictments of white middle-class America and seemingly cannot find any other truths.
In that sense, it is much like CNN to say nothing of MSNBC or even very much like the president and his wife. He knows he needs the votes, but as soon as he doesn't he does everything he can to pave the way toward a new communist future with the bones of the white middle class.
How could he do anything else? This is what he learned in Wright's church for twenty years.
It's now the main stock in trade of most historians at universities.
I hold out for an alternative history in which cooperation rather than murder was the norm. John Brown was a white middle-class man, as were most of the northern soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They had doubts in some cases, but I really don't think that Lincoln did. He had to play along with those who didn't -- just as Jefferson and Madison did in their own day, but the idea was that ultimately the institution of slavery had to go.
Government control of the economy is slavery.
Government control of the arts is slavery.
Government intrusion into the churches is slavery.
Government intrusion into the Zimmerman case or the Crowley case is unfair, too.
Obama can't micromanage everything. He should let the planning come from the ground up.
He should listen to the periphery. He should have listened to Stevens or put in place a Secretary of State who was more responsive.
Our empire is now quite farflung and this may be very difficult.
We also don't want government to silence the periphery as Stalin and Lenin did in order to manufacture total consent. Dissent is the nature of a democracy.
You get a few glimpses of the Siberian highway of death in this video. It's not maybe the best for describing the actual bodies put in the roads, but it does refer to them in passing. It's hard to believe how other people around the world live.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=933_1275704843
Kirby,
Jesus said we should become like children to get into heaven. To read "like men" is not that childish. So I think we should reconsider exactly how we read. What would it mean to read "like an animal," or "like a woman," or "like a Christian" or "like a birthday cake"? Just saying.
So, you don't recognize the paraphrase of 1 Cor 13:11? I thought it was pretty obvious.
In that sense, it is much like CNN to say nothing of MSNBC or even very much like the president and his wife. He knows he needs the votes, but as soon as he doesn't he does everything he can to pave the way toward a new communist future with the bones of the white middle class.
You're delusional. I suppose it entertains you to be outrageous and irresponsible.
I hold out for an alternative history in which cooperation rather than murder was the norm. John Brown was a white middle-class man, as were most of the northern soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They had doubts in some cases, but I really don't think that Lincoln did.
There is a valid point here, and one I've observed before. It's one thing to piss on white men (of which I'm one) because of their history of privilege and oppression, but I think justice also requires commending white men for their ultimate willingness to give up unjust power, for their willingness to hear a word of judgment, accept it, and repent. Without this willingness, without this receptivity to the word of God, there'd still be slavery, there's be no women's sufferage, etc.
We can look at the past, and agree that there were true injustices. Where we disagree is in the present. I still see vestiges of the old system of privilege and power, and say "more"; you see the concessions that have been made (or required), and say "enough."
But I think that honesty requires acknowledgement of both our sins and our repentances.
I'll buy the last part. We differ on how much and whose fault it is.
Kirby:
"Curtis regularly condemns me to death."
Actually, I suggested that if you took your Native American hate attitude to a reservation, you'd probably be treated harshly. Getting scalped needn't be fatal. Native Americans believed that if you could take a man's scalp, you could seize his soul, and have power over him forever. Still kicking and screaming, Kirby, but not unto death.
"It's about every month that he does it at least once."
This is a fantasy. I've accused you, with some justification, of being a National Socialist, who was born fifty years too late, but I've never suggested we condemn you to the ultimate fate.
"In his most recent post he avers that I should be scalped for questioning the narrative thread of ethnic studies."
You didn't mention ethnic studies. If you had, we'd have been on the same page. As you know, we've had that discussion before--about the "cultural relativity" of the humanities courses--and I've agreed with you. I've spoken at length--here on your blog (as elsewhere) about the reprehensible practice (in Arizona and New Mexico) of teaching illegals--in American schools--to hate their hosts. We're in agreement about that. But it doesn't change the history of our treatment of minority culture in America. We can disagree about that history, and still agree about the inadvisability of teaching ethnic minorities to "hate" white people.
"Otherwise known as resentment studies."
Yeah, I have to agree here, but I also think American history has been written by white men who chose to ignore the sad facts of our condemnation and exploitation of African Americans, Native Americans, as well as Latinos. Again, having acknowledged that doesn't oblige us to "prefer" their version of the story, or to make special gestures towards their well-being, out of misplaced guilt or charity.
"I resent resentment studies because [they] seek to build resentment rather than knowledge. It knowingly looks for indictments of white middle-class America and seemingly cannot find any other truths."
Well, it does both. If we focus exclusively on the negative aspects of our relationship with minority culture, we'll likely be telling an incomplete narrative. Still, it's good not to forget what evil we did do, lest we repeat those mistakes in the future. Teaching history is not just about making up pleasing fairy-stories like Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan. White men killing "indians" is also part of the story.
Why do I get the feeling that you prefer the folk tales to the truth?
Oh, well.
I see remaining structural problems having to do with family breakups that the Hollywood left glorifies while mocking shows such as Father Knows Best. Even in the Cosby Show he was often presented as knowing least.
I don't know precisely how to fix all problems. Dumping money on them helps the Feds but often not the actual problem. And answers from inside oof communities are usually better. Answers should reflect ideals belonging to an in group.
My suspicion--and it's only a suspicion--is that Obama really doesn't give a hoot about what Wright ever believed.
You take his religion seriously, because that's what "god-fearing" men tend to do. "Is he a heathen, or a Hindu, or a Muslim, or what?"
We've become accustomed to seeing our politicians bend over backwards to try to appear religious, because the religious right has made it a cause celebe, a right of passage. But most politicians aren't religious, even (and especially) those who profess it. It's a public performance, with no literal significance on behavior or policy. It makes good press. It's "the right thing to do."
Whether or not Wright was a socialist or a Communist or a holy roller, is of no significance whatever to Obama's character or his political behavior.
The problem with Father Knows Best is that it was a program designed to foster false ideas of middle class respectability. It offered Americans a fantasy in which the family, and society, and doctors, were whole-heartedly good-natured and honest. Americans knew in their bones that Robert Young and his wife and children lived in a false, "innocent" world, and yet they wanted to imagine that it somehow mirrored the world they wished they lived in.
Fantasies are fine as long as we understand their limitations. Cosby merely transferred the fake respectability of Ozzie and Harriet to the Negro setting. His "version" of African American family life was as much a Walt Disney version of our culture as the earlier ones.
Curtis,
In re: Obama's religiosity.
Obama didn't become Christian for electoral politics. It's pretty clear that he became Christian for domestic politics -- he was courting a Christian woman (Michelle) who belonged to a devout, engaged, and intellectually honest Christian family (the Robinsons). I'm willing to accept their vetting.
As for politicians in general, there are some whose faith seems to be... convenient? But I'm reluctant to judge anyone's faith. It's hard enough to see into our own souls, let alone another's. And there are certainly politicians who exploit the faithful -- presenting themselves as God and country types who will restore our nation to its rightful fealty to God, but whom, once elected, base their votes on lobbiest dollars and partisan tit-for-tat.
But there are others, of both parties, whose faith is undeniably legitimate.
It's easy enough to be cynical, but cynicism isn't always right.
Stories and stories about stories are different for each. I think my family was a lot like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best, but there weren't so many problems. Cosby's real life sucked because he had affairs and his son was killed on the highway. But I think many middle class black people live the life he demonstrated. Most dads are just as funny as the ones portrayed on these shows but don't want to be on TV so much. I don't know. That was my experience. Things were different when I was older because there were suddenly so many drugs available in my home town. Those were a distraction, and shouldn't have been enjoyed for those years as they were among my friends, some of whom lost their minds or their lives.
Things are settling down again. We like to watch Beverly Hillbilly reruns here and everyone in the family can sing the entire theme song by now.
My wife has translated it into Finnish and we sing it in Finnish too.
Stories and stories about stories are different for each. I think my family was a lot like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best, but there weren't so many problems. Cosby's real life sucked because he had affairs and his son was killed on the highway. But I think many middle class black people live the life he demonstrated. Most dads are just as funny as the ones portrayed on these shows but don't want to be on TV so much. I don't know. That was my experience. Things were different when I was older because there were suddenly so many drugs available in my home town. Those were a distraction, and shouldn't have been enjoyed for those years as they were among my friends, some of whom lost their minds or their lives.
Things are settling down again. We like to watch Beverly Hillbilly reruns here and everyone in the family can sing the entire theme song by now.
My wife has translated it into Finnish and we sing it in Finnish too.
Kirby,
An article just came out from two UC economists in the WSJ: Have We Lost the War on Drugs?. I don't usually recommend UC economists (they're too conservative for my tastes), but I think it provides some useful insight and food for thought.
Read it, and we can discuss.
I have sometimes wondered if stopping and starting drugnlegalization would be fun. Like now it's ok the today it's not! Could the cartels sirvive a year of legalization? It's impossible to plan and then bam. I did read it.
I have nothing the least bit acrobatic to say on this topic. GM wants this route. It seems unfair that the cartels have become so violent and drive people here. There are many unintended effects. Abolition is bad in some ways but drug dependence is also so sad. What is the matter with people? Why not learn a language or go for a walk or spend the money to see Antarctica? I dislike either outcome. The legalization of pot sickens me.
Candy Crawford???
I think her name is actually Candy Crowley, but she spent so much time on the Bush reservation in Crawford, Texas that now people think that's really her last name. Or maybe you meant Cindy, the supermodel?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/George_%28magazine%29.jpg/200px-George_%28magazine%29.jpg
Kirby,
I have sometimes wondered if stopping and starting drugnlegalization would be fun.
Fun is not a word I'd be inclined to use. It might be pragmatic. But while we'd gain quite a lot in terms of decreased criminal activities, I don't doubt that we'd see increases in addiction. The questions here are basically economic: how large wouuld the increases be, what are the marginal ROIs on education, addiction recovery, etc.
But the thrust of the Becker-Murphy article seems to be that we can spend less, and have a better societal outcome, through decriminalization.
Could the cartels sirvive a year of legalization?
I am doubtful. Destroy the profitability of the drug trade, and their reason for existing goes out the window.
Abolition is bad in some ways but drug dependence is also so sad.
Drug dependence is sad. But I see life choices as being built around tradeoffs. If we want to reduce drug dependencies, we need to order society in such a way that the choice to enter into dependency is less attractive for the vast majority of people than the choice to be free of dependency.
The criminalization approach tries to accomplish this, but it fails because people are so bad at risk assessment -- they tend to discount adverse risks associated with their own behavior (e.g., taking drugs or hang gliding), but at the same time apply a premium to risks imposed upon them by other people's behavior (e.g., nuclear power). Unsurprisingly, this ego-centric bias flips when the low probability event is something that works in our favor, hence the enduring popularily of all forms of gambling. Returning to criminalization -- the low probability event that is being discounted is the probability of getting caught, this time. And so people accept a persistent risk that makes getting caught eventually an all but certainty as an acceptable tradeoff against the dubious rewards of the next hit.
But in the end, the basis of the Becker-Murphy article is that entering the drug trade is a rational response (if a socially disfavored one) to the opportunities available to certain people. And this gets at one of my key points: once we understand that the response is rational, we can exploit that rationality by engineering the opportunities so as to drive the outcomes we want. What we need are not so much more jails, as more attractive, more reliable, more socially acceptable opportunities. But this begs the question of how to provide those opportunities.
the most active trade or so i hear from the street heh heh is high potency factory made pharmeceuticals junkies i talk to say why mess with street heroin when vicoden is just as good and as clean as anyone would ever want
not to mention the psychotropics
big trade
no matter how they try to clean it up the market is always interesting
capitalism at least in its contemporory manifestation is a force dependent upon human needs for pleasure and distraction and that's all there is to it there ain't no more you can gussy it up and write fancy books about econ but when it comes right down to the nitty gritty of life capitalism is about pleasure
other forms of govt emphasize survival or work
american capitalism is a crapgame of pleasures everyone is rolling for their own gamble...what is wall street but a casino
currency is not always determined by fort knox
fantasy pleasure and bullets
and in some cases jesus
what a strange cocktail
of cultural distraction
only one thing ever changes the dynamic
there is an i in capitalism
in the pit of capitalism
and in the ism
the i begins the ism
few regard the forced obeisance
or the empty smile
the god of capitalism
sits in his sanctuary
musing on the gullibility
of man
what about thorstein veblun...he had a good idea or two
jh
Education is the big divide. Tthe Bell Cirve authors argued that can't cut it. Things like algebra and writing a correct sentence require some level of IQ. And some level of perspiration and thinking ahead. Stripping or drug selling don't require any prerequisites. To be a useful member of society requires thought and requires a serious education in some area. In turn that requires a family network that values this from childhood. Jews have this and now Asians. I think Lutherans have it. There must be some groups of blacks that have this and this area should be studied and modeled. Right now mny see basketball as the ticket out. But there are only 400 spots in the NBA. How.to.create a functioning ning pipeline that doesn't drain the society? Slavery created an endemic mess.
The proposal to legalize drugs is a rational response to the failure to control illegal drugs.
The original reason for banning certain drugs was the bad effect they had on people who took them.
But this is no longer the priority. Now we're more worried about the consequences of failing to ban the illegal production, distribution and sale of banned drugs, than we are about the consequences to those who actually use them.
IOW, we haven't changed our attitudes about the immorality of being addicted to drugs. We've moved up to the next level of concern. We can now look at someone who smokes pot two or three times a day as just a little indulgent. Once upon a time, as with Reefer Madness--which I was shown as a boy in school--it was commonly accepted that marijuana was just a stepping-stone to heroin use.
Now we know that using heroin doesn't turn you into a monster. It's just that people will do anything, including all kinds of petty crime, to stay on it. And it ruins lives, as does cocaine (or crack). And there are other dangerous drugs as well. Ecstasy.
There is addictive behavior, as well as addictive personalities. Both my parents were addicted to cigarettes--two packs of unfiltered Camels each, a day. It was like a smelly old blanket over our lives.
Would the consequences of legalizing most illegal drugs cause more distress in society than the drug crime that exists now? Would we end up with many more people addicted to unhealthy drugs than there are now? And if we did, would the cost to society be so great that it would be an undesirable alternative?
Of course, we're asking this question because we failed to control them. Is that failure inevitable? Is there no third choice?
Can you imagine marijuana cigarettes sold at drug stores and gas stations? Can you imagine cocaine candy in shiny gold wrappers? Can you imagine drug tests for drivers, like blood alcohol tests?
Can you imagine college coaches dispensing growth hormone pills to linebackers?
I knew a guy in college--I've written about him on my blog--who played around with drugs so much that it cut short his academic career, and got him into serious trouble with the law. He eventually died, in his 40's--I don't know the actual cause. I would have to say that drugs ruined his life.
Kirby,
Education is the big divide.
Education is a big divide. After all, isn't part of the reason this blog exists is to argue that faith is also an important distinction? It's for good reason that this blog isn't "Edumacated Surrealism," however much it may at times seem to be exactly that.
Tthe Bell Cirve authors argued that can't cut it.
The Bell Curve authors used bad statistics to justify racism.
Things like algebra and writing a correct sentence require some level of IQ. And some level of perspiration and thinking ahead.
True.
Stripping or drug selling don't require any prerequisites.
False. Drug selling is highly remunerative, but also highly competitive and dangerous. Depending on your role, it may require skills far beyond those needed for graduate work in Mathematics or English. Indeed, I see this as part of the waste. The incentive structures often result in people who have skills that could be used to society's great benefit instead applying them to society's great detriment.
Right now mny see basketball as the ticket out
Or football... The problem here is what I alluded to in my earlier post: people suck at dealing with small probabilities, and especially in dealing with expectation calculations. Here, the issue is that there's a large payout associated with success (as an athlete, as a drug lord) is multiplied by a very small probably of success. The big top line payout grabs people's attention, and the apply a big premium to their individual probability of success. After all, that small number describes other people, it doesn't describe me. The Lottery is based on the same miscalculation. And both miscalculations ignore the non-linearity of the utility function.
How.to.create a functioning ning pipeline that doesn't drain the society? Slavery created an endemic mess.
Damn straight as regards slavery.
It seems to me that the most economical way out of this is to provide a nearly certain path for people of median ability to achieve a near-median salary (say, $35K/year), and for people of substantially greater than median ability and initiative to achieve a respectable upper-middle-class salary (say, $100K/year). A big part of my argument is that those paths don't exist for far too many people, and that it's both counterproductive and hypocritical to criticize them for taking the paths that are open to them.
But this gets us back around to the core problem. How do we provide those paths?
In the past, we could argue that profit-seeking free enterprise would automatically supply those paths -- that the fundamental problem of scaling up a successful business found its only solution in the proportionate scaling up of its domestic labor force, and that this was best done with people invested in their employer's success.
There may well have been a day when what was good for GM was good for the country. Indeed, a big part of the Republican vision for curing what ails the economy is the belief that the scaling of business is coupled with the scaling of the domestic workforce. But that day has passed. The information revolution has eroded this coupling to practically nothing. Human workers can often be replaced by automation as businesses grow, and labor can often be off-shored at reduced cost.
We need Plan B.
Stu:
"There may well have been a day when what was good for GM was good for the country. Indeed, a big part of the Republican vision for curing what ails the economy is the belief that the scaling of business is coupled with the scaling of the domestic workforce. But that day has passed. The information revolution has eroded this coupling to practically nothing. Human workers can often be replaced by automation as businesses grow, and labor can often be off-shored at reduced cost."
This is something we never hear in the media. The news anchors always repeat the "job creation" mantra every time taxes and regulation are raised, as if there were a mathematical relationship between
encouraging business and producing prosperity and jobs for the middle class.
I think that equation is no longer true--even if it ever was. In fact, it may be that our present day policies actually discourage domestic investment and real jobs.
You're right we need a Plan B.
But what would it be? JH mentioned Thorstein Veblen who pointed out that manual labor was valued less than mental labor. That may no longer be true. A plumber will certainly make more than an academic at least at the beginning. It's hard work, but it can pay quite well. Welders make decent money as do nurses and golf course managers.
Cooks do well if they can cook in an upscale restaurant. Flipping burgers most places will barely pay the rent.
Slavery was an incredibly stupid enterprise, although I am sure it paid well before the cotton gin (did this device make pickers irrelevant -- how is cotton harvested now?). I don't understand most agricultural machinery having rarely been on a farm although two generations back everyone in my family was a farmer and there is still an Iowa branch where everyone is farming on vast tracts of land with gigantic machines that dwarf my house.
They have basketball courts inside of these machines and can work out while the machine rumbles along. Well, it seemed that way to me when I was a kid.
As for a pipeline, the first thing is not to reward a lifestyle.
I think this means that Republicanism should be the way out.
Too many Democrats see Victim Studies as an education. The Sharpton approach to education, or the Jesse Jackson approach to education, is to focus on past wrongs, and to avoid past rights. This is also the tack of the Reverend Wrights. Why do we reverence these wrongs? Why are we creating vast pogroms of Ethnic and Women's Studies that go relentlessly over past wrongs in terms of demanding a payout?
why not instead develop current capabilities. Business, plumbing, welding, cooking, etc., will pay out more reliably and be better for everyone. Can't some of the poor be accountants or nurses, police officers or lawyers?
Why not model the future not on the victimizations of the past but on the functionalists of the past, in order to create a functional future?
This is why I want minorities and women to turn Republican.
There are very few Republican blacks. Thomas Sowell at Harvard is quite functional. He focuses on functionality. That's the way out of the ghetto. Whining about plantation life just mires you in a mind set, and makes you dependent on handouts from big government.
Veblen told us that mental work is better in terms of prestige. Is that still true?
Far better to get a degree from a community college in plumbing. Plumbing has probability on its side. Why not learn to be an electrician? Cosmetology is at least something. And learn something about mathematics and something about how to write a sentence and how to spell as you do so?
This is the way forward.
Getting all upset about the past and needing heroin to soothe you is the Democratic ideal. It's not very ideal, although it suits Democratic politicians who need those votes and will do anything to keep their population enslaved in an endless nightmare about how they don't have foam, or they don't have respect and are entitled therefore to a handout. How humiliating to accept a handout when life is about self-respect and doing for yourself, and freeing yourself from the government.
This whole new push to normalize drugs is nuts. It may get people out of prison, but it still imprisons them in a nonfunctional lifestyle. Brother can you score a dime? I hate this idea, and wonder if it's not just another way to trap voters into a mindlessness that the Democrats can count on.
I have some black students who are quite thoroughly functional. They are almost always Republican.
I have one black friend from high school. He is a hospital administrator. His was the only family I knew that was black AND Republican. He lettered in every sport but he could also talk, think, and write.
Condi Rice is a highly functional black woman. She is a Republican.
People should get out of the stew of the past and move forward. It's not like we shouldn't learn about the abolitionists and admire their courage, or learn songs such as Amazing Grace, but why go over it and over it? Why look at scars on one black man's back, or think about how some Indians got the boot when many have prospered and rolled with the punches and ended up as doctors and lawyers and on the right side of the law?
Almost everybody who came here was in a pickle of some kind. My Norwegian ancestors were starving as were my Irish ancestors. They came here to get functional.
Slavery was an endemic mess but so is most of sub-Saharan Africa, even today. It's a nightmare from Mali to Angola. Rwanda, anyone?
The entire exploded Spanish empire from Spanish Morocco to the Philippines by way of South America is a sybaritic nightmare.
Everyone should learn English and become a Lutheran. Getting out of sin is the beginning of a true freedom. Getting mired in the seven deadlies is a stupid sand trap.
Lutheranism is FUNCTIONAL.
Luther freed the mind. We should all study Nordic cultures instead of getting mired in the nonfunctional cultures of the past and present. Why are their classes about rap? This just mires people in a mental state that isn't functional. Sadly, few are enrolled to study Danish or Finnish or Norwegian.
Those programs are dying. Everyone thinks they should learn Spanish.
Spanish should be abolished. It's the language of stupidity and backwardness.
We need to learn about functionality and model it and forget about the nonfunctional.
We need to think about probability. At any rate, this is what I am telling my kids. Learn Finnish, and German, not Spanish. Fuggetaboutit.
I like some of my Spanish-speaking students but they are running as far from their culture as they can get. They are going into the Biblioteca and getting moving and getting an education.
I don't think anybody should join a profession whether it's prostitution or stripping or gunrunning or drugselling where the main idea is to hurt others for a profit. Do unto others is the beginning of something like a revolution that began two thousand years ago. I'm in on that revolution. That way lies the future. Stu says but yes, this is where the money is. Isn't it just like slavery to sell someone a drug like heroin? Why aren't people ashamed to enslave their own people? Isn't pimping also a form of slavery? Goodness gracious. What about Do Unto Others?
This phrase still hasn't penetrated vast continents of the muddled. Another good phrase: God helps those who help themselves.
One of the worst phrases I hear in these parts is: you gotta do what you gotta do. That way lies a jail cell I tell my students. Is it wrong to try to get a few correct sentences into students' heads? Work first and then play. The Bible is the source of some of our best phrasing.
Also, some of the worst, especially when it is filtered through the Baptists. When Baptists hit college they aren't permitted to think, and they fail out. (Luther said that Science trumps the Bible when it is dealing with how things work right now.)
Lutheranism permits total freedom of inquiry (sometimes I go too far with it but heck how can there be too much of a good thing?). Some parts of Missouri Synod are backwards as heck. But I just figure that was influence from the Missouri Baptists. We really have to drop Creationist thought. It's not 100% a killer for me, since most of the synod is functional, but really, we were given brains for a reason.
Way upthread Craig asks about Candy Crawford and Crawford Texas and Cindy Crawford. It's probably some kind of amalgamation. All those people and places are rather peripheral to my thinking. Cindy Crawford is an older woman (40s?) who is still a model right? I think I've seen a documentary about her.
I know nothing about her aside from a five-minute report that appeared somewhere about how she's older and still looks good.
I'm impressed by people who hold up over the decades not just physically but mentally. Sophocles was still knocking out decent plays in his eighties if not his nineties. That kind of thing impresses me.
Wodehouse wrote a good chapter of Sunset at Blandings on the morning of his death at 94.
There are some players in the NBA who are forty or more now. Nash and Kidd (names of Shakespearean playwrights, too) are among these.
Kirby,
JH mentioned Thorstein Veblen who pointed out that manual labor was valued less than mental labor.
As I see it, there are economic rationales to Veblen's observation that explain the value of labor more generally.
Part of it is the interaction between capability and performance. Practically anyone can dig a ditch, but the difference in productivity between the best ditch diggers and average ditch diggers isn't huge -- maybe a factor of 2 or 3, but certainly not 10. Whereas, in mental work, the productivity gap is much higher. In programming, for example, the difference between the best programmers and average programmers can be a factor of 100.
Another issue is that mental labor often requires years of intensive preparation, during which the material rewards of the intended employment are deferred. There are a lot of people who can't abide that deferral, which tends to limit supply of mental workers as much or more than ability.
That may no longer be true. A plumber will certainly make more than an academic at least at the beginning. It's hard work, but it can pay quite well. Welders make decent money as do nurses and golf course managers.
Yup. But I think it's an oversimplification to view these as "manual" labor. All of the positions you've described are skilled labor, and require 2 or more years of post-secondary education or its equivalent in apprenticeships, and often significant inate ability. To take just one example, not everyone has the strength, dexterity, and hand-eye coordination it takes to be a good welder. It's not an uncommon skill, but it falls well short of being a universal skill.
And I'll also note that there's considerable variation in compensation for academics, even at the entry level.
how is cotton harvested now?
In the US, mostly using mechanical cotton pickers. See the wiki article on Cotton.
Too many Democrats see Victim Studies as an education. The Sharpton approach to education, or the Jesse Jackson approach to education, is to focus on past wrongs, and to avoid past rights. This is also the tack of the Reverend Wrights. Why do we reverence these wrongs? Why are we creating vast pogroms of Ethnic and Women's Studies that go relentlessly over past wrongs in terms of demanding a payout?
Hrmph. I don't see a material difference between Gender Studies and Byzantine Studies. Both are fine academic disciplines, both can instill intellectual rigor, and both suffer from the problem that there is essentially no career path in the discipline post-graduation. Yeah, the golden few will get academic jobs, but it's hard not to draw a parallel with city kids working on their game while dreaming of the NBA. Except that academic training is fungible in a way that basketball skills are not.
why not instead develop current capabilities. Business, plumbing, welding, cooking, etc., will pay out more reliably and be better for everyone.
This is a bit of an oversimplification. We need doctors and lawyers, and we want movie stars and good-shooting point guards, whatever we might say. There are in any large economy lots of slots to be filled, with complex tradeoffs involving ability, initiative, preparation, and compensation.
Can't some of the poor be accountants or nurses, police officers or lawyers?
Sure. But all of these require a solid high school education (which might or might not be available), somewhere between two and seven years of post-secondary education, and financial and moral support during those years of education. The poor don't often have that luxury, and often need their children to become economically productive (or at least, non-dependent) before they've completed their high-school education.
Kirby,
Getting all upset about the past and needing heroin to soothe you is the Democratic ideal
Yeah right. And robbing grandmothers is the Republican ideal. So now can we set that shit aside, and have a real conversation?
This whole new push to normalize drugs is nuts.
I don't see a push for normalizing drug use. What I do see are difficult questions about how to deal with the reality of people who choose drugs. The strategy of criminalizing drug use isn't working -- we're now 50 years into the War on Drugs, and are further behind that when we started. Indeed, Becker (a very conservative economist) argues that the War on Drugs is actively making things worse.
It's time to consider other strategies.
I hate this idea, and wonder if it's not just another way to trap voters into a mindlessness that the Democrats can count on.
No, but FOX News thanks you for your paranoia.
I have some black students who are quite thoroughly functional. They are almost always Republican.
I suspect the first sentence is true, and the second is false. Students are adept at presenting faculty with what they want to see. Your Marxist colleagues (are there any left?) probably see the same sort of hope in the rising generation than you do.
People should get out of the stew of the past and move forward. It's not like we shouldn't learn about the abolitionists and admire their courage, or learn songs such as Amazing Grace, but why go over it and over it? Why look at scars on one black man's back, or think about how some Indians got the boot when many have prospered and rolled with the punches and ended up as doctors and lawyers and on the right side of the law?
Grump. These are an important, but small, part of any decent high school education, and are hardly encountered thereafter.
I don't think anybody should join a profession whether it's prostitution or stripping or gunrunning or drugselling where the main idea is to hurt others for a profit.
Well, I don't either. Which is why I think we need to order society so positive options are readily available.
Stu says but yes, this is where the money is. Isn't it just like slavery to sell someone a drug like heroin? Why aren't people ashamed to enslave their own people? Isn't pimping also a form of slavery?
Sure. Back in the day, slavery was where the money was. And it's not just money. Owning female slaves was always popular -- it's the meeting point of sex and power, where rape is an entitlement. Those are dangerous, powerful forces in the human psyche. These same forces are present in the drug and sex trades, they're just mashed up a bit differently.
But my point is that slave owners weren't ashamed of owning slaves. They were proud of it, and exquisitely practiced at the art of ethical self-deception. People are really good at that. So you tell me, how effective were purely moral arguments in ending slavery?
Another good phrase: God helps those who help themselves...
One of the worst phrases I hear in these parts is: you gotta do what you gotta do.
I suppose it's too much to expect for you to understand that these are different ways of saying the same thing.
Kirby,
You're right we need a Plan B.
Glad you agree. But do you realize that your Plan B is Plan A. There's a problem there...
"False. Drug selling is highly remunerative, but also highly competitive and dangerous. Depending on your role, it may require skills far beyond those needed for graduate work in Mathematics or English. Indeed, I see this as part of the waste. The incentive structures often result in people who have skills that could be used to society's great benefit instead applying them to society's great detriment."
When I was working with the felon teenagers, there was a pretty interesting trend - our best students were usually gang members, generally speaking Hispanic.
They had leadership skills, work ethic, a sense of responsibility, and respect for authority.
Just so happened that in 'the outs,' those skills were used for things like drug trafficking and beating the crap out of people and maintaining turf and the like.
In the desert, it meant we had a good leader who ensured shelters were set up, fires started, and systems followed.
Art that requires context the audience doesn't have in order to be appreciated was created by either asses or idiots.
Our plan A and plan B Stu arenjust the reversal pf same. I supose we need a plan C. There is a C in Coach.
Brett some will work to grok context. Not enough to attain popularity perhaps. I saw a neat program on PBS last night about Fabrice Champoon a French acrobat who fell and became a quadroplegic. For me it was beautiful to see him balance a sheet of paper using the ventilator next to a train window with his index finger. Very good programs very late on PBS. Daytime TV terrible and only late at night can there be anything in French.or another language. Saw a prgram about the Joffrey last week at 4 am.
I'm not surprised by the misuse of intelligence in Hispanic circles. Spain tried hard to block the Reformation. Protestant countries have a far better take on this. We jave functioning legal systems and consciences. Catholics have the molesters and the Inquisition. JH should necome a Lutheran. The only loss would be the food and art and music amd majesty. We scrapped that for the phrase Honesty is the best policy. America.should declare itself Lutheran Surrealist.
The moral context in Spanish civilization is mssing. Ditto for Italy. It gets even worse when you get to subSaharan Africa. It's missing in American Indian and Marxist culture too. It only exists in Protestantism. Just forget it everywhere else. The real wealth of America is in its Protestant heritage. As we lose that to moral morons like Barack we will lose everything. He is all empty rhetoric.
Any attempt to tamp down on something will get pushback. The gun control issue is similar to the drug issue. Soon all kinds of folks will go to prison for owning assault weapons. Illegal sales will go through the roof.
Kirby,
Any attempt to tamp down on something will get pushback. The gun control issue is similar to the drug issue. Soon all kinds of folks will go to prison for owning assault weapons. Illegal sales will go through the roof.
There's some truth to this, but some differences that are arguably important.
1) Drugs are consumable, guns are not. Thus, someone who has a drug habit is likely going to be buying repeatedly, whereas someone with a gun habit is probably going to be satisfied after a few (or few dozen) guns.
2) The fact that drugs are consumable means that drug pushers can maintain themselves with a relatively small clientele, all of whom are repeat purchasers, and the individual purchases are relatively small. This keeps risks down, and money flowing. This profile inverts for gun users. Most of the clients will buy a few weapons, which means that the gun pusher needs to be constantly adding clients. Each new client is a risk -- and so is each old client. A purchaser caught in possession is likely to be offered a plea deal in return for the name of their pusher. Gun pushers need more clients, so their risks are much greater.
I like the way you're thinking here, but the details seem enough different to matter.
I've written at some length about the problem of education in this country, on a blog I wrote in September 2011--
http://compassrosebooks.blogspot.com/2011/09/some-speculations-about-post-secondary_6320.html
In it, I argue against the present accepted wisdom of a continuous expansion of college--a kind of universal--as a goal of a democratic society.
I see a prosperous, healthy society as one in which no more than about 20% of the population should need or want a college degree, and that the majority of citizens should hope or expect to find remunerative work in industry or agriculture or services. That's probably impossible, but makes more sense than thinking we need 75% of the population with college degrees and no place to "use" it.
Huxley observed in Brave New World that as automation proceeded, there would be less and less real work to do. That would put leisure front and center, as it did in his novel vision.
Productivity is a very abstract word. What happens to a "rich" society like America, when it can't compete at the level of production jobs, but still maintains an elaborate educational and welfare infrastructure, costly and seductive.
I follow Kirby's argument here. Why do we send Hispanic kids to school to learn ethnic conflict and hatred, when what they should be pursuing is productive employment. But the problem is, productive employment is shrinking. Everyone wants to drink from a water hole in a drought.
Most of the prosperity in America over the last 25 years has come from economic leveraging. Property mortgages, financial speculation, borrowing, and wasteful "investment" in wars. China will soon surpass us in GDP, if they haven't already. Clearly, college education isn't the answer to our economic woes.
Kirby prefers to regard economic stimulus as a bogus strategy. But Republicans are always talking stimulus themselves, except they see the "stimulus" as keeping rich people rich through lower taxes and granting business a regulatory free hand. Everyone talks stimulus. But stimulating growth isn't really achieved through either approach.
I see the obscene profits, for instance, of the petroleum industry, as a diversion of society's fruits. The over-exploitation of energy manipulated to keep the host quiet results in a gross concentration of capital in a very few hands. On the one hand, we should be using less petroleum; on the other, our resources shouldn't be controlled by just a few powerful individuals, who benefit from a status quo of apathetic users. Granting petroleum companies tax breaks and environmental waivers is completely nuts. It doesn't promote "growth" or jobs and squanders what reserves we have on the planet for future generations.
Guns are not physically addictive, and drugs aren't weapons except in a very very limited sense. The "victims" are the users.
What they have in common is the exploitation of the sellers/distributors.
I find it amazing to hear Kirby show hatred for people who sell drugs, while condoning gun sellers.
Gun selling is about selling the naughty excitement of playing with guns as toys. Very dangerous toys.
Selling drugs is about establishing a dependency.
Both kinds of indulgence feed off our carnal natures, and should be curtailed. A nation might need to be militarily strong, but a man needn't prepare for armed conflict with his neighbors.
Our culture encourages both kinds of naughty play. For those who can't or won't separate fantasy from reality, taking cocaine or owning a handgun (and fantasizing about using it) amount to the same kind of wrong behavior. Rather than dreaming of shooting people, we should be dreaming of planting gardens, or going on a second honeymoon with our spouses, or taking our kids fishing. The NRA wants people to focus on guns, to own and handle and tinker with them.
If you look back to the Founding, guns were not naughty toys: they were the essential tools that had won our freedom from the dictatorial king, and established liberty throughout the land. They still do this. They have another aspect which has to do with popping and robbing but essentially the gun guarantees private property and the right to life and liberty that are guaranteed in the Constitution. Taking them away is like taking away the Constitution.
Guns liberate. Drugs enslave.
I see this differently than you guys do. I'm with Rush and others on this topic. I don't own a gun and only fired a BB gun once. I hit a black-capped chickadee and cried for three weeks.
I live in the country where almost everyone hunts and for many deer meat is a staple. Deer are beautiful, but they need to be killed back since there are no longer any mountain lions much to keep them in check. Also, you have to worry about the Lyme problem. More and more have Lyme.
I don't trust the government to be anything but overwhelming parasites trying to make us dependent on them by any trick necessary. Take away Jed Clampitt's gun, and he would have never hit the oil that became his lifeblood and the ticket to Beverly Hills.
let's bring back the mountain lions
i like those cats
you probably need some wolves in your neck of the woods
wild meat
is always good
what about buffalo in new york
i mean you have a city named after the animal
why don't we try to revive a big heard of buffalo in new york
yeah that's the ticket
:)))))
jh
your statements
for lack of a better term herr olson
are preposterous
you're like a rhinocerus
in target store
I can see the structural difference in control of guns vs. drugs that Stu raises. That is, that it is going to be easier to control one rather than the other. But I think it's important to let people have guns. People who shoot drugs on the other hand should not.
Drugs are very bad. I have no idea how the counterculture got going on them. This idea of an inner world that is so important to counterculture types should be foregone in favor of a reflective appreciation of the outer world and effective participation in it.
Work first, and then play.
A house divided against itself cannot stand up.
People should go out hunting and bag a deer. They should come home and gut the deer and dress it, and make jerky.
The government will use any tick necessary to make us dependent on them.
My face is as full of tics as Herbert Lom's was full as he thought of Inspector Clouseau when I think of the government with complete goofs and spoofs thinking they should overturn the Constitution in favor of their ideas and ideals.
Not everyone should have to have a gun (that's the law in Switzerland) but the people who want them and aren't certifiable should have one, or two, or even thousands, stockpiled.
The gun is our heritage. It's how we got rid of the king and established democracy. Get rid of the gun and we no longer have America.
We don't even have Switzerland.
We have something like emptiness. The government wants everyone on drugs just because Obama was such a stoner in high school. He thinks he has an enlightened consciousness but he doesn't.
His poems aren't very good, and his laws and edicts are making us all into squirrelly nuts.
Kirby:
We're repeating ourselves here.
Everyone knows someone who hunts, and hunting has a long tradition. Today few people hunt for food, it's mostly a recreation, rather like fly fishing (which I do).
But the majority of NRA members apparently now believe we need to curtail hand-guns and automatic weapons. It's only the lunatic fringe that wants the bad guns.
Guns in neighborhoods don't make anyone free. Or safe. They actually raise the level of risk considerably, by putting deadly weapons in the proximity of those who would otherwise not think to use them--adulterers, abusers, juvenile delinquents, etc. My own chances of being burglarized or raped or squatted on are probably 1/50,000. I certainly don't see the presence of a .38 pistol in my house as having any prophylactic effect on my small degree of vulnerability. In addition, I don't like the odds of confronting a true criminal with a weapon, particularly if he is armed too.
You again raise the false issue of a militia needing to defend itself against tyranny. But you don't really mean this. You don't suggest that you and your neighbors arm yourselves as citizen vigilantes to fight the local police or National Guard. So this business of "bearing arms" against injustice is just a debating trick with no relevance at all.
We already have freedom. We don't needs guns to win it back. In a civilized society, people don't need guns.
"people who want them and aren't certifiable should have one, or two, or even thousands, stockpiled. "
You should go into the gun business.
Why stockpile guns?
What are you going to use them for?
Yours is a very irresponsible attitude. You don't take ownership of your beliefs or statements.
You're just blowing smoke.
Ha ha.
Come and listen to a story bout a man named Jed,
Poor mountaineer he barely kept his family fed,
Then one day he was shooting up some food, when up from the ground came a bubblin' crude: oil that is, black gold, Texas Tea!
Obama threatens our entire heritage with his edicts. God and guns are our heritage.
The drug idea isn't part of our heritage. None of the Founders were druggies. The first real stoner we've had as the president is Barack. Many of our presidents were crack shots. Washington could shoot an acorn at 100 paces. Jackson could shoot very well. None of those guys were big on dope.
Therefore, people should reject drugs, and keep guns.
Obama was a huge stoner. Now he wants to make us all into drug zombies like him, but he doesn't see the overall value of guns. This may not prove he's not an American, but you have to wonder.
America is a Winchester Cathedral, but Obama says we should let go of God and guns, and take up dope.
Nope.
We need to resurrect the House UnAmerican Activities Commission and investigate Obama's similarities with Alger Hiss.
Surely there is someone who knew Barack Obama back in the days of smoking dope nightly and daily who could be his Whittaker Chambers. Lord, won't you buy me a Gatling Gun? (Do they still sell those?)
Oh deer!
I can see the structural difference in control of guns vs. drugs that Stu raises. That is, that it is going to be easier to control one rather than the other. But I think it's important to let people have guns. People who shoot drugs on the other hand should not.
Drugs are very bad. I have no idea how the counterculture got going on them. This idea of an inner world that is so important to counterculture types should be foregone in favor of a reflective appreciation of the outer world and effective participation in it.
Work first, and then play.
A house divided against itself cannot stand up.
People should go out hunting and bag a deer. They should come home and gut the deer and dress it, and make jerky.
The government will use any tick necessary to make us dependent on them.
My face is as full of tics as Herbert Lom's was full as he thought of Inspector Clouseau when I think of the government with complete goofs and spoofs thinking they should overturn the Constitution in favor of their ideas and ideals.
Not everyone should have to have a gun (that's the law in Switzerland) but the people who want them and aren't certifiable should have one, or two, or even thousands, stockpiled.
The gun is our heritage. It's how we got rid of the king and established democracy. Get rid of the gun and we no longer have America.
We don't even have Switzerland.
We have something like emptiness. The government wants everyone on drugs just because Obama was such a stoner in high school. He thinks he has an enlightened consciousness but he doesn't.
His poems aren't very good, and his laws and edicts are making us all into squirrelly nuts.
Golly, you're fun, Kirbsters.
Lightning wit. Ticks. Deer. Nope'a'dope.
Rope-a-dope.
Ali still got Parkinson's despite his defensiveness in the ring.
I've never taken drugs in my life. I have seen and held and used guns, and I know their deadly power.
You're such a ninny, you've never seen a gun in action. Get someone you know to take you out to a firing range and shoot off a few rounds of a .38 or a .45. Try it without ear plugs first. Shoot a melon, and imagine it's your head. Once you've done that, we'll talk again.
Ever seen someone in the emergency room with a bullet wound? Ever been a soldier on the battlefield?
Obama had little to say about gun control before these recent massacres. Everyone's taking a new look at gun control, and so are our representatives.
Time for you too, Kirbsters. Time to stop "playing" with ideas and take them seriously.
Live, eat, breathe, digest and shit your ideas first, before pretending. It's called thinking before you speak, thinking before you shoot.
Then, shoot to kill, and stop using popguns.
Speaking of squirrels, you might qualify on that score, bro' --
Curtis,
Most of the prosperity in America over the last 25 years has come from economic leveraging. Property mortgages, financial speculation, borrowing, and wasteful "investment" in wars. China will soon surpass us in GDP, if they haven't already.
Cite? Because I'm not buying much of this. Let me suggest a quick look through the wiki article Economy of the United States for a more balanced (and optimistic) view.
That said, here's how I see it.
(1) Leveraging has played and important and ambiguous role.
(2) The information revolution has also played an important role, both in increasing productivity, but perhaps more importantly through automation in weaking the hand of labor vs. capital.
These have driven, but also been driven by, some fundamental changes in our country's economic culture.
(3) Fifty years ago, the assumption was that companies existed in the interest of their clients and employees, and that the stockholders interest was limited to a share of the profits that flowed from the client-employee relationships. These days, the assumption is that companies exist solely in the interest of their shareholders.
(4) Somewhat unexpectedly, given (3), we've seen a fundamental shift in corporate governance, with CEOs gaining power, and boards of directors losing it. This has resulted in great concentration of wealth in the hands of CEOs, whose salaries are often dwarfed in value by grants of options and other indirect, quasi-merit-based compensation.
As regards China, I'll note per the wiki article cited that it was widely believed in the 70's and 80's that Japan's economy would overtake ours early this century. That hasn't played out, and I don't expect the China scenario will either. China is labor rich, and at least for now, possesses significant capital reserves. But China is relatively lacking in national resources, especially on a per-person basis. Never say never, but I believe that China's growth is already inflecting from exponetial to logistic.
We remain a resource-rich country, especially on a per-capita basis. If we're wise enough to be good stewards of our resources, we will do well in the long run.
Kirby,
There's little doubt in my mind that the James Madison had revolutionary-era quartering of British troops in civilian houses in mind when he wrote the second amendment. Thus, I believe the notion that we could use guns as a means to protect ourselves from governmental tyrany does reflect the framer's intent.
Of course, Madison framed this in terms of collective (militia) rather than individual (guerilla) resistance, because in his day, trained troops where much more effective than a like number of armed civilians. These days, there's a delusional belief that the revolutionary war was won through the erosive effects of a wide-spread guerilla movement -- that there was a farmer with a musket behind every stone fence, picking off British infantry who were so regimented that they simply marched by without fighting back. In fact, the war was won largely by trained regular troops, supported at a critical juncture by the French fleet. Madison was deluded in his faith in the militia, even then. Militia forces were widely employed by the US during the war, and were rarely effective. They were practically a joke to the British, who became so adept at routing militia that the US regulars finally figured out how to use the militia's well known propensity for flight to their advantage at Cowpens.
These days, we have yahoo wannabe militia out in the woods of Michigan, racing through the hills on Jeeps, wearing fatigues, brandishing assault rifles as if they were Che, and thinking that they're a real power. But the reality is that the disparity in combat effectiveness between militia and regular forces has only grown. The real army has helicopters, missles, artillery, tanks, remote sensors, land mines, robots, not to mention air force support including airborne sensors, fighter-bombers, etc., and the training to use it all. Our military wiped out Iraq's army with negligible casualties. Iraq's army's would have wiped out our militia with negligible casualities. The disparity is that large.
But the popular notion that isolated armed men can stand against regular forces is simply more delusional still.
Stu your argument is that the People have only a pea-shooter compared to the atom bomb that the government has, and that therefore the peashooter should be taken away. I don't buy this.
You may think that a socialist like Barack is harmless and therefore worries about his power-grab should subside. But socialists always turn into hard core communists once they have the upper hand.
It's only a division of powers that makes the socialist somewhat reasonable.
Many think that Trotsky would have behaved differently than Stalin had he triumphed in the power struggle over who was to rule the Soviet Union. And the left fancies that they are Trotskyites.
The only difference between the two is that Trotsky didn't have a police or army for very long. While he did have it he used it ruthlessly as he did at Cromstadt when he obliterated the anarchist sailors without a second's thought.
Stalin and Trotsky were made of the same cloth.
Don't ever forget that Obama is also made of this same cloth. He's a Marxist from the ground up. He will claim he's a socialist, or that he's a communitarian. Just watch as soon as he's in office. To the extent that he's able to do so: heads fly. Lies are told. Others are responsible. He's a pig with horns.
You may not see it because you largely agree with his policies. I don't and I see a steamroller barely restrained by the rule of law.
He's a terrifying menace.
At the same time, he could be worse. He could have a brain.
It's rule of law that accounts for our economic success. You have only to look at the difference between North and South Korea to understand that it is law that determines prosperity.
You could also look at El Paso and the mess that's happening just across the border.
Perhaps some of you will blame our drug use for the disorderly conduct south of the border. It's a mental framework, however, and one that is entirely out of control.
The Spanish Inquisition stopped the Enlightenment in its tracks, tortured prisoners, and instituted a violent repression of anything that wasn't church-backed and government-backed power, reducing the People to the level of scum.
The same thing happened everywhere the Spanish ruled.
And they are not the worst. Try the Russians, the Cambodians, or the North Koreans.
You can be detained in North Korea for many years without the government even notifying your relatives as to your whereabouts. you don't even have to be charged.
The same thing was true in Stalin's Russia.
Here, we have a few rights. We should not allow a single one to be surrendered to the socialist pig-dog who is in the White House pretending he has our interests at heart.
He cares about us even less than he cares about Ambassador Stevens.
What he wants is total rule over every aspect of our lives. He claims this is for our own good.
What would a pig like that who has smoked crack know about anybody's own good? He should let me decide and keep out of it.
Obama smokes cigarettes for God's sake. How could he know anything about health?
He's probably never even held a gun. What would he know about their proper use? Why on earth is he the commander in chief?
Obama's a socialist squirrel with more than a few nuts in his cabinet.
The Onion: Gorilla Sales Skyrocket After Latest Gorilla Attack
The Gun Machine
I enjoyed the Onion piece a lot.
i do say i really do say let me say without further ado let me weigh in and say kirby you have reached a new pitch a new tone of vituperative resonance for lack of a better term you are saying things in this stream which show a degree of madness one we've always known but still we stand back in amazement that ludicrosity can have such inane expression and for this i sort of thank you
guns and pills
war and pharmeceuticals
faster cars bigger trucks
more neuterized women
brighter tv
bad science and worse art
hard to take a neutral stance on all this
but i will
we're living on borrowed if not stolen time
zzzt glitch excuse me my computer is coughing must be a virus
part of the democratic experiment which was tried in the once great country named USA which was consumed with national hybris shortly after the WW II but we ignored this hybris and got lost in the medium of the message which turned out to be nonesense yet believeable nonesense and simply because because because well i'm not tellin'.........
think for your self
i've heard they can take brain matter and unite it with cells of a tobacco plant and create a tobacco plant which recites poetry
now obviously this might entail blowing a lot of smoke but we must look with interest and the monstrosities born of unbridled unchecked mad science and most all of it is mad science all of it is producing a metamythology of vapours and dwindling hopes
we'd all do well to shrugg our shoulders and walk away become like thoreau who i think was actually metis
mr olson your attacks on our beloved president the prince who brings us back to the light of hope in the streets of utter despair the shining light the prayer utterd by the collective hearts of democratic self determination a land in search of a queen so we have queen latifa and lady gaga the only evident success stories of feminism all the rest of it is a mess let's at least agree with that
i heard a summation lecture last night by a woman "theologian" if you could call her that and it became obvious to me she was either drunk or on drugs she was dressed in a man's clothes all black without the patch of white on the throat her body was saying you know i look best in a dress but to wear a black suit and suggest woman priesthood is much more powerful but i scoff i scorn i spit at such presumptions patoooohiiie it was comical i'm still laughing i took away nothing meaningful except for the fact that she had spewed out before us a superficial overview of what has occurred since the second vatican council...which...if you want to get a sense of a group of people entereing upon an experiement you might go back to those documents of the early 60s and measure them against the insidious devastations of decadent society we call modern or post modern or dumber than a post modern whatever all i know is we've dcided fast food is a social value and that women must be able to phuq discriminatively by setting aside the fecundity of their very beings and submitting themselves to being biomonsters who look and act real sharp like they're running everything whether you like it or not
obama is a pawn
michelle runs the country
have you done your sit-ups today
i know kirbemente (that's french)
that you are striving for some rhetorical strength that the conservatives want and cannot find because they have nobody since bill buckley died won't you come home bill buckley but no he can't come home and thus there is a political party adrift on the seas of change with a torn sail and no maps
maybe all that happened in the last election is that the republicans proved how devoid of meaning and practicality they really are
the republic lends itself to fascism
the democratic presumptions lend themselves to diversity much like abstract impressionism every person becomes a nation unto himself
since ameirica is in an advanced stage of respitory failure can't we just agree that being second rate is OK
it all comes down to clever ways of survival
it should be against the law to say demeaning things about our leader especially when he was elected in a fair and balanced election...400 yrs ago you'd have lost your head now it seems you've lost your marbles
tiddly-winks is next
jh
I'm for universal human rights. Bush was for universal human rights.
It should be a right to own a gun as Washington and Madison and Jackson did.
I don't think we should be able to own gorillas, since they are meant to be wild, and it's wrong to tame something wild and use it for your own will without its consent. The Onion is funny but when you peel back a few layers it will make you cry.
I have no idea what Obama is for. Is he Alger Hiss? Does he hiss like the serpent? I really do not know what he is.
He says he's for this, but he turns out to be for that. He says he's for that, but he turns out to be for this.
What's he fighting for? Does he give a darn?
I understood what Bush was fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. The left generally did not. Obama has no idea what those wars are about. He wants to raise taxes and give money to the people who elected him.
That makes sense: it's strictly in the Tammany tradition.
It's not principled, although it is traditional Democratic practice. It works for them.
He also wants to support the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. That makes total sense. It's in Pelosi's district, and she is fond of the mouse. Supporting vermin is an important part of the Democratic ticket.
I am for universal human rights. To a lesser extent I support animal rights.
I am a flexitarian. If vegetarian food is available I prefer it, but I will not be too picky. I will eat chicken if there's nothing else. I am hoping the chicken got to enjoy its life. Its tastier if it did. I am hoping that it didn't have to be raised on steroids in a shoebox, and puffed to full adulthood in a week or two, and then slaughtered and put in styrofoam for immediate sale.
I nearly faint when I pass the meat aisle.
When I hear Democrats speak I nearly faint.
It's all Marxism, and that tradition is against human rights. Read Solzhenitsyn. Marx didn't even believe in Jesus. He thought it was all a swindle. He just wanted to murder the rich, as Cain wanted to murder the Able.
Oy vey.
Everyone is so confused. I'm the last linear thinker, and I am beginning to wobble as a result.
Warble.
Gobble.
Glee.
The rotting goddesses of yesteryear surface in the speech of the Dems. Pagan rituals. Love for the Aztecs. Let's be multicultural and rip the hearts out of Republican poets and toast the rotting goddesses of yesteryear, while spitting on Our Savior.
Woman the barricades with barricudas.
Barricade the barricades with promenading bromides.
Obama doesn't care about the people of Tibet, or about the untouchables in India or the people of the South Sudan. They can't vote for him.
I offer a prayer to all those who can't vote, but who deserve human rights, beginning with the unborn, and ending with the untouchables, and the unspeakably rich who've lost their minds watching the roulette wheels of the stock market spin in their dreams until the heads of Easter Island come stomping toward them in the form of this Administration.
2nd amendment breakdown:
First part: we want to have folks able to be called into the service of their several states.
Second part: this is a necessary requirement of the first part and ergo it must never be futzed with.
Why is this hard?
In other news, I'm hosting a poetry reading in Boston and everyone should jump all over my Kickstarter to help fund it and hopefully encourage other authors to do the same.
Kirby, I think you should make "There's No I in Team" into an operatic one act. But Stu has to be a character commenting on the action.
Very meta.
Part I
Well, Kirbster, you've given yourself a blank check against the sanity account, but you're overdrawn and everything is bouncing.
"I'm for universal human rights. Bush was for universal human rights."
No, Bush was in favor of bankrolling the warmongers and war profiteers. Cheney held his hand while he repeated the mantra. When he got the 9/11 news, he went into his Alfred E. Neuman trance. Then the team went into action. Human rights? Naw. It was "get Saddam" and knock out the "weapons of mass destruction."
"It should be a right to own a gun as Washington and Madison and Jackson did."
Jeeezus, Kirbster, did you ever chop down a cherry tree? You is sounding as crazy as Ezra Pound in a tizzy.
"The Onion is funny but when you peel back a few layers it will make you cry."
Was it the pity for the gorillas than made you maudlin, or what? Please be specific.
"I have no idea what Obama is for. Is he Alger Hiss? Does he hiss like the serpent? I really do not know what he is."
This sounds delusional. Do you dream of Alger Hiss? Are you afraid of snakes?
"He says he's for this, but he turns out to be for that. He says he's for that, but he turns out to be for this."
I don't see this ambiguity in Obama's policies. Maybe you need a potato and a tomato to set you straight.
"What's he fighting for? Does he give a darn?"
He's presently in a kind of war with Republican stone-wallers in the Congress. But "fighting"? Probably not. Would you like to fight Obama. I'll wager he'd knock your block off.
"I understood what Bush was fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. The left generally did not. Obama has no idea what those wars are about."
Which means you bought the propaganda. No one--not Democrats, not Republicans, not independents--believes that we went to war in Iraq or Afghanistan for "the right reasons." I predicted that no matter how long we fought, no matter how long we stayed, those countries would revert to their natural political state, which is autocracy--either the Muslim theocracy, or the "secular dictator." It's inevitable. We fought those wars for nothing.
"He wants to raise taxes and give money to the people who elected him."
I actually this is what we call democracy. Maybe you know it by another name.
"That makes sense: it's strictly in the Tammany tradition."
It would if Obama were the shill for the rich and corporations. Clearly he isn't, which is why the radical right has been directed to attack him. You can include yourself in that rabble.
"It's not principled, although it is traditional Democratic practice. It works for them."
Nothing is less "principled" than taking money from rich people and companies to manipulate government against the interests of the populace.
"He also wants to support the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. That makes total sense. It's in Pelosi's district, and she is fond of the mouse. Supporting vermin is an important part of the Democratic ticket."
Kirbster could start a campaign against the Mouse. We could have field trips to set out mousetraps. Every mouse caught is a vote for Mitt. Every dead rat is a Republican shill.
"I am for universal human rights. To a lesser extent I support animal rights."
Actually, you support neither. You condemn at least half the human race to Hell, and the rest to miserable death. Animals have it little better. Let's eradicate the domestic deer. No deer, no ticks, not Lyme Disease. That's a syllogism we can all get behind.
Part II
"I am a flexitarian. If vegetarian food is available I prefer it, but I will not be too picky. I will eat chicken if there's nothing else. I am hoping the chicken got to enjoy its life. Its tastier if it did. I am hoping that it didn't have to be raised on steroids in a shoebox, and puffed to full adulthood in a week or two, and then slaughtered and put in styrofoam for immediate sale."
Now you're talkin'.
"I nearly faint when I pass the meat aisle."
You could wear a mask.
"When I hear Democrats speak I nearly faint."
Such tender sensibilities. And here I thought you were a political warrior. Stand up and fight, ninny!
"It's all Marxism, and that tradition is against human rights. Read Solzhenitsyn. Marx didn't even believe in Jesus. He thought it was all a swindle. He just wanted to murder the rich, as Cain wanted to murder the Able."
This is a little confused. Marx and Solzhenitsyn and Jesus are all dead. I vote we move on.
"Oy vey."
You can say that again.
"Everyone is so confused. I'm the last linear thinker, and I am beginning to wobble as a result."
The shortest distance between two points in a parabola.
"Warble."
Turkey-lurkey.
"Gobble."
Glub-glub.
"Glee."
Tinsel.
"The rotting goddesses of yesteryear surface in the speech of the Dems. Pagan rituals. Love for the Aztecs. Let's be multicultural and rip the hearts out of Republican poets and toast the rotting goddesses of yesteryear, while spitting on Our Savior."
Sounds good to me. Since you don't drink, you'll have to use Kool-Aid.
"Woman the barricades with barricudas."
Man the women.
"Barricade the barricades with promenading bromides."
Gimme drugs!
"Obama doesn't care about the people of Tibet, or about the untouchables in India or the people of the South Sudan. They can't vote for him."
I say, invade Communist China. Think what power we'd have after our biggest economic competitor is out of the way. Talk about efficiency! We'd eliminate over a trillion Communists in a wink of the eye.
"I offer a prayer to all those who can't vote, but who deserve human rights, beginning with the unborn, and ending with the untouchables, and the unspeakably rich who've lost their minds watching the roulette wheels of the stock market spin in their dreams until the heads of Easter Island come stomping toward them in the form of this Administration."
Amen.
Finally GM weighs in! School must be back in session.
jesus is not dead
No one is dead.
Few understood the Bush administration's commitment to Human Rights around the world and how Bush contributed much more than Obama, who is a piker. The war on terror was a war for human rights around the globe.
Bush knew that but the fascist media wouldn't let his message through.
You can look at Bush's own website where he says it himself:
http://www.bushcenter.com/blog/2012/12/10/a-message-from-president-bush-on-human-rights-day/
Or you can look at The Journal of Democracy, which in the past has said how preferable Bush was to Obama in terms of pushing human rights.
The Democrats have never cared about human rights. They didn't in the Civil War and they don't now. Human rights has always been a Republican principle.
The Journal of Democracy has many times stated how much preferable the W. administration has been to democracy worldwide than the Obama administration. Obama simply doesn't care about principles. He cares about race, gender, and class: these aren't principles, they're demographic signifiers without any kind of principle (Bishop Tutu and Idi Amin are both black; Valerie Solanas and Queen Elizabeth of Bathory are both women, as is Jeanne Kirkpatrick; Charlie Manson and Mother Theresa were both poor).
To think in terms of transcendent signifiers we have to think about human rights as principles.
The Journal of Democracy has frequently lamented the Democrat idiocy on this matter. But they were idiotic clear back to Tammany, what do they expect?
Only the Republicans have even tried to think about timeless and enduring principles. The Democrats' vocabulary mires them in self-interest. They don't care about the unborn because they can't vote.
They don't care about the people in Cameroon because they don't vote.
However, there is a Journal of Democracy in Cameroon.
I'm certain that Obama doesn't subscribe and probably couldn't even pinpoint where Cameroon is in Africa if left to his own devices. He thinks there are 57 states in America. Whatever.
http://www.cjdhr.org/call.htm
The Democrats just care about their voters.
Republicans care about the whole world. We can no longer deny we are part of the whole world. And that Human Rights is a Protestant concept that comes out of Lockean Puritanism. and that the whole world would like to subscribe, but often cannot, due to local geniuses such as Castro, and Chavez, whom Obama supports.
We still don't have a mea culpa from the American left with regard to turning Vietnam over to the communism party of Vietnam while Nixon and others had struggled to make it a free electoral democracy such as prevailed in South Korea.
http://www.petitiononline.com/Proj118/petition.html
There is still time to sign the online petition to make up for this grievance.
Thousands of Vietnamese citizens around the world and inside of Vietnam would like to be able to speak, and have the rights that we enjoy, and which the American left destroyed.
"What are we fighting for?" Sang Country Joe and the Fish.
They just really didn't know.
There is almost never any coverage of this problem within any of the major media stations. The American left consigned several generations of Vietnamese to communist slavery.
And no one brings it up. It's considered impolite.
But we fought the government for that! the idiots proclaim.
And yes, you may as well have fought for the southern Confederacy, which the Democrats did fight for, from 1860-1865 and beyond.
Communist airheads unite.
I BELIEVE JEFFERSON DAVIS WAS A COMMUNIST. YOU COULD SEE IT IN HIS EYES.
I didn't see it. But I know he was. I sense it. I have this wonderful intuition.
Dubya was a comic who got elected. He was supposed to fly jets, but he played hookey.
Or hockey.
Shut up, you stupid hockey puck.
Puck the magic stuffed toy..
Lived on the shining shore.
Bore his wife three weasels.
Mounted on an easel.
Not feasible.
Cute little devils.
The Confederacy was a Communist Conspiracy!
Slavery was not the issue. It was control. The right to be seen and heard and believed. The right to kiss the Venus de Milo.
Who was she, rising from the waves, standing on a clamshell, sans clothing.
Filthy Communist porno trigger-horse.
What's up, Doc?
Gotta go.
Slavery is alike whether it's the Nazis using slave labor with the Jews, or whether it's the middle class in Stalin's USSR, or whether it's the confederacy in the Old South. It's all just plain slavery.
Today we can all be proud of the slave conditions that the left promoted in North Korea, and throughout Vietnam.
At least we stuck up for Taiwan. There at least, is the semblance of freedom.
Obama is slowly tightening the screws on America. Soon he will have us under the thumbscrews of political correctness and the one party system that the Democrats believe is the only right one.
Once.the Dems have taken away our arms they should also take away our legs.
Curtis, and jh,
Curtis writes:
This is a little confused. Marx and Solzhenitsyn and Jesus are all dead. I vote we move on.
jh writes:
jesus is not dead
Yeah.
I've been at my father-in-law's funeral. I may write about it, but probably not today.
Anyway...
Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Christ is always present.
Sorry to hear about the funeral. He's not dead! No one ever dies. It's too illogical.
Evan Connell died. He was eighty-eight. The story I saw didn't mention Points For A Compass Rose.
http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=evan%20connell&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CC4QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsday.com%2Fentertainment%2Fbooks%2Fevan-s-connell-acclaimed-author-dies-at-88-1.4435795&ei=sQXxUNqbNYSPkwWOpIDACg&usg=AFQjCNFW8zv92vIuGIfBdlEJ0z9xgdLs6g&bvm=bv.1357700187,d.aGc
Craig:
This is the first I had heard about Connell.
A fascinating man, without a doubt.
I read several of his short stories, and both the Bridge books.
I acknowledged his use of the term Compass Rose. There are many literary references for it, but Connell's was a title for a long verse narrative. It was not destined to become a big seller; the publisher probably was reluctant to do it, only consenting out of loyalty or obligation.
Connell was interested in history, and devoted more and more of his attention to it as his career progressed. In a sense, his earlier literary efforts "bought" him the right to follow his interests. His books became almost "academic."
I think the Bridge books are hilarious satire, shrewdly deadpan. They have the kind of sotto voce of the plains states ethos. I liked the Newmans in the movie.
Connell was a major figure. He'll be missed.
Stu:
With respect to your comment of Thursday, January 10, 2013 1:35:00 PM EST--
Your posting habit is to reference some article or tag you've read, and to stand on that as buttressing your statements.
To be honest, no one could responsibly "research" every speculation and opinion they held and carry on anything like a percolating casual discussion in the blogosphere.
I think it goes without saying, for instance, that speculation and economic leveraging have been significant phenomena in our economy over the last quarter-century. The real estate and stock market bubbles showed how fragile and tenuous our hold on our empty prosperity had become. Our pensions, investment accounts, home equity collateral bankruptcies, our ultra-obscure brokerage "instruments" etc., were all used to camouflage the continuing economic slide of the middle-class. This isn't something we need to get statistics for--it's common knowledge if you've been living and paying attention.
In the Eighties and Nineties, Americans saw their investments and home values skyrocket, only to see them eventually crash. During this parallel period, American corporations were offshoring capital and jobs at unprecedented rates. All our "prosperity" was an illusion, fed by empty valuations, like the empty calories we consume in junk food. They just made us fat and lazy, and eventually unhealthy economically.
It may seem superficially that we're a "resource rich" nation. But how do you measure that? Is shale oil a real resource? Is coal a real resource? When you factor in the devastating environmental consequences of so much resource exploitation, it doesn't look nearly so "rich." Do we really have "unlimited" water everywhere? If you peel back the hype and look at the details, it's not nearly so rich as it seems. In California, for instance, agri-business is screaming about water: They've nearly exhausted the Central Valley aquifer, and want more and more mountain water off the Sierra, but the growing population wants it just as badly. Sadly, we're simply running out of water, despite all the clever engineering and diversions.
Scientific farming has produced miracles, but much of the arable land has been exhausted for decades. Except for the Pacific Northwest and the Atlantic seabord, the nation is water poor. Our system of food production is unsustainable, with our elaborate network of long transport. Our poultry and fruit production are artificially supported with pesticides and hormones and expensive transport; it's a dirty business, as anyone who's taken a look at our corporate agricultural system knows.
My take of course is to curtail population growth, and get down to the dull but necessary business of resource conservation. Not fracking and mining and clear-cutting and building more dams, but husbanding our birthright in ways that have a future. I like the idea of Americans building cars for Americans. I like the idea of encouraging quality over cheap alternatives. American know-how should be used to benefit American science and development and productivity, not China's. Not India's.
I bought my copy of Points For A Compass Rose from a Wesleyan missionary from England in Tonga. He came there to teach geography, but the Tongans quickly decided he was better suited to run the Friendly Islands Bookstore. Much of his inventory consisted of books remaindered from Australia and New Zealand.
The floor of the lobby in the building where I live now is a compass rose design made of polished inlaid granite. A patio was added to the roof deck a few years ago with the same design.
My godmother could easily have been a classmate of Connell in the English department at the University of Kansas. Her roommate there was the daughter of a former governor of the state.
Actually they wouldn't have overlapped; Class of '47 and Class of '54, a four year gap between them, though they likely would have had many of the same professors.
http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=custer's%20horse%20comanche&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FComanche_(horse)&ei=CmzxUJKkN8S0kAXTlYHABw&usg=AFQjCNGKQF6bnnH1FFzg4agX0nPfC3DIbg&bvm=bv.1357700187,d.aGc
I have heard of a certain man that never spoke for twenty years, who could not be influenced by an age that failed to participate in him. Perhaps the mockery of the populace sounded less consequent to his ear than the passage of each April breeze. - Evan S. Connell
i doubt that anyone in the twentieth century wrote with the clear-eyed aesthetic of painful and curious truths the way Connell wrote....one of my heroes...even though he cast his cold eye on the church many a time... a real clever warrior has departed for other adventures
deus lo volt-
in my top 3
for novels
amen Evan amen
jh
Curtis,
Your posting habit is to reference some article or tag you've read, and to stand on that as buttressing your statements.
To be honest, no one could responsibly "research" every speculation and opinion they held and carry on anything like a percolating casual discussion in the blogosphere.
I'm often criticized for the way that I argue, in terms to me which all but inevitably end up sounding to me like, "You're doing it too well. You should come down to our level, and argue as badly as we do." I don't find this to be convincing in the least.
In this case, I appealed to a very general reference to counterbalance what struck me, and still strikes me, as a dangerously narrow view of the causes of the recent financial crisis.
I think it goes without saying, for instance, that speculation and economic leveraging have been significant phenomena in our economy over the last quarter-century.
I agree, and agreed. Leveraging is an important phenomenon. My issue is there are other important phenomena, including the information revolution, outsources, and changes in the economic culture of the country.
It may seem superficially that we're a "resource rich" nation. But how do you measure that? Is shale oil a real resource? Is coal a real resource? When you factor in the devastating environmental consequences of so much resource exploitation, it doesn't look nearly so "rich." Do we really have "unlimited" water everywhere? If you peel back the hype and look at the details, it's not nearly so rich as it seems. In California, for instance, agri-business is screaming about water: They've nearly exhausted the Central Valley aquifer, and want more and more mountain water off the Sierra, but the growing population wants it just as badly. Sadly, we're simply running out of water, despite all the clever engineering and diversions.
Oil, shale, and natural gas are resources. So is a large supply of fresh water. We have arable land, timber, precious metals, river systems that facilitate heavy transportation and commerce. Are there localities where a particular resource limits development? There will always be a bottleneck. But our bottlenecks are not as constraining as other country's bottlenecks.
Have we been wise is managing our resources? As water shows, not always, but we haven't been completely irresponsible either. We're a big country. We've had the opportunity to do a lot of things right, and a lot of things, wrong. I do think we need to attend more to systematic errors, of which the premature exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the over exploitation of renewable resources are two.
It seems to me that important points are being missed. The oft-lauded middle class is a fairly recent phenomenon historically, a product as much as anything of Henry Ford's realization that manufacturing needs customers. This has been forgotten in rush to lower costs through automation and offshoring. Indeed, it's been the experience of the past few recessions that the jobs lost are never really regained, instead job growth picks up again from the diminished post-recession norm. Recessions are in effect consolidation events, whatever their trigger, in an economy in which labor itself is no longer a bottleneck. Yet we expect our citizens to perform two distinct roles in our economy -- as workers, and as consumers -- and we ignore the link between the two at our peril.
I don't think we've figured out how to structure a working economy in which labor is not a bottleneck.
Stu:
The post-war boom was built on a pact between capital and labor that acknowledged the connection between productivity and consumerism.
You can't have one without the other, or you can't have productivity unless you have consumers to buy things.
It became evident to capital that it was possible to build distribution systems based on another model, one in which cheaper and cheaper products could be produced abroad and marketed here. But that model was flawed, since "here" eventually would be sucked dry, as our imbalance of payments has shown.
This phenomenon has, as I mentioned before, been masked by implausible real estate valuations, the two worker household, and unsustainable equity surges. Rather than the "bottleneck" you seem to see, labor has steadily been losing power and influence, at the expense of workers' job security, pension entitlement and health coverage. Rather than the bottleneck you see, I see capitulation and lost ground. How is that a hindrance to economic progress?
Your theory of "consolidation" is intriguing, and I'd like to hear more about it. The jobs aren't "regained" because they don't produce profit. Workforces are expensive--increasingly so--and so capital works to make them unnecessary. In the Nineties, we were told to work harder and harder and harder, that our salvation depended upon it. Then they off-shored the jobs as a reward. Some payoff. I've written before about how Hersey Chocolate company shut down a whole town in California and moved the operation to Mexico. That's why I'll never buy a Hersey bar ever again. They're poison. The executives who did that should have their homes burned down.
I didn't mean to demean your arguments, or the manner in which you make them, Stu, I just wanted to point out that making mildly controversial assertions isn't the same as mounting a carefully reasoned argument, with sources and references. As we both know, "evidence" can always be mustered to "prove" almost anything. As casual commentary, blog comment boxes aren't the occasion for academic treatises. Kirby, who runs the site, is by far the predominant contributor, here, and you could hardly call his posts models of expository writing (with proofs).
Go, Capital and Labor, hand in hand,
Bleed Fortune and Prosperity across the land.
Konrad Krez
Strike of the Members,
1875
no one should have to work
work work more than 2 or 3 hours a day
the only thing i really have against the communists is that they tended to agree that work was the issue
work is not the issue
work is over-rated
people should work a little every day i suppose but they need time for walks exploration reading recreation blowing bubbles cloud watching piquant morsels cup cakes and conversations which last hours sometimes not to mention showers and appropriation of food from the garden what with all that there isn't all that much time for work or consuming
we need to throw that word out of the lexicon - consumer - it's an abstraction that points to ambiguities
i call for a re-establishment of the words gay and queer to a general use with no connotations and a removal of consumer from the dictionary
do i ask too much
i hardly think so
but then i do think
thereefore i must be
or maybe i'm a figment of my own imagination
fancy that
for your information curtis without calling too much attention to myself i think i am the predominant voice on this blog i am the alfa-commentator i howl at the moon and the others tend to howl back
vrroooooom vrooooom
leader of the pack
ahhhhhhh
crash
ah well o will what the hell
ring the bell farmer in the dell
learn to spell what's that smell
all i know is i grew up in a context where bullshit was considered an art form
so what's the beef
leisure: the basis of culture
jh
Go, 49ers!!!
Except for top models no one is hungry in the USA. Surely that's different than India or Africa or South America or North Korea. Obama can only make things worse with all his finagling. He's thrown millions out of work with his finagling and jimmying of the economy. We've lost the top credit rating due to his tomfoolery. He should step down so we can get a leg up and stop pulling our leg that he can hope to change his diapers and man up after the mess he's made of the situation in Benghazi and now he wants to pin it on a film and say we have to stop annoying Islam while Mali falls into the malfeasance of bandits and culturally bereft lunatics who share his middle name and the middle finger he's raised to what may not be his land but was once that of the boys and girls named Sioux.
I believe the consensus is that the U.S. was downgraded because the Congress failed to ratify the raising of the debt limit. This had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING THE PRESIDENT DID OR SAID. It was nothing but Republican shenanigans.
We need to withdraw from the Middle East and man our barricades here at home. We need to keep investment and jobs at home. We need to invest in America. No one wants us butting in any more. We should heed that warning.
If the Muslims want to fuck up their corner of the world, let them.
Let's put things right here, and then we can consider what we might do to help the rest of the world.
Charity begins at home.
We need to help our friends in Africa. The French are helping out in Mali. "A friend in need is a friend indeed."
We need to help our friends in Africa. The French are helping out in Mali. "A friend in need is a friend indeed."
Curtis,
Your theory of "consolidation" is intriguing, and I'd like to hear more about it.
The idea's pretty straightforward, and hinges on the interplay between human (and corporate) inertia, and marginal changes in productivity.
I believe that, in the ordinary course of things, businesses need a good reason to hire or fire. You hire people who you're confident will make you money, and you fire people who you're confident will lose you money. The margin folks tend to remain hired if hired, and to remain unemployed if unemployed. The effect of automation, outsourcing, aging, compensation progression, and other forces is that the utility of a typical employee tends to peak soon after hiring, and to degrade slowly thereafter.
Now, add to this pattern the effect of business cycles, which depress the profitability of most employees. Suddenly, a large number of guys who were "just getting by" in terms of their continued employment aren't, and lots of marginal guys get fired -- basically, the tranch of employees who just made the cut last time. Come the recovery, the people who were fired tend not to be rehired -- after all, they'd reached the point where they were "just getting by" during the good times, and so don't meet the test of someone the employer is confident will make them money.
Curtis,
I believe the consensus is that the U.S. was downgraded because the Congress failed to ratify the raising of the debt limit. This had NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING THE PRESIDENT DID OR SAID. It was nothing but Republican shenanigans.
Exactly. The President can only spend what Congress appropriates and authorizes. The spending problem is Congress's problem, the destructive politics around the debt limit is also Congress's problem -- specifically, it's a problem caused by ideologues in the Republic party, and that party's lockstep mentality as represented by the Hastert rule.
That's the MSNBC consensus. It has nothing to do with what S & P said which was that our debt was too high.
S &P cited various problems in the downgrade. You could read S&P downgrade wikipedia for starters. The sevrre recession combined with the subprime mortgage problem (acorn) Fannie Mae and the rebundling process was the initial problem. Combine that w two unfunded wars entitlements going out of control and Obamacare going into enactment and you had a series of question marks. The downgrade happened four days after the debt ceiling was raised. Making more money available which is the Obama answer isn't enough. Dem dems think it is as they think no one will notice.
A larger but far more comprehensive wiki artice is called US PUBLIC DEBT. It's impressive to see how it has spiked during the Obama years. The problem is partially the recession but that was exacerbated by Obamacare. Michael Moore has called for the arrest of credit raters who call attention tto the mounting debt. This is the Stalinist approach to public problems but it results in Chernobyl and the disappearance of the Aral Sea. And finally - collapse. I see the Tea Party as patriotic and naysayers like Moore to be nincompoops. I wish Romney had stayed on message about the economy. Benghazi was a symptom of the bad economy and not a direct cause of it as Obamacare is a direct cause and Fannie and Freddoe.are direct causes. It's hard to understand government spending and credit ratings because the terms are vague and much of the spending is done undercover with the compliance of the MSM but just a tad of looking things up will show how profligate the Dems have been since at least FDR.
Consent of the governed is the basis of legitimate government. A majority still wants Obamacare overturned.
"S &P cited various problems in the downgrade. You could read S&P downgrade wikipedia for starters. The sevrre recession combined with the subprime mortgage problem (acorn) Fannie Mae and the rebundling process was the initial problem. Combine that w two unfunded wars entitlements going out of control and Obamacare going into enactment and you had a series of question marks. The downgrade happened four days after the debt ceiling was raised. Making more money available which is the Obama answer isn't enough. Dem dems think it is as they think no one will notice.
A larger but far more comprehensive wiki artice is called US PUBLIC DEBT. It's impressive to see how it has spiked during the Obama years. The problem is partially the recession but that was exacerbated by Obamacare. Michael Moore has called for the arrest of credit raters who call attention tto the mounting debt. This is the Stalinist approach to public problems but it results in Chernobyl and the disappearance of the Aral Sea. And finally - collapse. I see the Tea Party as patriotic and naysayers like Moore to be nincompoops. I wish Romney had stayed on message about the economy. Benghazi was a symptom of the bad economy and not a direct cause of it as Obamacare is a direct cause and Fannie and Freddoe.are direct causes. It's hard to understand government spending and credit ratings because the terms are vague and much of the spending is done undercover with the compliance of the MSM but just a tad of looking things up will show how profligate the Dems have been since at least FDR."
The above two paragraphs are pure Lutheran Surrealism. It may be time to do a 5150 on Kirby. This is moronic stuff.
Augie Mozart's on the catbird seat and he's ready to sing.
Kirby,
Let's take a look together at what Standard and Poors said. The italics are theirs, the roman commentary is mine.
We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to 'AA+' from 'AAA' and affirmed the 'A-1+' short-term rating.
We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from CreditWatch negative.
The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics.
Note that this does not say that the debt is too high, contrary to your claim, nor that the short term deficit is too high. It does say that there is a problem in the medium term (i.e., 5-20 years). The questions here are largely around
(a) how quickly and fully the economy will recover,
(b) the health of the entitlement trust funds, especially Medicare.
More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
This is a polite way of saying that since the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party is bat shit enough to believe that it might be politically useful to default, we can no long be as confident as we were of debt repayment.
Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any time soon.
Again, the Tea Party wing is so bat shit that they can't even compromise with themselves, let alone anyone whose economical policy doesn't envision a return to the gold standard. But we'll say it as though there are two sides to this, because anything else will just get the crazies excited, and we don't want that.
And we're skeptical that that these bozos are going to lose political power fast enough to avoid serious damage.
The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the
long-term rating to 'AA' within the next two years if we see that less
reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new
fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government
debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case.
This is a bit more complicated. On one hand, they anticipated (rightly so, IMHO) that the sequestration would not stand. It's a bit too early to know -- Congress kicked that can down the road just after the "fiscal cliff." On the whole, I'd expect they're pleased with the tax increases.
The specter of higher interest rates is something that the conservative economists (and debt rating agencies) have been obsessing about. "We'll be the next Greece." But we're not. The interest rate on Greek 10-year debt was at 35% last spring, but under the European debt stabilization efforts have fallen to 11.6%. The comparable rate on US 10-year treasuries is 1.89%, this is up a bit (from 1.6% at the time of the downgrade), but is still below the Federal Reserve's 2% target inflation rate (which is a lower-bound for the bond rate).
The issue of "new fiscal pressures" refers to the possibility of a double-dip recession, as UK is currently facing. Here, the understanding is that moving too quickly to austerity will bring on a double-dip, further depressing US tax collection.
Kirby,
Consent of the governed is the basis of legitimate government.
True. Did you notice that a majority has now voted twice for Barack Obama as President? Or that he is now the first President since Eisenhower to win 51+% majorities twice?
A majority still wants Obamacare overturned.
This is false. The last poll to show majority disapproval for Obama's handling of healthcare was taken in October. At this point, the health care question is a toss-up, but the trends are strongly in Obama's favor.
As more and more of the healthcare law becomes effective, I expect we'll see more and more support for it.
Everything is the fault of the Tea Party. Repeat.
Obama can do no wrong. Pass it on.
The "tax holiday" that was just lifted, and which everyone is now seeing in their first paychecks of the new year, is a resumption of the "normal" deduction rate for Social Security tax, which had been "suspended" for two years as part of the effort to "stimulate the economy."
I've spoken before about the necessity of paying attention to how these "deficit" measures are being reported.
Suspending Social Security taxes of course exacerbates the long-term health of the trust funds, and cannot be regarded as a real strategy to address the short-fall in our actual fiscal balance sheets. Suspending Social Security taxes doesn't pay for the two Middle East wars, or the Bush II tax cuts, or the Medicare cost-overruns.
All our social program obligations shouldn't continually be lumped together and referred to as "entitlements" when the real elephant in the room is the rising cost of health care, and the baby boomers aging.
The only way we're going to "pay for" the deficit spending is by rising revenues. A stable, healthy economy will generate more tax revenue, provided we don't confiscate it through more "tax savings" and "tax holidays." Or, we can raise our taxes. But raising taxes isn't a stimulus. Krugman believes that we should invest in jobs and programs during lean times, and pay off the debt in flush times.
The Republicans apparently believe you can spend during lean times, and then give big tax breaks during flush times. That formula is basically how we got into the budget mess.
You can't lump together all Republicans. There are a variety of people among the millions of people who are Republicans.
The left can more easily be lumped into Keynesians and communists.
Some are both, or are so mixed up it doesn't matter. Keynes thought if the government spent money on the citizens to make work, that those who benefited would turn around and buy even more. He thought if the government gave out a hundred million the benefit would be two hundred million to the economy and that the government would reap a massive benefit from the giveaway.
But the government is also giving away houses, and healthcare, and other things. It doesn't add up.
Kirby,
You can't lump together all Republicans. There are a variety of people among the millions of people who are Republicans.
I think more accurately, you can lump them together for some purposes but not others. In particular, this seems to be a reaction to Curtis's (perfectly valid) note that Republicans were enthusiastic deficit spenders during the Bush administration.
But the plain truth is that Republicans were all but unanimous in their support for Bush administration economic (and war) policies. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 received 216 Aye, 0 Nay, and 4 Not Voting from the Republican House; and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 received 218 Ayes and 3 Nay from the Republican House. Those voting "Aye" for these fiscally irresponsible acts included many future Tea Baggers.
In the light of this near unanimity, the notion that the Republicans constitute a varied caucus is a fantasy. The Republican House, and to an only marginally lesser extent, Senate, votes as a block. Being a Republican Congressman is the easiest job in the world. You don't have to think, you don't have to represent your constituents, you don't have to act in the best interests of the country as you see it. You just vote the way the leadership directs.
Saw Zero Dark Thirty. It presents Obama as a clueless wuss. The left will squeal like tiny porkers on a hot tin roof.
I thought waterboarding was a kind of surfing. It turns out it isn't.
You can ask Dubya about waterboarding, but not about surfboarding. He authorized it--secretly, then grudgingly, to the public. What a guy.
What do you think American soldiers feel about being captured? Since we broke the code of the Geneva Convention, we can't expect terrorists to follow it either.
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to fall into the hands of any Arab terrorists. They'd show no compunction about practicing every kind of torture on me, psychological or physical.
And what could I say to them?
The point about Republicans is that they've traditionally represented the interests of the rich and big business. Their strategy has always been to divert attention away from this politically embarrassing fact, in order to build constituencies out of people who either should know better, or believe they're ethically "aligned" with the selfish interests of capital.
In your universe, Kirby, everyone who doesn't subscribe to the Republican version must be a Communist. This is an absurdly naive position to take, but you keep taking it. You even go so far as to trace it right back centuries into pre-Communist history. Perhaps you think you could trace it all the back to the Sumerians, or even to our distant pre-human ancestors. Was Satan a Communist? Probably. Obama is Satan. There are so many Satans, where do we start, and where does it end?
How many Communists live in Delhi? How many Communists are on the faculty at SUNY? You might make a reputation for yourself as a whistle-blower, outing Communists throughout New York State.
Do you write letters to the editors of dailies broadcasting your theories about Obama being a Communist? If you don't, why not? Don't you feel strongly enough about your beliefs to follow through? Or are you just slumming here online?
Because the left is not right ergo they must be wrong. Go see Zero Dark Thirty.
You are silly to think Muslim fanatics care about right and wrong. Have you ever heard of Daniel Pearl? They belong to no country and therefore the Geneva Conventions don't apply. You might as well say tsk tsk to the Red Brigades or naughty naughty to Hitler over Auschwitz.
Satan is always after the Jews. We must stand with them until the New Jerusalem and beyond.
If you do what terrorists do then you have no ethical defense against terrorists.
If the ends justify the means, you are in uncharted territory.
Because Hitler killed Jews, doesn't make the killing of Jews justified.
Your argument makes no sense.
Kirby,
Go see Zero Dark Thirty.
You do understand that not only is Zero Dark Thirty a fictionalization of the bin Laden assassination, it is an ahistorical fictionalization. I.e., it lies in order to make points that the actual events do not support. Isn't this the very definition of the word "propaganda?"
Stu, what do you mean propaganda?
Curtis, what do you mean? These people intend to kill us. They do not do it legally or ethically. Did you see how they flew a plane full of citizens into the WTC?
No rules apply when dealing with terrorists.
None.
If they are not playing according to rules, then we should not.
It's a question of self-defense.
The Israelis have figured this out. Bush, a quick study, also figured it out.
Obama has a longer learning curve.
If he were president until the sun burned out, he might figure it out sometime before that critical juncture. I wouldn't bet on it. Ethics gets in the way of common sense for some people.
Even if we are as nice as pie to the terrorists, they will still try to kill us.
They don't want law and order or a discussion. They want to terrorize, and coerce us into abandoning the free world to their reign of terror.
We have to fight for the free world by any means necessary. Zero Dark Thirty shows us this. Orwell said all art is propaganda. Art that is in service to the free world may be propaganda, but it's propaganda I support. Go see the flick!
Ignore that fatso Ed Asner!
Kirby,
Stu, what do you mean propaganda?
The movie "Zero Dark Thiry" is a packaging of a lie, and it's a lie that's calculated to serve a partisan agenda.
No rules apply when dealing with terrorists.
None.
If they are not playing according to rules, then we should not.
I disagree. We are who we are, not who the terrorists define us to be. By following the "anything goes" approach, we've surrendered to them by giving up on our defining values. And it's not even useful. Despite the lies of "Zero Dark Thirty," no actionable intelligence came from waterboarding. We've done damage to ourselves without advantage.
Bush, a quick study, also figured it out.
Bush was not so much a quick study, as he was someone easily manipulated by people he trusted.
We have to fight for the free world by any means necessary. Zero Dark Thirty shows us this.
Lies don't deserve the standing of truth.
They found the courrier through torture. Go see the movie! A woman made the film, and a woman pieced the pieces together that led to OBL. Therefore everything is peachy and PC and charmed. You should sign on and sing along.
Kirby,
They found the courrier through torture. Go see the movie!
You don't get it. The movie lied, at exactly this point. This is well documented.
Kirby,
Read this letter, signed by Senators Feinstein, McCain, and Levin. And do try to be less credulous.
Stu, you predictably take the far left viewpoint. Don't always do that. Break it up and try some variety.
The Wiki page shows how views of the film cover the spectrum.
McCain is on the right, but he's so close to the center on torture because he didn't like being tortured.
Try to wake up a bit. There's still time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Dark_Thirty
Do you always have to take the 100% ethical route? do you ever think: killing Bin Laden saved thousands and thousands of lives. Whatever got us to that point is worth it.
Dershowitz has taken that viewpoint.
I'm just saying try to see others' viewpoints for once. We're here because our ancestors often took the practical rather than the high route to success. We can afford to be ethical because we have such cushy jobs. But someone had to take down Bin Laden. At least go see the movie and get a glimpse of what they were up against.
It's as close as you'll ever have to get to the front lines.
I wouldn't have the stomach for it, but am amazed that those who were there were able to conduct themselves so ethically, and so well.
Hurray for America!
In the movie it also gives a sense of how while playing on a team one member of a team has the duty to question the general thinking of the team and bring it around to her thinking if she thinks she's thinking better than the rest. We see this in Maya.
Most of us are in relatively easier situations. We are far from the front lines. We can imagine how the police SHOULD act in hotspots such as inner cities in which guns and drugs and knives circulate, or in prisons in which evry other person is a focused maniac of some kind or another.
We are dealing with befuddled students at worst, and our job is to get them to try to think better.
I get tired of Ivory Tower people who think that they could be perfect while on the front lines while their fellows get blown up, and while they themselves are shot at and bombed.
Many of us would try to expedite the proceedings in order to take out the other guy before he took us out. Stu would have us take terrorists out to dinner and ask them politely, how will you kill my fellow citizens next, while passing the olives.
Obviously this won't work.
Thanks to Bush we had a functional team in there long enough to get something done before the Ivory Tower intellectual got in and screwed up both wars and everything else.
BHO did take credit for the whole thing, even though none of it was his to take. BHO is an active hindrance to the survival of the free world.
Trying to hold on to your identity as a good guy is like going to a boxing match where there's no referee but you think it's Queensbury's rules. The other guy has brass knuckles and is kicking you with razors put into his shoetips. You say, well, I'm going to keep my gloves on and keep my punches above the belt.
Then you wonder why the insurance industry won't cover you.
Kirby,
Do you always have to take the 100% ethical route? do you ever think: killing Bin Laden saved thousands and thousands of lives. Whatever got us to that point is worth it.
I think it's a bad idea not to be ethical. I think it's a bad idea to surrender our values at the first challenge. If the values we say define us are so expendable, then we stand for nothing.
I do endeavor to be pragmatic. I don't favor, e.g., unilateral violations of another country's sovereignty. Yet I think Obama was right in violating Pakistan's sovereignty in order to settle scores with bin Laden. Here, the value of the benefit was sufficiently large to justify the breach.
But I consider the case against torture to be a strong one. Under torture, people will say or do anything at all. It goes without saying that they'll make stuff up, if that offers a reprieve. AFAIK, there is zero evidence that torture produced actionable intelligence in the hunt for bin Laden. There is no benefit to justify the cost.
Obviously there is now a cover up going on. It has various points behind it: Obama doesn't want torture used, and doesn't wish to be associated with it, although the Benghazi facility was rumored to have harbored tortured Al Qaida personnel. The truth of this is still in question.
The letter from Feinstein fudges on various points. Intelligence was not PRIMARILY gained through coercive techniques it was gleaned through reading files. How were the files created?
I don't really believe anything that anyone in the government says.
They all torture the truth. Pilate was perhaps first to go in this way. "What is truth?"
He's the basis of every government point-person since.
No matter what anyone in government is saying you can bet it's at best a perversion of the truth and a form of propaganda for themselves remaining in office.
That's first.
Way behind that is some little bit of substantial truth.
Against it you have what remains of the fifth estate.
Anything that doesn't appear on Fox and Friends is leftist drivel.
Anything that appears on Fox & Friends is rightist drivel.
I don't even believe my own two eyes.
Everything we know is faked, and massacred by our terrible frameworks through which we vainly try to think.
Still, I think it's important to see the film because it's an important film that people will talk about for the next year. I wish they explained what happened with all these guys when they had squeezed the info out of them like old lemons.
When Maja first attends a tortire session she asksnif the detainee will ever get out. The answer was no. This means either permanent detention or else death. In that part of the world this is normal. I cringed but I think it's ok to fight fire with fire. I hope you go see this movie.
The movie isn't terribly clear how they determined truth. But it was sophisticated. It wasn't what was said but how it was said. There was a sophisticated process of deduction. The top torture guy had a Ph.D. This wasn't dummies with thumbscrews. The breakthrough came through a long logical sequence from lots of disparate facts. It was like piecing together an elaborate puzzle. Meanwhile the puzzle was shooting back! It took over a decade!
Kirby:
"I get tired of Ivory Tower people who think that they could be perfect while on the front lines while their fellows get blown up, and while they themselves are shot at and bombed. "
Actually I think YOU are one of those Ivory Tower people. Like Cheney and the Wolf.
Red-tyed theorists who like to send men and women off into wars.
If you notice, those with real military experience are against torture, because they know the consequences.
The thing about torturing Muslim radicals is that they emotionally welcome torture and death. That's there greatest moment. They value life less than the honor of martyrdom. That's why they're human delivery-systems.
I would never strap on a load of explosives and give myself up to terror.
We were wrong in Iraq, and we were wrong in Afghanistan. We conducted both wars for the wrong reason(s), and they brought us nothing.
Pakistanis certainly knew for years where Bin-Laden was and did nothing to help us.
The intelligence about where he was was gathered, as I understand it, through the use of neighborhood medical outreach personnel. Which is why the Taliban have been targeting our polio vaccine workers, as revenge.
Do you read the papers?
Rendition was ineffective. It didn't work.
If you're being "pragmatic" you have to admit the low expectations for torture, especially with people who don't value their own body and life.
Curtis, I don't think you have the facts quite straight about the polio vaccine people. Go see the movie and get the larger picture and then see how the smaller picture of the polio worker fits into the larger narrative.
At any rate, maybe we can switch topics for a moment.
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