j_b

He is too ugly and I don't fuck with morons.

PP is the Ann Coulter of CascadeClimbers. He pretends that accusing people of palling around with Pol Pot and Bin Laden amounts to presenting an argument. Then when confronted with his goon-like tactics, he pretends that red-baiting/terror baiting isn't done to curtail freedom of speech.

25% of voting age folks is more or less the constituancy of the rightwing lunatic fringe. Even now Bush's approval numbers are about that many. Yes, he beat you at your own game money-wise but he didn't appeal to fear.

Which explains why Bush was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. When political machines spend 100's of millions of dollars on propaganda appealing to fear, the outcome of voting is sure to be skewed. Bush got in with approximately 25% of the voting age population, lost the popular vote in 2000, and stole 2004 by disenfranchising voters.

There is a lot of room betwen Zinn and the team he is putting together. I was hoping he'd at least plant the necessary seeds of change but by reappointing the people who played a significant part in the mess we have today, I doubt it will be possible. Human societies are reaching tipping points that cannot be put off any longer.

That was before you killed the golden goose (the middle class)and emptied the treasury. There is nothing left to steal and you'll find that pandering to ignorance of your role in this economic debacle is going to be impossible.

You may well end up very disappointed, j_b. I don't think he is likely to really shake things up. So hang on to your hat because without shaking things up, we are in for a very nasty ride. Without the democrats toeing the war party line, we wouldn't have gone to Iraq. If the opposition had done its job, the corporate media, including the NYT, couldn't have have done its dirty work to the same extent. Even with all the propaganda, it is only days before the war when it was inevitable we were going in that public opinion became pro-war and that didn't last very long.

I strongly suspect we agree on most things if we get past the ISMs

A link to document that the usual goons red-bait/terror-bait left wingers here and elsewhere at every occasion they have to shut up people?

Not at all, a large majority of americans are solidly on the left like me. I'd like to think it's because I wasn't running but I am no fool, I know that like they do to many candidates the corporate media would have boycotted me. So, I guess you didn't have a specific reply to any of my arguments? Fancy that.

I don't jump on occasional offenses but PP has been it doing here regularly for years with anyone on the left. Whatever you want to call them, his tactics are profoundly anti-freedom of speech: they are goon-like.

Repeatedly red-baiting to shut up people in public fora in Bush's America is gestapo-like.

Look who is "whining" now? It looks like the service goon didn't like being called out on his red-baiting. Isn't is interesting how the 101st chickenhawk keyboard brigade always talks about "whiners", but then ask for sympathy against the meanies who don't take it lying down? I'll ask a second time. Is it really OK for the powers at Cascade Climbers to enable people who use gestapo like tactics? Isn't this dude a moderator on this board?

Right, but the Democratic party leadership, including Obama, knew most of that before they voted for it. No?

Anybody informed couldn't have been duped. There were 10's of millions of people in the streets around the world before the war who already knew the intelligence was fabricated. The pols who voted for the war shouldn't be trusted to represent the people. Actually, the experience argument is widely being used to justify Obama's conservative choices for his cabinet but it doesn't account for the fact there are experienced politicans who were against the war, against deregulation, etc .. who are also experienced in washington so he has little excuse not to select at least some true progressives at important posts.

A large majority of the gamblers on Wall-street also wanted Obama, and seeing that the architects of deregulation on the democratic side (Rubin, Sumners, Volker, etc ...) are at the top of the list of the Obama team, they may very well have known what they were doing. They may believe their own propaganda about the virtuosity of unregulated corporatism but anyone who thought that GW in any way or form was competent in 2000 and didn’t call for GW’s impeachment after that has little judgment worth considering. Of course they pander to the small government mantra since it is at the core of neoliberal propaganda to weaken government. Yet they cheered for a war of choice that blew government budgets skyward and put several trillion dollars of public funds into corporate hands. So much for small government and "free" markets. In other words, they advocated policy that was the exact opposite of what they preached, which makes them either liars or stupid. The Economist has been at the forefront of cheeleading for deregulation, assymetric globalisation (all finance-oriented corporatist control but no political checks and balance) and for the rape of the environment (like via financing charlatans such as Lomborg). They systematically bash the northern european model (even today) that is the closest to an attempt at mixing markets and social justice and cheered the speculative bubble model that lead us where we are today. The Economist regurgitates to yuppies what comes from corporatist think tanks like CEI, AEI, CATO, etc .. I am all for decent job creating business. To be more porecise, I am for socially/environment conscious businesses and pro-fair trade, and contrary to The Economist, I am against short-term greed oriented corporatism that made policy for the last 30 years and drove the world near economic collapse.

Of course, the republicans have pandered to the uneducated and religious lunatic fringe. BUT did it really take 30 years for The Economist to figure it out? I am tempted to ponder whether the uneducated class or The Economist are the morons in this affair. Until the economy forced most people to consider their economic welfare instead of the usual rightwing pandering to xenophobia, racism, homophobia, etc .., 25% of the voting population was suffcient to win, and more recently steal, elections. In fact, I still can't see how Palin is obviously more incompetent than Bush or Reagan who by the way were championed by The Economist. The Economist is pure ideological propaganda. They refuse to draw the appropriate lessons from the GOP debacle, which was in great part due to the economic and financial collapse following 30 years of neoliberal policies which have destroyed the middle class. Policies of extreme inequalities that were and still are championned by The Economist. If I were you Dave, I'd tell my father to quit reading that trash.

The official unemployment rate is not only unreliable but it is not comparable to that of 1978. In 1984 Reagan started counting the military among the employed to increase the size of the denominator and decrease the rate of unemployment, while Clinton redefined the unemployed by ignoring those not looking for a job in more than 4 weeks (the discouraged) and those underemployed who wish to work more but can't find more hours. Real unemployment is well over 10% already. I don't have a ready solution w.r.t. the bailout of automakers but it seems that America can ill afford losing more quality manufacturing jobs and that any bailout should have serious strings attached. Also, 1% of all retirees get a pension from the auto-industry. Let's not forget the public probably will assume most of the cost of these pensions if automakers go into bankruptcy.

Meanwhile the Chinese automakers are expecting a bailout: "This autumn, after six years of 20 percent or more annual growth, vehicle sales were flat or slightly negative, a shock to an industry that has borrowed heavily to build ever more factories for a market that had once seemed insatiable" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/business/worldbusiness/19chinaauto.html?

Because losing 3 million jobs and dismantling communitites isn't panicky enough?

I can't believe they mention uplift since it is many orders of magnitude smaller than 0.5m/yr on Logan and we'd know if there had been major displacements on faults in the last 16 years. My guess is it isn't very different from typical snow accumulation.

If calling out the "free market" ideology for the quackery that it is, and calling out the red-baiting goons on this board amounts to being shrill, then so be it. It's not a hazard that no discussion takes place. There is no discussion because they only have propaganda and no cogent argument.

Hawks and deregulation types. Not a single progressive on the list. Definitely "change" we can believe in.

I know it is difficult for you to have a logical discussion but you still failed to show how PP's red-baiting was in retaliation for "personally insulting" him, which you falsely asserted above. So you can run along now with your tail between your legs if you wish.

Are we supposed to read your mind or do you actually have a point? Note that it the 2nd instance of your making gratuitous assertions in this thread that you cannot substantiate.