Bill O’Reilly doesn’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama “unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels”.
Gee, Bill. That’s awfully white of you!
Month: February 2008
The Pity Is That It's True
Commenting on a piece by The Financial Times columnist Clive Crook on Barak Obama’s likely economy policies if elected, The Economist manages to interject a point desperately depressing, but spot on: “His voting record suggests that, if elected, Mr Obama would be the most economically left-wing American president since … well, it’s hard to say. Richard Nixon?”
The Economist has had Nixon in their sights ever since he briefly introduced wage and price controls in August 1971, violating a core tenet of Chicago School orthodoxy, but on reflection they have a point. Nixon was the last president who was willing to seriously entertain the use of government to fundamentally regulate the economy not solely at the behest of Wall Street and corporate interests. The Friedmanite orthodoxy which was religiously embraced by so many around Reagan and which has subsequently stripped government of the will to regulate the unchecked greed machine of the market was viewed as a sectarian movement, very nearly a cult, by Nixon and his principal economic advisors.
But it says a great deal about how much the progressive movement in the Democratic Party has surrendered that the principal organ of neoliberalism, The Economist, finds that the worst thing it can say about Barak Obama is that he might pursue Nixonian economic policies. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society are beyond the realm of possibility, much less Roosevelt and the policies which underlay the New Deal. And they are almost certainly right. Obama is as much a captive of the corporate-worshipping wing of the Democratic Party as Billary (the principal reason that Hillary Clinton won’t release her joint income tax returns is that they would reveal that husband Bill has been openly a wholly-owned subsidiary of major U.S. and foreign corporate interests since leaving the White House, just as he was more clandestinely since his first days in Arkansas politics).
With Edwards and Kucinch out of the race there’s very little to enthuse me about a contest between a product of the Daley machine in Chicago and the Democratic Leadership Council’s anointed one. I suspect strongly that Obama will be just another case of “run to the left, govern to the right.” I only wish The Who’s lyrics were right: We won’t get fooled again. But I wouldn’t make book on it.
More Culture Jamming
EcoEquity, Greenhouse Develpment Rights, Bali Conference, Our Planet
Tom Athanasiou and his good colleagues at EcoEquity attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“The Bali Conference”) & got a chance to share the ideas behind their framework for Development Rights in a Carbon-Constrained World. ( I earlier promised that I was going to give an in depth analysis of their argument, but I’ve changed my mind. They summarize it and present it better than I can, so what’s the point?)
Tom has a few follow-up articles about the Bali Conference and what comes next. In Grist, Environmental News and Commentary, Tom has a kind of Bali Conference trip report. In Foreign Policy in Focus, Tom has a short but important essay, “Towards a Defensible Climate Realism”.
These articles somewhat wonkish in nature, but hey, difficult problems require a little bit of thought, and what policy problem is more difficult or important than climate change? Besides, if you’re reading Wetmachine you probably have a fair amount of wonk in you, or at least geek, which is close enough. For some real insight into what really needs to be done about climate change at the policy level, rather than at the switch-to-energy-efficient-lightbulbs-and-hope-for-the-best level, you need to get acquainted with EcoEquity.
Check ’em out. Better still, subscribe to the EcoEquity newsletter, then you’ll be as in-the-know as I am!
Footnote to Howl
In an earlier couple of posts, I copped to a certain amount of schadenfreude over the howling in distress of Boston sports talk radio hosts and rabid Patriots fans about the compound insult to their manly self-images from (a) the loss in the SuperDuper Bowl(tm), and (b) dread Prirate Roberts Senator Spectre Specter’s meddling in the spygate affair. As I said before, I’m a Pats fan myself, but all the apotheoses of Brady, Bellichick and Kraft over the last few months and years were really getting on my nerves. Now, today, it gets better: Robert Kraft and the Patriots are being sued for a hunnert million buckaroos by some dude on the Rams who claims his rightful place on a SuperDuperBowl team was stolen from him by the nefarious cheating Patriots. I wonder how Saint Kraft will come out of this one?
Anyway, mostly I wanted to pass along a link to this essay by Yahoo columnist MJD, entitled “Why I’m OK with Arlen Specter’s involvement in Spygate.” It’s funny and it’s good. I agree with him.
P.S. Yes, you literary types correctly detected an allusion to Allen Ginsberg! Footnote to Howl is a sublime poem. But be sure to read it after reading Howl itself. That’s the way the footnote achieves its full poetic power.
Olbermann On FISA
I try not to do too many “Yeah, what he said” posts. But Keith Olbermann put it so beautifully last night I can’t resist.
You can follow this link to the video and transcript, or just watch the embedded video below….
Attack of the Killer Beets!
No, I’m not talking about the Beets, the great rock band from the Nickelodeon show Doug. (Couldn’t find a decent video of the classic “I need more allowance” from the show, but here’s a still, with music.)
I’m talking about genetically engineered sugar beets with Monsanto’s “Round Up” pesticide built right into them. Now, I’m not going to start a whole thing about genetically engineered food being awful, etc. ( I’ll leave that bioluddite verus brave-new-world stuff for my next novel!)(You think I’m kidding!!).
But I do think Monsanto is just horribly bad and awful, as are all the congresspeople who are in its pocket.
Here’s a petition to stop their latest assault on our food supply & environment. Not to mention, bodies. Sign it if you feel like it.
The Markey-Pickering “Net Neutrality” Bill: Grinding Out One More First Down In The Internet Freedom Bowl.
God knows I love Ed Markey as one of the true defenders of us average folks. Time and again, he has proven himself that rare combination of smarts and political savvy to remain an effective champion against media consolidation and telco and cable interests even when he was minority member. Which is why it always pays to pay attention when he acts.
Markey’s latest bill, The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, H.R. 5353 (co-sponsored by retiring Republican “Chip” Pickering (R-MS)), would seem at first glance pretty weak gruel compared to his previous bill in 2006. So what lies behind this apparent retreat from an outright ban on ISPs discriminating to Congressional findings, a mandate for some FCC hearings, and a report? After all, with Markey chair of the Subcommittee, shouldn’t he be pushing something more aggressive? I mean, the Dems control both houses of Congress now, right?
The answer lies in the pragmatics of Washington and the recognition that — unlike in the movies — major battles aren’t won overnight. As I have said before, this is a long, messy fight in which both sides invest a heck of a lot of time and energy in positioning themselves and grinding out short yardage plays to advance the ball. Seen in that context, the Markey Bill is a very effective tool for both keeping the debate alive and advancing the ball another ten yards toward the goal post.
Analysis below . . .
“Comedy stylings of a libertarian blowhard”
James Wolcott, whose work I would link to more frequently if it did not so show me up as a pale Wolcott wannabe, has a little thing up on his blog about Penn Jillette, the blowhard aforementioned. As usual, he’s spot on, only this time, with one sour note. He says that Penn Jillette
with his long, lank locks resembles an angry mutation of Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski
Now, that is just totally unfair to the Dude, and I’ll leave it at that, for to make a bigger deal out of it would be supremely un-Dude-like. What Wolcott meant to say, I’m sure he would have realized if he had just waited a minute before posting, is that Jillette looks just like Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen from A Mighty Wind.
After the fold: take a look and see if I’m lying.
Is It Really De Ja Vu All Over Again? And Which De Ja Are We Viewing?
Everyone loves history, especially their own. It is perhaps therefore not surprising to see a spate of Democratic/Liberal columnists fret about the possible similarities between the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver and the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. There, the Democratic Party — caught between an entrenched old guard and a vocal youth vote, between supporters of the Vietnam War v. opponents, civil rights activists in varying degrees, and supporters of Robert Kennedy adrift after his assassination — engaged in brutal internecine warfare that split the party and gave Richard Nixon the victory.
But is it the right analogy? I would suggest, as I know others have as well, that the correct analogy lies not with 1968 but 1932. That story ended happily for the Democrats, and it is worth considering why and whether that success can be repeated — if we do not try to shove our differences under the rug and “play nice.”
More below . . . .
-
The Pity Is That It's True
Commenting on a piece by The Financial Times columnist Clive Crook on Barak Obama’s likely economy policies if elected, The Economist manages to interject a point desperately depressing, but spot on: “His voting record suggests that, if elected, Mr Obama would be the most economically left-wing American president since … well, it’s hard to say. Richard Nixon?”
The Economist has had Nixon in their sights ever since he briefly introduced wage and price controls in August 1971, violating a core tenet of Chicago School orthodoxy, but on reflection they have a point. Nixon was the last president who was willing to seriously entertain the use of government to fundamentally regulate the economy not solely at the behest of Wall Street and corporate interests. The Friedmanite orthodoxy which was religiously embraced by so many around Reagan and which has subsequently stripped government of the will to regulate the unchecked greed machine of the market was viewed as a sectarian movement, very nearly a cult, by Nixon and his principal economic advisors.
But it says a great deal about how much the progressive movement in the Democratic Party has surrendered that the principal organ of neoliberalism, The Economist, finds that the worst thing it can say about Barak Obama is that he might pursue Nixonian economic policies. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society are beyond the realm of possibility, much less Roosevelt and the policies which underlay the New Deal. And they are almost certainly right. Obama is as much a captive of the corporate-worshipping wing of the Democratic Party as Billary (the principal reason that Hillary Clinton won’t release her joint income tax returns is that they would reveal that husband Bill has been openly a wholly-owned subsidiary of major U.S. and foreign corporate interests since leaving the White House, just as he was more clandestinely since his first days in Arkansas politics).
With Edwards and Kucinch out of the race there’s very little to enthuse me about a contest between a product of the Daley machine in Chicago and the Democratic Leadership Council’s anointed one. I suspect strongly that Obama will be just another case of “run to the left, govern to the right.” I only wish The Who’s lyrics were right: We won’t get fooled again. But I wouldn’t make book on it.
More Culture Jamming
EcoEquity, Greenhouse Develpment Rights, Bali Conference, Our Planet
Tom Athanasiou and his good colleagues at EcoEquity attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“The Bali Conference”) & got a chance to share the ideas behind their framework for Development Rights in a Carbon-Constrained World. ( I earlier promised that I was going to give an in depth analysis of their argument, but I’ve changed my mind. They summarize it and present it better than I can, so what’s the point?)
Tom has a few follow-up articles about the Bali Conference and what comes next. In Grist, Environmental News and Commentary, Tom has a kind of Bali Conference trip report. In Foreign Policy in Focus, Tom has a short but important essay, “Towards a Defensible Climate Realism”.
These articles somewhat wonkish in nature, but hey, difficult problems require a little bit of thought, and what policy problem is more difficult or important than climate change? Besides, if you’re reading Wetmachine you probably have a fair amount of wonk in you, or at least geek, which is close enough. For some real insight into what really needs to be done about climate change at the policy level, rather than at the switch-to-energy-efficient-lightbulbs-and-hope-for-the-best level, you need to get acquainted with EcoEquity.
Check ’em out. Better still, subscribe to the EcoEquity newsletter, then you’ll be as in-the-know as I am!
Footnote to Howl
In an earlier couple of posts, I copped to a certain amount of schadenfreude over the howling in distress of Boston sports talk radio hosts and rabid Patriots fans about the compound insult to their manly self-images from (a) the loss in the SuperDuper Bowl(tm), and (b) dread Prirate Roberts Senator Spectre Specter’s meddling in the spygate affair. As I said before, I’m a Pats fan myself, but all the apotheoses of Brady, Bellichick and Kraft over the last few months and years were really getting on my nerves. Now, today, it gets better: Robert Kraft and the Patriots are being sued for a hunnert million buckaroos by some dude on the Rams who claims his rightful place on a SuperDuperBowl team was stolen from him by the nefarious cheating Patriots. I wonder how Saint Kraft will come out of this one?
Anyway, mostly I wanted to pass along a link to this essay by Yahoo columnist MJD, entitled “Why I’m OK with Arlen Specter’s involvement in Spygate.” It’s funny and it’s good. I agree with him.
P.S. Yes, you literary types correctly detected an allusion to Allen Ginsberg! Footnote to Howl is a sublime poem. But be sure to read it after reading Howl itself. That’s the way the footnote achieves its full poetic power.
Olbermann On FISA
I try not to do too many “Yeah, what he said” posts. But Keith Olbermann put it so beautifully last night I can’t resist.
You can follow this link to the video and transcript, or just watch the embedded video below….
Attack of the Killer Beets!
No, I’m not talking about the Beets, the great rock band from the Nickelodeon show Doug. (Couldn’t find a decent video of the classic “I need more allowance” from the show, but here’s a still, with music.)
I’m talking about genetically engineered sugar beets with Monsanto’s “Round Up” pesticide built right into them. Now, I’m not going to start a whole thing about genetically engineered food being awful, etc. ( I’ll leave that bioluddite verus brave-new-world stuff for my next novel!)(You think I’m kidding!!).
But I do think Monsanto is just horribly bad and awful, as are all the congresspeople who are in its pocket.
Here’s a petition to stop their latest assault on our food supply & environment. Not to mention, bodies. Sign it if you feel like it.
The Markey-Pickering “Net Neutrality” Bill: Grinding Out One More First Down In The Internet Freedom Bowl.
God knows I love Ed Markey as one of the true defenders of us average folks. Time and again, he has proven himself that rare combination of smarts and political savvy to remain an effective champion against media consolidation and telco and cable interests even when he was minority member. Which is why it always pays to pay attention when he acts.
Markey’s latest bill, The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008, H.R. 5353 (co-sponsored by retiring Republican “Chip” Pickering (R-MS)), would seem at first glance pretty weak gruel compared to his previous bill in 2006. So what lies behind this apparent retreat from an outright ban on ISPs discriminating to Congressional findings, a mandate for some FCC hearings, and a report? After all, with Markey chair of the Subcommittee, shouldn’t he be pushing something more aggressive? I mean, the Dems control both houses of Congress now, right?
The answer lies in the pragmatics of Washington and the recognition that — unlike in the movies — major battles aren’t won overnight. As I have said before, this is a long, messy fight in which both sides invest a heck of a lot of time and energy in positioning themselves and grinding out short yardage plays to advance the ball. Seen in that context, the Markey Bill is a very effective tool for both keeping the debate alive and advancing the ball another ten yards toward the goal post.
Analysis below . . .
“Comedy stylings of a libertarian blowhard”
James Wolcott, whose work I would link to more frequently if it did not so show me up as a pale Wolcott wannabe, has a little thing up on his blog about Penn Jillette, the blowhard aforementioned. As usual, he’s spot on, only this time, with one sour note. He says that Penn Jillette
with his long, lank locks resembles an angry mutation of Jeff Bridges’ Dude in The Big Lebowski
Now, that is just totally unfair to the Dude, and I’ll leave it at that, for to make a bigger deal out of it would be supremely un-Dude-like. What Wolcott meant to say, I’m sure he would have realized if he had just waited a minute before posting, is that Jillette looks just like Eugene Levy’s Mitch Cohen from A Mighty Wind.
After the fold: take a look and see if I’m lying.
Is It Really De Ja Vu All Over Again? And Which De Ja Are We Viewing?
Everyone loves history, especially their own. It is perhaps therefore not surprising to see a spate of Democratic/Liberal columnists fret about the possible similarities between the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver and the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. There, the Democratic Party — caught between an entrenched old guard and a vocal youth vote, between supporters of the Vietnam War v. opponents, civil rights activists in varying degrees, and supporters of Robert Kennedy adrift after his assassination — engaged in brutal internecine warfare that split the party and gave Richard Nixon the victory.
But is it the right analogy? I would suggest, as I know others have as well, that the correct analogy lies not with 1968 but 1932. That story ended happily for the Democrats, and it is worth considering why and whether that success can be repeated — if we do not try to shove our differences under the rug and “play nice.”
More below . . . .