Pajiba

I live in Texas. I heard about this flick weeks ago.

Even the right is entitled to their own opinion, I guess. But how much of that deficit was racked up on military action in a certain region with a shit ton of oil? This is just more of the same hate mongering right versus left overblown rhetoric that we as political puppetry and knee jerking lemmings have grown oh so accustomed to.

You know what this country needs besides a good ol' grassroots revolution, El Che style? A third fucking party. That. Would be. A start.

Shiiiiiiiiii... Even Reagan is too liberal for the right these days.

And pointing out the military as "wasteful" spending will get you nowhere with Republicans. That's the only part of the government they think should be big.

Annie_Reckson: A neat little http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/Revenue_v_Spending.png ">graph.

“From the massive increases in agricultural subsidies in the farm bill of 2002, to the new Medicare prescription drug entitlement of 2003; from the 47% increase in the defense budget, to the 80% increase in education spending, George W. Bush has demonstrated that “limited government” is not part of his political vocabulary.” From here.

You know what this country needs besides a good ol' grassroots revolution, El Che style? A third fucking party. That. Would be. A start.

Oh, for crissake. Stop jerking off and actually think about what you've just proposed for a second. You've got a political system wherein it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to compete nationally - a few million to compete for any federal position - and if you don't win, there is no second place. The USA isn't a two-party system because of some grand conspiracy to make you powerless; it's a two-party system because in a first-past-the-post non-parliamentary system, that's the most economically efficient way to compete. There are plenty of dinky little parties offering you an alternative: Working Families, Constitiutionalists, Libertarians, Greens. "But those are all marginal" you say, and the only response is "yeah, and what did you expect?" Nobody is really interested in throwing a couple million dollars away on third-party vanity when, for the same amount of money, you can elect twenty or thirty candidates you support in party primaries and actually get a few people into office. The sole genius of the Tea Partiers is that they figured this out.

The United States needs electoral reform, true. It needs public election financing, campaign reform post-Citizens United, and major Senate rules reform. But a third party is just pundit wanking, pure and simple.

You know what this country needs besides a good ol' grassroots revolution, El Che style? A third fucking party.

You do know that Che was a sadist murderer? he is best known for running the Cuban gulag and executing men and boys who were found to be "enemies" of the revolution. He personally would shoot them in the head. Of course, this was without trials or any other legal process.

How the left idolizes Che is beyond me.

My proposal for giving third parties a fighting chance:

Every fall there's a party rush. The parties all have to have posters at their tables clearly listing what policies they want to enact and how much those policies will cost. All policies of all parties will immediately be enacted at the end of rush week, and all policies must apply to everyone, not just party members. So if Democrats want universal health care, everybody gets universal health care. The catch is, only those people who sign up for your party have to pay for it (and by law everyone must identify with a party).

Once all poliicies are enacted, all party members receive an itemized bill. Any cost overruns will be billed in six months. So if the Republicans want to start a war or continue a war, only Republicans will pay for it, and only Democrats will pay for universal health. Obviously, the more members the parties can attract, the less the cost to each individual party member.

Everyone will pay a minimal fee for the constitutionally mandated functions of government. Beyond that, you pick what you want to pay for by choosing which party you want to belong to. Party membership will be much more fluid, parties like the Greens will get a chance to make policy, parties will be forced to form coalitions to spread the cost.

It will be completely legal for the parties to buy your membership in any way they can.

The president? He/she is reduced to a figurehead, like the queen of England.

"warmed-over pabulum we've been hearing from the right since Reagan."
It might round out the diet of warmed-over bullshit fed to us by the left since FDR died.

How's the war on poverty going?

How's the war on drugs going?

Odette Yustman's left cheek/Odette Yustman's right cheek, 2012.

Bipartisanship we can all agree on.

Although what I really should have said was, "..imagine if your crazy uncle was elected to office." eesh

Third-parties aren't going to be viable until they get a base that sticks around longer than an 18-month election cycle.

You want a third party to last? Vote for a Green school board chairman. Vote for a "Tea Party" (I only use the quotes because there's so many factions calling themselves "tea party") candidate for state Agriculture Commissioner.

You don't win the big prizes with a top-down strategy. You have to keep the foot soldiers around for long enough to gain some credibility.

Bill Shatner for Prime Minister of the United States of America!

How the left idolizes Che is beyond me.

Correction, Chewster: Uninformed college students and actual Socialists (not Democrats, there is a difference) idolize Che. The same way they idolize Bob Marley because of his use of pot and peace messages rather than because he basically stopped a Jamaican civil war all by himself. Or for the same reason they listen to Dave Matthews because they have cotton balls embedded deep within their eardrums.

If you had to characterize me, I'm left leaning (although really I'm very socially liberal and fiscally conservative, which means I hate both parties with a passion - really, none of them know how to balance a checkbook, and they are fucking assholes).

Anyhoo, suffice to say the right would consider me "the enemy", for things like believing that governance should have absolutely nothing to do with religious beliefs.

And even with that, I can't stand Michael Moore. I'm tired of him being viewed as the speaker for the oppressed. I see him as somebody who less of a belief system and more of a structured approach to a job of being a dissenter. It's manipulative, ugly, and he's done permanent damage to the concept of a documentary - to the point where every single one you see now is less about dispassionate display of fact behind an issue and much more about severely exploiting the viewer to achieve a specific viewpoint.

Michael Moore doesn't sit down to teach you with one of his shows. He screams his editorial at you until he believes you have to agree with him.

Just to be clear, I'm still voting yes on prop 19, I still think gays deserve all of the happiness we generally aspire to in life, I still think immigrants make this country a great place, not detract from it. I still think we need to loose our cultural fascination with violence and guns.

I just don't need Moore to tell me that, and I really don't want to listen to his posturing.

How the right idolizes Reagan is beyond me. Supporter of right wing governments in Latin America which in turn killed their citizens en masse. Iran-Contra. Illegal invasion of Grenada. Supporter of Saddam Hussein. Selling of bio-weapons to Iraq. Tripling of the national debt.

All of this anger is entirely misdirected, onto parties and politicians, etc. when the real issue is global capital. It's a sort of ideological mystification to say that this party or that party is the root of our economic and social misery, when the obvious cause of the crises we face are rooted in contradictions of Capitalism itself.

Zizek develops this idea of ideological mystification here.

David Harvey talks about the economic crisis here.

Enjoy.

Blame Canada.

Posted by: , at October 12, 2010 12:11 PM

That's it, man, I'm coming down to beat your ass.

/looks for lacrosse stick and moose saddle

"I can grant you that. Not that you are correct on social issues but certainly that you are more self-righteous about them. Except maybe for that whole killing babies thing."

You don't even have the slightest shred of ironic self-awareness, do you?

I was in a rush the other day, and my keyboard was out of batteries. You've got to be drinking from the kiddie pool if you think public servants are bunches of assholes; and you know better about the world, but you just can't be bothered to do anything about it. If you would begin a virtual relationship with the staff of a candidate like Bill White, former Mayor of Houston running for Governor of Texas, you are slightly more likely to strengthen the platform whether or not those staffers remain on after. You're likelier to go further as a private citizen there than in most already elected offices. The manager for BW is J.D. Gins, and I can assure you, he is not the partisan hack that you're so ironically unaware exists.

If the Democrats are less enthused about this election, it's mostly because all but the 2006 midterm saw a decrease in voting turnout in 70 odd years of midterms. If polling suggests to you the world is crazy, that's because mostly old ladies answer their phones, and it's either illegal or very expensive to call people on their cells. (Why I too doubt the veracity of the sex survey pisaster is on about.) If you believe that cable news is worth watching for more than your spare 20-30 minutes, I'm sure God will help you. Unless it's your job, of course, in which case, Stewart/Colbert, you're doing an excellent job.

The simple matter of fact is that the Republican party boasts an anti-intellectual party agenda that would rather allow them to give tax breaks to their richest constituents, most of which have their hands in the grinding up of Americans. One of the greatest faults of a so-called healthy economy is that we've meant that to indicate ever-increasing profit shares on companies that do not produce anything new or gain any significant share of the market, from quarter-to-quarter, indefinitely. 70 percent of the shares are own by less than 10 percent of the people. This category paid 19 percent less in federal taxes in 2004, mostly by intrepid firms offering new services in tax shelters. With Central Asia booming and South America isolating, the number of people for capitalism to exploit shrinks ever smaller, and we should see very blatantly how worship of the free market has turned the sacrificial blade on its followers. Redistribution of income has come to mean taxes in any form, and further conflation voids almost all civic responsibilities that might also come with a price tag, no matter how minuscule. "Dat Durn socialism." Even smaller, I am sure your city councils have also had lengthy debates over new increases like 7 cent property hikes, 25 cent public transpo, 41 cent education bills. Guess which none of them passed?

It's a rough time for politics. Obama has looked weak in some public appearances lately. Actually had a Bush quote moment with the Chilean miner rescue. He also was 70 percent of the President I loved in issue 1115, Rolling Stone Wenner interview this week. I could submit Policy Review or the National Interest, Foreign Policy and the Economist for immediate perusal, but the Rolling Stone interview is accessibility from the man himself. And in it he's saying that none of this has been or is going to be easy. Read it to the end.

He inflates the significance of 'accomplished,' but otherwise gives a remarkably cogent perspective I'd expect of anyone holding public office. So when I do lump Tea Party together in one bunch, I mean the type of people who pay for speakers and vote for politicians who cannot even offer that. I think it's a good thing if they stick along. I have been a believer in dialectical materialism, yet still I admit their usefulness. Either I'm right or even bigger assholes are coming along. I can admit to flickers of idealism hoping not the latter.

Some of you are really smart, here. That's what disturbs me about some of the rather cavalier attitude towards government. You may be a sincere libertarian, but aside from the ontic impossibility of your various platforms, you're fucking kidding yourself. That brochure is not what makes a government run. Anarchy is ultimately peaceful people looking out for those in their immediate vicinity, yadda yadda yadda. But the size of what you're talking about simply does not work. We should be getting through with brochure indoctrination. For any political ideology. For any politician.

alon, Zizek is probably not the person to push on the intellectuals in the crowd, or the dilettantes, perhaps like myself. I've only read sections of In Defense of Lost Causes and a couple articles he's written in The New Left. His other ones I've picked off the self didn't hold me for too long, but he's one that I will revisit as long as he's still writing. While his points often sound good for 45 minutes, he seems mostly to conclude that merely re-examination may possibly enlighten. I like his humor and sprinkles of pop culture, but at the end of hours of spelunking, I can't see him saying much more than, 'Yeah, ________ isn't _________-ism, but even if it was, this is the world of Lacan, not Hegel or Heidegger-- so fucking what if it is ________-ism? Get over it and live in the ontic.' Really, the dude is impenetrable sometimes.

So I text my physical therapist friend yesterday something about the Obama interview in Rolling Stone. No zealotry, just that she should read it. I get back, " Why, does he admit that he's a complete idiot socialist pigface? Cause if not I don't want to read it." I felt like saying back, "What's heart-breaking is how little you deserve a response," but she's got an ugly kid, so I let it slide. heh heh.

Anyway, money has ensconced the political process if not kidnapped both political parties. A Roberts Court that makes that money easy to hide doesn't help anything. We haven't gotten everthing we've wanted, much less the transparency of money in the spokes, but it's been a busy Presidency. I know public office is another guise for evil men; you know, the ones that don't become lawyers or make movies. But the thing is, doing nothing CERTAINLY makes it worse.

I hate to end it on an appeal to vote, but I'm saying don't vote. Call Bullshit. If the Democrat and the Republican in your area are both full of shit, and you don't have the steam to write to their staff to delineate in what ways, vote third party. But until we get Election Day as a National holiday, it's going to take a little more sacrifice even on the first Tuesday of off years. And by all means, if the Democrat in your district is just a skosh better than the Republican, go vote. Old ladies certainly will. And this in no way is directed at our sweet, lusty crones. Y'all are marvelous.

Yes, right-wing - Reagan did so much FUCKING GOOD for the working people of this country. I can't believe these morons. And, sorry, Moore's conclusions were a hell of a lot more supported and sound than this douchebag's (who calls his own movie "controversial" in the trailer).

God, this trailer confirmed my happiness at being a member of the effete northeastern elite.