Yes we can.
Goddamn right.
Recently in politics Category
Near the end of the Clinton era:
Near the end of the Bush era:
I tell you what, Biden totally rocks that leotard and cape.
As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.
--Marriner S. Eccles, Federal Reserve Chairman 1934-1948, on The Great Depression.
Wall Street Journal on millionaire haven Greenwich, CT:
Greenwich, Connecticut is a rich enclave of hedge fund managers- and thus is feeling the pain of the current financial crisis like a ton of bricks. Ned Lamont, a Greenwich resident who ran for Senate in 2006, says, 'This is our Katrina.' ...First Selectman Peter Tesei said Wall Street affects everything from philanthropic contributions to a potential increase in public school enrollment if some families can no longer afford private schools. A recently laid-off trader who was making several million dollars annually 'is not going to be able to donate the $200,000 they did in the past' to charities, Tesei said.
Ned Lamont, you are hereby designated Fuckmook of the Week. And in a week where Sarah Palin is going to actually attend the VP debate, the world economy is crashing into dust, and Joe Torre is going to to the playoffs in a Dodgers cap, that's saying a fucking lot.
If this was really your Katrina, then you would feel more pain than not being able to donate $200,000 to charities. You'd be looking to charities to feed you. Your kids would not be going to public schools, because there wouldn't be any more public schools. You wouldn't be looking at downsizing your house, your house would be gone, you would be unemployed and homeless and still making payments on a mold-infested wreck while your insurer ass-raped you and Congress and the President didn't think your problems were worth more than a few floor speeches, never mind a special session to hand out $700 billion to you and your friends.
If this was really your Katrina, I would feel for you, man. Because you would be facing such total destruction and demoralization, and you would have to face it without being able to take solace in brass bands or real food or Mardi Gras, because when all is said and done, you still live in a shithole called Connecticut.
Worse, the Yankee half of Connecticut.
[Readers with memories stretching back further than last week will remember that Lamont was pulled out of his attic by Coast Guard divers after standing in water up to his neck for four days the DailyKos golden boy pushed to replace Joe Lieberman in the Senate in 2006. A fucking Kossack. Figures.]
Thanks to Sarah for the morning linky eye-opener.
So I get a recorded call from Wee Walker Hines on my cell, urging me to vote for James Carter for District 2.
Oddly enough, the call came from a 202 (Washington DC) number.
Hines is already part of the Beltway elite? Jeez, boy, don't they still card you at Georgetown bars?
It at least helps me tell the Carters apart a little more, and leads me like an Achaean towards Troy, as the (possibly? hopefully? please god?) leastest of seven evils.
Right. It's just so tiresome. See this, this thing right here, is what is wrong with our mainstream commentary, what is wrong with the people who supposedly make decisions in our discourse, one major part of what is wrong with newspapers. This thing, right here. This elevation of detachment and dispassion into a virtue of its own over and above passionate intensity so that the first person who raises his voice in the argument loses no matter who has possession of what facts.
Our only hope:
It's been decades since a leader of Obama's stature has delivered a speech on race and racial controversy with such candor and honesty and subtlety and passion. The man's thinking is right.
I urge you to watch the whole 37 minute version.
I will give him money, I will wear his shirts, I will work for his campaign, I will vote for him.
The Edwards campaign is hosting a conference call for the Louisiana campaign organization, and grassroots supporters are invited to attend.
Wednesday, December 19 at 7:00 p.m. ET (6:00 CST).
Unfortunately I won't be able to make the call, I have a regular engagement on Wednesdays that I can't get out of. But at this point in the campaign, I'm pretty firmly in the Edwards camp, with Obama a close second and Hilllary in the "oh, crap, if I we have to, I guess so" pile. I'm hoping the rest of the halfwits will drop out soon after the first primaries.
[P.S.: Just to clear up any confusion, we're talking about John, not Edwin.]
