I say the following not as a serious recommendation, as 1) it would be a compromise of principle since it allows for state involvement, though one that would work differently than the current ones thrust on us all the time, 2) I don’t know how it would actually work if done, & 3) I know it has no chance in hell of being done anyway, but consider this scenario: instead of a straight bailout, the company is seized from management and broken up, with the pieces controlled by groups of the employees, w/ the aid of the suppliers on logistics. From there, the inevitable state assistance goes to the workers, with the ones that ran the company into the ground deliberately left holding the bag. Obviously, this would be much more justified than what is going to happen…
Under a restructuring plan put forth this week by GM, the ailing automaker would give majority ownership to the federal government to stave off bankruptcy. That handoff would amount to an extraordinary partial nationalization of the maker of Buicks, Cadillacs and Chevys that has been an independent company since 1908. [...]
GM’s proposal would give the government more than 50 percent of the automaker’s stock in exchange for forgiving $10 billion in government loans. The United Auto Workers union would end up with a 39 percent stake.
The plan is far from a sure thing. Holders of GM’s $27 billion in unsecured debt have dismissed it as unfair because they would lose most of their investment. And the White House repeated this week that it doesn’t want to own GM or any other auto company. But through its broad efforts to rescue the auto industry, the White House is already deeply involved in the operations of GM and Chrysler.
So the government would own half of the company. The union (not the workers in the union, but the union, note the phrasing) would own 40%. No breakup. And this was GM’s idea. I suspect the UAW workers are in for a rude awakening if this plan goes through…
Edit: in a surprise turn, Brad — whose post you really should read in its entirety — catches not just a Catoite, but Big Chief Catoite himself Ed Crane, admitting that these types of moves make Obama a statist, not a socialist. Anyone who thinks Obama is a radical is looking at him through whiskey goggles.
Bored out of my skull, did my usual surfing and ran across this. Here’s a summary:
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Specter: “I don’t think 30 years is long enough in congress. Maybe with some luck I’ll last ’till 100, then keel over during a vote, get into the history books”
Republican Party: “You follow Statism A, we want Statism B, you don’t fit our wing of the elite!”
Specter: “M’kay then…(switches R after name on CNN to D)”
Republican Party: “DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON YOUR WAY OUT YOU FAG-LOVING BABY-KILLING COMMIE SIMP!!”
(pauses…)
Republican Party to Pennsylvania Democrats: “Psst…y’know how loyal of a Republican this guy was?”
==========================
For people so capable of manipulating a crowd into co-singing the ridiculous and/or just plain unthinkable, the US political elite sure does suck at logic. If contradiction were an Olympic sport, this’d get the gold…
Watching TV earlier, saw that Heinekin ad they’ve been showing with the people singing along to the radio in the taxi. Thought to myself “Man, it would’ve been ironic as hell if they had used that song without clearance & Biz Markie sued them over it…”
While we’re on the subject of reactions to the torture memo, here’s another one the Washington Post saw as sane:
Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families. The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their “moral compass,” a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder’s identifying them as “moral cowards.” Mulling Obama’s claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?
David Horowitz? Charles Krauthammer? Nope, it’s Michael “Imperial Hubris” Scheuer. Y’know, the guy that articulately argued that 9/11 was the culmination of pent-up blowback from several decades of intervention. The one that had a joint press appearance with Ron Paul about this in the run-up to the primaries. That is the person now arguing that to not torture is UnAmerican.
To put this in clearer perspective: Michael Scheuer saying this is like Redman doing an anti-drug PSA.
I can only think of one possible way that this column isn’t proof of severe cranial trauma: he’s using reverse psychology to express to people just how cold an empire that admits it is an empire has to operate, and this is but a chess move to make openly questioning the worth of policing the world harder to dismiss. Unfortunately, my internal meter is leaning more towards the Full of Shit explanation.
Reminder #12312978 of the bankruptcy of politics: people that write garbage like this aren’t laughed into obscurity…:
If ever there were a time for President Obama to trust his instincts and stick to his guns, that time is now, when he is being pressured to change his mind about closing the books on the “torture” policies of the past.
Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States.
He was right to do this. But he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government.And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices. (emphasis mine)
As I’ve mentioned before, the likelihood of prosecutions was, is and will be zilch barring an absolute miracle. There’s generally been two views shaking out over this:
Right-wingers say that the entire thing — disclosure of the memos, criticism of the interrogation methods, all of it — is stupid, the techniques INCLUDING waterboarding aren’t torture, and it doesn’t matter anyway because they were only applied to the worst of the worst and great intel came from them. All of these are verifiably false, but at least it’s internally consistent with their ends-justify-the-means ironically relativist worldview.
Pretty much everybody else approves of the releases, and if they don’t openly call for prosecutions (though, as Glenn recently pointed out, polls have shown approval for such) they at the least think the tactics were a dumb and/or disgusting idea.
In contrast, David Broder’s view is effectively “nice to know, yeah it sucked, but who cares?”. How original of him! His reasoning for this is ________?
[...]having vowed to end the practices, Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats.
This is not another Sept. 11 situation, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. We had to investigate the flawed performances and gaps in the system and make the necessary repairs to reduce the chances of a deadly repetition. The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places — the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department — by the proper officials.
This sounds like Broder is trying to argue that torture was, possibly, the only thing standing between us & another attack, only w/o coming out and actually saying it. Either that, or he’s justifying wild half-assed panic in response to failure. How he figures waterboarding and slamming people into walls was just another allegedly carefully agreed upon tactic switch for Defending The Homeland purposes and not feel-good vindictiveness (and, as we now know, fishing for that al-qaeda/Saddam tie that never materialized…) puzzles me. No, seriously David, what’s your argument?
Suppose that Obama backs down and Holder or someone else starts hauling Bush administration lawyers and operatives into hearings and courtrooms. Suppose the investigators decide that the country does not want to see the former president and vice president in the dock. Then underlings pay the price while big shots go free. But at some point, if he is at all a man of honor, George W. Bush would feel bound to say: That was my policy. I was the president. If you want to indict anyone for it, indict me. Is that where we want to go? (emphasis mine)
Back in high school, random idle chitchat at one time that got into interracial adoption prompted a running joke with my friends that one day I’d adopt a little white boy & change his name to something like Malik or Hakeem. Newsweek has a story about a black couple that for real adopted a white girl, and how people around them treat that fact. To summarize (unfortunately…):
Whites: “…I think we should check on that girl, I’m getting suspicious of that big negro that keeps following her around”
Jamaica’s government put police and the army on alert to prevent violent demonstrations as it prepared to announce tax increases on gasoline, cigarettes and other consumer items on Thursday.
Police and soldiers were deployed at what the government called “strategic” locations across the Caribbean island to quell any violent protests. Finance and Planning Minister Audley Shaw was expected to announce the tax increases during a budget debate later on Thursday. [...]
Nine people were killed during riots that broke out when a gasoline tax increase was announced in April 1999.
Note that this is over sales taxes. Meanwhile, we have protests here over the top marginal income rate, attended by people that don’t pay it, organized by people who’re more affected by capital gains taxes (which are generally lower than that top income tax rate), both groups turning out to not really have a problem with the spending side of the equation as long as it goes to weapons manufacturers & mercenaries.
I dunno how legit this is supposed to be, or if it’s a joke gone horribly wrong, but here’s what someone in Ohio wants to do for the 4th of July (the original video was yanked, someone else recorded from it beforehand):
Common sense desperately wants to tell you something. It says that, if the environment is that the government is releasing reports about fears of far-right violence & people that were strangely silent the past 8 years are suddenly speaking as if they’ve changed their names to Liberty McFreedom and randomly throwing out “-isms” that they don’t bother to learn the definitions of, then publicly announcing an armed march on Washington and then following through on it is a good way to end up making the Waco siege look like a picnic.
Look, obviously I do not feel that merely being armed is communication of violent intent. There in fact is a LOT to be angry about. As for the point mentioned by others about violating weapons permits on the journey, it’d be a rather pitiful anti-government movement that was afraid of violating laws they inherently believe should not exist. What gets me about these things is that, for all the bluster, the angle approached here smacks of mere political opportunism (albeit in the case of the militias, a different form than commonly talked about). I can’t help but wonder why this type of sentiment is so much more popular when the driver’s seat of the empire is held by someone who has a (D) behind their name on the news.
In case anyone doesn’t get what I mean by this criticism, I mean to say the following and nothing further:
Actual, principled anti-statism I am completely on board with. IMO, this looks more like a bunch of wackos just angry that they don’t have control. And with what the government will do to your garden variety protestor, try to imagine what they’ll do to whoever shows up for this event.
Edit 1040am CST, 042409: After some more thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a hoax. No one that was actually planning this would post it on fucking YouTube, and disguising his voice is pointless since if he attended people would find out who he was. I’ll leave this up because of my statement about the overall wave of shallow anarchy-chic, but the video is pure humor to me now, not a discussion point.
There was argument before the Supreme Court yesterday about the propriety of strip-searching 13-year-old girls on suspicion of having drugs, such as that scourge of humanity and claimer of souls known as Advil. In a sane society this would be a 9-0 decision opposed to it, w/ the opinion reading simply “WTF is wrong with you?!?”.
Unfortunately, a sane society is not that which we live in. Thus, we get people old enough to know better actually debating this like the State is capable of furnishing a legit reason to eyeball the crotches of children. Some more enthusastically than others…:
David O’Neil, an assistant to the solicitor general representing the federal government, tried to steer a middle course.
The Fourth Amendment had been violated, he said, because school officials did not have a reasonable suspicion that Ms. Redding had secreted drugs in her undergarments. But Mr. O’Neil added that Ms. Redding should not be allowed to sue the assistant principal who ordered the search, because the law was unclear at the time.
Justice Antonin Scalia challenged him on the first point.
“You search in the student’s pack, you search the student’s outer garments, and you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has drugs,” he said. “Don’t you have, after conducting all these other searches, a reasonable suspicion that she has drugs in her underpants?”
“You’ve searched everywhere else,” Justice Scalia said. “By God, the drugs must be in her underpants.”
Mr. O’Neil said a more focused suspicion was required. “Certainly there is no practice anywhere, that I’m aware of, of hiding ibuprofen in underwear,” he said. (emphasis mine)
Leave aside the fact that, since ibuprofen is taken orally, keeping the pills in your underwear would make them unsuitable for consumption and thus pointless — unless, of course, you either didn’t pay attention in Biology or simply vehemently disagree with Dante’s view of the nether regions. The way Scalia sees it, not finding drugs in the normal places means not that the kid doesn’t have drugs, but MUST have them in their underwear. Following that to its logical conclusion, what exactly stops authorities from thinking that if the drugs aren’t in their underwear then they’re in what is under the underwear, and taking that as excuse to play Amateur Gynecologist with our daughters?
