Hard News: America: Chill out!
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the groups on the left, who were much more prone to cross-group mistrust, in-fighting and so on.
From what I recall of Homage to Catalonia, this was one of the things that drove Orwell out of the war (that and being shot through the throat) - he was a member of the POUM militia, organised by an anarchist group, and the communists purged them towards the end of the war.
Factions, eh?
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So he subscribes to that odd, utterly irrational conspiracy (nothing in this whole circus is nuttier than the birther stuff, just fucking insane twaddle), but in DC this GOP Congressman is the one chosen to rebut this massive policy speech by the nation's President.
It's bizarre, isn't it? Even if you disagree with everything Obama says, there was no doubting the seriousness of his address, the clarity of its key messages, and, of course, the quality and poise of its delivery.
And in response, the Republicans put up some clown who subscribes to a racist conspiracy theory about his own president.
Media Matters has Olberman on Sean Hannity's awesome effort for Fox News: When he talked in the speech about why insurance companies treat their customers badly Obama went out of his way to say that "insurance executives don't do this because they're bad people -- they do it because it's profitable".
Hannity's follow-up?
"When he said tonight insurance executives are bad people, it took me (a)back because it was so harsh and unfair."
You can't really work with that in any sensible way.
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I might remind people that if you take issue with James, I'd prefer you attacked his argument, rather him personally.
Not one to say he said, he said, but it's worth pointing out that James has on more than one occasion attacked one or two of us personally as a lead in to his arguments, whether well formed or not (and I'd take issue with that..he largely recites rather than argues, and couples those recitations with offensive slurs and generalisations targeted against people like, y'know, women in politics. They tend to upset me).
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Fair enough.
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the POUM militia...the communists purged them towards the end of the war
Oh, great. Thanks for, like, totally spoiling the ending for me. Wanna put a spoiler warning on that next time? :)
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. . . Islamists who have no concept of woman's rights that we would recognize, stone to death woman accused of adultery who are actually victims of rape and think gays should be killed . . .
This from a guy who thought it a splendid wheeze to parrot the expression "hairy armpit brigade" here a while back when sneering at feminists who begged to differ with his beloved Republican agenda. Just a slight derivative detour from James's usually well-formed arguments.
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Kos has some insta-poll analysis, with appropriate caveats, that looks pretty good for Obama.
There's a built-in bias, in that speech-watchers are likely to be fans of the President, but it seems that he turned around quite a few independents.
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Here's a related link. The MoD Defence Review 2009.
If we want the US to chill, are we gonna chill a bit more too?
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It's not on health, but on the President's address to school students, I think we had a thread somewhere, but I found this piece very interesting. It's from a publication with "examiner" in the title, so you may wish to take it with a grain of salt =) but:
when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported.
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Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. ...
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but:
Yes, I find the antics on the left often just as unsettling as those on the right, but as I said on my blog a few days back, they tend to exist mostly on the fringe (no excuse made for Rep. Ford though, how bloody stupid, what a ridiculous waste of public money), whereas the nuttiness on the right tends to exist from pretty close to the centre and then balloons on the way out into something increasingly, for want of a better word, demented.
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It's not on health, but on the President's address to school students, I think we had a thread somewhere, but I found this piece very interesting. It's from a publication with "examiner" in the title, so you may wish to take it with a grain of salt =) but:
It's real enough, and documented, but not quite the same sort of wrangle. The Democrats pitched it as a case of using federal resources for political advantage -- the next year was election year.
The Republicans might have had a case on that basis with Obama, but the actual response last week was frequently hysterical, with people seriously using words like "indoctrination and "communism".
There were whole school districts that refused to show the innocuous Obama speech; parents demanding that schools not carry it and various other forms of hyperbolic mayhem. Nothing remotely like that happened in 1991.
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and a school district that wouldn't show the Obama speech -- didn't want to disrupt planned lessons -- but bussed students to see a Bush jr. speech.
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the POUM militia...the communists purged them towards the end of the war
Oh, great. Thanks for, like, totally spoiling the ending for me. Wanna put a spoiler warning on that next time? :)
Don't worry, Rich. In the film version the fascists get their come-uppance and the POUM leader gets the girl.
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And it's an American submarine..
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The best thing about the town hall crazies is how they've told us that Obama is simultaneously a fascist and a communist.
That's because it's not a spectrum. And when you go to the extremes, they meet at the back in the middle. That's why the anarchists that are going to protest the G-20 in Pittsburgh in a couple of weeks are also all fascists.
I learned that on Fox News.
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but the actual response last week was frequently hysterical, with people seriously using words like "indoctrination and "communism".
Yep, demented. There is a mountain of difference between some strongly stated unease, and the sort of inane verbiage that seems to spout from folks like this elected GOP official:
“As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education - it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Russell said.
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While I pimped the universal healthcare FB supporters' group recently, I totally forgot to link the LiveJournal thread where hundreds of US citizens talk about their healthcare experiences. Frightening is really the only word for it.
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“As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education - it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” Russell said.
They also conveniently forget a speech Reagan gave to schoolkids which basically consisted of Ten Reasons My Government Is The Best Government Ever. Because that was just, um, truth in advertising. Apparently.
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CBS poll gives BHO a big healthcare bounce.
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I might remind people that if you take issue with James, I'd prefer you attacked his argument, rather him personally.
Can we make an exception for Ian Wishart?
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Wishart is an argument.
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Nice to know that others have recognized this fact.
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Max Blumenthal's footage of the 9/12 march is funny and also terrifying. These people are deeply, deeply weird and crazy:
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And for a depressing local connection...
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Jim Emerson has a great piece on Glen Beck's brand of hysteria in his most recent blog. He points out how he gets away with his sleight of hand rhetorical technique, which sets up a rumour with no basis and forces the slandered to respond.
It's all based on the old logical fallacy known as "negative proof," the implication that something is true only because it hasn't been proven false: "We know Saddam has WMDs because he won't prove that he doesn't." "Where does it say there are no death panels?" "We know these detainees are terrorists because at no time since they have been arrested and held in isolation without charges have they proven they are not terrorists, and the president says they would not be imprisoned if they were not terrorists." (This is where I want to have continuous instantaneous access to a clip from "The Larry Sanders Show" of Artie [Rip Torn] with his shit-eating Producer's grin saying: "Don't start pulling at that thread or our whole world will come apart.") From there, it's only a short hop to: "Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?" "When did you stop beating your wife?"
This nonsense is usually combined with Pavlovian association and repetition. The more people hear the juxtapositions -- Saddam/9-11, detainees/terrorists, Obama/Muslim, healthcare reform/Naziism -- the more they are inclined to assume a connection where there has never been one. Does anyone honestly think Glenn "Obama is a racist" Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? I don't know. I hope not, because that would put them on Glenn Beck's level. This site mimics exactly the sort of evidence and logic Beck uses to smear public figures on Rupert Murdoch's Australian gossip tabloid, FOX News. (Apparently he's on the radio, too, but I have heard no hard evidence of that.)
In case you're wondering, the last line is a reference to a parody site linked in the post. It seems Mr Beck is too stupid or cynical to get the none-too-subtle joke though...
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