TenuredVulture wrote:SO, yeah, Pakistan, the nuclear armed one, has a reasonable chance of becoming a failed state thanks to horrific flooding. Sweet.

doubt it. the govt will leverege the crisis for all the help they can get, because everyone knows it's a bad idea for it to all go pearshaped and in the hands of parts of the military/ISI. You know, the parts what like the taliban and the idea of some kind of military theocracy.

Course, you could legitimately ask the question why the world has to put so much effort into the place now, but then if you give the selfame military fuck loads of money and turn a blind eye to their nuclear programme for the best part of 25 years because you live by some dumb shit like the enemy of my enemy instead of paying careful attention to non-proliferation treaties which you wrote, then well, I guess you reap the rewards.

VoxOrion wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:There are lots of good reasons for localism. Laboratories of democracy and all that. There are also lots of problems.

One thing that has changed in the last 40 years or so is the capacity of state governments. State governments used to be citadels of cronyism and corruption, few people in state executive branches were qualified to do much of anything.

These days, however, state governments have lots of talented people both in elected office and in their bureaucracies. States tend to be less partisan (though there are some severely dysfunctional counter examples like New York and California) with government focused on pragmatic problem solving.

One thing though is that turning power over to the states can be business unfriendly. Ask anyone who runs a trucking firm--would they rather deal with one set of federal guidelines, or 50 sets of state guidelines?

I also wonder how much media cultivated this. I'm not writing with my right-wing crackpot hat on (for now), but I wonder if there is an additional chicken and egg question here. Local newspapers are dead and only old people seem to read them (old people who, ironically, seem to be the only ones who show up for local government meetings). Local newscasts, while they dwindle in relevancy, are outrageously sensational and human interest driven. The rest of the televised news and, by and large, internet news, is rigidly focused on national issues (driven by need to earn ad revenue from the largest pool of viewers/readers possible). Factor in the way politicians, bloggers, editorial writers, and journalists have been turned into celebrities... I just wonder if that shift has more to do with Joe Six Pack's lack of knowledge/interest in local politics than anything else.

I'm not sure what you mean by "this" in your first sentence. Local newspapers are the least dead part of the newspaper industry. People like seeing their kid's pictures in print when they win a local spelling bee and whatnot. There are however serious pressures for local papers to refrain from going after negative stories like corruption or undue influence by certain interests.

But yeah, lack of knowledge of local politics is significant. It's a paradox on two levels--individuals are much more likely to make a difference at the local level, and local governments have a greater impact on people's lives than most people think. The second point though leads to an emphasis on solving problems rather than winning, at least when local politics is at its best.

NIMBYs who oppose windfarms should stop using electricity.

At first I thought that people complaining about Glenn Beck's Fauxfflicted White Person Rally/Nonsense Tour 2010 in Washington were mostly the same people who were brushing off the Hallowed Ground argument for not building that mosque* in NYC.

They seemed to be parallel - in both instances, someone is doing something near the site where something historic and deeply emotional took place, and that something, complainers claimed, conflicted with the historic event. Glenn Beck is tarnishing the memory of MLK, the mosque is spitting on the graves of 9/11 victims. Beck is holding his goofy rally two flights down from where MLK spoke, the mosque is two blocks away. One group of criticizers leans conservative, the other liberal.

But then I thought, no one's trying to stop Beck from holding his rally, from exercising his constitutional rights. And the mosque isn't a publicity stunt.

Then it occurred to me that one of the primary arguments against the Hallowed Ground meme is that the ground isn't hallowed at all. A strip club, fast food chains, they are within the same distance of the WTC site as the proposed mosque. The Lincoln Memorial, while site of a number of notable events, was also the place George W. Bush sent the Rockettes kicking down the steps.

Still, it's not like the mosque is holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 11 -- a supposed offense contingent upon the mosque representing terrorism, which of course isn't true.

But if the mosque doesn't actually conflict with the memory of 9/11, do Beck's views actually conflict with those of MLK, does the rally actually conflict with MLK's speech? Well, I don't really know, because Beck's just a mouth chasing ratings and cash. I can't identify a single way Glenn Beck and his followers have been oppressed, and I can't identify a single authentic thing about Beck's whole circus. He's a phony, PR magic, a fancy book cover, things MLK certainly was not, and things his legacy certainly does not represent.

So I had a final thought: Fuck you, Glenn Beck.

*-I realize it's more than just a mosque.

drsmooth wrote:More thought-provoking than the blah title suggests, and not all that long: Why Conservatives Should Read Marx

a snip:

This [Burkean] strand of conservatism, which would deny citizens the freedom to make their own decisions regarding pornography (or drugs or prostitution), obviously runs counter to libertarianism, the doctrine that the government should keep out of as much as it possibly can. In theory it is possible to be an economic libertarian and a social conservative; in practice the two are irreconcilable. To take a simple example, imagine a social conservative who thinks women should dress modestly in order to encourage men to treat them with dignity, endorsing the ancient adage that “with the laying-aside of her clothes, a woman lays aside the respect that is hers.” Can he really believe that the way we dress is unaffected by marketing?....Companies like the bikini manufacturer Sinful Clothing, whose ads recently graced New York taxis, are only taking matters to their logical conclusion: sin is good. Just as an industry based on the creation of desires is essentially hostile to restraint, so economic libertarianism is naturally opposed to social conservatism....So why are there libertarian conservatives? This is a fairly recent phenomenon....

The thing is, most people calling for smaller government are not libertarians--they don't want porn shops everywhere, or legalized prostitution and gambling everywhere. Most of most definitely don't want to open the borders to all comers, and most I suspect aren't wildly enthusiastic about free trade. They probably don't even want things like less spending on education or other programs that benefit lots of people.

They want lower taxes. They may say they want fewer regulations on business, and some of the more sophisticated might be troubled by the growth of unaccountable power of the government bureaucracy (and it's important to note here that often, that power serves the special interests it's supposed to regulation not the people--otherwise, why is food safety often under the purview of the Department of Agriculture rather than the FDA--part of the Department of Health and Human Services?).

If you want a pretty solid historical answer regarding the formation of the conservative coalition in the US, you could do a lot worse than read The Conservative Ascendancy by Donald T. Critchlow a book I'm sure I've recommended here before. The other book to read that offers a possible explanation of the roots of all this is Louis Hartz's The Liberal Tradition in America.

If this guy were consistent with his beliefs, he wouldn't even like Mr. Progressive Martin Luther King


BTW, he's coming out with a book today and this is all just a marketing technique. The guy's good. He's completely fake, but he's good. It's also starting to border on dangerous.

If they were consistent with their beliefs, they wouldn't like Jesus either.

This rally is lame. Not compelling. The stuff being said isn't any crazier than what Beck and his buddies have said before. Palin's speech was rote.

Lame. Lame. Lame.

i have little doubt my one college acquaintance is there. he used to post things like 'obama is a muslim, marxist commie who is a kenyan' before I defriended him on FB. he also blew up to 300 lbs at 5'9. probably eating too many freedom fries


-i just spent ten minutes trying to find fox news on my tv and it's right before msnbc. i guess that shows i haven't watched much cable news outside of internet clips

A lot of the teabaggers in the background are leaving.

half the point of these things is to dress up and/or raise your crazy sign. once they suggested they not do that, it probably got boring for the participants. they can't quite congregate like WTO protestors, can they?

I love that the lefties here are the ones that watch Beck/Palin/et al.

yeah, you just support them by rooting on candidates they explicitly and implicitly endorse

I'm not sure Beck and Palin really endorse anyone but themselves, which is why it's so frustrating people actually buy their shit.

Lonesome Rhodes in the flesh

thats why i included the word implicit. palin did endorse a bunch of people which either put them over the top or were picked by her because they were due to win anyway. she's slick in that regard. so now that means guys like joe miller have little standing in their way to get into the senate

jerseyhoya wrote:I love that the lefties here are the ones that watch Beck/Palin/et al.

For the same reason we look at Mets Refugees

al sharpton has a similar thing going on, promoting better lives for all children, lives which don't settle for mediocrity. i guess 250k are in dc for it

i haven't watched fox news in 5 months, this liz trotia looks exactly like carly fiorina. i thought they hired her or something before they flashed the name on the screen


why is beck using a public park for his rally?

i just saw fanny packs


is beck's hair what blonde hair looks like when it's halfway gray? i never took notice before, and i don't have any frame of reference

Yeah, they're using a public park paid by the very taxes that they constantly complain about.