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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 10 to 34 of 93. Go back in thread:
Posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:16:03
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:11:18
To be more serious, I do like Stephen Kotkin. It's not his politics I like. He just knows how to write history.
You haven't said much about Christopher Clark. I read him when I was on a boring and depressing Greek Island. Which may have helped. Stephen Kotkin is even better.
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 2:01:12
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:16:03
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:16:05
In reply to Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 2:01:12
So Mark is in Mexico?
I assume Brett has blown it. Believable?
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:31:53
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:16:05
'A rigorous all boys Catholic high school.'
Rigorous? What kind of rigour?
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 16:57:11
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:31:53
'How many beers is too many?'
No easy answer there.
Posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 16:57:11
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 13:52:50
In reply to Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
Says video not allowed in my country? (permission not given)
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 13:52:50
Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane. Did he die yesterday?
I had watched 4 hours of Kavanaugh testifying. Thinking about my feelings, I was embarrassed. What's my investment? Kavanaugh as a man? (Too silly to answer.) The dignity of the US Supreme Court?
Had to imagine this anywhere else. Embarrassed (once again) to say, 'Not even here'. Western Civilisation?
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:05:09
In reply to Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
Imagine this in Japan.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:31:00
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:05:09
The particular line I had in mind was
This generation's got no destination to hold.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:32:18
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:31:00
Did you see the video of Jeff Flake in the elevator? I posted it above, but I understand if you don't want to.
I can imagine this happening over much of the world unfortunately :(
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:38:11
In reply to Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
> Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane. Did he die yesterday?
>
> I had watched 4 hours of Kavanaugh testifying. Thinking about my feelings, I was embarrassed. What's my investment? Kavanaugh as a man? (Too silly to answer.) The dignity of the US Supreme Court?
>
> Had to imagine this anywhere else. Embarrassed (once again) to say, 'Not even here'. Western Civilisation?The power struggle is real. Kavanaugh hasn't demonstrated the temperament to be a (lifelong!) judge, and he's already come close if not outright perjury, but what stops the clock here is a story from HS. A believable story. But what amazes me is no one has made much of previous statements about his political work under oath.
This seems like a perfect example of what you described as a culture war.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:49:15
In reply to Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53KddneD-k
An article mentioned a lawsuit over heart surgery?
Which song did you send? I can look it up.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:36:42
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:32:18
>I can imagine this happening over much of the world unfortunately :(
Not the emotional performance. When a train is late in Japan I worry the driver may commit hari kiri or whatever it is for losing face.
The sex stuff, of course.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:38:49
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:49:15
The album is Volunteers and so is the song. It's the last one.
(Meadowlands is taken from the anthem of the Red Army.)
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:47:14
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:36:42
> Not the emotional performance. When a train is late in Japan I worry the driver may commit hari kiri or whatever it is for losing face.
>yes!
From what I've read, the US is a loud culture on top of it all.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:48:08
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:38:11
> he's already come close if not outright perjury, but what stops the clock here is a story from HS.
What is HS?
His questioning of Monica Lewinski, his work on torture. What's the other one?
How many beers is too many? That was a moment. I would guess not less than 20, but young people are resilient before the light goes out of their eyes.
Bloody prep schools. I went to one. No wonder they have to draw a line under it and ascend to sanctimony. Still, I felt the wounded narcissism was a cover for something else. (What?) He didn't believe it (the performance) and neither did anyone else, particularly his wife, and it didn't matter. The midterms are coming.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:51:44
In reply to Re: Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:38:49
> The album is Volunteers and so is the song. It's the last one.
>
> (Meadowlands is taken from the anthem of the Red Army.)I can't recall where (Not Bob Woodward?) I read that neocon strangled the 60s. I don't have enough history to understand this.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 18:13:52
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:51:44
The reference is to the Powell Memorandum, halfway down the wiki page.
Powell Memorandum[edit]
On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist, anti-Fascist, anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America for the chamber.[14][15] It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of Americans' faith in enterprise and another step in the slippery slope of socialism.[14] His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.[14] He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry. That was the point where Powell began to focus on the media as biased agents of socialism.[14]The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It sparked wealthy heirs of earlier American Industrialists like Richard Mellon Scaife; the Earhart Foundation, money which came from an oil fortune; and the Smith Richardson Foundation, from the cough medicine dynasty;[14] to use their private charitable foundations, which did not have to report their political activities, to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Scaife in 1964[14] to fund Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimalist government-regulated America as it had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
The Powell Memorandum thus became the blueprint of the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as well as inspiring the US Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.[16][17] CUNY professor David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.[18][19]
Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business. Powell urged conservatives to take a sustained media-outreach program; including funding scholars who believe in the free enterprise system, publishing books and papers from popular magazines to scholarly journals and influencing public opinion.[20]
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections by independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti.
Though written confidentially for Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, it was discovered by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson, who reported on its content a year later (after Powell had joined the Supreme Court). Anderson alleged that Powell was trying to undermine the democratic system; however, in terms of business' view of itself in relation to government and public interest groups, the memo only conveyed the thinking among businessmen at the time. The real contribution of the memo, instead, was its emphasis on institution-building, particularly updating the Chamber's efforts to influence federal policy. Here, it was a major force in motivating the Chamber and other groups to modernize their efforts to lobby the federal government. Following the memo's directives, conservative foundations greatly increased, pouring money into think-tanks. This rise of conservative philanthropy led to the conservative intellectual movement and its increasing influence over mainstream political discourse, starting in the 1970s and '80s, and due chiefly to the works of the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.[21]
Posted by sigismund on October 1, 2018, at 3:53:31
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » beckett2, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 18:13:52
I spent most of high school going to parties like this. Everyone was drunk, including the kids behind the wheel in the car home. Afterwardamazing that we liveda standard line was Oh my god, you were so wasted I was so wasted he was so wasted Everyone laughed, sometimes memorializing the events later in yearbook messages sprinkled with in-jokes. One time a girl woke me in the morning to check if the car was in the yard; she couldnt remember driving home. Plenty of kids forgot making out, passing out, throwing up. In the time since, I have not heard of anyone from that crowd accusing another or being accused of assault, but an accusers years of silence would not be surprisingsexual honesty was not our strengthnor would dumbfounded blankness on the part of the accused. Why were we so insecure with one another? Longing for connection, attention, a kiss, why were all of us, girls and boys alike mustered in our single-sex schools, so afraid that we were willing to be foolish pretending not to be, pretending that we couldnt hurt or be hurt?
Posted by beckett2 on October 5, 2018, at 13:45:36
In reply to Fun, posted by sigismund on October 1, 2018, at 3:53:31
The vote is in a few hours, and while there is a flicker of hope, I have a bad feeling, similar to election night.
Her piece, I wish, had mainstream publication because it should be read. Without going issue by hot button issue, her discussion of torture touched on all that is wrong with Kavanaugh. He is craven, self pitying, weak, a bully. I've mentioned he frightens me when he brays about reaping a whirlwind. He threatened over half the population with his partisan outbursts since over half the population vote democratically, but gerrymandering for one obscures this number.
Trump, Gina Haspel, Kavanaugh. His confirmation hearing was as she points out, a miniature of his attitude of disregard for suffering and dignity. I don't believe he once said to Blasey Ford he was sympathetic to her suffering, even if he didn't do it.
I was live streaming the senate remarks before the first vote (the vote to move to vote), and I was gobsmacked and angered by the dearth of creativity in everyone's remarks (I don't know if Kamala Harris spoke. She is a refreshing exception to this rule.) Left and right the same tired workhorses trotted forth. I muted McConnell after a minute because he is so despicable and all was a diarrhea of partisan blah blah bullsh*t.
Besides condoning torture, he aslo lied about receiving stolen emails. He claims he had no knowledge, even though he forwarded one with the subject heading 'Spying'. The emails were stolen (phished) democratic strategies from a mole within democratic headquarters.
Posted by sigismund on October 6, 2018, at 20:06:19
In reply to Re: Fun » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on October 5, 2018, at 13:45:36
Posted by beckett2 on October 8, 2018, at 19:51:17
In reply to Mark Blyth, posted by sigismund on October 6, 2018, at 20:06:19
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpjHV1UQng
I missed this somehow, I guess because of my liberal tears shed over the SCOTUS. I'll look at it.
The only joy of the past few days was the shredding of Banksy's painting.
Posted by beckett2 on October 8, 2018, at 23:47:30
In reply to Mark Blyth, posted by sigismund on October 6, 2018, at 20:06:19
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpjHV1UQng
Thank you. I understood some of this, and I figure if I listen/watch other videos, I'll understand more.
Posted by sigismund on October 9, 2018, at 14:42:07
In reply to Re: Mark Blyth » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on October 8, 2018, at 23:47:30
Well, he can speak and think quickly and some of it goes over my head.
I liked it because it suggests a way out of the divisive impasse.
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