U.S. politics isolation tank

[rosco rathbone]

Reading this in Paul Krugman's blog made me think:

We really did produce all the goods and services counted in GDP; we were able to do that because we had willing workers, a sufficient capital stock, the right technology, and so on.

What is true is that some of the spending that created demand for those goods and services was debt-financed, and those debtors can’t continue to spend the way they did. But that doesn’t say that the capacity has somehow ceased to exist; it only says that if we want to keep the capacity in use, someone else has to spend instead. In other words, past growth wasn’t an illusion, or a fraud; but we need policies to sustain aggregate demand.

So people produced goods and services in exchange not for anything real or tangible, but merely for debt, which is to say a claim on the future earning stream of the debtor.

Meanwhile, the economy was chugging along merrily-propelled by nothing more than the propensity of humans for gaining power over others. (debt).

The whole thing is sustained by nothing more than ape psychology.

 

[intothewoods]

I knew you would!

Oh man, I love how detailed it is. Nixon is a freak and super fascinating. Awkwardness aside, I think he would have kicked ass today.

Perhaps she has improved in the last year or so but the time I watched more than 30 seconds of her speaking I was singularly unimpressed with her delivery mechanics without regard for her content.

I haven't exactly been attending her rallies or anything. The most I've watched of her at one sitting was her speech to the RNC convention, and I thought she was totally on fire. She's attractive, pumped up, folksy, bitchy - people love that shit. The crowd ate it up. Since then I've only seen clips. I still think she's got that same energy. Even at the VP debate - she was barely keeping her shit together, but she wasn't boring or stiff. Would you rather listen to her or Bob Dole? I just remember Dole debating Clinton - oh lord boring. Hell, even Elizabeth Dole at her best doesn't have that energy and that just folks appeal. Bill Clinton has it in spades when he's not being long-winded. I don't know, I'm not saying she appeals to me personally at all, but I totally get the appeal. Maybe you had to actually grow up poor, because I always thought that GW Bush came off as completely insincere with his just folks routine.

I think you're supposed to be unimpressed. She's down-home, after all.

Hipopalorum

She's like the bitchy popular girl or something, and also some women love that stupid mama bear shit. If she actually spent some time learning policy and retaining some decent advisors, I think she could be a serious contender. Did you read Game Change? John Edwards was basically a dimwit on policy issues but he wanted to be president, so he put in the time to bone up on the details.

 

[midwestyankee]

I haven't exactly been attending her rallies or anything. The most I've watched of her at one sitting was her speech to the RNC convention, and I thought she was totally on fire. She's attractive, pumped up, folksy, bitchy - people love that shit. The crowd ate it up. Since then I've only seen clips. I still think she's got that same energy. Even at the VP debate - she was barely keeping her shit together, but she wasn't boring or stiff. Would you rather listen to her or Bob Dole? I just remember Dole debating Clinton - oh lord boring. Hell, even Elizabeth Dole at her best doesn't have that energy and that just folks appeal. Bill Clinton has it in spades when he's not being long-winded. I don't know, I'm not saying she appeals to me personally at all, but I totally get the appeal. Maybe you had to actually grow up poor, because I always thought that GW Bush came off as completely insincere with his just folks routine.

Maybe "wooden" wasn't the best descriptor. I find her delivery predictable, insincere and cynical. Also, it's the same thing every time she speaks. I see no evidence that she is speaking anything but lines on a page that don't actually mean very much to her.

I'm with you on GW. He was one of the most insincere politicians on the national stage in a very long time.

 

[Netzach]

I was just being a liberal.


I say she's only getting started.

They. Laughed. At. Reagan. Too.

But not what, 87 percent of them, right? Ron marshalled whatever into ultimately some intoxicatingly effective leadership, even if you think, as I do, that he was the half-aware dismantler of the entire nation.

I don't think she's capable of that, not with a legion of advisors, not with a fox, not with socks. And the percentage of people who think she can is a small percentage of the country, and the only part of it with real clout is on FOX payroll.

If the republican party had a brain and was actually interested in doing what they say they want to do, they'd be placing a long shot bet on Marco Rubio.

But they won't. They don't really mean what they say about wanting to include Latinos that much, and they're scared shitless that he might actually be a REAL neocon and cut their puerco as well.

 

[midwestyankee]

"Commie red" - are these people nuts or what?

Who here saw a picture of Michelle Obama's dress for the state dinner the other night and immediately thought that she was a communist for wearing red?

 

[rosco rathbone]

"Commie red" - are these people nuts or what?

Who here saw a picture of Michelle Obama's dress for the state dinner the other night and immediately thought that she was a communist for wearing red?

It's Drudge, man. Everything is tongue in cheek with them. You can almost picture them laughing at the rubes.

 

[rosco rathbone]

But not what, 87 percent of them, right? Ron marshalled whatever into ultimately some intoxicatingly effective leadership, even if you think, as I do, that he was the half-aware dismantler of the entire nation.

I don't think she's capable of that, not with a legion of advisors, not with a fox, not with socks. And the percentage of people who think she can is a small percentage of the country, and the only part of it with real clout is on FOX payroll.

If the republican party had a brain and was actually interested in doing what they say they want to do, they'd be placing a long shot bet on Marco Rubio.

But they won't. They don't really mean what they say about wanting to include Latinos that much, and they're scared shitless that he might actually be a REAL neocon and cut their puerco as well.

Looks like Christie is now out of the running as a future star. He appointed a Muslim judge...

 

[midwestyankee]

It's Drudge, man. Everything is tongue in cheek with them. You can almost picture them laughing at the rubes.

I might buy that picture of Drudge, but then you get a zillion little follower blogs who eat that shit up like cotton candy. Do they seriously think that people really give a damn about the "red menace" these days?

 

[rosco rathbone]

Reading this in Paul Krugman's blog made me think:



So people produced goods and services in exchange not for anything real or tangible, but merely for debt, which is to say a claim on the future earning stream of the debtor.

Meanwhile, the economy was chugging along merrily-propelled by nothing more than the propensity of humans for gaining power over others. (debt).

The whole thing is sustained by nothing more than ape psychology.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/01/why-might-there-be-high-unemployment.html

 

[rosco rathbone]

heh.

busted.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/morbid-curiosity-leading-many-voters-to-support-pa,18865/

 

[rosco rathbone]

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/01/20/totaling-the-ferrari-ferris-bueller-revisited/

 

[ThorkelGriersen]

Has anyone else seen this??

Glenn Beck generating threats for Francis Fox Piven

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura2

Nothing learned from Tucson

 

[rosco rathbone]

Has anyone else seen this??

Glenn Beck generating threats for Francis Fox Piven

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura2

Nothing learned from Tuscon

Threats aside, I find it fascinating that a former shock jock now has millions of suburbanites reading Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, and for all I know, Hegel & Kant, in their Tea Party study circles and Beck book clubs. In some perverse way, that might be a good thing.

 

[ThorkelGriersen]

Threats aside, I find it fascinating that a former shock jock now has millions of suburbanites reading Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, and for all I know, Hegel & Kant, in their Tea Party study circles and Beck book clubs. In some perverse way, that might be a good thing.

It very possible.

Actually, I don't blame Beck. I don't think that he knows any better; Fox, on the other hand, is a different matter.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Genius idea: professional voiceover actor reading things written by internet morans.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/mental-health-break-15.html

 

[rosco rathbone]

http://theaporetic.com/?p=914

 

[ThorkelGriersen]

http://theaporetic.com/?p=914

The clearest essay I have every read on the distinction between currency and money was by (yeap!) Karl Marx.

The horrible irony is that as the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, they went to the banks -- who posted the amount of their assets on the front of the bank building -- and forced their way into the safes and counted the currency. When they discovered the currency on hand was vastly short of the banks listed assets (money), they tortured the bank officers, in many cases to death, about the missing "money."

 

[rosco rathbone]

http://michael-hudson.com/2011/01/the-spectre-haunting-europe/

 

[rosco rathbone]

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011...g-patriarchy-all-on-political-macroeconomics/

 

[Homburg]

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/20/steampunk-palin-comic/

Couldn't decide where to put this.

It's a one-off comic starring Sarah Palin in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world.

The insanity fo it all is just brilliant.

 

[midwestyankee]

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/01/20/steampunk-palin-comic/

Couldn't decide where to put this.

It's a one-off comic starring Sarah Palin in a post-apocalyptic steampunk world.

The insanity fo it all is just brilliant.

Looked at it. My eyes are seeping some kind of primeval fluid and I think I may soon have trouble comprehending even the Three Stooges.

 

[midwestyankee]

Fascinating analysis of trends in the U.S. culture that began as I was in college:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/18/michael_lind_primitivism/index.html

I don't think he's wrong.

 

[ThorkelGriersen]

Fascinating analysis of trends in the U.S. culture that began as I was in college:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/18/michael_lind_primitivism/index.html

I don't think he's wrong.

Dead On. As someone born in the 1930's I watched as we retreated from enlightened civilization to a world of magic and superstition. I think that we have passed the point of no return.

Re: Sherri Sheperd of ABC-TV's "The View" statement: "I don't know if the world is flat or round and I don't care. I have more important things to deal with."

WATCH !!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkrkaH_V7fE

There was a time when someone this ignorant would never have been permitted a public forum.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I think Lind is my favorite big-picture political/historical commentator.

 

[rosco rathbone]

I've been meaning to read Stockman's book on the Reagan era for a while now.

Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy