Pat Toomey eh?

dajafi wrote: As if that isn't depressing enough, here's Greenwald, echoing my first thought upon hearing the freeze announcement:

[A]ll "security-related programs" are also exempted from the freeze, which means it does not apply to military spending, the intelligence budget, the Surveillance State, or foreign military aid. As always, the notion of decreasing the deficit and national debt through reductions in military spending is one of the most absolute Washington taboos.
...
Even as the U.S. sunk under increasingly crippling levels of debt over the last decade, defense spending rose steadily, sometimes precipitously. That explosion occurred even as overall military spending in the rest of the world decreased, thus expanding the already-vast gap between our expenditures and the world's. As one "defense" spending watchdog group put it: "The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six 'rogue' states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion."

He concludes with a clip about a recent meeting SecDef Gates had with several of the biggest defense contractors, pledging to work with them to ensure steady annual Pentagon budget increases in the years to come. Maybe there's some alien invasion they know about that we don't, or the whole "Warsaw Pact dissolves" thing was actually a fiendishly clever trick. There isn't much other possible justification to maintain our ginormous military.

But without our massive military budget I wonder what unemployment would be? Especially in the South?

Thinking about PtK's "broad trends" question a little more, try this one on: as a country we've done pretty much a 180 in most internal spheres (as in we're still the world's strongest/most important country) over the last 60 years.

During the 1950s, we had broad-based prosperity and relative equality (economists sometimes refer to this period as "the Great Compression"), powered in large part by organized labor's unprecedented strength. This was the economic foundation of the "simpler time" that Reagan and later conservatives sometimes hearkened back to; it was a lot easier to come home for dinner every night when you couldn't be dragooned into working overtime, the union had your back against the possibility of wrongful dismissal, etc.

On the down side, women and non-whites were still comprehensively and unthinkingly discriminated against, gays were reviled and had to live in secrecy and shame everywhere, and until rock and roll showed up (and probably even after that), popular culture was unbearably bland.

With the exception of the McCarthyite spasm, our politics really were consensus-driven. Fairly little separated the Ds and Rs of that period. (This remained true until the Goldwater movement and the New Left began to exert their pulls.) Of course, the Cold War was a big reason for this; the Red Menace also probably helped the cause of the labor movement, in that political and business leaders came to the realization that the best way to prove Marx wrong was to treat workers like human beings and invest them in the perpetuation of pluralistic democracy and a (bounded) free market economy rather than tossing them out of the tent.

In pretty much every one of these areas, we're at the opposite end of the spectrum today. To some extent the spread of higher education to a much greater share of the public made unions less necessary, but the big rise in economic inequality and related political divisions and diminishment of social cohesion suggests that we've probably lost more than we've gained in that sense.

hooray Franklin and Marshall!

VoxOrion wrote:How can you be so caustic, and then expect someone to invest time listening to things you post? "You're all fools, you're all wrong, and I don't want to discuss it. Now, go listen to this 16 minute thing I think is interesting!"

You announce that you will not operate within the bounds of reasonable discussion, then expect to be engaged in discussion! If you've got it all figured out and have no interest, why post anything? It's wacky, brother, though I suppose I'm complicit by giving you the attention you crave.

I'm truly sorry if I'm coming off "caustic" or "you infer that I think you are fall fools". The truth is, I think that there is a lot of intellect in this thread and that most of you are really smart people. That's why I bother. I keep trying to expose you all to some other voices, with different assumptions , different starting points, and different data -- and definitely different analysis. If I've done that in a condescending and or insulting way, I'm truly sorry. Not my intention. I don't think I'm superior. I just get rev'd up and passionate. I read through some of the discussion and see some of the citings and get so frustrated. I'm following entirely different conversations.

Forget how you feel about me or what you perceive as my rants -- but I'd ask you to take 10 min here 15min there listen to some of the links I posted yesterday -- it's not a huge investment in time, people like Normon Solomon or Stiglitz are not whacko fringe radicals. The guy, I forgot his name who talks about the industry-of-anonymous sources and how it pollutes the information stream in mainstream media is really fascainating.

I'm sure most of the talk later will be about Obama and his state of the Union.

Vox, I think you really care about your community and your country and on a common sense level you are probably a reasonable if slighly conservative guy who believes in right and wrong. I really do. I'm a busy guy, I don't need attention -- I have plenty of friends and a great women in my life. I dig that you guys really care about these issues -- and I'm truly interested in how you all react to some different commentaries and analysis.

Up to you. You can hate the messenger. I'm ok with that. But don't ignore all the messages. (you too Dajafi)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPi4OcUrHkE[/youtube]


This is about as sincere as Philly the Kid's apology. Don't engage.

jeff2sf wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPi4OcUrHkE[/youtube]


This is about as sincere as Philly the Kid's apology. Don't engage.

Don't engage me. but listen to the links when you have a sec... jeff2sf who are you? don't answer i don't really care...

Philly the Kid wrote:
Don't engage me. but listen to the links when you have a 30 minutes you will never get back

Fixed your post. You're a pathetic useless hack who should have stayed banned/self-exiled. You're a joke.

Oh please, let PtK write what he wants to write. He's harmless and means well. I don't click on the links because I'm a close minded fool, but seriously what's the harm. If he's not being a prick, don't be a prick to him. Unless it's funny.

jeff2sf wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:
Don't engage me. but listen to the links when you have a 30 minutes you will never get back

Fixed your post. You're a pathetic useless hack who should have stayed banned/self-exiled. You're a joke.

You couldn't hold my intellectual jock. I can't think of single post of yours that I ever took note of, nor any contribution you've ever made and you are surely one of the nastiest a**holes who rears his head just to demonstrate - what? what do you demonstrate jeff2sf? Why don't u post anything about anything on your own. Start a thread -- show us how smart you are?

jerseyhoya wrote:Oh please, let PtK write what he wants to write. He's harmless and means well. I don't click on the links because I'm a close minded fool, but seriously what's the harm. If he's not being a prick, don't be a prick to him. Unless it's funny.

Jesus, first you link to crashburn, now you're defending PTK? Hand in your GOP card.

Seriously, he's about as harmless as spam. The man doesn't actually want to have a conversation. He takes up bandwidth and asks that people listen to him (otherwise they're obviously close minded) but won't listen to us. He's a hippie douche bag that needs to go away.

dajafi wrote:I don't have time (or don't want to invest the time, I guess is the more honest way of putting it) to listen to PtK's stuff. But the question of "what is the trend line in your lifetime" is a pretty interesting one that doesn't have a simple answer. Just to very quickly list a very few of the bigger changes from when I was born in the early '70s, on the plus side you have:

--Enormous strides toward equality on race, gender, orientation
--Cleaner air and water
--Fall of communism and affirmation of liberal democratic governance model
--Unimaginably greater variety of cultural/entertainment options
--Partial reversal of previous trend toward writing off American cities as "ungovernable"

I won't list the cons, but to my first thought they all have to do with dysfunction in the political economy (e.g. stagnation in real wages for all but the most highly educated, even as overall economic output has skyrocketed; pervasive "corruption"--by which I mean that special interests seem more powerful than ever; unprecedented partisanship and gridlock; debasement of news media) and their consequences.

On the whole, is life better today than it was when I was born? Probably. Has the pace of progress slowed since I showed up, compared to the previous thirty years or so? Also probably. The question is whether we retain that self-correcting capacity. That's what I worry about.

I see it rather differently. I'm glad you at least took this piece up.

I'm a little older than you, and I can firmly say that the world I was born into, the foment, the hopefulness, and the progress -- has all turned another way starting with Reagan in 1980.

We are in a place now, where the media consolidation has never been more immense. People have to protest in "special fenced in zones" miles from the action. Civil liberties have been gutted. The Presidency especially under Bush (continued with fervor under OBama) has abused its executive branch powers. Corporate greed has reached new highs. Compare the average CEO salary in 1980 preReagan and the last 30 years since.

People are more distracted than ever with celebrity culture because of the 24-7 mass media machine. Communism (not real communism) fell and was briefly replaced with Drug Lords, and then really replaced with Terrorism. Fear and divisiveness. While there are more African American doctors in 2010 than in 1970, there are way more Black men in prison, way more prisons, way more in the military as an economic chance out and that ratio of people in the ghetto has not improved. The poor as just as poor, and just in the same proportions. The divide between top and bottom is wider. The general tone has moved way more to the right. The Right-wang ideologs have framed the dsicussion and moved us far to the right. Universities went from education to certification.

There is progress in the sense of technology advances. But we have moved backwards and we have less freedom in my opinion. There is more big brother than ever due to that technology. And our democracy is even more eroded.

Few grassroots movements can get a foothold. They are infiltrated, or discredited.

People feed on sound bytes of mis-information.

The two parties are just a struggle for power and emphasis, but they all feed at the same trough of big business. The Supreme Court has become radically conservative, and political. Roberts was appointed for one reason. Not to be a fair-minded judge who defends the law and constitution, but to make sure the Bush-Cheney agenda stays viable no matter who serves in the White House.

Things are far worse.Climate, pollution -- and because there is some education about certain things.. we're not much closer to a cure for cancer. We hacen't been back to the moon. People are still bigots and prejudiced and divided. There are less unions protecting workers. Much or manufacturing base has shrunk. We have had some of the worst recessions and financial crises.

We live in an era of sensationalism.

The majority of the food supply is toxic. Small farmers have been squeezed out. Patriot Act. I could go on and on.

If I could get off this planet, and go be a settler on some other planet with a band of egalitarian people - I'd do it in a heartbeat. We have more nukes.

In the 40 years since 1970, we have had massive murder of people all over the world. East Timor, Haiti, Rwanda, Chechnia, Kurds, Bosnians, Iraq was embargoed for 12 years before being invaded, pick a region. Secret agnecies have never been more armed with tech and weapons and more insidious.

We have a less educated populace.

By almost ever measure I've watched things get worse in my lifetime. Short of the advent of internet and home computers -- I see little progress overall.

It won't happen in my lifetime, but there will be an implosion. And man will either have a paradigm shift, or likely be massively reduced in numbers.

Whether back to Washington and Jefferson, or the Canegie Rockefeller, OSS -- I'm not idealizing the past. Lynchings in the south. It's been bad of course before -- but it's in many ways worse. The hypocrisy has never been more transparent.

Philly the Kid wrote:

spend more time here

excerpt:

Democrats Boosting Right-Wing Populism
by Norman Solomon
In his triumphant speech on election night, the next senator from Massachusetts should have thanked top Democrats in Washington for all they did to make his victory possible.

For a year now, leading Democrats have steadily embraced more corporate formulas for "healthcare reform." In the name of political realism, they have demobilized and demoralized the Democratic base. In the process, they've fueled right-wing populism.

The Democratic leadership on healthcare and so much else -- including bank bailouts, financial services, foreclosures and foreign policy -- has been so corporate that Republicans have found it easy to play populist.

Fixated on passage of something that could be called "healthcare reform," the Democratic establishment has propagated the myth that enacting such a law is vital to the political viability of the Obama presidency.

With few exceptions, the most progressive members of Congress have twisted themselves into knots to move with the choreography from the White House. The worse the healthcare bill got, the more they strained to lavish incongruous praise on it.

Defenders of the current healthcare legislation don't like to acknowledge how thoroughly corporate it is. In the wake of the Senate election in Massachusetts, we're sure to see a new wave of mass emails from progressive groups urging a renewed fight for a public option. But the Obama administration threw a public option under the Pennsylvania Avenue bus well before the GOP victory in Massachusetts finalized its burial.

Key provisions -- such as a mandate requiring individuals to buy private health insurance without a public option -- are giveaways to mega-corporations on a scale so vast that it boggles the mind.

Such a federal healthcare law -- massively combining an intrusive government mandate with corporate power -- would be a godsend to right-wing populism for decades.

Philly the Kid wrote:In the 40 years since 1970, we have had massive murder of people all over the world. East Timor, Haiti, Rwanda, Chechnia, Kurds, Bosnians, Iraq was embargoed for 12 years before being invaded, pick a region. Secret agnecies have never been more armed with tech and weapons and more insidious.

Suppose you're right. Those 40 years before 1970 were really peaceful - Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. All sweethearts that didn't have secret agencies working for them........

Philly the Kid wrote:You couldn't hold my intellectual jock.

Does anyone have a good image of an intellectual jock?

Mountainphan wrote:

Philly the Kid wrote:You couldn't hold my intellectual jock.

Does anyone have a good image of an intellectual jock?

Terry Hoage, Eagles safety. Degree in Genetics from Georgia, with a 3.85 GPA. I suppose he's too big to hold.

where does one keep an intellectualy jock? the basement is probably too cruel. maybe the guest bedroom.

CalvinBall wrote:where does one keep an intellectualy jock? the basement is probably too cruel. maybe the guest bedroom.

Do libraries have locker rooms?

CalvinBall wrote:where does one keep an intellectualy jock? the basement is probably too cruel. maybe the guest bedroom.

I was thinking you'd just throw the ijock in a locker or equipment bag.