September 2008
Sarah Palin’s Greatest Hits
After watching a number of these Sarah Palin-Katie Couric interviews today, I have to say that they might be one of the funniest things I’ve watched in a while — much funnier than the SNL parodies, which are a complete comedic failure. Anyhow, I kind of had to search around a bit to find the best ones, so here’s a compilation:
- On the “Bush Doctrine”
- On her news sources
- On experience
- On foreign policy
- On the economy (I): job creation
- On the economy (II): another Great Depression
- On the economy (III): John McCain’s legislative record
- Update: On Roe v. Wade
- Update: On abortion and evolution
- Update: On democracy, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and Israel
I think what makes these interviews especially funny isn’t so much that she’s completely uninformed and inarticulate, although this is a significant part of it. Basically, I agree with Matthew Yglesias that what produces the bizarre and baffling effect of watching Palin speak is that she’s trying desperately to communicate in Capitol Hill jargon, but is only capable of expressionistically stringing together talking points that fail to produce a coherent thought.
Bailout Burnout
I haven’t read through all of these yet, but Talking Points Memo has a great list of various economist’s reactions, including Paul Krugman’s, Robert Reich’s, and Nouriel Roubini’s, to the failure of the bailout plan to pass through Congress and where that leaves us. Definitely worth checking out.
America: The Gift Shop
If American foreign policy had a gift shop, what would it sell? (Via Mike Soron.)
“Fleecing Shareholders”
In the comments section recently a discussion erupted extending from fascism, to liberalism, to communism, and finally to the Wall Street bail-out. Yesterday Mark featured part of the discussion on the economics of fascism. Today I want to bring up this notion of “fleecing shareholders” as a form of benefiting the majority. As Ezra Klein notes in the above link
…[T]he majority of the country doesn’t own any stock. Indeed, the bottom 90 percent of us only own 20 percent of the market. The top 10 percent, by contrast, control 80 percent, with the top one percent of Americans controlling an astounding 36.9%.
You can see a graph over at The American Prospect, and the data comes from the Economic Policy Institute. So, again, the question with the bail-out is one chiefly concerning the question of who benefits, but seeing as the bail-out is in limbo at the moment there is not much else to add.
The Prestige and Kierkegaard
Recently I was at an Indian potluck and Christopher Nolan came up as a topic of conversation. Probably something related to The Dark Knight. Anyhow, the conversation eventually moved to The Prestige and I remembered a thought I had had on the film, but had forgotten about until that afternoon.
One potential way of reading the film would be through a Kierkegaardian lens, which I think shines some light on the trinity used within the film. Hence, we can think of Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialist trinity of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious as roughly equivalent to the pledge, the turn, and the prestige.
The aesthetic and the pledge are essentially the same: it involves something of a pact, but crucially adorned in a baroque manner (the importance of masks, titles, and theatrics in the film and magic itself). Think of any magic show you have ever seen as well: there is always something of a glam theatric that surrounds the entire performance. We might also parallel it to Lacan’s imaginary order, the order of ego adornment and spectral identification.
The ethical, then, is roughly equivalent to the turn: in it, the object disappears from our sight, as if by magic. But the “as if” here is crucial, because in our heart of hearts we must unconsciously believe that the trick is merely an illusion, even if we consciously wish it to be something more: if we were to fully accept it as something truly mystical, our entire…
The Economics of Fascism
Wikipedia on The Economics of Fascism:
Fascism also operated from a Social Darwinist view of human relations. Their aim was to promote “superior” individuals and weed out the weak.[15] In terms of economic practice, this meant promoting the interests of successful businessmen while destroying trade unions and other organizations of the working class.[16] Historian Gaetano Salvemini argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because “the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise… Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social.“[17]
So that we’re all aware, we’re not looking at a socialist economic bailout, but a fascist one.
Note: Bryan posted this already in the comments section, but I think it’s extremely relevant to our current national predicament so I’m posting it again. Plus I think Digg and Reddit are going to eat this up.
Time Will Crawl Remix
David Bowie Says:
There are a host of songs that I’ve recorded over the years that for one reason or another (clenched teeth) I’ve often wanted to re-record some time in the future. This track from Never Let Me Down is one of those. …
Our engineer, who had been listening to the radio, shot out of the studio and shouted: ‘There’s a whole lot of s*** going on in Russia.’
The Swiss news had picked up a Norwegian radio station that was screaming - to anyone who would listen - that huge billowing clouds were moving over from the Motherland and they weren’t rain clouds. This was the first news in Europe of the satanic Chernobyl. …
For those first few moments it felt sort of claustrophobic to know you were one of only a few witnesses to something of this magnitude.
Over the next couple of months a complicated crucible of impressions collected in my head prompted by this insanity, any one of which could have become a song. I stuck them all in Time Will Crawl. That last sentence rhymes.
Yer Blues
Yer Blues by The Dirty Mac because… well, why not?
The Girl From Las Vegas
The Girl From Las Vegas has a surprise. Check out Judge a Book By It’s Cover for increased titillation.
Fascism: 1975 and 1993
According to Dead Horse, the definition of “fascism” has made an odd shift between 1975 and 1993, with some interesting parallels to the recent bail-out. Here are the two American Heritage definitions:
From 1975: “A philosophy or system of government that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.”
From 1993: “A system of government marked by a totalitarian dictator, socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition, and usually a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.”
Dead Horse writes:
Notice what’s missing in the 1993 definition? “[M]erging of state and business leadership…” And that fascism is an extreme right phenomenon. By removing “extreme right” from the definition clowns like Goldberg were free to write “Liberal Fascism”, a most moronic combination of two antithetical terms.
An addition to the 1993 definition is “socioeconomic controls”. What form of government doesn’t have socioeconomic controls? Sweden has socioeconomic controls. Someone who didn’t know anything about fascism could grab onto “socioeconomic controls” and presume that fascism was against free markets, you know, like liberals.
Of course, fascism is against free markets. But then most people who proclaim that they are for free markets are against free markets. The question is never about the existence of socioeconomic controls. It’s about what kind of controls and who benefits. The same class of people who benefited from fascism in Germany and Italy are the same kind of people who benefit from the execution of Paulson’s plea.
It’s the merging of state and business leadership that is becoming official with this proposed bailout.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
The Neoliberal Dominance of the State
K-punk on the financial market crisis:
One can only share the exasperation of Ads Without Products about the rash of articles describing the current bail outs of financial institutions as constituting a leftward turn. It’s puzzling how “a massive transfer of public wealth to the private sector”, how the State buying up bad debts without getting any equity in return, could be considered the return of leftism. It’s capitalist realism by other means: the only kind of state intervention that is “possible”. This kind of “nationalisation” could only happen to protect the interests of the speculator class…
…What we’re seeing is not the collapse of capitalism, but the disintegration of the illusion that capitalism is about the untrammeled free market. The developments over the last few weeks only underscore Alex Williams’s point that the State, far from being exterior to capital, is a “vital element of stabilisation” which prevents capitalism from accelerating to the point of self-destruction.
Braised Chunks of Karl Popper Served in Heavy Sauce
On the ongoing subject of BHL and his new book, The Left in Dark Times, here is a hilariously scathing review by Scott McLemee in The Nation. The whole review is worth quoting. (Via Crooked Timber.)
Karl Pilkington on Whales
From his new blog:
Whales aren’t happy at the moment cos there’s too much noise in the sea which is a bit of a cheek when whales are actually the loudest animal on the World. Their noises can be heard for miles. When I had a free face rub a few years ago, the woman put a CD on of Whale noises. I asked her to turn it off cos it was annoying me. She told me it was one of the most beautiful relaxing noises on the planet. I said “I’m sure it is, if you’re swimming with them but a cd recording is just noise.” It’s like how I don’t mind the buzz from a fly if I’m sat in a field somewhere, but when a blue bottle is buzzing round the flat it does me head in. There’s a time and a place for everything. Plus the noise could be whales moaning for all we know. It always sounds more like a moan to me. I’m not a fan of classical music cos there’s no words so a whale warbling on with itself is never going to win me over.
I Can Play!
To follow up an unprecedented number of youtube videos, here’s an unprecedented second post about Omnichords. Oh, and it’s just another fucking youtube video.
Letterman Owns McCain
Chris Rock owns Bill Clinton, Katie Couric owns Sarah Palin, the federal government owns your local check cashing store and Letterman owns McCain.
Late night TV is the best part of the election season.
Via Wonkette.
Why $700 Billion?
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Jesus fucking christ. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Don’t Trust Wikipedia
On the Omnichord:
Scientists have recently uncovered hidden omnichord sounds deep within David Bowie’s song Heroes. There is still some debate as to which function in particular is being heard, but there is no doubt that the sonic signature is that of a late 80s omnichord. This has sparked a wild gold rush to find other Bowie tunes that may contain omnichord parts. Thus far, Space Oddity has returned no results.
The Transfer of Wealth
According to Senator Byron Dorgan, the total amount of wealth being transferred amounts to $1.7 trillion or $12,200 per taxpayer, via Lenin. I also love this little tidbit from Section 8 of the Treasury Financial Bail-out Proposal:
“Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”
Check out Karyn Strickler’s and Robin Varghese’s comments on this.
Chris Rock On Letterman
Everybody and their blog has probably already shown you this, but it’s too great to miss. Chris Rock on the Clintons, Obama and Sarah Palin:
Note, the video may go down but you can find some transcript here, the first part of the video here, and a torrent here.
Update: President Clinton was great on the Daily Show last night. Would I vote for Clinton over Obama and McCain if he were allowed in the race? Without a second thought.
Slavoj Žižek v. Bernard-Henry Lévy
The New York Public Library hosts a debate that sounds like it was narrated by Werner Herzog:
Bernard-Henri Lévy, France’s “rock-star philosopher,” and Slavoj Žižek, the Slovanian “Elvis of cultural theory,” will scrutinize the totalitarianisms of the past as well as those of the future, as they argue for a new political and moral vision for our times and investigate the limits of tolerance.
Does the advent of capitalism cause more violence than it prevents? Is there violence in the simple idea of the neighbor? asks Zizek in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.
Are human rights Western or Universal? How is it that progressives themselves-those who in the past defended individual rights and fought fascism-have now become the breeding ground for new kinds of dangerous attitudes? asks Lévy in Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against New Barbarism.
Audio available here. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Bailout Talking Points
The blogosphere reacts!
- David Brooks thinks we should take this opportunity to completely overhaul the financial system by hoping for the appearance of a financial oligarchy of “bipartisan” Economic Wise Men who will fix everything. Glenn Greenwald reminds him that this was basically the guiding idea before the entire financial market collapsed!
- Kos asks why some of the planned $700 bn. bailout will go to banks that aren’t even failing. TPM has more thoughts on this.
- Doubt is cast on whether or not we’re really in a “crisis.”
- Jonathon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution sums up what I will likely find to be the most fucked up part this entire scheme:
Whatever happens with the Wall Street bailout, I hope the recipients will take $30 million and endow a Hank Paulson Chair in Free Enterprise at AEI. Then the person in that position can spend the next forty years writing op-eds and going on TV telling us how if we just deregulate Wall Street it will make us all rich! rich! rich!
I think it’s clear that the Fed/Treasury is in the wrong: for one, the problem is not simply “liquidity,” it’s rather that the financial institutions, which had little oversight, were using bad loans as collateral. Some have used that argument to assert that the people who took out subprime mortgages are fundamentally at fault, but this perverted logic ignores the fact that the entire solipsistic speculation started with Wall…
The Pantheon of Capital
Premediation:
So where does the agency of the market to prompt the federal government to hand over nearly $1 trillion to bail out Wall Street come from? This agency, I would argue, in some sense comes from, participates in, the agency of premediation. The tone of this mediation is urgency. We are to be on the alert, to be concerned, and ultimately to be scared. The agents that we should fear are called “the market” or “Wall Street” or “the Dow.” “The market will not be happy if too many limitations are put on this bailout.” “Wall Street is worried that unless the Fed acts, more turbulence lies ahead.” “The Dow is demonstrating its concern about the terms of the bailout.” Not unlike the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods, these powerful creatures need to be feared and respected and pacified. The mediasphere is filled with the priests and votaries of these gods, warning the public of the danger that could come if they are angered or their will is flaunted.
…But the gods of Wall Street are in turmoil and they are still at the present moment more powerful than the collective voices of Main Street. Only when the premediation of Main Street’s agency begins to compete with the premediation of Wall Street’s agency will it be possible to imagine an economic future in which the US government acts to bail out the overwhelming majority of the American public who are threatened by this financial crisis, not the minority of those whose investments and livelihoods depend upon the financial markets.
Well Did You Evah?
One more Debbie Harry video. In this one’s she’s with Iggy Pop singing Cole Porter.
Here’s Tom Waits from the same album:
And lastly, David Byrne.
Top Sample Sources
Scoring Rules:
0 points per sound effect sample.
1 point per sample.
3 points per extra song if more than one song from the same group.
5 points per extra group if more than one group.
Note: A song, or group, is not counted if it only uses pure sound effects.
Youtube is Videodrome
I just wanted to be the first person on the internet to say this:
Youtube is Videodrome.
Dammit, George Michael!
What he won’t be doing any time soon is a movie version of a certain quirky TV show. He hasn’t heard of any plans for an Arrested Development film.
“I don’t think I would want to see a movie of the series if I was a fan, anyway,” Cera says. “And I don’t really see a need for it if you can get the three seasons on DVD.”
Ohh, COME ON!
Do we really have to put up with a bunch of shitty hipster movies by Michael Cera without the reward of an Arrested Development movie?
A bonus for your sorrow:
‘All of a Sudden’
Senator Bernie Sanders:
For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.
Watch the video interview here. (Via Daring Fireball.)
Ethnic Cleansing Stops Iraqi Violence
I have no idea how reputable this is but it seemed worth posting.
“By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left,” geography professor John Agnew of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study, said in a statement.
“Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning,” said Agnew, who studies ethnic conflict.
Jobriath the “Theatrical Event”
Here is Jobriath, the American record company response to David Bowie. Apparently there was a billboard in Times Square and a massive publicity campaign behind Jobriath but he never took off.
I can see why. The introduction to his performance promises “[a]n unusual and exciting theatrical event” which fails to materialize. He seems to be wearing springs and at one point he does flying leaps around the stage. The voice is also second rate Bowie derivative. This isn’t exactly Width of a Circle.
I would imagine the biggest obstacle to Jobriath’s success is that he got to the patent office second (or 72nd considering glam was already waning when his first release came out). Strangely he shares a given name with actor Bruce Campbell.
I’ll Stand By You
Is Karen O the new, Overt version of Chrissie Hynde?
Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle
William Greider in The Nation:
Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses—many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What’s not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?
If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public—all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called “responsible opinion.” If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics—exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
Bons Mots and Bêtes Noires
Christopher Hitchens reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism in the Times. There are a number of interesting anecdotes in the article, such as the ones about how several prominent French ex-Communists supported Sarkozy against Royal in the most recent French presidential election. But then it kind of fizzles out at the end with a tired, signature diatribe against GOD and FUNDAMENTALISM. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)
Vote for Obama
Shaviro over at Pinocchio Theory argues that, despite the fact that the Democrats will more than likely disappoint anyone who thinks anything will actually “change” beyond a pathetic return to Clintonian neoliberalism, one should nevertheless vote for Obama:
It is not stupid to vote for McCain/Palin; rather, it is evil. Republicans are intrinsically, and necessarily, morally depraved. Anyone who votes for McCain/Palin, or supports them, by that very fact demonstrates that he or she is a person utterly devoid of basic morality, and lacking in any respect for others. To vote for McCain is to shit on human civilization, and show utter contempt for human values and human hopes. And not in spite of the Democrats’ hypocrisy, but rather precisely because of this — because their hypocrisy is, as it were, the compliment that vice pays to virtue — the only moral thing to do in this election is to vote for Obama.
(Via I cite.)
The Free Market
Atrios over at Eschaton:
The entire financial system is practically collapsing and they’re lamenting the possibility of more regulation. I don’t think the sports/referee metaphor is perfect, but it’s probably good enough. People who prattle on about “the free market” are usually too stupid to have a clue how complicated and pervasive the “rules” had to be to to get a well-functioning modern market system: sophisticated concepts of contracts and enforcement, property rights, legal entities, proper accounting, bankruptcy, limited liability, etc… etc…, did not descend from the heavens but were, in fact, created.
Toyota Brown
So although many people seem to be dreaming of the slightly more exciting Republican nominee, last night I had the strangest dream involving Obama and McCain. It took place at a surreal convention center; the decor reminded me of a mix between a David Lynch film and a vibrant Nintendo videogame. Anyhow, the video being broadcast was showcasing, in a cartoony, almost socialist realist form, all of the various ways in which Barack Obama was better than McCain, making the case for how easy it should be for him to win. A typically stupid “dream as a fulfillment of a wish,” as Freud said.
Then John McCain took the stage with someone who was apparently an old buddy of his from their rock and roll days. The guy had sagging, but tight white skin, numerous piercings, shades and a soul patch, reminiscent of Tommy Lee. His nickname for McCain was “Toyota Brown,” the origins of which were not explained, except that it was referred to as a term of endearment from when John McCain, too, was evidently a hard rocker in the mid- to late-70’s.
Which is all to say that from now on I’ll be referring to John McCain as “Toyota Brown” on this blog, and hope others follow in my footsteps.
The Sound of Raining Bullshit
Lenin chimes in with his usual perspicuous analysis of the situation:
… The news can’t talk sensibly about this, because they can’t talk about class. They implicitly favour the capitalist purview in their focus, but they cannot directly address the issues involved. That is why no one relying on the papers and the television for enlightenment is going to have a clue what is going on…. In fact, the best explanation you are likely to end up with is that some banks made some horribly bad bets on mortgages for poor people (and, therefore, what? - poor people shouldn’t have mortgages?). To talk realistically about this crisis is to talk about what has happened to wages and profits for thirty years, the contours of class struggle and the associated political projects (socialism, social democracy, neoliberalism, etc), as well as the basic mechanism of exploitation behind that. To talk realistically about the issues raised by this crisis is also to talk about class, and particularly the impact on working class people. You can’t understand why those who gain most from the system suffer least when it fails, while those who gain least suffer most unless you at least mention the fact that there is such a thing as highly concentrated class power in the society…
Change We Can Believe In
While John McCain is out and about touting how the “fundamentals” of the economy are strong (as to what he means by “fundamentals,” I’m sure he has a very thorough answer), because to say they aren’t means that you are insulting hard-working Americans (unlike, say, actively voting against workers’ rights), McCain’s economic council is busy pretending that they had nothing to do with bringing about one of the worst economic crises in U.S. history. Worth mentioning in particular is Phil “A Nation of Whiners” Gramm’s special role:
Gramm orchestrated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 which “destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies.” He also pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which made legal “the mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector.” The Nation writes that “those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community.”
So basically, if this chart of Obama’s and McCain’s respective tax proposals hadn’t already convinced you that it’s in your best interest to vote for Obama, then McCain’s surreal ineptitude regarding the economy, as well as his cadre of buffoons, should perhaps be some food for thought.
Vote for Change
The Obama campaign has a nifty, Katamari Damacy-esque website where you can register to vote quickly and easily, unlike the McCain campaign, which could only conceivably win if they were to actively discourage new voters from registering. I followed the instructions and was able to register to vote absentee in my county in about 10 minutes tops. I think the process for normal voting is a bit shorter, since you don’t have to take a detour through state and then county websites. (Via Bitch, Ph.D..)
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
Hopefully this will be the last post in a while that contains the name “Palin” in the title, but this article by Frank Rich on the unbelievable phoniness and absurdity of the McCain campaign is probably one of the better op-ed columns I’ve read in the New York Times in quite a while. If you’re lazy, though, here’s the conclusion:
As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.
Defective MacBook Fame
What have I been doing while my computer’s been broken you ask? Just making the front page of Digg with a complaint to the Consumerist about my computer being broken. Not exactly how I hoped to get there…
Operation “Castration” or: Castration as Plenitude
Jacques-Alain Miller, the grand arbiter of all things Lacan, has a short article on Sarah Palin’s “feminism.” Here’s an interesting quote:
What is the precise difference between the women of these two generations? The first ones imitated man, respected the phallus, and performed as if they had one. The second wave knows that the phallus is only a semblance and, furthermore, one not to be taken seriously: it is the de-complexified femininity. A Sarah Palin puts forward no lack: she fears nothing, churns out children all while holding a shotgun, and presents herself as an unstoppable force, “a pitbull with lipstick”.
There’s also a great response to this and several other discussions on the definition of “feminism” in our post-Palin political world over at Infinite Thought. IT writes:
It is clear, then, that we are not only dealing with ‘right’ and ‘left’ feminism, but with a fundamental crisis in the meaning of the word. If ‘feminism’ can mean anything from behaving like a man (Miller), being pro-choice (Valenti), being pro-life (Palin), and being pro-war (the Republican administration), then we may simply need to abandon the term, or at the very least, restrict its usage to those situations in which we make damn sure we explain what we mean by it.
The Class Struggle
Jonathan Schwarz in A Tiny Revolution:
But as America has gotten less and less middle class, the power of the technocrats has eroded. At the same time, the rich have begun to bitterly resent that technocrats have ANY power.
…What’s happening now is the technocracy is organizing itself to fight back. MoveOn, the Obama campaign, blogland—that’s the technocracy in action. But the only way they’ll win is by allying themselves to the 80% of Americans who have essentially no power. And technocrats can almost never bring themselves to identify downward. (I didn’t get a PhD in mechanical engineering so I’d have to join no union!) Meanwhile, the 80% can smell the fact the technocrats do have contempt for them and have no intention of sharing real power—making the 80% vulnerable to rhetorical attacks on the technocratic elite.
Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?
Now, apparently they’ve only run the first test on the particle accelerator so far. They haven’t initiated the high-energy collisions yet, which would be the hypothetical instance in which the earth is destroyed. This won’t happen until October, but luckily they have an RSS feed. (Via Daring Fireball.)
Dreaming of Palin
An intriguing column in today’s issue of Slate about the sudden rise in dreams about Sarah Palin. Apparently if they like your dream enough they’ll publish it in a future article, you just have to send an e-mail to IdreamofSarah@gmail.com. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Russell Brand is America’s Golden Saviour
Russell Brand has made Fox News and those Disney rock stars angry. He’ll always be my hero for introducing the concept of seagulling (see definition #2).
They offer some extra facts “for the record”, which is thoughtful.
Fox News:
The “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” funnyman also encouraged Americans to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in the upcoming election, referred to George W. Bush as a “retarded cowboy fella” and took a shot at Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter.
“The safe sex message is to use a condom or become a Republican,” Brand said.
For the record, Rus isn’t an American citizen and can’t vote anyway …
Fanny, Freddie, and the Case for Social Democracy
Matthew Yglesias:
In addition to direct labor market interventions like the Employee Free Choice Act, if greater overall levels of economic production no longer benefit most people for “natural” reasons then we need to capture a larger proportion of that production and channel it into public services — schools, health care, parks, safe streets, reliable buses, new rail connections, clean air — that benefit everyone.
I think Matt is right to point out that the collapse and subsequent deprivatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offers yet more proof that neoliberalism is a discredited ideology whose vacuity is made all the more apparent during times of economic crisis. On the one hand, it’s tempting to take the view supported by most left-liberals that the State ought to act as a buffer against the tumultuous/destructive ebb-and-flow of unrestrained Capital, which isn’t to say that I disagree with the notion that the state ought to make it its raison d’être to provide adequate public services, but merely that the State should not be reduced to a utilitarian system of price-controls (here the neoliberal critique of Kenyesianism based on the “unintended consequences of regulation” rings true).
Instead, the collapse of the mortgage market should pose a troubling question not just for neoliberalism, but for the entire logic of Capital: should something like housing really be left to the private sphere, given the necessity of property for sustaining human life (not to mention Hegel’s defense of property rights qua the free subject’s “objective Will” in the Philosophy of Right)?
Moreover, the subsequent establishment of sprawling shanty towns and trailer parks due to foreclosure, often immediately outside of rich, gated communities, many of whose houses are now vacant (or, in a number of cases, eerily populated by animals and insects) raises the question of social justice under late Capitalism: particularly, of how it might be possible to bring about an equitable redistribution of property and of how to overthrow the economic and social barriers between those who are Included within the neoliberal “safe zones” (e.g., gated communities, green zones, border fences, etc.) and those who remain Excluded (e.g., “Third-World” slums/favellas and the rising number of homeless in the “developed” World).
Historians: Stop Bush/Cheney From Destroying Presidential Records
Think Progress reports:
Thirty-two of the nation’s leading historians have sent letters to congressional leaders calling on them to stregthen the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The effort, led by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and joined by the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the National Coalition for History, notes that while the PRA requires the administration to preserve presidential records, “it fails to provide an effective means of enforcing compliance with that requirement.”
The letters are available here and here. Given the Bush administration’s record of secrecy and deception, the preservation of presidential records is a crucial way to seal, in writing, concrete proof of their World-Historical malevolence: not necessarily for all of us who got the chance to live through Bush’s presidency, but for future generations who might be interested in the truth as opposed to some hypothetical white-washed narrative, the likes of which history so often succumbs.
The Art of Shrinking Heads
Jodi Dean over at I cite has put together a brief review of Dany-Robert Dufour’s The Art of Shrinking Heads, a Lacanian critique of late capitalism and the rise of the “postmodern subject.” I haven’t read Dufour’s book yet, but going off of Dean’s review, it seems to significantly overlap with Zizek’s similarly-themed politico-philosophical project, which would be one reason among others to take some interest in reading it (or her post(s) on it, at the very least).
Palin
Adam Kotsko in The Weblog:
The problem with Sarah Palin is not her “inexperience,” her specific abuses of power as governor, her vague relationship to an Alaskan secessionist movement, her family dramas, or her apparent ignorance of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance. Nor is the problem some kind of “meta” fact about her character that these various factors reveal, in combination or separately. Nor indeed is the problem that McCain apparently chose her with that peculiar blend of cynicism and recklessness we’ve come to expect from the Republican Party and McCain in specific.
No, the problem is that she’s a right-wing nutjob. Under no circumstances should she be allowed within fifty miles of the judicial appointment process or the running of the federal bureaucracy — again, not because she’s inexperienced or has a tendency toward self-aggrandizement or might have covered up her daughter’s pregnancy, but because her views on virtually every policy issue on which she’s formed an opinion are insane and because she is being given a “crash course” on the remaining issues by a man whose views are also insane.
The fact that her selection is being hailed by a major faction of the Republican Party is further evidence that the Republican Party is a fundamentally illegitimate political organization, not because they’re incompetent or corrupt (plenty of Democrats are incompetent, corrupt, or both), but because they have insane beliefs or are willing to pay lip service to insane beliefs. It’s content, not form — would that liberal commentators could recognize that.
The Case for Socialism
Shaun Harkin in the Socialist Worker:
So the question is: How do we restructure our society to meet the needs of the vast majority of humanity and rid the planet of the scourges of war, exploitation and oppression? Socialism—a society based on workers’ control and dedicated to meeting human needs—is the alternative that we urgently need.
My only problem with the piece is that a lot of the rhetoric is hopelessly outdated. This isn’t to say that it isn’t true, but simply that it isn’t an effective way to argue a point, especially if the goal is to write a persuasive piece (although I suppose if one is receiving their news from the Socialist Worker to begin with, then it wouldn’t really matter).
Klein Responds to Critics of The Shock Doctrine
Naomi Klein has written a follow up to the Right’s criticism of her latest book, The Shock Doctrine, one year after its publication. I recently read the book over the summer and highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested. (Via Mike Soron.)
The Audacity of Rhetoric
Another Zizek article in In These Times, this time specifically on the subject of Barack Obama. I haven’t read it yet since I’m in a hurry, but I like the quote the editor highlighted:
Measured by the low standards of conventional wisdom, the old saying ‘Don’t just talk, do something!’ is one of the most stupid things one can say.
Amy Goodman Arrested; Released, Tells Story
Amy Goodman, one of the leading progressive investigative journalists and head of Democracy Now! was recently arrested while covering a large protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Now that she has been officially released from prison, here is her story:
(Via Bitch, Ph.D..)
Sarah Palin’s Troubles
In the last few days I’ve learned the following about Sarah Palin:
- Her teenage daughter is pregnant.
- Her Down syndrome child is probably her grandchild.
- She thinks the founding fathers created the Pledge of Allegiance.
- She was an Alaskan Secessionist.
- She is under investigation in an ethic’s probe.
Either John McCain made a huge mistake which he’s suffering for or Digg and Dailykos are vindictive rumor mills. Either way, someone is pouncing.