Tag: The Stars Hollow Gazette

Sigh.

There are those who will dismiss this as yet another Obama bashing rant, but unlike Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans he leads I really would like Obama to succeed.

I understand Rush.  I am hyper partisan.  I never accepted W as my president even during the smoking pile nobody could have anticipated bin laden determined to attack in the US bullhorn bullshit 95% of YOU! you willfully ignorant accessories to war crimes times you thought he was the bees knees.

I want to grind your nose in your tortures and murders, your common thefts and lies and pederasty and perversion that you accepted by your complicity.  Up against the wall motherfuckers.  Were I not fundamentally opposed to the death penalty you might hope to provoke me to a quicker relief from your shame and degradation than the lifetime in Spandau I think your pissy pants craven cowardice and oathbreaking deserve.

Obama has never been a liberal.  The DLC assumed he was one of theirs until he disavowed them.

The reason progressive Democrats deluded themselves is that Obama was consistently anti-Iraq.  For them the real game is whether we meet the 16 month deadline and the Odierno – Petraeus – McArthur axis are doing what they can to impede it.  No nukes in Korea.  Get the troops out or find another job.

Frankly if he satisfies that minimum requirement Obama need fear no challenge from the left, for the most part they will be co-opted.  Those of us who care about little things like the Geneva Convention and the Magna Carta and the US Constitution can hope they get carried along on the tide but…

We are the 5%ers and proud of it.

Still who knows?  The level of ignorance about simple dimple economics astounds me.

These Chicago School Free Market Fundamentalists, these Randian Hard On Libertarians, these Friedmanite (Milton and Thomas) Monitarist Morans refuse to recognize that we have efficiented ourselves out of business.  We don’t make anything except conmen who will sell you a lump of wood and call it nutmeg.

Tulips.

Keynesian denial seems to have permeated our discourse and people no longer understand that it’s possible to over supply demand.

Supply side economics is a lie.

It doesn’t matter how much you can produce if nobody is buying.  Prices fall into a deflationary spiral and you have an economy with excess capacity.  Cars rotting on lots, high inventory, job cutting, fall in demand.

DUH!

You need to reduce inventory and create scarcity- plow under those debts and fuck the creditors.  You need to create demand and re-inflate.  This is basically spending, but if you were wise and responsible you’d spend it on stuff that was valuable and would last, still spending alone will do because of the multiplier effect.

If I pay you a dollar it doesn’t just go to you.  It goes to your Starbucks barrista and from them to their Chiropractor and Aroma Therapist (you stand on your fucking feet all day and it doesn’t fucking matter).  Eventually your dollar ends up in the pocket of someone who decides to invest it in something like a Credit Default Swap and with less stimulative effect than a bet on 24, odd, black when the ball comes up 00 the coupier rakes it in.  Sucks to be you.

In the mean time someone got coffee which made the coffee people happy and the barrista stands a little straighter.

Fuck you, you tightfisted greed heads.

A Stars Hollow Gazette

You know, some people don’t read.

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they read for information only.  They don’t care about the plot and don’t identify with the characters.  Metaphors or a felicitous turn of phrase are wasted on them.

You can feel the same way about history.

I’ve always seen it as a ripping yarn that has the benefit of not stretching your imagination much because it’s all true.  As I’ve developed my understanding I’ve recognized that it as much written by real actors with a real axe to grind as anything else.

The past is not dead, it’s not even past said Faulkner.

Aristotle was not stupid.  Many of his ideas were wrong because of the limitations imposed by his environment, but some also because of his personal attitudes and positions.  Most of the ones that were right have been misinterpreted and abused.

If you just look at the facts and time lines and don’t understand the man you’re missing more than half the message.

Criticisms, political pressure and Barack Obama

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Tuesday Jan. 13, 2009 08:47 EST

Politicians, by definition, respond to political pressure. Those who decide that it’s best to keep quiet and simply trust in the goodness and just nature of their leader are certain to have their political goals ignored. It’s always better — far better — for a politician to know that he’s being scrutinized closely and will be praised and supported only when his actions warrant that, and will be criticized and opposed when they don’t.

Right this moment, there are enormous pressures being exerted on Obama not to make significant changes in the areas of civil liberties, intelligence policy and foreign affairs.  That pressure is being exerted by the intelligence community, by the permanent Pentagon structures, by status-quo-loving leaders of both political parties, by authority-worshipping Beltway “journalists” and pundits (such as the ones who wrote the wretched though illustrative “What Would Dick Do?” cover story for this week’s Newsweek).

If those who want fundamental reform in these areas adopt the view that they will not criticize Barack Obama because to do so is to “help Republicans,” or because he deserves more time, or because criticisms are unnecessary because we can trust in him to do the right thing, or because criticizing him is to “tear him down” or “create a circular firing squad” or “be a Naderite purist” or any of those other empty platitudes, then they are ceding the field to the very powerful factions who are going to fight vehemently against any changes.  Do you think that those who want the CIA to retain “robust” interrogation powers and who want the federal surveillance state maintained, or want a hard-line towards Iran and a continuation of our Middle East policies, or who want to maintain corporate-lobbyist-domination of Washington, are sitting back saying:  “it’s not right to pressure Obama too much right now; give him some time”?

It’s critical that Obama — and the rest of the political establishment — hear loud objections, not reverential silence, when he flirts with ideas like the ones he suggested on Sunday.  This dynamic prevails with all political issues.  Where political pressure comes only from one side, that is the side that wins — period.

…

Obama is about to become one of the world’s most powerful political leaders, if not the single most powerful.  He begins with sky-high approval ratings, his political party in control of Congress by a large margin, and enjoys reverence so intense from certain quarters that such a loyal following hasn’t been seen since the imperial glow around George Bush circa 2002.  He’s not going to crumble or melt away like the Wicked Witch if he’s pressured or criticized.  The far more substantial danger is that he won’t be pressured or criticized enough by those who are eager to see meaningful changes in Washington, and then — either by desire or necessity — those are the voices he will ignore most easily.

Greenwald, Crooks and Liars, and Firedog Lake

Obama’s allegedly “new” centrism and his ABC interview today

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Sunday Jan. 11, 2009 08:23 EST

Update II: Regarding Obama’s apparent desire to have a new process created where torture-obtained evidence can be used (and/or where the standards of proof are lowered), the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1935 case of Brown v. Mississippi, addressed the question of whether the U.S. Constitution allowed the State of Mississippi to use a confession obtained by beatings and other forms of coercion to convict African-American defendants of murder (h/t lennonist).  The Court invalidated the convictions because they were secured by coerced confessions and said (emphasis added):

In Fisher v. State, 145 Miss. 116, 134, 110 So. 361, 365, the court said: ‘Coercing the supposed state’s criminals into confessions and using such confessions so coerced from them against them in trials has been the curse of all countries. It was the chief iniquity, the crowning infamy of the Star Chamber, and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions.  The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country. . . .  The duty of maintaining constitutional rights of a person on trial for his life rises above mere rules of procedure, and wherever the court is clearly satisfied that such violations exist, it will refuse to sanction such violations and will apply the corrective.’

There’s absolutely no good reason for Obama not to close Guantanamo immediately and simply try the detainees in our already-extant courts of law.  That’s how we’ve convicted all sorts of accused terrorists in the past.  The only reason not to do so is a desire to disregard — violate — these long-standing American principles and instead create a new process that allows torture-obtained evidence to be used.

A Stars Hollow Gazette

A lot of people (including Stephen Colbert) are down on Wikipedia because it is edited by just anyone.

First of all this is not exactly true and with just a little bit of surfing ability (which I’d tell you all about in excruciating detail except I already have 17 lives) you can find all the fights just as surely as you can in orange.

Oh you mandarins get that, I know you do.

And that’s exactly the point.  When you cite Wikipedia you are citing the common wisdom, the battleground, the future history.

The contested record.

So if your facts contradict Wikipedia you’d maybe like to cite an alternate source.

What I don’t like about Wikipedia is they’re making all the articles shorter which makes narrative harder to put together and some parts much weaker than others.  When I was sketching out my history of the Revolutionary War I found pivotal events that had been a minor part of a collective battle or campaign in context either minimized to an unquotable obscurity or expanded into a tome of self indulgence (a very powerful magic item indeed).

I mention this in the context of some long term research I’ll be sharing into Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings about activism, and Keynesian Economics.  If I tend to quote the most simplistic summaries it’s simply because they are common and accepted.

Wikipedia has sadly fallen down in the area of pop culture, partially due to copyright cops deleting many quotes and redacting plot summaries and story arcs.  As ever anything you read about a celebrity is carefully vetted by their publicist and lawyer if they have any self respect at all.  Even so I never find a paucity of undeniable facts to hate.

Ditto corporations and politicians, if you’re muckraking Wikipedia isn’t the place to start but it is a public record.

Crossposted at Rainbow Mittens.

I don’t know how many of my friends are gay.  I have a lot of them.

Me?  Not so much.  No fantasies or childhood experimentation, except the hetero kind.

In fact sex is kind of icky, if only because it fools with your emotions.  Makes you irrational.

I hate that.

I’m constantly surprised by the sexual lives of my friends, many seem to choose the most inappropriate people who bring out their worst characteristics.

My life is certainly like that.  My fiance gave me unconditional love, but I am Captain of the Enterprise and she was not it.

So maybe it wasn’t that unconditional after all.

But that’s not the story I want to tell.  

After the big scare this might be an appropriate time for me to let everyone know I’m not planning on going anywhere.

I like DocuDharma, I like all you guys, and I enjoy our time together more than I can easily express.

I’m constantly bragging about you to my friends and relations who uniformly tell me that they much prefer the content of this site to any of the others I post at.

During the last few months I’ve been involved in some heavy lifting projects in other places and in real life also, so I haven’t been able to be as active as I would want.  These projects involve changes to my schedule which will take some getting used to, at least for me.

I want to thank you for your patients and tolerance and I’m hoping that conditions will soon stabilize so you can expect more regularity from my performance.

Parades!

Where are the Mummers?  Wasn’t there some kind of Orange Bowl Parade?

The Rose Bowl Parade is at 11 am on NBC, ABC, and HGTV (which does by far the best job).

Football!

Outback Bowl 11 am (supposedly on ESPN).

• South Carolina
• Iowa

Capital One Bowl 1 pm ABC

• Georgia
• Michigan State

Gator Bowl 1 pm CBS

• Nebraska
• Clemson

Rose Bowl 5 pm ABC

• Penn St.
• USC

Orange Bowl 8:30 pm Faux

• Cincinnati
• Virginia Tech

I have to say this is a completely substandard performance.  I should be able to hangover hazed glut myself on sex, violence, and consumption through a dimly remembered bacon and eggs benedict, pancake, bloody mary, mimosa binge for a solid 24 hours.

I am expecting you to provide substitute amusement.

Wednesday I’m headed north to the lake house, where I’m supposed to have Inet but maybe not, one reason I’m agitating for Wednesday.  

Could be gone until the day after eksmas (Friday) and while I would normally expect to be available as usual between 11 pm and midnight certainly, I’ll also unavailable during “family time” at my sister’s which includes at least 2 huge meals a day.  She doesn’t have a connection.

If I have access I’ll be working out of a flash drive on a borrowed machine which is always excellent fun.

Still I’m hoping and planning on staying in touch, looking forward to it actually.

But the lake house could be basically uninhabitable unless you wanted to camp out by the fireplace.  No heat, no phone, no electricity, no water.

No fun at all.

Nor is staying at my sister’s although I’m usually allowed a quiet corner to sulk.

I’ll expect she’ll get tired of cooking and be glad to see our backs.  I imagine we’ll leave right after breakfast Friday, after lunch if we leave from the lake house (which should mean net).

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Guess Who?