brainiac conspiracy

Quote of The Day

Every hero becomes a bore at last. ---Emerson

(Via.)

---Baron V

Thought Leaders of the New Millennium

I think this explains why we are doomed as a species:

[A]t this year’s TED conference, which was held here in Vancouver, British Columbia, the rock star Sting got onstage and gave a presentation that had a different feel. He talked about his rise to stardom and then about a period in middle age when he was unable to write any new songs. The muse abandoned him, he said — for days, then weeks, then months, then years.

But then he went back and started thinking about his childhood in the north of England. He’d lived on a street that led down to a shipyard where some of the world’s largest ocean-going vessels were built.

Most of us have an urge, maybe more as we age, to circle back to the past and touch the places and things of childhood. When Sting did this, his creativity was reborn. Songs exploded from his head.

David Brooks . . . Sting . . . TED Talks . . . Shoot me now, or shoot me later?

More to the point, when I circle back to the place of my childhood, I remember what a creatively stifling and miserable experience it was for much of the time, and how I didn't really get my act together, both as a creative thinker and as a human being, until I moved away from there for good. The fact that the place was pretty much leveled by the  Northridge earthquake probably dimmed whatever nostalgic allure it might have held for me in my declining years, so there's that. Guess what I'm saying is, some of us move away from home for very good reasons, and they don't all revolve around money and fame.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Give People a Reason to Vote For You

And you'll probably get their vote. If you don't, you likely won't. Team Democrat used to be so good at this kind of politicking before the "grown-ups," a.k.a. the neoliberal privatizers, overran the party leadership and started lecturing us on the need for budget-cutting and entitlement reform and all these other policies that sound great in theory but which everyone outside of D.C. hates in practice.

As an alternative, perhaps revert to proven Democratic election strategies, i.e., promise people as much free stuff as they want because people like free stuff! So what if the Georgetown social set decries it as "populist"---you want to win an election, or an invitation to cocktails with Sally Quinn? This is not at all difficult to figure out, people.

---Baron V

They've Already Won

Inasmuch as conservatives have driven and defined our public-policy debates over the last four decades or so, yes, they've won the policy wars. Sure, they're losing on a lot of the cultural issues as the country grows more secular and pluralistic, but the guns-and-butter debate has been settled decisively in their favor. Heck, even the "liberal" Goldberg Act was originally hatched at a right-wing think tank! I'd originally thought that the election of our first African-American President and the spontaneous rise of the Occupy movement signaled a change of direction, and that the ideological pendulum would have swung a lot harder to the left by now than it has. Maybe another catastrophic failure of capitalism will do the trick. But obviously, we can no longer rely on Team Democrat to propose anything more than token reforms to address the many iniquities that plague the existing social order. There's too much money at stake!

---Baron V

America's Worst Journalist

Even in a crowded field, this dude stands out.

I mean, Fournier has essentially written the same column every week for the last five years: "Obama is right, but . . . since he's not getting shit done, it would be better if he were advocating the wrong things instead. Or something." Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me, either, and if I were the guy's editor, I'd throw these columns back at him and tell him he's not getting paid until he comes up with a fresher take. Sure, Barack Obama has displayed many shortcomings as President, but the inability to reach accord with Republicans is not among them.

---Baron V

Cillizza

Every time I think this guy can't possibly write something more vapid and utterly void of historical significance, he outdoes himself. I mean, hello?!? Team Democrat has had contending factions for nearly a fucking century, back to the day when FDR cobbled together a coalition of Northern city and union bosses, urban blacks, and reactionary Southern agriculturists. And no, the presence of Barack Obama in the White House did not "paper over" the differences between the liberals and Blue Dogs. They were readily apparent from the beginning of his presidency, and it's the reason we got shitty legislation like the Rube Goldberg Act and the bank bailouts instead of, you know, actual liberal legislation like single payer and nationalizing the banks.

Will there be a "war" between progressives and moderates? Probably, but it's hard to see why either side will bother until 2020, when Team Democrat will have the opportunity to redraw the political map of America if it can win back all the state houses it lost a decade prior. But for now, no. The corporatists are ascendant, and the leftists will need to bide their time---or switch parties.

---Baron V

Got an Easy Answer For That

Obviously, yes!

In the shutdown era, Democrats have had a more moderate image nationwide than the tea-party-burdened GOP. But that image may be at risk if liberal Democrats set the pace for the party. We could see them rally around a progressive leader---Warren, de Blasio or some yet-to-emerge candidate---who speaks their language of economic populism. If the agenda of this new New Left drives Democrats’ choices, it might weaken the ideological and demographic coalition that has led the party to victory in four of the past six national elections.

Because proposing to raise taxes on rich people to pay for infrastructure and health care, or suggesting that we break up the banks and throw their executives in jail, are both bad, horrible, very terrible things because heaven forbid our government should actually give voters the things they actually want. We must never have liberal/leftist government because "populism", a view that is only held by the wealthy and by people who live in the greater D.C. metro area. The rest of us? We don't exist.

---Baron V

Technocrats

When we choose our leaders, it's kinda depressing to admit, but in a way, right-wing crackpots would be preferable to the sensible centrists who populate the Washington policy establishment. That's because the crackpots don't hide the fact that they are ideologically driven while the serious persons

are careful to pretend that they have no ideology. Their preferred pose is that of the politically neutral technocrat offering well considered advice based on profound expertise. That is nonsense. They are deeply dyed in the hue of the official ideology of the governing class, an ideology that is neither specifically Democrat nor Republican. Domestically, whatever they might privately believe about essentially diversionary social issues such as abortion or gay marriage, they almost invariably believe in the “Washington Consensus”: financialization, outsourcing, privatization, deregulation and the commodifying of labor. Internationally, they espouse 21st-century “American Exceptionalism”: the right and duty of the United States to meddle in every region of the world with coercive diplomacy and boots on the ground and to ignore painfully won international norms of civilized behavior.

The atrocities both sides commit are, essentially, the same. They only vary by degree.

---Baron V

Not Enough to Say The Other Guy is Nuts

One of the reasons why Team Democrat got hammered so badly in the 2010 midterms was because that too many members of the team ran away from a Democratic policy agenda.They wouldn't even discuss single-payer health care, they wouldn't consider additional stimulus spending, and within a year of winning a landslide Presidential election, too many of them were warning about out-of-control spending, deficit reduction, Fix the Debt grifting schemes, etc. What I'm trying to get at is, when you don't give your supporters a good reason to come out for you on Election Day, they likely won't show up. Note I said "vote for you" as opposed to "vote against the other guy." That passive-aggressive approach has been tried already, and failed miserably. You want Democratic turnout, then start advocating Democratic principles. Need a list? Expand Medicare and Social Security, raise the minimum wage, housing is a right, impose a guaranteed annual income, and tax the wealthy to pay for it all. Oh yeah, and single-payer, too. Will it help win the midterms? I have no idea, frankly, but if you're going to lose, at least you can go down with your morals intact.

---Baron V

Answer to a Question Nobody Asked

It's a never-ending source of mirth and merriment that the Third Label No Way third-party people don't seem to understand that the moderate, sensible centrist party they so ardently seek---well, it already exists, and it's call Team Democrat. But that's not what the Third Way/Bloomberg-for-President gang really cares about. What they want more than anything is policy that rewards themselves with massive tax cuts, starves the elderly and the poor, keeps government regulation of their enterprises at a bare minimum, and keeps their investment portfolios pumped up with trillions of dollars of free money: Republican policies, in other words, minus the birther-paranoid cohort.

Besides, we already have third parties in America. Plenty of them: Greens, Libertarians, Constitution, Socialist Workers, et al. Given the way we conduct elections, and the way election law is written in most states, their impact at the polls up to now has been minimal, and if the No Way centrists genuinely wanted to break the back of the two-party duopoly for which they have such disdain, seems to me they'd be generously supporting these smaller parties, and helping them to grow in strength and numbers in order to (a) promote more diverse political discourse, and (b) pressure the two major parties to inch back toward that mythic political center. But, as mentioned, that's not what they really want.

---Baron V

"Democratic Overreach"

In official Washington, it happens every time Democratic candidates and officeholders advocate on behalf of public policy that voters really like---you know, like breaking up the banks and jailing their executives, or raising taxes on rich people and spending the money on infrastructure. You'd think the party was in imminent danger of exhuming George McGovern and nominating him for President again, and this is why the party's liberals must forever be excoriated.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Barack Obama:

Repeating points made in the AFJ’s recent report on the federal judiciary’s excess of former corporate lawyers, Warren noted that 71 percent of Obama [judicial] nominees’ prior experience was chiefly defending corporations. Just 3.6 percent of Obama’s nominees, according to the report, have previously worked mainly for public interest organizations.

I just don't get it---this attitude that so many of the technocrats in our government have that the private sector is where you find the real experts on virtually any subject when they're the same exact people who steal our wages, bust our unions, keep millions of us laboring in a permanent state of poverty, and whose workplace abuses are defended in court by some of our most awful human beings. What terrible thing could we ever have done to deserve such incompetent leadership?

---Baron V

Chow Hounds

Back in the day when I was a corporate bigwig, I used to travel a lot---and I mean a lot---on business. And due to the nature of my work, my business travel frequently took me to destinations that were deep in the heart of Flyover Country. And when I got hungry and needed a meal, I typically had a choice between either fast-food crap or some middlebrow chain restaurant like Applebee's or Chili's or Olive Garden. If I got lucky and found an In-N-Out Burger in town, I went for the fast food, but otherwise I settled for the middlebrow. What I found most appalling about these places wasn't the quality or the freshness of the food---which was typically fine---but the size of the portions, which were absurdly huge, and because I was traveling, it wasn't practical to eat half of the food now and take the rest to go, so I had to leave a lot of grub on the plate. Besides being wasteful, it's also ridiculously unhealthy since a lot of Americans are trained from birth to eat everything on their plate because of the starving children in India, etc. And I think this helps to explain why so many of us are so badly overweight---because we consume too many calories, and that's just how our job creators like it.

---Baron V

Centrists

It's really rather unfair to claim, "They don't care about jobs" because, well, they care deeply about jobs. They just don't want their taxes raised to help pay for government programs that would create actual jobs for people because most of our centrists are wealthy and influential persons. Sure, they agree that joblessness is a terrible thing that exacts frightful social costs. They just think it's someone else's responsibility to do something about it. This is why the centrists' economic policy positions are so closely aligned with conservatives' economic policy positions: Because the underlying motives of each camp, i.e., selfishness and greed, are virtually identical. The centrists have a bit more of a social conscience, but not enough to make a difference in terms of real-world policy outcomes.

---Baron V

The Village Id

Turn on the Sunday talk shows, and you will see it on display. You'll hear the wise men of Washington expressing concern over the health of our democracy, with references to Madison and Jefferson and the Federalist Papers, and debates over the constitutionality of everything. But when you peel away the layers of the onion, you'll find that they don't really believe in constitutional government at all because they don't think that the lesser orders are capable of governing themselves---giving us what we want would be "populism," you know---and that we need some caudillo-type strongman to lead us.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Just Like Tip 'n' Ronnie

In a world where political gamesmanship ends at Happy Hour, both sides can settle their partisan disputes over shots of Old Granddad and tokes of Macanudos:

“It's a step forward that shows that there can be other breakthroughs and compromise if you take the time to know somebody, know what their passions are, and know how you can work together,” said Murray in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

She added that “one of the things we had to learn to do is to listen to each other and to respect each other and to trust each other . . . Either one of us could’ve taken out and blown up and killed the other person politically. We agreed from the start we wouldn't do that. Very important to where we are today.”

Ryan seconded her view saying, “We spent a lot of time just getting to know each other, talking, understanding each other's principles, and we basically learned that if we require the other to violate a core principle, we're going to get nowhere and we'll just keep gridlock.”

This is how politics is supposed to work! Just keep paying out ransom to the hostage-takers, and they'll stop taking hostages! Oh, wait:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on “Fox News Sunday” Senate and House Republicans will soon huddle at their party retreats to figure out what Republicans can extract out of Democrats in return for raising the debt ceiling next year.

“We as a caucus---along with our Senate counterparts---are going to meet and discuss what it is we’re going to want out of the debt limit,” Ryan said. “We don’t want nothing out of this debt limit. We’re going to decide what it is we’re going to accomplish out of this debt limit fight.”

I will never understand why Team Democrat always seems so desperate to strike a deal---any deal---with the people who want to dismantle their legacy. It's stupid politics, and it leads to stupider policy. But I guess it's a sign of the times we live in, where we are led by one party that's utterly uninterested in governing, and another party that's incapable of it.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Channeling The Zeitgeist

Embrace The Suck.

When someone such as Paul Ryan is considered a voice of moderation in our politics, you really have to wonder if liberalism as a philosophy of governance isn't officially and forever dead. If so, we'll have to face the fact that it was Team Democrat that killed it. Maybe it's time to join the Greens after all.

---Baron V

The Progressive Alternative

Nobody knows for sure if Hillary Clinton is going to run for President three years from now. Probably she will, but it's pure speculation at this point. That said, progressive-left types such as your humble blogger shouldn't just clear the playing field in the event that she decides to run. Sure, a more leftist "protest" candidate might not be able to compete with the Clinton fundraising machine, and no politician from either party has such high name recognition. But that doesn't mean that someone shouldn't attempt a challenge. Besides, one never knows that it might succeed. I don't think many people would have told you that Barack Obama would have beaten Clinton back in 2007, and while Obama didn't run as the "progressive" alternative, I think it's fair to say that most progressives gravitated toward him during the primary season on expectations that he would govern more liberally than he has.

Now, it's also possible---likely, even---that Barack Obama is sui generis, that there's no other Democratic candidate on the horizon who can hope to recapture the energy and excitement of his first presidential campaign. But there's still a need for a candidate who can inspire the liberal base to turn out on election day and vote for down-ticket progressives, even if they have hold their nose and voter for Hillary Clinton. That won't happen without a vigorous challenge from the left. I have no idea who's going to attempt it, but it needs to happen all the same. Besides, a lot of our most "populist" policy positions---like raising taxes on rich people, raising the minimum wage, increasing Social Security, and reining in a runaway surveillance state, are actually---the horror!---popular with voters. Sounds like a pretty good formula for winning elections, no?

---Baron V

Bipartisan Consensus

Your humble blogger ruminated over this yesterday, but it bears repeating that it's basically a bullshit talking point that's pimped by people in positions of power and privilege like Mike Bloomberg and Tom Friedman to uphold an existing status quo that---amazingly and coincidentally!---just happens to enrich and empower them. "Ramming through" legislation has been the rule, rather than the exception, in our history, and compromise, such as it exists, has been an eleventh-hour expediency, not a default mode of governance. If there was a signature weakness of the current administration, it was its refusal to acknowledge this cold hard political reality until it was too late in the game to do anything about it.

When people vote for liberal governance, they expect liberal governance. When they don't get it, they'll punish you for it. That was the lesson of the 2010 midterms. Then again, it could be that Team Democrat no longer believes in liberal governance but only plays at being liberal on TV. That's too bad because America could really use a bonafide liberal political party these days.

---Baron V

Democrats Can Never be Allowed to Govern as Democrats

Unless Republicans allow it because both sides are equally partisan fartfartfartfartfart:

Both parties have been guilty of delaying and blocking qualified judicial nominees of presidents from the opposing side, particularly for this important appeals court.

Meanwhile, both parties.

I've said it before, and I'm still not a big fan of this filibuster move---the crazy people will employ it to the most destructive ends whenever they regain control of the Senate---but it's easy to understand why Team Democrat felt like they needed to do it. Now that it only takes 51 votes to get things passed, however, let's have a show of hands in favor of single payer, shall we?

---Baron V