10.23.09
Sink, Comrade sink!
The only downside to the news that TCM’s approval ratings had a greater rate of slide than any comparably situated president in fifty years is the fact that he doesn’t care. He sees these numbers and his reaction is, “Well, time to pull out all the Chicago thug / Bill Ayers / Saul Alinsky tactics.” Demonize the insurance companies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox News. Keep referring to what his predecessor did. Cut executive pay at bail-out-recipient companies by 90 percent. Encourage Congress to split socialist health care into two bills to hide its true cost. Sign away American sovereignty in Copenhagen in December.
More of us every day realize he’s a very bad human being, and certainly a grim nightmare as a president, but most North Koreans realize that about Kim Jong Il.
It’s really and truly very iffy as to whether a recognizable United States will be where we live by Easter.
One thing’s for sure: this is no time to let up.
Mr. Dings said,
October 23, 2009 at 10:34 am
http://www.takimag.com/article/usa–failed_state/
Just because I wanna hear you trash Paul Craig Roberts again. And why?
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Well, I think we can all agree he’s no longer a supply-side free-marketeer.
I’m always intrigued as to how figures associated with a strong stance – be it left or right – trransform and so thoroughly switch sides.
David Horowitz, for example, who did a left-to-right transformation, has writtem a couple of books detailing the process. I’d be interested to see if there’s anything Roberts or anyone else has ever written about how he made the switch the other way.
I’ll definitely grant him his point that the US is politically weak, although I have a feeling our reasons for asserting thus would be diametrically different. We’re weak because we have a president who actually holds the country he leads in contempt and goes around the world apologizing for it, and holding UN Security Council meetings on adolescent fantasies of worlds without nukes at a time of unprecedented dnager from proliferation.
But then Roberts gets into unsubstantiated hyperbole territory. “Terrorism and military aggression” . . . “Killing Afghan women and children” . . . “enriching defense contractors and career officers”
Also, it sounds like he’d be on board with government health care. Man, if that’s the case, his transformation is complete.
I looked up this Randolph Bourne character whose philosophy is atteh core of the whole Lew Rockwell/ Paul Roberts / Ron Paul outlook. It’s just plain weird if you ask me. Justifying pacifism on libertarian grounds. Seeing war as the state’s way of accumulating more power.
These guys never say a word about the real threats that enemies put right in our faces, from Pat Buchanan’s soft-pedalling of Hitler, to a willful ignorance of the determination of Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria, Iran and the UN Human Rights Council to obliterate Israel, to the pattern of al-Qaeda attacks on Western nations over the past two decades.
The reason I characterize them as way outside the mainstream is that their stance is that, even though the larger world sees huge differences between, say, TCM and W, or Reagan and Clinton, to this bunch, they’re all the same, left or right, if they aren’t for complete dismantling of our Defense Department and intelligence-gathering cpabilities.
It takes wiillful ignorance of a magnitude I can barely comprehend to embrace their worldview.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 23, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I don’t demand exhaustive substantiation when someone ascribes motives to someone else’s behavior – that is, if it’s at least fairly plain that the motive is driving it. (Case in point: TCM’s deliberate crippling of our economy.) But to say that we are in Afghanistan to kill innocents and bolster defense contractors’ profits really approaches the level of a non-sequitor, given that the obvious reason we’re really there – that’s where the jihadists who want to destroy us are – is quite plain.
Mr. Dings said,
October 24, 2009 at 2:33 am
Meticulously researched, brutally honest, heavily annotated, Brutal Violence: Visually explicit portrayals of violence, which may be characterized by extreme brutality, extreme bloodletting and/or extreme tissue damage. May include images of torture, horror or war.
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2009/10/15/killing-the-innocents-to-save-our-troops.html
Killing the Innocents to Save ‘Our Troops’
Eight Years of Horror Perpetrated upon Afghan Civilians by the American Military and its Megaphone, the Corporate Media
By Marc W. Herold, Department of Economics, University of New Hampshire
Lecture given on October 15, 2009 at a public forum with Zoya of RAWA, “Afghanistan: Resisting Occupation and Fundamentalism,” organized by United for Justice with Peace and the Afghan Women’s Mission, held at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 24, 2009 at 3:48 am
Oh, come on. You don’t actually go for this “Justice With Peace”/the-US-is-intentionally-inflicting-horror stuff. I know you don’t. This is more of that “here’s-another-viewpoint-that-ought-to-be-considered” vibe you do from time to time. How do I know? You’ve never expressed anything this extreme before in any reference to US involvement in Afghanistan.
“Afghan Women’s Mission” – tell that to the Afghan women who can now go to school but under the Taliban had to stay home in their burkas or face firing squads in sports stadiums.
And, by the way, what is “corporate media”? Would that be anything like NBC, the parent company of which – GE – under the leadership of Jefferey Immelt has contacts with the government of Iran?
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 24, 2009 at 3:52 am
Your link quotes Edward Said as some kind of legitimate source. Enough said.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 24, 2009 at 3:59 am
Substantiation for my assertion that you don’t actually go in for this doo- doo: You’re on record as being aligned with Reasonalble gentlemaen / “Realists” / “Moderates” such as Hamilton, Lugar, Dennis Ross, et al, and, while I profoundly disagree with their overall view, I do know to be informed players who would dismiss this kind of nonsense from the get-go.
That is, unless that stance of yours was merely for show.
Mr. Dings said,
October 24, 2009 at 4:38 pm
So you are saying these photographs are not real?
Mr. Dings said,
October 24, 2009 at 5:05 pm
The US is bombing innocents. Unintentional collateral damage, no biggie since WW II.
Mr. Dings said,
October 24, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Really can’t speak for that Eye in the Sky though.
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
October 24, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Pointing up collateral damage is no substantive argument against a war in which the United States is defending itself from a hostile force.
Junior Dings said,
October 25, 2009 at 1:10 am
Again, counter-terrorism, not counter-insurgency. But it’s OK to hold Obama to his word. Without the tough guy talk about that issue and other promises, he might not have been elected and, as a result, we might each be happier.