tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post4423618755874835450..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Contempt for the Masses - a modern curse?David Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger52125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-11253071984278967872009-11-04T21:08:47.847-08:002009-11-04T21:08:47.847-08:00How about this stunning new image of Enceladus:
h...How about this stunning new image of Enceladus:<br /><br />http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/398920main_cassini20091103-b-full.jpgSidereushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14365430916880667866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67719277524715739402009-11-01T13:26:49.923-08:002009-11-01T13:26:49.923-08:00Obama and the Israelis
Very unpopular in that cou...<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02iht-edsiegman.html?_r=1&ref=globalhome" rel="nofollow">Obama and the Israelis</a><br /><br />Very unpopular in that countryashnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-16373739802439152842009-11-01T12:55:52.731-08:002009-11-01T12:55:52.731-08:00I wasn't saying that lower middle class people...I wasn't saying that lower middle class people get an automatic pass for the Right. I was saying that the curses from both Left and Right are primarily ideological, not class or race based.<br /><br />--<br /><br />As for understanding Obama's background, see C.M. Kornbluth's short story "The Adventurers."Carl M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01278814334603631598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-45800375004621700422009-11-01T07:00:08.710-08:002009-11-01T07:00:08.710-08:00Very true words. Genuine bipolar folks (as oppose...Very true words. Genuine bipolar folks (as opposed to gaunt, unhappy celebutants) never want to take meds when they are "up". To do so would make them forego that euphoric, omniscient high that lets them soar o'er us puny worms and create fabulous works of art, and to invest every dime of the family fortune in mango futures.<br /><br />They are fascinating people, but almost literally, cursed. The depressive phase is a coal black pit, and the concurrent substance abuse and social issues are near insoluble.<br /><br />Tacitus2<br /><br />And per a previous topic, I am giving my President a reasonable time period to show us where he is going. The electoral cycle is by design, a less patient beast.Tacitus2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-38806328426193107432009-11-01T02:42:19.137-08:002009-11-01T02:42:19.137-08:00Contra Woozle: sadly, while it's easy to blame...Contra Woozle: sadly, while it's easy to blame Reagan for the flood of homeless people who filled the streets during his reign of error, the facts speak otherwise.<br /><br />In this case I must regretfully blame the liberals. Yes, the left. Specifically, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.<br /><br />During the early 1960s a coalition of liberalls, correctly appalled at abuses in mental hospitals (where sexual and other kinds of abuse by underpaid orderlies was rampant), proposed using the new generation of antipsychotic drugs to treat many of the mentally ill in outpatient clinincs. In part liberals' enthusiasm was driven by pharmacology. We should recall that in the early 1960s, the introduction of lithium as an effective treatment for what was then called manic depressiion (today called bipolar mood disorder) was brand new, and today's antipsychotic medications like chlorpromazine and haloperidol were also relatively new. (Those medications didn't produce the zombie-like side effects of earlier meds like thorazine, though they did have other side effecst, notably tardive dyskinesia.)<br /><br />Fired up with idealism and technological brio, the Great Society troupers thought their proposal would end the scourge of abusive institutionalization for mental patients. <br /><br />You can see the problems, can't you? <br /><br />Idealism...technological brio...the roots of the Viet Nam debacle. <br /><br />In this case a variety of huaman fallibilities conspired to doom the Great Society mental health reforms. Firstly, the idea was that mental patients were to be treated in outpatient clinics. The problem, though, is that it depends on mentally ill people <i>voluntarily</i> and <i>regularly</i> taking their meds. Most didn't. A recurring cycle: when the outpatients took their meds their delusions went away, they thought everything was fine, they stopped taking their meds, they became delusional again and wandered away into the community and it became impossible (or very difficult, as in costly) to track them down and force them to take their meds.<br /><br />Second, as mentioned, the states were supposed to build 2,000 outpatient mental health clinics but only 500 were actually built. A lot of that budget crunch resulted from the Viet Nam war, which slashed revenue sharing to the states to pay for the Apollo program + the Vietnam war.<br /><br />Even if all the clinics had been built, though, the scheme would never have worked. The fact of matter simply is that mentally ill people for the most part can't be treated in outpatient clinics.<br /><br />As much as it would be convenient to blame Ronnie for this, the idealistic liberals are actually responsible for the epidemic of homeless mentally ill people on the streets. <br /><br />Moreover, we are now <a href="http://www.seattlepi.com/local/377671_mental04.html" rel="nofollow">paying the price in blood for this failed liberal policy.</a><br /><br />A good example of how both the right and left are responsible for the mess we're currently in, though, in fairness, the far right has a whole hell of a lot more to answer for over the last 15 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58042734134641856752009-10-31T22:56:58.286-07:002009-10-31T22:56:58.286-07:00Russian privatization was utterly monstrous.Russian privatization was utterly monstrous.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-28692686612643358932009-10-31T17:33:39.390-07:002009-10-31T17:33:39.390-07:00Hah! I'd forgotten about Rust. The mental imag...Hah! I'd forgotten about Rust. The mental image I get is that a fly can safely land on a crocodile's nose, where you'd be crazy to lay your hand.<br /><br />I do regard Gorbachev as a genuine hero. I also feel that George H.W. Bush bears at least some shame for throwing away the chance to help Russia become a truly free long-term ally after the Soviet debacle. Here it is, the early 1990's, the ex-Soviets want advice on how to restructure their economy, and who does the Bush-led US government send? Wall Streeters. Investment bankers, Federal Reserve/World Bank/IMF super-geniuses and Masters of the Universe.<br /><br />This may mostly be 20/20 hindsight, but I can almost imagine the conversations between some of these Wall Street advisors and their hosts.<br /><br />American Investment Banker Jones: So, Oleg, you're going to have to privatize all these State-owned industries. All these huge farms. All those oil fields and gold mines.<br />Russian Party Bigwig Voroshilov: That's a big task, Fred. The State owns nearly everything. How should one handle such a massive project?<br />Jones: It is hard to say what all these assets are truly worth. We capitalists say that a thing is worth what someone will pay. So it is important to sell to the right someone. We must set up a process for accepting credible bids.<br />Voroshilov: At present there are few people with any real assets in Russia that they can bid, therefore the expected value of the assets under auction might be considered a kind of collateral for their own purchase, da?<br />Jones: Indeed! But who can you, as the auctioneer, trust?<br />Voroshilov: I trust my relatives.<br />Jones: What if there are bids from people you don't trust?<br />Voroshilov: Paperwork is often lost.<br />Jones: Yes, all too often.<br />Voroshilov: A toast to good advice!<br />Jones: Here's mud in your eye.<br /><br />A few years of that and you get oligarchs and Putin.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-40887640968421678812009-10-31T16:49:34.769-07:002009-10-31T16:49:34.769-07:00Actually, far more interesting than Reagan's r...Actually, far more interesting than Reagan's rather bland and highly over-rated role in the fall of the USSR is Gorbachev's real story... how he took adv of every failure of competence in the soviet bureaucracy (and they were innumerable!) as an excuse to fire lots of crazies.<br /><br />Korean Air 007 was one<br />Submarine catastrophes were others.<br /><br />Chernobyl was the big one... he fired maybe 3 or 4 thousand guys.<br /><br />But an unsung hero was a young German (certified) lunatic named Matthias Rust, who flew a little cessna plane across the most heavily defended air corridor on the planet and then swooped around Red Square in Moscow 3 or 4 times, before landing right in the square. <br /><br />The police were sure it couldn't have happened without permission and posed with him and got autographs... till finally it got bucked up high enough that someone said "WTF!!!????"<br /><br />While he was in Lubyanka prison, I hear Rust got Ice Cream with every meal. He let Gorby fire another thousand guys. <br /><br />And STILL the Old Guard almost pulled off their counter coup. Seriously, had he not fired all those guys and replaced them with younger pragmatists, we likely would have all fried, when Ron pushed them real hard.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-68123904498087128492009-10-31T16:23:53.744-07:002009-10-31T16:23:53.744-07:00O and I simply must throw in my $.02 about Andropo...O and I simply must throw in my $.02 about Andropov. In the Fall of 1983 he was so sick he couldn't be evacuated if Moscow were nuked. The Soviets were *terrified* that Saint Ronald was serious about starting a preemptive nuclear holocaust, and started planning for this fear as May 1981. A friend told me he'd been traveling in Eastern Europe in late 1983 and I said "You could have died there!"<br /><br />The Reds were already paranoid about Reagan, but at the start of September 1983 came the diplomatic crisis of Soviet jets shooting down <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007" rel="nofollow">Korean Air Lines Flight 007</a> after it overflew prohibited airspace at night. 269 people died, one a sitting US congressman. It's been suggested that the flight was deliberately used to "tickle" Soviet radar and thus gather intel about Soviet air defenses. Seems Korean Air Lines would do any favor Korean Central Intelligence Agency asked, and KCIA would do anything CIA asked. So who knows.<br /><br />Before September 1983 ended a Soviet satellite mistook the sunrise over the US for a ballistic missile launch (I'm oversimplifying) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov" rel="nofollow">Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov</a>, the Soviet Air Defence Forces duty officer at the helm that day, declared it a false alarm and maybe saved the world. He has since been showered with a couple of awards and a thousand bucks or so.<br /><br />Then at the beginning of November the US and NATO held an exercise called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83" rel="nofollow">Able Archer 83</a> which "simulated a period of conflict escalation, culminating in a coordinated nuclear release." Basically it was ten days of heavy radio traffic as HQ's and field units all over Europe read scripts like a cross between Red Storm Rising and War of the Worlds. Bedridden old Andropov and the rest of the Politburo had to spend a week and a half listenting to GRU reports and wondering if there was going to be a big SURPRISE! and the end of this show.<br /><br />Able Archer 83 ended with a whimper and we all didn't die, but the extremem nervousness inside the Kremlin was top secret which average citizens didn't really begin to hear about for more than a decade. Reagan didn't hear about it right away either; the following August he made his infamous joke: <a href="http://russiatoday.com/Art_and_Fun/2009-08-11/reagan-cold-war-joke.html" rel="nofollow">"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia. We begin bombing in five minutes."</a> It's said Reagan's much more conciliatory attitude toward Gorbachev resulted from the sobering effect of Reagan beginning, after a couple more years, to hear the chilling inside dope I just recapped.<br /><br />Happy Halloween!TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22570697999213517482009-10-31T15:36:52.638-07:002009-10-31T15:36:52.638-07:00Dr. Brin rites: "Okay, let's put it this ...Dr. Brin rites: "Okay, let's put it this way. If Obama gradually moves us toward black ink and fiscal responsibility. Will you guys finally be willing to drop the cliches and bury Supply Side... for good?"<br /><br />Nevergonnahappen.<br /><br />A famous example of a falsehood that keeps returning from the grave is the Abraham Lincoln misattribution which says in part "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich." In fact this is from a pro-business lecturer 50 years after Lincoln, but keeps getting repeated As Lincoln's after debunking ad nauseam.<br /><br />Snopes for example has a page on this: <a href="http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln/prosperity.asp" rel="nofollow">Lincoln On Prosperity</a> which merely leads true-believing Tea Partiers to say that Snopes has a liberal bias. This leads straightaway to a sort of game of Whack-A-Proof. It's like Whack-A-Mole except that the True Believer whacks any reference you offer with a giant stamp that says Liberal Bias and you have to come up with new references which in turn are only good until the stamp comes down.<br /><br />Lincoln did, however, say this: "But another class of reasoners hold [snippage] that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior – greatly the superior – of capital." <a href="http://dig.lib.niu.edu/teachers/econ1-lincoln.html" rel="nofollow">From: Lincoln, Abraham. "Annual Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859."</a><br /><br />Incidentally, I get my nose out of joint when Reagan defenders say "go ahead and dump on W cause he betrayed Reagan's ideals etc..." As I see it Bush is the logical end result of Nixon and Reagan. The one and only Reagan policy I ever supported was that of arming Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviets. And I have since repented of that you betcha buddy hoo boy do I ever repent.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-40749662080442822822009-10-31T15:19:26.523-07:002009-10-31T15:19:26.523-07:00Perhaps, but if he doesn't? Do we just throw ...Perhaps, but if he <b>doesn't</b>? Do we just throw up our hands and say that the mess Bush left was just too big to be fixed? Or that it was all those Republicans in the Senate and House that stopped his strategies from working?<br /><br />To me, this looks like the only outcomes are Democrat Victory and Democrat Excuses.sociotardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11697154298087412934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25219929977900539712009-10-31T12:06:29.314-07:002009-10-31T12:06:29.314-07:00Okay, right.
But dig it, I think it is fair to gi...Okay, right.<br /><br />But dig it, I think it is fair to give Obama a little time. Nine months into a dire emergency he did not create, isn't it fair enough to let the Keynsians have a bit of rope?<br /><br />After all, Keynsianism asks for big deficit spending ONLY when needed at times like this.<br /><br />In contrast, Supply Side demanded total deficit spending ALL the time! In order to give subsidies to the rich, in a fairy tale incantation claiming this would result in... erasure of deficits!<br /><br />Look, isn't it time to pull the plug on that mythology, that religion? The experiment was run, fully, totally, across thirty years. Giving vast subsidies to the rich has had one effect -- to make the rich vastly richer -- without doing a scintilla to boost economic activity or increase net tax revenues. The bleeding under Reagan and both Bushes was not acute, aimed at dealing with a particular year's crisis. It was systematic, relentless and planned.<br /><br />Okay, let's put it this way. If Obama gradually moves us toward black ink and fiscal responsibility. Will you guys finally be willing to drop the cliches and bury Supply Side... for good?David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83523896913387059222009-10-31T11:20:39.098-07:002009-10-31T11:20:39.098-07:00David
A minor correction:
You won't be "...David<br /><br />A minor correction:<br /><br />You won't be "lectured to about budget busting---by the nation's worst budget busters (to date)".<br /><br />You may appropriately question the sincerity of modern day budget hawks, their Damascene Road moment coming so suspiciously soon after they were voted out of power. But you are generally honest enough to take lumps when and if they prove to be just desserts.<br /><br />Tacitus2Tacitus2noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9921924814290034882009-10-31T10:55:04.045-07:002009-10-31T10:55:04.045-07:00I know some people who suffered a little bit under...I know some people who suffered a little bit under the welfare reform law. <br /><br />Rob H, Obama was not just raised by lower middle class Americans, but they were also white! The man's background confounds almost every attempt to pigeonhole him, but my conservative friends and relations are not paying attention to that...<br /><br />...because they have no idea what his history is, and refuse to read the memoir he wrote, at the request of others, before he even had a chance to be famous. <br /><br />As books go, it's no <em>Startide Rising</em> but it is still worth spending time reading.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15618647194288598056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-16380621715966907672009-10-31T10:37:36.000-07:002009-10-31T10:37:36.000-07:00Carl, find where I said that lefties don't suf...Carl, find where I said that lefties don't suffer from the allure of contempt for the masses?<br /><br />Marxism... and especially Leninism... was all about hypocritically praising the masses, in theory, while in reality squashing the life out of them. I was speaking of all humanity, there.<br /><br />OTOH, your statements are deeply flawed. Did you know that the rebuilding of the US Armed forces, that the right credits to Reagan, began under Carter? Did you know that the Soviet arms budgets did NOT go up, during RR's buildup, and hence, he deserves no credit for "driving the USSR over the cliff, in a vain effort to keep up?"<br /><br />The USSR collapsed because Breszhnev had already sent it down its arms-buildup craze, in the wake of apparent US weakness after the debacle of a land war of attrition in Asia. That accelerated the end game of George Marshall's grand "wait them out" strategy. They were already starting to fall apart when RR entered office.<br /><br />Hence the shift to Andropov and the Gorbachev... who was the one who made the REAL difference. Do you have a clue how many crazy, old guard commies Gorbachev fired, over the course of six years? Probably not. Reagan-worshippers don't like to pay Gorby any attention. But HE was the one who had to do the hard, daily work of making th Soviet Collapse soft and peaceful, instead of an Earth-killing spasm.<br /><br />Look, I defended RR many times. His "evil empire" speech was right-on and the lefties were crazy for hating it. (OTOH, Bush's "axis of evil" speech was raving hypocrisy and aimed at ruining all options for the US... except to jump into another debilitating land war of attrition in Asia....<br /><br />As for cost overruns? Sure, entitlements get away from you. I have long felt that conservatives and libertarians had their best polemical stances when it came to critiquing liberal excess. Indeed, the ONE TIME the neocons, under Gingrich, actually NEGOTIATED...<br /><br />...the result was Wlefare Reform, a fix that repaired a startling number of bad policies and really helped America. Alas, that was the ONE time he cooperated and negotiated in good faith with Clinton and the dems. Soon thereafter, total Culture War began. The neocon congress became the laziest, do-nothing body in US history. The GOP reps became lockstep partisans whose only words were "no" and "fillibuster."<br /><br />But here's the crux. I won't be lectured to about budget-busting... by the nation's worst budget-busters....David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-26542461179880397202009-10-31T09:23:57.501-07:002009-10-31T09:23:57.501-07:00My pet theory on the supposed "stupidity of t...My pet theory on the supposed "stupidity of the masses" is that it's simply a sampling artifact. People aren't "stupid" as a general rule; they're just not <b>focused</b> most of the time, the way small interest groups are. When The People really sit down and talk over a major problem for months on end, they usually come to the right decision. <br /><br />It takes longer for the entire United States to decide something than a small group does (like a committee, or even a New England town meeting) because there are more links and a greater memetic diffusion tensor. But when we figure something out (like that we were duped on the Iraq War), you couldn't move us with the greatest propaganda outfit in the universe.<br /><br />Which is the kernel of truth behind Churchill's quote: "The American people can be counted on to do the right thing... after trying everything else."<br /><br />It just *looks* like we're floundering and saying inane things. The truth is, most people only spend a small fraction of their brain contemplating politics, environmental issues, et cetera; most of the time they're trying to drive, or cure cancer, or total out third quarter earnings, or setting up their next night out. The wheels of distributed intelligence grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.Catfish N. Codnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-61969010693747982092009-10-31T09:17:20.160-07:002009-10-31T09:17:20.160-07:00Sorry Carl, but that doesn't wash. See, Obama ...Sorry Carl, but that doesn't wash. See, Obama was raised by a single mother and grandparents in a lower middle class family. Yet there is massive disrespect for him among the tea partiers and their ilk. <br /><br />So. Is the dislike of Obama by these "common folk" racism, or partyism? After all, it <i>can't</i> be classism by your own definition of the word. ^^<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-61142890472381604962009-10-31T08:27:22.556-07:002009-10-31T08:27:22.556-07:00Middle class folks like...Sarah Palin. No contempt...Middle class folks like...Sarah Palin. No contempt for her around here, I'm sure. <br /><br />Ronald Reagan: lower middle class background. No contempt for him either, I'm sure.<br /><br />Tea Partiers: middle class. No contempt for them.<br /><br />Fundamentalist Christians. No contempt there.<br /><br />On the other hand:<br /><br />Jimmy Carter, Al Gore: Southern Patricians. Can't like them...<br /><br />---<br /><br />Hey. Snarling and villification of the other side is standard politics. Don't claim to be above it and indulge in it on the same site. It's unbecoming.<br />---<br /><br />Some posts back, you claimed that liberals had a better prediction record than conservatives, and gave some decent examples.<br /><br />Some counter examples:<br /><br />Name a liberal entitlement program which didn't suffer massive cost overruns. The Tea Partiers are screaming mad over government takeover of healthcare in part because previous entitlements/welfare programs ended up costing WAY more than originally proposed.<br /><br />Back in the Reagan era, my liberal friends predicted a massive arms race, the spread of fascism, and World War III. Instead, we got a mass breakout of democracy and an end to the cold war. We got a peace dividend in return for those Reagan era war deficits.<br /><br />As for global warming deniers, they still remember Carl Sagan's prediction of Iraq War Winter.<br /><br />-----<br /><br />Neither side has a monopoly on overblown/incorrect predictions.<br /><br />That said, feel free to continue calling George W. Bush a smirking chimp. He deserves it.Carl M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/01278814334603631598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-61775428989405322432009-10-31T02:39:41.924-07:002009-10-31T02:39:41.924-07:00re: Guy Fawkes, I assume it was more a reference t...re: Guy Fawkes, I assume it was more a reference to V for Vendetta than to the original plotterMarinonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6246254977870820562009-10-30T14:54:58.527-07:002009-10-30T14:54:58.527-07:00You do realise that Fawkes was the seventeenth cen...You do realise that Fawkes was the seventeenth century's version of Timothy McVeigh, don't you?<br /><br />Oh well, I suppose bogey-men have to keep up with the times as well.<br /><br />(So beware the measured tread of the DHS coming up the garden path tonight! Rendition or treat?)Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-27023596701646874642009-10-30T13:33:40.134-07:002009-10-30T13:33:40.134-07:00On an entirely unrelated note, what are you guys d...On an entirely unrelated note, what are you guys doing for Halloween this year? I've been running around the office in a Guy Fawkes costume all day.Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-72151365248078336732009-10-30T10:50:33.047-07:002009-10-30T10:50:33.047-07:00TCB I was not aware of that of the Washington Time...TCB I was not aware of that of the Washington Times. That is very disturbing...Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-522941724057809762009-10-30T09:48:43.266-07:002009-10-30T09:48:43.266-07:00Ilithi Dragon, re: Marino's comment:
Bill Mahe...Ilithi Dragon, re: Marino's comment:<br />Bill Maher said it well: "In this country the right has way more freedom of speech." Or, as liberal websites oft say, IOKIYAR. It's OK if you're a Republican. Right propagandists have been painting targets on abortion M.D.'s backs and getting away with it for a long while, to cite one obvious example. Yet it's the kids who sabotage logging equipment who are called "domestic terrorists."<br /><br />More on the subject of far-right propaganda organizations: in D.C. you can see three daily papers on a streetcorner. The "liberal" New York TImes, which let Judith Miller pipeline pro-war disinfo in the run-up to Iraq; the "liberal" Washington Post, which has drifted a bit to the right of the NYT; and the Washington Times.<br /><br />The Washington Times is in many ways the mold from which Fox News was cast. Behind the scenes it is owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a Korean cult mogul, billionaire, and crypto-fascist with yakuza ties who did time in federal prison for tax evasion and has sworn to take down the United States as we know it. The Washington Times has lost an estimated three billion dollars over thirty years. That's thirty years times a hundred million. And Moon and his far-right crowd seem to have gotten their money's worth, in tax breaks etc. <br /><br />Robert Parry (who broke the Iran/contra story) has many ugly details at Consortium News. He has several books' worth of deep investigation at that site on the scary infrastructure of Bushism, US cryptofascism, and the truth about culture-war treason going back all the way to the secret Reagan/Iran plot of 1980.<br />http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/122706.html<br /><br />Disclaimer: Dr. Brin is correct about the left/right terminology being problematical, but it at least serves as a semi-useful shorthand in cases like this.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8335052312561803642009-10-30T06:45:30.619-07:002009-10-30T06:45:30.619-07:00Marino:
Wouldn't that poster's comments b...Marino:<br /><br />Wouldn't that poster's comments be grounds for referral to the Department of Homeland Security? There is a line between freedom of speech and making terroristic threats, after all.Ilithi Dragonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10300247936272572280noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25465721469352096402009-10-30T04:11:28.057-07:002009-10-30T04:11:28.057-07:00On topic: yes, both Spengler's cycle theory of...On topic: yes, both Spengler's cycle theory of history and "voting largessse from public treasure" meme are common rightwing fare (Odd how a sci-fi loving Euro leftie ended up communing with a list of GOPpers and furtheer right like the one I'm going to speak about now)<br /><br />OT, or maybe not, but good for the registry, re: 10,000 McVeighs.<br />I belong to a discussion list and a thread came out, about a lawsuit against using drones in places like 'Stan due to civilian casualties. The debate followed the usual subject creep and it ended up into something like "Under Obama a new technocratic fascism is taking power, we're already two nations at war, and "when (notice the "when", ot "if") the dance begins, there will be an OK in every city" or "OKC will look like a walk on the beach", and the underlying assumption seemed that OKC was a legitimate act of private war against the "eevil libruls". <br />This said by someone who, in another thread praised the Serbian ethnic cleansing because they "were fighting against Islamic invaders", and the Bosnia's Moslems were there for centuries. I'm really scared, my country suffered badly from the terror wave of the '70s.Marinonoreply@blogger.com