US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

i thought that was bourdieu, in 'distinction'

good call. here's ur crown

http://frmarkdwhite.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/crown.jpg

i think it's cute in the best way when matt taibbi's post-HST furious-hate shtick spasms into something corny. also he's been doing a terrific job with this whole thing in general and it was rad to see him latch onto something with real force after wandering around for a while post-yeltsin, snapping at things while his style curdled. the Big Issue's really focused him.

not that it makes any difference

i cannot wait for him to cover the new campaigns

i thought he was reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally boring about the tea party at first but that last thing he wrote about them (the thesis was that they were a legitimate grassroots movement in response to the crisis/bailouts but were purchased and occupied early by the floundering republican party which massaged all the racist/misogynist social complaints and the vague idea of Big Government and gradually turned the tea partiers' faces away from the banks) i thought was really good, especially from a guy who'd started to slide into the pit of just being furious over sarah palin. and again it's doing all this furious research into the financial crisis that's improved him, the same way he was improved by knowing everything about the flamboyantly corrupt criminal/government/media maze of 90s russia.

taibbi is absolutely one of my favorite journalists - perfect blend of smarts and seething hatred for the things he covers. still recommend his latest book, just finished it yesterday

and it's cool cuz i used to say mean things about him of the i-hope-he-doesn't-burst-a-vein-straining-to-be-hunter-s-thompson type, but with this excellent second phase of his career he probably has more excellent phases than hunter s thompson had.

xxp yes

i really liked Griftopia too but i have to say it's super depressing and if you want to function in any healthy way maybe save it for when you don't need to face the world and smile (thanksgiving might be a perfect time if you're gonna be miserable anyway)

haha yes totally

'griftopia' is good but not 'all the devils are here' good. that is the shit

I like Taibbi a whole lot actually but the rhetoric of "this confirms, once and for all" is so bogus. You "just confirmed, once and for all" something the left has been asserting for a hundred fucking years? heavy generational narcissism there imo, just because you're around to see something doesn't make it more egregious

your kneejerk hostility's obscuring his point. it's not that eternal timeless plutocracy is screwing over the plebes, it's that goldman sachs executives lied to congress under oath, a federal crime. that is a big deal. but this fits a well-known pattern, so why bring it up? well basketball games have happened before, doesn't mean i don't care who wins the heat-bulls series

bulls in 5, btw

would we feel better if taibbi had gone with corroborates

bulls in 5, btw

― reggie (qualmsley

I hope you're right, but I'm thinking Heat in 6

yeah I mean you're right q yr right

key to the series is rebounding. the way bigger and tougher bulls will keep the heat off the boards, then finals time

I like Taibbi but when I forward his columns to relatives and others they think his over-the-top language and rhetoric and use of expletives makes his points less worthy.

just annoying to know that the next time a bunch of far-left crazies are goin "hey this deregulation shit is going to lead to some bad shit" they'll be wasting their breath because nobody cares about projections based on history, they care about punishing bad actors post-mortem

reggie: heat-bulls 2011 eastern conference finals

was way ahead of Taibbi in pegging Chumpbama

btw I have my crown already

Hi guys! What'd I miss?????

talking about taibbi and somehow bringing NBA into things

go bulls!

bullies, etc, too

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), facing reelection next year, spoke up to oppose a plan being drafted by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad that would impose a new surtax on millionaires of about three percent on top of the higher tax rates they would face when the George W. Bush tax cuts expire next year, according to several people familiar with the exchange. […]

Several centrist Democrats have been voicing concern in private sessions that Conrad’s draft may be shifting too far to the left in order to placate liberals on the committee whose votes are needed to move the legislation, according to aides.

Centrist Dems always have to screw things up

'centrist'

you know you're in deep shit when Sen. Conrad is being criticized for being too liberal

Nelson's makeup is ghastly.

drill Bammy drill

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0514/Obama-says-Drill-baby-drill.-Will-new-oil-policy-ease-gas-prices

this surely will lower gas prices!

excellent move!

yeah. that was the first thing i heard this morning (alarm clock tuned to NPR): "and President Obama proposed expanding domestic oil production..." and i knew today would be shit-tay

here's the deal. everyone knows this won't make a dent in oil prices in the short-term. blowhards who love heritage foundation and their ilk want to con themselves into believing that it will make a difference in prices in the mid-to-longterm, but they've got their blinders on, as usual.

interestingly, the big green environmental organizations haven't made much of a fuss about this, yet.

i give up on obama. he's a politician, he makes these moves for what he believes to be political gain (even though gas prices are going up this summer, they're going to stay up for the foreseeable future absent another recession, and no one who is stupid enough to think the president can control the price of gasoline is going to give him credit for moves like this that are intended to show that he's taking steps to lower the price - they probably still think that the ATM is a magic machine that distributes cash out of heaven or something), but god, it's so so disappointing to see him play political games with nature.

have no idea why i placed "here's the deal." at the beginning of that. maybe reading too much krugman.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_D-pHGonSYyA/SlK_tACvN1I/AAAAAAAAB3s/17E0Z_2yhPY/s400/Titanic+Deck+Chairs.jpg

chair in the front needs to moved 3 inches to the right imo

Weird that Obama would do this now, but then, dude's political timing has always been awful. Like, why not wait to see if this even becomes an issue during the campaign before you OK more domestic drilling? Or at least have it in your back pocket, ready to be signed, should it flare up as a real concern. Regardless, if domestic drilling somehow morphs into a major campaign debate, again, with all the other shit going on, I give up now.

Anyway, maybe if we're lucky (hah) there'll be a major on-land domestic oil disaster, and Obama will put this decision on hold for a few months, too, like he did re: the Gulf. And then he can turn around and approve it when the next soul-deadning natural disaster takes our mind elsewhere.

or, you know, he could just point to stuff like this

http://i54.tinypic.com/2m5neol.gif

as a way of saying "hey look, the meme that i destroyed domestic oil production is rong" and "hey look, it doesn't impact GLOBAL oil prices you fucking morans". but no, we'll all continue to play this horrible game

what's the doomsayers' nearest/furthest projection on when declining oil will take us from fucked to truly & completely fucked?

heh, well i think the (and sanpaku + others feel free to disagree/correct me) is that global oil production peaked a few years ago (2006-2008), that it was the recession that reduced prices (by driving down demand), and now that demand is rising again, and production is still at a plateau, we're in a deeply cynical scenario where the faster the "recovery" occurs, the faster we go back to the limits that we broached back in 2008/2009, when gas prices were skyrocketing. there have always been a few peak oil camps, one of which believes that peak oil will precipitate an obvious collapse/tragedy, and another that believes that it will be more of an undulating recession process, where recessions temporarily drive the price of oil down, only to spike again once economies recover, etc etc. the latter scenario sounds more likely to me (but again i'd love to hear what others think).

as far as fucked vs. completely fucked, i don't think we're at "fucked" yet. plenty of people still commute for an hour+ each direction every day, and when we're fucked, that won't be commonplace anymore.

i represent doom

Z_S, I think that is a very fair description of the stage we're at in the oil production switchover to flat or falling oil reserves. It is also noteworthy that, as a rule, price spikes will tend to be sharp on the upside, but slow to fall on the downside.

The steep decline in oil prices from Oct 08 to Jan 09 were due to factors well outside the oil markets, linked to a sudden conflagration of monetary assets during the CDO/mortgage-backed securities meltdown.

why so many right wingers on the shows this morning?

ABC - "This Week" - Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C.; Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

NBC - "Meet the Press" - Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

CBS - "Face the Nation" - House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

CNN - "State of the Union" - Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

CNN - "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - American leadership, Condoleezza Rice and Eric Schmidt

1 democrat, 1 technocrat, 6 republicans. that's fox news style

how can you trust a Democrat with this economy?

too true

as a bonus mitch albom is on the sports reporters this morning

no one who is stupid enough to think the president can control the price of gasoline is going to give him credit for moves like this

and apparently only ~9% are (presently) that stupid. expanding drilling dosen't even really make good political sense at this point...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/2011/05/05/AFLD6R2F_graphic.html

kevin :D :D :D