The White House immediately condemned the release of the WikiLeaks documents, saying "such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."
I came across this while doing some research for a recent episode of GDAE Podcast. Being a good Republican at the end of the Clinton administration:1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George [H.W.] Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault. 2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own. 3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time. -- Ann Richards, Governor of Texas.
Thankful for the Social Security safety net that helps keep people from becoming too desperate. (And we all know that desperate people do desperate things).
If you have not heard, Rush Limbaugh trashed Motor Trend Magazine's choice of Chevy Volt, an electric car, as "Car of the Year." Limbaugh got his facts wrong, etc. No surprise there.
If you can stop shilling for your favorite political party long enough to go for a drive, you might really enjoy the Chevy Volt. I’m sure GM would be happy to lend you one for the weekend. Just remember: driving and Oxycontin don’t mix.
Chevy Volt Electric Car
We are embarked on the Second American Revolution and you have my solemn vow that with a new Republican majority in Congress, American life is about to be profoundly different. The people have spoken.
Under justifiable public pressure, the German government has taken up the theme of burden sharing, meaning that creditors must face losses in future crises.
| Party Affiliation | 2008 Percentage | 2010 Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Democratic | 40% | 35% |
| Republican | 33% | 35% |
| Independent | 28% | 29% |
[the] current estimate is that 90 million people voted [in 2010]. Exit poll says 45 percent were Obama voters in 2008. That’s 40.5 million voters.
In 2008, Obama won 69.5 million votes. So about 29 million Obama voters did not show up in 2010.
Exit poll also says 45 percent of people who voted yesterday were McCain voters in 2008, again 40.5 million. That, vs. his nearly 60 million in 2008, means about 19.5 million McCain voters did not show up.
So Obama had nearly 10 million more no-shows.
| Party and % of Turnout | % of Vote Dem | % of Vote Rep | % of Vote Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic 35% | 91 | 7 | 2 |
| Republican 35% | 5 | 94 | 1 |
| Independent 29% | 37 | 56 | 7 |
| Party and % of Turnout | % of Vote Dem | % of Vote Rep | % of Vote Other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democratic 40% | 92 | 7 | 1 |
| Republican 33% | 9 | 89 | 2 |
| Independent 28% | 51 | 42 | 6 |
On the previous episode of GDAE Podcast (36) I re-visited my original motivation for people on the political left to reach out to principled people on the political right... a concern that extreme right wing demagogues are stirring up potential violence among uninformed people who are suffering real economic hard times. My "original" motivation was to promote relationships between genuine conservatives and progressives that could either prevent right-wing populism from growing ugly or at least be a mitigating force, a buffer, if society devolves further into darkness as some economists predict is a real possibility in the coming years.
Nut case Ann Coulter is at it again calling for a repeal of the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18.
For about two years I've been producing segments for the GDAE podcast that "beat the drum on prosecuting Bush administration officials for their crimes." I've generated nearly 40 segments, each about 1-3 minutes.
Left / Right Populism - Part VII
"Only the severed head was found. A wire was run through the ear with the corpse's ID attached to the wire. 3rd bn [battalion] commander identified the remains as Ahdel Abu Hussain, he was an officer in the NP [national police] Wolf Brigade."
: //-___ REPORTS IP'___ FROM ___ FOUND A CORPSE IPE___ AND E___ FROM JSS ___ THE RECOVERY AND DISPOSITION OF THE REMAINS; NO BODY FOUND, NO OTHER WOUNDS VISIBLE, ONLY THE SEVERED ___ WAS FOUND. A WIRE WAS RUN THROUGH THE EAR WITH THE CORPSEE___ ID ATTACHED TO THE WIRE.
___ Battalion COMMANDER IDENTIFIED THE REMAINS AS
___ , HE WAS AN OFFICER IN THE ___ WOLF BRIGADE ___ Battalion, ID SERVICE NUMBER IS ___.
... not all of the responses to globalization were progressive. For example, fascism, which Karl Polanyi defined as "the reform of the market economy achieved at the price of the extirpation of all democratic institutions," was also part of this countervailing drive, one that hijacked the search for community in the service of reaction, counterrevolution and racism.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
One morning he spend an hour talking about feudalism -- how it was the clearest political expression of primate dominance dynamics, how it had never really gone away, how transnational capitalism was feudalism writ large, how the aristocracy of the world had to figure out how to subsume capitalist growth within the steady-state stability of the feudal model.
The opportunities for growth are no longer in growth.
We've got to identify the new nongrowth growth markets, and get into them.
Yes. Which means close cooperation of the governments involved. Praxis's gross annual product is much larger than most countries'. What we need to do is find countries with small GNPs and bad Country Future Indices [bad future prospects]. ... We identify those, go to them and offer them a massive capital investment, plus political advice, security, whatever they need. In return, we take custody of their [nonmarketable captial]. We also have access to their labor. It's an obvious partnership. I think it will be the coming thing.
The title probably sounds like the ranting of a lefty wing-nut. But a little sober thought reveals a reality that is hard to deny.It is open to Imperialists to argue thus: "We must have markets for our growing manufactures, we must have new outlets for the investment of our surplus capital and for the energies of the adventurous surplus of our population: such expansion is a necessity of life to a nation with our great and growing powers of production."
After 1870 this manufacturing and trading supremacy was greatly impaired: other nations, especially Germany, the United States, and Belgium, advanced with great rapidity, and while they have not crushed or even stayed the increase of our external trade, their competition made it more and more difficult to dispose of the full surplus of our manufactures at a profit. The encroachments made by these nations upon our old markets, even in our own possessions, made it most urgent that we should take energetic means to secure new markets. These new markets had to lie in hitherto undeveloped countries, chiefly in the tropics, where vast populations lived capable of growing economic needs which our manufacturers and merchants could supply. Our rivals were seizing and annexing territories for similar purposes, and when they had annexed them closed them to our trade. The diplomacy and the arms of Great Britain had to be used in order to compel the owners of the new markets to deal with us: and experience showed that the safest means of securing and developing such markets is by establishing 'protectorates' or by annexation....
In today’s [New York Times] report on the foreclosure mess, a revealing sentence:
As the foreclosure abuses have come to light, the Obama administration has resisted calls for a more forceful response, worried that added pressure might spook the banks and hobble the broader economy.
Surely this can serve as a generic statement:
As NAME ISSUE HERE has come to light, the Obama administration has resisted calls for a more forceful response, worried that added pressure might spook the banks and hobble the broader economy.
Stimulus, bank rescue, China, foreclosure; it applies all along. At each point there were arguments for not acting; but the cumulative effect has been drift, and a looming catastrophe in the midterms.
Or to put it another way, the administration has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And soon there won’t be any more opportunities to miss.
