Tag: Booman

Jan 10 2013

Both sides doo-doo it…

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Booman’s Burden:

The 1953 CIA-sponsored coup that put the Shah back in power in Iran, and the subsequent build-up of SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal internal security force, are certainly black marks in our Cold War history. But it’s not a simple story where we can know that things would have turned out so much better without our meddling. By 1979, Iran had modernized to a remarkable degree, certainly by the standards of the region, and a lot of that was because of American investment. Without submitting to the Hitler-built-good-roads mentality, we can admit that there were many positive consequences for the Iranian people of both the Shah’s reign, and America’s role in sustaining it. One of the tragedies of the Iranian Revolution is that it was taken over by religious fanatics who jettisoned the good along with the bad as far as America’s influence was concerned. On the progressive side, I think there is a constant frustration that the American people are never given the proper context to understand why the Iranian government and (to a degree) the Iranian people are hostile to our country, and especially its foreign policy. The temptation is to overcompensate in the opposite direction, portraying the U.S. as the bad guy and the Iranians as the justifiably aggrieved party.

This impasto of bullshit on blogboard reminds me of David Brooks’ Shit-Brown Period, conceptually AWOL and non-representational, yet physically and graphically present, as if someone had pooped into Duchamp’s signed urinal at the exhibit.

I suppose killing 500,000 Iraqi children with sanctions, or invading Iraq on multiple occasions, are also not “simple stories where we can know that things would have turned out so much better without our meddling,” but I’m guessing that nationalizing some of the world’s largest energy reserves would have turned out rather well indeed for the average Iranian in a world of energy deficits.

ON THE OTHER HAND!  Signature drone strikes on wedding parties and children carrying firewood obviously relieved them from the potential suffering of growing old and weary of the world and its people.

How’s that Grand Frog March going, buddy?  I’m sure history will say I have misunderestimated you.

Jan 03 2013

trifecta (boxed)!

Here’s what Lord Black (econ PhD & virtually universally well-liked blogger, quoted even by Kthultu) said:

Grow the damn economy and the deficit disappears. The end.

I merely add this observation to “Armando, you ignorant slut,” and “booman’s Christmas ass-kicking,” in order to drive home my point, that not all things are that simple, are they?  Nor should they be to liberals, in particular, the devotees to reality and reason.  These spiraling crises (resources, energy, & econ) are systemic.  So, quit acting like fools.  I always imagined you as smarter, but yer failin’ big.  Republican Big.

I honestly recommend Sir Stirling as a starting point for your madness.  It will help maintain your Earth’s orbit, at least.

Dec 24 2012

booman’s Christmas ass-kicking

I’ve suspected for some time that booman was stove-piping White House talking points.

I don’t think it’s violating any trust to reveal to you that I receive both on and off-the-record correspondence from the White House. On most weekdays, I’ll get a few heads-up about things the White House thinks are important.

Actually, if booman considers himself any sort of independent analyst, it would be wrong not to disclose such access, so I actually give him credit for doing so, even if it was inadvertently via bragging.  To the extent that he actually remains quasi-independent is anyone’s guess.  I personally think he’s drunk the access koolaid, as they say, and that if his “analysis” becomes any more shallow, you won’t even be able to get your feet wet at the frog pond.

Listen to this slapdash attempt at explaining the ongoing Greatest Heist Ever:

Why does America have worse economic inequality than almost any other developed nation? Because of the Republican Party. It’s that simple. Why is the Republican Party the way it is? That’s a more complicated question.

In booman’s world, there’s no mention of Clinton, NAFTA, the WTO, Rubinomics, Glass-Steagall, the transpacific partnership, etc.  It’s “Republicans.  That simple.”

Or his explication of the list of things we can’t do, due to crazy Republicans:

In light of last night’s debacle in the House, what do you think the chances are that we can:

1) pass comprehensive immigration reform.

2) pass a stimulus bill focusing on infrastructure.

3) raise the debt ceiling.

4) pass any legislation to address climate change.

5) restrict sales of assault weapons and high capacity clips.

6) restore cuts in discretionary spending (other than military) that is reduced in the Sequester.

7) do sensible tax reform, including on the Doc Fix and the Alternative Minimum Tax?

You can add to this list anything else we need to do but won’t be able to do because the Republicans are crazy.

Yep.  Republicans are crazy.  Democrats have had their hands tied on gun control since the mid-seventies, and Obama never scuttled the Rio Earth summit.  The WTO and Kyoto had nothing to do with globalization and China’s use of coal.  Or outsourcing of jobs.  Or trade deficits.  Nope.  Nothing at all.

On Obama’s continually “folding like a tissue in the rainstorm:”

Critiques of President Obama’s negotiating style are certainly warranted, but the most boring thing in the world is the suggestion that the president is really a moderate Republican who wants to move the Democratic Party to the right and gut entitlements. We have control of half of Congress, and any suggestion that we can get 100% of what we want if only we are more inflexible is moronic. The only real debate is over what we are willing to give up, not whether or not we have to give anything up. So, progressives should put themselves in the shoes of a negotiator and ask themselves honestly what they are willing to sacrifice and what they want in return. This talk of rainbows and ponies needs to end.

Ladies and Gents, I am fucking psyched by this block-headed, self-proclaimed “progressive” bullshit of pushing Oh, Brother!’s  austerity agenda, and the ridiculous  “Who blinked first?” framing.  Blink, blank, blunk.  Obama!  

Now, booman ain’t stupid, in the sense that he does mine certain truths, but he speaks in the language of mountaintop removal: to get to that vein, you have to blow the top of your head off.  This is the same reason I recently accused BTD of ignorant slutness.  They know (I hope they know) better.

Did you ever stop to think that our problems in America are not partisan, but substantive?  Systemic?  Decades long structural problems that tower over party politics, partisan hackery and hemi-neglect?  Energy, trade, and investment deficits?  Resource wars?  Environmental collapse?  An American Ponzi economy/wealth pump beginning to run in reverse?

SCROTUS (Supreme Caver-to-Republicans Of The United States), the hare-brained economists and incontinent ubermensch master-class investment bankers have crashed the system (repeatedly), and as usual they are taking it out on the ever more penurious.  There are reasons for this, stupid liberals.  It’s Obama’s job to make penury “okay” with stupid liberals, and his performance on this “inside job” should garner him an Oscar.

Either booman (and his ilk) is stupid, or he thinks you’re stupid.  I don’t cotton either way.

Oh, Brother!’s got the stoopid libruls also supporting Kerry and Hagel.  Fer realz.  Jus’ like he got ’em to hooray HillBill’s attack on Libya, and givin’ bin Laden cement galoshes (We killed Dillinger!), etc..    Jus’ like he got ’em to support Kagan on SCOTUS, which sounds like an astringent to be used on porcelain after you FLOTUS or POTUS in the bathtub.  Next up, swear to god, he’ll get libruls to support Jamie Dimon at Treasury.  Stoopid libruls will draw a line in the sand and fight to the last stoopid librul on cutting Social Security to ribbons.  Swear.  To.  Fucking.  God.

Oh, and Syria has mobile weapons labs containing weapons of mass destruction!

This is your so-called “reality-based community” giving you the straight poop.

The “reality-based community” is as drugged-up and strung out on American Exceptionalism as any winger.

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All they really want for Christmas is genetically modified orgasms, but it wasn’t the spermaceti they were after: their motives were mad.

Merry Times.

Feb 18 2011

Booman: Reagan will beat Glen Beck on relative merits.

(cross-posted at boomantribune)

I think booman is correct in suggesting that in the struggle between Obama and House Republicans, Reagan will beat Glen Beck on relative merits.   That’s good enough for booman to continue supporting the president.  Of course, that is looking through an objective that can only resolve issues at the cellular level and range of center-right to right wing nut: one neuron is darkly stained with cresyl-crazy, whereas the one next to it took up less stain.  One would need to zoom out with a much broader, less powerful lens to know whether these neurons were in the left or right hemisphere of the brain, to know which half of the brain stained most heavily for crazy overall.

For example, the very unstable situation in the Middle East is only likely to worsen over time, which was empirically predictable many decades ago, and predictable in principle from any arbitrarily selected moment in history after Malthus.  Either prediction suffices to suggest that there is nothing “routine” about “managing” the Middle East, and demands very different policies to manage the transcendent problems, in any kind of adult-like, proactive fashion.    In booman’s usage, “child’s play” is a relativistic term: Obama is like a cognitive nine-year-old to Boehner’s five-year-old.   If one can call continuing decades of failed right wing policy for all the wrong reasons “statesman-like,” then maybe the right wing is correct in trashing the entire idea of governance.

Glen Ford rightly rips progressives supporting Obama’s center-right/right wing grand unification, and John Caruso presses him a tick further, but neither goes nearly far enough in their relatively tepid denunciations of statesmen and their supporters promulgating more right wing, empirically-failed solutions.

I’ll admit that on the concurrent schedules of permanent global economic collapse, peak oil, climate change, and the sixth great extinction event, it is difficult to imagine what a real statesperson might look like, but I doubt it’s the kind of person with a hankering for further high stakes military and financial gambling,  who pines away for the support of the haves over the have-nots, and is therefore eager to take a blowtorch to governmental regulation, including safeguards against inequality and financial and ecological catastrophe, and who has proven utterly incapable of executing accountability, all in the name of personal or short-term gains.

Jan 07 2011

Booman becomes anosmic:

Not a “whiff” of corruption from Obama.

Dec 31 2009

Booman is of two minds, like a tree in which there are three birds.

Booman the politico makes some recondite point that is also not easily understood by the lay person.

What brought people together into progressive blogging communities and networks was related to policy (the invasion of Iraq, torture, illegal surveillance, regressive taxation, bad environmental policy) but also other things (a one-sided corporate media, incompetent government, and lack of meaningful and effective resistance by the Democrats). But notice something. The progressive blogosphere rarely if ever engaged in serious policy debate about legislation pending in Congress. Insofar as it was discussed at all, it was normally opposed. And that kind of blogging can be habit-forming. What was appropriate when the Republicans ran everything is carried over and used against the Democrats.

Jun 02 2008

No Panty-Sniffers In the Dem Party!

Booman elevates the debate about the future facing America’s electorate with another incisive analysis of the major issues of the day.  

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My own ideas are always welcome as long as I don’t make the purveyors of truth, light and joy seem anything but divine.

Dem’s peering into a former President’s pants? Would never, ever happen. Dems are better than that. Only Republicans would fixate on the sexual apparatus of a former President.

Did you hear McCain actually wants to prolong the Iraq war 100 years?

Meanwhile Booman reminds us that only a Republican could ever be caught on camera engaging in a two-minute racist hate session.

Don’t Forget To Stand During the National Anthem.

Any egregious lie, mis-truth and mis-representation of any Rethuglian position is welcome! The more outrageous and rage-inducing the better!

See ya!

Jan 03 2008

Booman is dead right.

I choose that as my headline advisedly because last I heard Booman thought I was an ass clown and I am.  I’m a member of his site and I could have and could be contributing much more.

I”ve also stolen many good ideas from him about how to run a site and build community.

Still my suck up skills are insufficient to the depth of my depravity and I expect no thanks from this-

Perhaps because his wife is such an avid reader of blogs, Edwards’ campaign tapped right into our zeitgeist. He came out with our insight front and center. You want Edwards’ message? Here it is: ‘Fuck David Broder, fuck Joe Klein, fuck Chris Matthews, fuck FOX News, fuck Tim Russert, fuck Mitch McConnell, fuck Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Defense. We don’t need them. They won’t negotiate in good faith. They’re stacking the deck against us. And we can beat them by telling the truth and getting organized.’ That’s Edwards’ message, and that is the message we have internalized both through our successes and our failures.

What’s funny is that Obama is saying many of the same things, in his own way. The policy differences between Edwards and Obama are minimal. But Obama’s tone deaf to the blogosphere. And, as a result, the blogosphere didn’t trust him. Take Armando:

…we do not criticize Obama’s political style on aesthetic grounds; we criticize his style because we think it will not work to actually EFFECT CHANGE. We believe that despite his being touted as the change candidate, his political style is the one LEAST likely to achieve progressive policy change.

His ‘style’ will be ineffective. Why did so many of us conclude this? It’s because we have watched Tom Daschle, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi try to negotiate with the Republicans (in the minority, the majority, no matter) and it does not work. We have watched the Dems talk tough and then back down time and time again. We’re done with conciliation and we don’t believe bipartisanship is possible without first crushing the Republican Party down to a stump.

This totally encapsulates my argument on tactics of us against the Villagers.

Bravo Boo.

Nov 21 2007

Hillary Hate Makes People Idiots

Booman:

The non-stop shilling for Clinton continues at Talk Left where Armando is at it full-time.

Have whatever opinion of the actual Bill Clinton Presidency, but you have to deal with the fact that Bill Clinton remains extremely popular and his Presidency remembered fondly.

It's funny, but I don't remember Bill Clinton's presidency all that fondly. The first two years could only be described as a total disaster.

Funny, I do not recall writing that BOOMAN remembered the Clinton Presidency fondly. I cited an article which stated:

Bill Clinton enjoys a 66 percent approval rating in a Washington Post/ABC News Poll released last month.

Booman's hatred of Hillary is so blinding that he denies the obvious – Bill Clinton is popular, whether Booman likes Bill or not. He sounds like a Republican now. Denying obvious facts. That is quintessential Hillary Hate. Makes people idiots.

Nov 12 2007

The Myth of the Straight Talking Pol

Booman writes:

Which gets straight to the problem with so many Democratic nominees. Was Michael Dukakis a tough guy? Could you believe Bill Clinton? Which Al Gore was going to show up to which debate? Where did John Kerry stand on the war? As Terence Samuel notes, this is not the kind of image that we need in our next nominee.

Hillary has worked hard to project an image of toughness, but she hasn't mastered it at all, the art of creating trust. . . . [S]he isn't really all that tough and, more importantly, she isn't trustworthy. She doesn't project trustworthiness. . . .

What nonsense. There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton is perceived as tough. Indeed, that is one thing the “castrating bitch” GOP meme has accomplished. But she has been attacked as untrustworthy. The funny thing is Booman notes that no Dem GE Presidential candidate seems to have figured out how to be viewed as trustworthy. But he thinks Clinton is the problem. What myopia! Bob Somerby has covered this extensively and it is amazing that Booman does not seem to know about it:

P]onder this statement by the New York Post’s Charlie Hurt. The boys were discussing Saint Rudy:

HURT (11/6/07): You know, because [Giuliani] is such a gun-slinger, and because he is such a straight-talker, people believe him . . .

Giuliani’s endless, howling misstatements are becoming the stuff of legend—but to Hurt, he’s still a “straight-talker.” But then, Time’s Mike Allen had stated this view roughly one minute before:

ALLEN: . . . It turns out they like his gun-slinging, straight-shooting swagger, that he comes across—he will answer a question, he will say, “No way, no how.” People like that.

To Allen, he’s a “straight-shooter.” . . .

All week, Clinton’s “evasiveness” and “double-talk” have been trashed on Hardball—like Gore’s lies and Kerry’s flip-flops before her. But Giuliani is still a “straight-talker!” There is absolutely nothing on earth that will keep these lads from their Group Tales.

Apparently, Booman knows nothing of this. And let me be clear about something, there are no straight talking pols. Never have been, never will be. Not George Washington. Not Abraham Lincoln. Not FDR. My gawd, are we so far gone in our naivete about this? Don't believe me. Well, watch this:

We need to stop putting these folks on pedestals. And understand that pols are vessels for political interests. Best fight for your own political views to be adopted by the pols you can choose from.  For pols, it's hard to be a saint in the city.