Daily Archives: January 28, 2010

Take that, Glenn Beck (and Rex, too)

by CK MacLeod Posted on January 28, 2010

Things would have been very different under a President McCain: “I would have called up both Republican and Democrat leaders and say, ‘could everyone please sit quietly, let me deliver my very important message not only to them but to … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged John McCain, State of the Union | 9 Comments

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Latest on Wed, 09:00 pm
miguel cervantes: It's a comic book film re at least the fist two Spidermans, LA gets the treatment in Iron Man, somet imes one thinks too much on those things,
fuster: can you believe that people were calling the Lakers an underdog against the Thunder?
CK MacLeod: What's that? Baseball?
fuster: it most def ain't baseball the way Artest plays it. my twin nephews played on a pretty serious rugby team until one of them needed a rather extensive facial reconstruction.....happily everyone can now tell them apart ......and somehow it puts me in mind of Ronny.... who a few minutes ago, put an elbow unto Harden's face as he dragged him to the ground.
miguel cervantes: btw, how often does a Nicks or Lakers player, come down with abdominal strain,
fuster: Heck, miggs, that's so minor compared to this......... “I can’t even believe we won, to be honest with you,” BasSie said. ticker-tape parade is being planned

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- Let them eat flat screens (12)
  - fuster:
    Siri can be a real helper…… http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05 /17/science/bodies-inert-they- moved-a-robot-with-their-minds .html?hp
  - CK MacLeod:
    You mean in the sense that the crisis of the late ’70s was handled by putting the US economy as a whole on the credit card? Just speculating here, but we can use...
- Bibi Christ (11)
  - fuster:
    It ain’t so much where he came from, it’s where he’s going……… saying ” it may have to be done” doesn’t the fact that it can’t...
  - miguel cervantes:
    Well Mofaz came from Likud, didn’t he, it’s not an easy decision to strike Iran, but to deny that it may have to be done, is the delusion, similarly, the...
- Ghost Machine (7)
  - miguel cervantes:
    Those interested in casuistry and determinism, the film suggests that Loki came to Earth, because of the research into higher order weapons, at their own version of White Sands.
  - miguel cervantes:
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jo hngaudiosi/2012/05/08/disney-c onfirms-the-avengers-2-movie-t heme-park-rides-games/
- Two New Sites (8)
  - fuster:
    tchotchkeite !!!!
  - CK MacLeod:
    mmmmmm tchotchkes is looking better to me again…
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The traditionalists do not just believe that the word "marriage" should be taken to refer to the union of a man and a woman, and they do not admit of a distinction between a popular or common usage and a legal one: They insist, over and over if rarely with explanation, likely under instruction by pollsters and spin-sters, that marriage is between a man and a woman. State and the law, they believe, should reflect this primary denotation, not merely because a one-to-one correspondence between common or traditional usage and the law is preferable in the abstract, but because the heterosexual union is biologically and organically the basis of human life, making any attitude towards it other than reverence both inhuman and morbid, all the more ominous as a principle of the state. →
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The bigot is the individual whose beliefs are so contrary to the fundamental commitments of an egalitarian culture that they are not and cannot be worthy of serious discussion, but only of scorn and ridicule - or, for those whose political sensibilities are still impaired by remnant sympathies, of mandatory confession, self-criticism, and disassociation. →
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The Tsar, Who Is Above the Law, Declares Nothing To Be Above the Law

The Tsar, Who Is Above the Law, Declares Nothing To Be Above the Law
	In short: "It is almost as if, starting from a certain point, every decisive political event were double-sided: the spaces, the liberties, and the rights won by individuals in their conflicts with central powers always simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals' lives within the state order, thus offering a new and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves."

In short:

"It is almost as if, starting from a certain point, every decisive political event were double-sided: the spaces, the liberties, and the rights won by individuals in their conflicts with central powers always simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals' lives within the state order, thus offering a new and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves."

not necessarily great like good great
	In short: "Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Inevitably, society took measures to protect itself..."

among others
	In short: "Inner things or outer things, what are they but things and things!"

What a Concept

What a Concept
	In short: The perceived intellectual exhaustion of liberalism, along with receding memories of the 1930s, has in recent years led to renewed interest in Carl Schmitt's work, including this tract, written at the time that Schmitt was urging Hindenburg to save the Weimar Republic from itself. Hindenburg had other ideas. The author was a German who joined the Nazi Party in the same month as Martin Heidegger, and was active in subequent years as an ideological anti-semite, but THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL remains arguably one of the most important and challenging pieces of political writing of the last 100 years.

In short:

The perceived intellectual exhaustion of liberalism, along with receding memories of the 1930s, has in recent years led to renewed interest in Carl Schmitt's work, including this tract, written at the time that Schmitt was urging Hindenburg to save the Weimar Republic from itself. Hindenburg had other ideas. The author was a German who joined the Nazi Party in the same month as Martin Heidegger, and was active in subequent years as an ideological anti-semite, but THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL remains arguably one of the most important and challenging pieces of political writing of the last 100 years.

Enigma wrapped in the obvious

Enigma wrapped in the obvious
	In short: "A synoptic view of the current crisis would say: while the epicentre lies in the technologies and organisational forms of the credit system and the state-finance nexus, the underlying problem is excessive capitalist empowerment vis-a-vis labour and consequent wage repression, leading to problems of effective demand papered over by credit-fuelled consumerism of excess in one part of the world and a too rapid expansion of production in new product lines in another."

In short:

"A synoptic view of the current crisis would say: while the epicentre lies in the technologies and organisational forms of the credit system and the state-finance nexus, the underlying problem is excessive capitalist empowerment vis-a-vis labour and consequent wage repression, leading to problems of effective demand papered over by credit-fuelled consumerism of excess in one part of the world and a too rapid expansion of production in new product lines in another."

Eghel Lehge Gheel Ghele Leegh

Eghel Lehge Gheel Ghele Leegh
	In short: Fredric Jameson re-reads Hegel's most perplexing work - intended to be a dispensable preface, but translated since Hegel's time into a core statement - for the (for whatever) present moment. He therefore begins at the end: "Absolute Spirit cannot be considered as a terminus of any kind, without transforming Phenomenology of Spirit into a developmental narrative, one that can be characterized variously as teleological or cyclical, but which in either case is to be vigorously repudiated by modern, or at least by contemporary, thought of whatever persuasion."

In short:

Fredric Jameson re-reads Hegel's most perplexing work - intended to be a dispensable preface, but translated since Hegel's time into a core statement - for the (for whatever) present moment. He therefore begins at the end: "Absolute Spirit cannot be considered as a terminus of any kind, without transforming Phenomenology of Spirit into a developmental narrative, one that can be characterized variously as teleological or cyclical, but which in either case is to be vigorously repudiated by modern, or at least by contemporary, thought of whatever persuasion."

Free to Oppress but Could Be Worse!

Free to Oppress but Could Be Worse!
	In short: Wood's THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC is an acknowledged classic, combining exhaustive research into the political literature of colonial and revolutionary America with an original and durable interpretation of "American Political Science" and its first great product, the Constitution. EMPIRE OF LIBERTY moves the story into the new, rapidly changing nation's difficult first decades, pitting the greatest names in early American history directly and even violently against each other, as a comprehensive early national portrait emerges - along with the basic contradictions of the American polity mirrored in the title.

In short:

Wood's THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC is an acknowledged classic, combining exhaustive research into the political literature of colonial and revolutionary America with an original and durable interpretation of "American Political Science" and its first great product, the Constitution. EMPIRE OF LIBERTY moves the story into the new, rapidly changing nation's difficult first decades, pitting the greatest names in early American history directly and even violently against each other, as a comprehensive early national portrait emerges - along with the basic contradictions of the American polity mirrored in the title.