prole

Poor Prole. Nobody is left-wing enough for him anymore. Sorry my cynicism and defeatism hasn't progressed to the point where I think it's just "business as usual" when a candidate running a campaign on systemic change from the left, mobilizing historically marginalized constituencies on that message, and winning by a large margin as a result turns around and governs to the right of Republicans on issue after issue with little or no pressure to do so. It's pathetic. The conservative narrative in '08 was entirely correct: he didn't have enough experience for the job. Will he ever learn that you don't negotiate with terrorists?

But wait, Obama's going to make a deal! What a fighter!

Good point. I'm not sure if there's much of a coherent ideology involved when it's simply and unconsciously taken as a given that "political systems coping with a structural fiscal crisis" are supposed to solve their problems through "taxpayers getting a gold plated reaming in order to bail out the retarded creditors that made bad loans" or whether it's just a natural outcome of concentrated, unregulated economic power coming to bear on the political process, media, and useful idiots in academia. The semantics probably aren't that important.

Don't want to upset the donors' apple-cart though. "Dahling, tax me a little more, but for heaven's sake don't shut down the crap game!"

Don't give me that crap. There's no reason you can't push a progressive social agenda and a progressive economic agenda at the same time. As it stands, the Democrat wing of the FIRE Party is happy to play liberals' asses like fiddles against rightwing boogymen while forcing more of the same economic medicine down the throats of those least able to bear it. What long-term agenda? Democrats have, and continue to be led around by their Prince Alberts on the same economic policies pioneered by Republicans. Democrats don't have a long-term agenda other than permanent campaigning and lurching from GOP manufactured crisis to GOP manufactured crisis.

Ugh, what a load of tripe. What difference do personal approach, "philosophy", negotiating skills, and methods mean when the end results are exactly the same? The partisan illusion is wearing thin...

Interesting how when one sees Labor, Socialist, and Democrat parties in Europe and the US imposing austerity, wage depression, and cuts to the social safety net in order to keep corrupt credit-ratings agencies happy and pay off gangbanksters and asset stripping campaign contributors, the logical conclusion would be "the bastards are all the same". For you, it's some sort of heroic validation of your rotten ideology. Guess we just have to wait for another round of I told you so's...

Can he really be expected to challenge entrenched power? He's literally a walking corn subsidy!

I mean, if you can't trust him to run a hotdog stand can you really trust him to run the country? Hmmm?

No, I'm sorry. I just cannot get past his weight. He's morbidly grotesque. Politics is one thing, but gahddamn!

yeah but most of us only wear one belt at a time And most of us only need one on the outside of our bodies.

-Clear to whom? How have I missed the stories about the Americans risking death by packaging themselves in shipping containers to seek out a better life for themselves in China? -It must be interesting to anyone who lived through the 70's to hear them expounded as the high-water mark of American civilization. Planes work just fine.

Talk about a security blanket, Steve Wynn is lovin' it! Don't forget this retard: "China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country? From new roads to wise leadership, sound financials and five-year plans, Beijing has the winning approach. Recently I flew from Los Angeles to China to attend a corporate board-of-directors meeting in Shanghai, as well as customer and government visits there and in Beijing. After the trip was over, in thinking about the United States and China, it was not clear to me which is the developed, and which is the developing, country. Infrastructure: Let's face it, Los Angeles is decaying. Its airport is cramped and dirty, too small for the volume it tries to handle and in a state of disrepair. In contrast, the airports in Beijing and Shanghai are brand new, clean and incredibly spacious, with friendly, courteous staff galore. They are extremely well-designed to handle the large volume of air traffic needed to carry out global business these days ...Human Rights/Free Speech: In this area, our American view is that China has a ton of work to do. Their view is that we are nuts for not blocking pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens..." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576430162195057084.html Blah, blah, blah. Reads like a LeMonde Editorial from the 30's heaping praise on Stalinist Russia. "Centralizing all decision making and resource-allocating power in the hands of a few technocrats made a lot of sense to me when I was running Microsoft. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we ran all of society this way. Just look at China!..." Nauseating. Nauseating or otherwise, it's pretty clear that when comparing America's 30-year experiment with neoclassical economics with countries with even mild industrial policies, it's failed both to "deliver the goods" and maintain a vibrant democratic political culture. But hey, we do have really nice platinum-level facilities for millionaires and up!

Next!

Talk about a security blanket, Steve Wynn is lovin' it!

"Physically Irresponsible NOT Fiscally Irresponsible in '12!"

"Sure, I'm morbidly obese, but it's my only downside!"

What's the difference between a mountain guide's wage and that large curtain of blubber hanging from the side of Chris Christie's face?

Capitalism is, by its nature, defined by uneven growth. But that isn't to say that China, et al. are simply "catching up" and that they'll follow a similar path of development. The kinds of structures that are emerging there, the manner of their integration into the global economy, and authoritarian features are quite different from the ones that defined the advanced economies emerging from WWII: Keynesian underpinnings, the compromise between labor and capital, liberal democracy, and the welfare state. The transitions have been going on for decades but the financialization of our economies, the bursting of the unsustainable bubbles designed to keep the party going a bit longer, and the disaster-style capitalism practiced in the aftermath have all by consigned that order to the dustbin "over here". Whatever modes of organization, ideology (Confucianism, so hot), and social control emerge "over there" as they articulate with movements and structures at the macro and micro level, it doesn't, nor is it ever, going to look like the US or Europe over the last 60 years. That's what I meant.

are you looking at Lenin-corpse spank material again, Prole? No, the New York Times ...

There's also the "stay at home silver lining" approach. I'm not pulling the lever for these vampires.

Yes, there is a lot here to take issue with, however the main points and contours of the argument are quite clear: "The game is over". The post-WWII consumer capitalist order is done. Not only has the Fordist age of mass employment come and gone, but the reliance on one unsustainable bubble economy after another both to maintain growth rates and the illusion of "keeping up" is giving way to open asset-stripping, debt farming, and scamscape. What comes after that? The illusion of partisanship is an open joke on a global scale. It took a Nixon to go to China, it took an Obama to give us austerity and structural adjustment, devaluation and wage-depression. Given that FIRE has and will continue to hold the reins of the State for some time, the Republican/Democrat dichotomy is just a good cop/bad cop routine played for the theatrics of legitimacy. What does politics look like when power over policy is effectively concentrated (like the US) or entirely absentee (like Greece)? It is becoming harder and harder for the system to reform itself. Unlike economies of producer/consumers, asset-strippers and tollbooth economies have no constituencies beyond the accounts where the money is deposited. "Full employment", "war on poverty", etc. were born of a time of power sharing when business, labor, and government actually needed each other. It's not clear that that remains the case.

Giddyup.

Best piece I've read all week.