I Gotcher Overton Window Right Here

Tigerhawk, an unusually honest, and in this case knowledgeable, wingnut:

Jim Leach, the Republican former Congressman from eastern Iowa (the First and then Second Iowa Congressional Districts) from 1976 to 2006, has endorsed Barack Obama.

[…]

Longtime readers know that Jim Leach was the first and only politician for whom I actually knocked on doors… As a tenth grader at Iowa City High School I devoted literally hundreds of hours in the fall of 1976 working on his ultimately successful campaign[.]

[…]

When Jim took an appointment at Princeton University last year I sent him an email and asked him to lunch, and he graciously accepted. We mostly talked about old times and that original election campaign, but it became quite clear that we disagreed quite strongly on foreign policy. He said then — in April 2007 — that he thought Barack Obama had the potential to transform America’s reputation in the world. I walked away persuaded that if Obama were the Democratic nominee Jim would endorse him, or at least vote for him.

That said, Jim Leach has not grown more liberal over the years. He was well within the mainstream of Gerald Ford’s Republican Party and felt quite comfortable in it. But thirty years after his first election to Congress he no longer agreed with his own party’s leadership on many of the most important matters of the day. I believe he would say that he had not changed so much as the party had, and I would agree with him. Today’s GOP is far to the right of the party that was in the permanent minority in the 1970s, and it has dragged the Democrats along with it. Jim Leach, a Ford Republican who has not really changed his views on the big issues, is now quite comfortable endorsing a Democratic nominee who is himself probably closer to the center than the leaders of that earlier era, including George McGovern, Ted Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Edmund Muskie, Mo Udall, and even the 1976 version of Jimmy Carter.

Point is, count your blessings.

(Andy McCarthy, in contrast a typically dishonest, game-playing wingnut, calls Leach a RINO.)

The sorely-missed General Glut, May 2004:

Contemporary DLC Democrats (including John Kerry) as well as most “liberal” bloggers are little other than the reincarnation of liberal Republicans of a bygone age. Compare John Anderson of 1980 to any of these guys and try to measure the difference. Warning: bring your micrometer.

Heh! Indeed!

Bingo:

The current location of the Overton Window is so far to the right of any objective political spectrum, that what are now considered Extreme Left Positions are really not extreme at all.

 

Comments: 101

 
 
 

Every time I look out my Overton Window, I see George W. Bush mooning me while Cheney flips me the bird.

 
 

Duh.

 
 

So what’s the point? Does Tigerhawk want a cookie for noticing what the rest of us noticed ten to fifteen (or more) years ago?

Or, more relevently, is Sadly, No pointing out that conservatives can learn?

 
 

Say we all got together and killed a few dozen billionaires, then redistributed what we could carry of their wealth to the slums? What year would that move the Overton Window to?

 
 

That was…sensible?

Wait. I am accustomed to laughing at their lack of acuity.

What do you want me to do with this?

Yay?

 
 

Why does the flacking spam filter hate me?

 
 

Or, more relevently, is Sadly, No pointing out that conservatives can learn?

I doubt it – Tigerhawk seems pretty content with the location of the current center, hence his “Count your blessings” ending. Seems to me it’s more like he’s preparing the faithful for an Obama victory.

 
 

What a slacker. He’s lolling about counting his blessings while his fellow wingnuts are doing all the work. Get to work! Those Democrats aren’t going to smear themselves, you know.

 
 

Points of some interest: Joke Line is showing signs of being a ref who has been successfully worked — here — and the Obama campaign has put out a loooong rebuttal to the Corsi pile of crap.

The brain-dead won’t be convinced, but McLame may just be letting his surrogates paint him into a corner too odiferous and (more to the point) too small to win.

 
 

This is all seemingly correct from the political standpoint, but from another, things have never been more “liberal”.

Culturally, this country is getting more liberal by the day. To the point where the only way fundies can really compete is by copping popular media — everything from pulp novels to rock — in order to sell their wares.

It’s bad to hate blacks and gays now — though surely bigotry is everywhere. No one blinks much anymore when blacks and whites kiss on TV, or, in the case of Six Feet Under, gayly fuck.

The culture scolds — invariably conservative and religious with an odd lefty academic in there — are getting routed.

Now that might not be as important as universal health care (although that is almost an inevitability within the next 30 years — the system will collapse by then), but it’s not nothing.

Politics are cyclical — but culture is largely evolutionary (with obvious caveats), which is why every era’s self-described conservatives are so afraid of change — because it’s VERY hard to change back.

 
 

This is no doubt the case and is a sad state of affairs. Likewise the “liberals” on the Supreme Court are pretty much center-right compared to the Warren court. But I’m not going to sit out every election waiting for my candidate to come along, because it’s na ga happen. If real liberals are not simply a minority in this country but a large voting bloc that keeps getting shut out of elections because we live in a corporate kleptocracy-oligarchy, what do we do about it?

 
 

If real liberals are not simply a minority in this country but a large voting bloc that keeps getting shut out of elections because we live in a corporate kleptocracy-oligarchy, what do we do about it?

Agreed. You either pick your favorite candidate or you start looking for a way to overthrow the government. No points for sitting it out on principle.

 
 

you start looking for a way to overthrow the government

Not electing a Republican is a good start.

They’ve yanked themselves so far to the right I think McCain’s current problem stems from the fact that he’s not stupid enough for the right wing, and too stupid for the rest of the population.

At least, I hope so.

 
 

what do we do about it?

Local action. Make sure the elected politicians in your area skew left. It is not a quick fix.

 
 

They’ve yanked themselves so far to the right I think McCain’s current problem stems from the fact that he’s not stupid enough for the right wing, and too stupid for the rest of the population.

Or as the alleged lliberal corporate media tells it, “It’s a difficult year for Republicans”. Funny how they never explain just why that is.

Also Obama is an elitist mooselimb terrorist who is too skinny and popular.

 
 

If real liberals are not simply a minority in this country but a large voting bloc that keeps getting shut out of elections because we live in a corporate kleptocracy-oligarchy, what do we do about it?

Get loud, unashamedly biased, and hard left. Stop defending Obama and start defending Ayers; stop accepting ‘electability’ as part of the terms of the discussion. Get angry when people knuckle under on important things, and never let go of the political and social totems of the left, no matter what the gains.

Goldwater was a fucking crank, but his people knew not to let go of anything. They’re still calling Adlai a faggot and we’ve already forgotten how intolerable Ford was, to say nothing of Clinton.

The right wants a culture war, you give it to them – and if it goes to fucking molotovs, you buy some fucking kerosene. No quarter for the Nazis, no mercy for the collaborators.

 
 

I was pretty pleased when Leach voted against the Iraq fuckup, the only congress critter from Iowa to do so – including liberal Sen. Tom Harkin and Blue Fucking Dawg Leonard Boswell. Nevertheless, I wasn’t sad when Loebsack beat him in the Republican clobbering of 2006. (If only we could have cleared out Steve King instead, but King’s district is more rock-headed than rock-ribbed, and sadly I suspect that bastard will keep his seat even when Obama surges to victory in this state, which it looks like he’s going to do with a wide margin.)

Leach held on to that seat in a quite liberal district by not being offensively right wing. He didn’t really do much, that I could tell. He was right about where putative Dem Boswell was on the issues. He belonged to the type of Republican genre that former Governor Bob Ray belonged to, reasonable, socially to the left of most republicans and fiscally responsible.

I don’t know about other Midwestern states, but if Iowa Republicans are any indication, there’s a lot of positioning going on among the not-insane ones to survive the coming Dem onslaught. Sen Grassley has built his career on going after wasteful spending at the Pentagon, and I look for him to ramp it up. He’s also been going after the televangelists about their tax exempt status, and was shut out of the big Rethug convention blowout for his pains. He’s really pissing off the religious loonies with this one.

Meanwhile, the state party has been taken over by full bore right wing lunatics. The social conservatives are frothing at the mouth and they are scaring the shit out of the moderates. They actually put a woman who’s a big wheel with Iowa Right to Life in power. Ah, it’s gonna be sweet. In central and southeastern Iowa there won’t be a Republican elected to a city council seat at this rate. I dig it.

 
 

Steve King is one st00pid mofo. But the House is so full of them, eh Candy?

It’s hard to stand out when you’re competing with the likes of Michelle Bachman and Jean Schmidt.

 
 

The right wants a culture war, you give it to them

Yes!

It’s a tough thing. When a philosophy is built on tolerance, what do we draw the line at tolerating?

Fortunately, there’s always a wingnut who crosses it in a jet plane.

 
 

It’s hard to stand out when you’re competing with the likes of Michelle Bachman and Jean Schmidt.

Those two are loons and I really don’t believe that a majority of the people in their districts are behind them. Local pushing could rid the house of two nuts who help move the house to the right by being so fucking nutty that evil looks sane.

 
 

Damnit WordPress ate my link.

Dr. Wulsin might knock Jean out in OH-02 this year, RB. Although it is a district full of funny mentals.

 
 

what are now considered Extreme Left Positions are really not extreme at all.
Undeniable given that many of the positions being portrayed by the GOP and some of the media as extreme leftwing were originally embraced by Nixon and Ford. Truth is that Clinton’s positions are almost indistingushable from theirs and Obama’s only slightly different (and the difference keeps getting smaller as he continuously tracks rightward). Unbelievable given that polling data clearly and consistently (for more than a dozen years) show that most (about 60-70%) favor positions and policies which are well to the left of either Clinton or Obama.

 
 

What Alec said. The Dem leaders are wusses. They won’t fight until they get a 10:1 majority. So, the rank (especially the *very* rank) and file have to do it, and maybe some day we will get enough respect to get that 10:1 punch.

My neighbor, in our Blue neighborhood, has a bumper sticker: “Drill Now, Drill Here, Pay Less.” It’s on the bumper of a Yukon XL. My question is, do I sneak up and slap a home-made “DICKHEAD” sticker on the bumper? Do I approach them with faultless logic in a friendly and neighborly way? Do I throw pig’s blood on the vehicle? (No, wait a minit, that’s for people who wear fur coats. Sorry.)

What do I, a Dirty Fighting Hippy, do?????

 
 

Very true, HTML. When I look at the “liberal” blogosphere, I’m often surprised at where they actually are on the spectrum. In European terms, few would qualify as liberals at all. The likes of Markos and Yglesias strike me as Third Way types, centre-rightists who are reasonably liberal on social issues (this is precisely what the “Third Way” in Europe was designed for: people who had had a liberal education and didn’t really GAF about who you fuck but liked rightwing economics because they wanted to be rich and not feel guilty about it).

And when will you guys get it? The Dem leaders are not “wusses”. They’re not fighting because no one is doing anything they don’t like.

 
 

Apparently the religious right, now that they’ve got complete control over the Iowa GOP, is driving out anyone not well to the right of Car Rove. Chuck Grassley is not being allowed to attend the GOP convention as a delegate because of his stand against Christian right crooks. Which is good news for Dems, because just like in Kansas, the wingnuts will overplay their hand–they can’t help themselves–and will drive every moderate politician in the state out of the party.

 
 

Now that might not be as important as universal health care (although that is almost an inevitability within the next 30 years — the system will collapse by then), but it’s not nothing.

It’s bad to hate blacks and gays now — though surely bigotry is everywhere. No one blinks much anymore when blacks and whites kiss on TV, or, in the case of Six Feet Under, gayly fuck.

The right wants a culture war, you give it to them – and if it goes to fucking molotovs, you buy some fucking kerosene. No quarter for the Nazis, no mercy for the collaborators.

What you do is you make top-down class warfare and endorsements of aggressive war just as toxic as racism — no, you make it even more toxic.

Daniel Larison said something a few months ago that stopped me in my tracks. Now he’s a paleocon and so might not be coming, as it were, from the right place in making this remark but he asked: Why is it that warmongering is more socially acceptable than racism? (Which ignores, for now, the complicating fact that the basis of *some* warmongering *is* racism.)

Why indeed? Now before Mandos or some other hysterical person jumps my case — I’m not saying that racism shouldn’t be unacceptable. I’m glad it’s to the point now that we’ve pretty much won — and continue to win — that cultural battle. But stupid wars — and I don’t think I have to argue about this, do I? — in a utilitarian sense hurts (or kills) more people and damages the country more than garden variety racism.

[I think somebody could (counter?) argue that racism is a whack-a-mole game, where when we stamp it out of one place it pops up in another. Consider the LGF phenomenon, which is new. Ten years ago, say (basically before 9/11), their sort of racism was unheard of outside some crazy Jewish and Xtian superfundie circles. Now it’s basically shared, or at least strategically acknowledged, by the entire rightwing. Now that doesn’t mean, for the simplistic thinkers out there, that the *sole* bias undergirding the wingnut love of the war on terra is racism; but it’s defnitely a part of it.]

Now lemme consider this from a different POV. I put myself in a smart wingnut’s shoes and consider my heirarchies. What is most important to me? What, OTOH, am I willing to compromise on?

Or here’s another way of looking at it. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that what victories we’ve won are due to the rightwing basically *allowing* us to win them — while fighting rear-guard actions against us on cultural fronts, basically let’s assume that they’ve agreed to cede ground in areas that they don’t care about as much. If we assume this, we can assume that the areas in which we have *not* gained ground are the areas in which the rightwing has the biggest investment. *This*, I think, explains why we can’t make warmongering and top-down class warfare socially unacceptable — the rightwing values these things above all others, and will not cede an inch in defending them. Which makes sense, because the former preserves their power and enriches them (and drives deficits which prohibit liberals from spending on social programs like they want, on those rare occasions when they do get power), while the latter ..well, it’s value to them should be obvious.

Ask yourself first, who wingnuts are — not in their identity but in their class. Then consider the interests of that class. Sure, some of its interests are cultural — it has to be to trick enough culturally conservative plebes to vote as rich men. But this cultural interest is a cynical means-to-and-end; it’s not their goal. No, at the top of their heirarchy is a basic desire for fuedalism. Above all else they seek to maintain it and enlarge it. Get rich and *not* give a sucker an even break. Attack this; make this goal and this belief pure cultural poison and you substantively solve cutlural issues further down the heirarchy by attacking the heart of wingnuttery. It’s hard to make so-called “whole-cloth” liberals see it, but wingnuts think it’s all about class, so *we* have to think it’s all about class. Everything else, pretending everything else is equal in concern, is putting the cart before the horse (i.e. wtf do you think wingnuts want to trash the environment?!?! It’s about the $$$, stoopid.)

 
henry lewis, master of dreadful analogies
 

If Michelle Malkin was standing at the Overton Window, how long would your horizontal ladder need to be in order to elope with her.

 
 

Local action. Make sure the elected politicians in your area skew left.

Easier said than done in backwaters such as mine, where the same obvious nincompoops who are universally viewed as nincompoops nevertheless somehow continue to be reelected.

 
 

This is the only hopeful thing about extremest fundamentalist exclusionary politics. When they get finished enforcing all the ideological purity requirements they find they have the power to insist upon, they end up with two guys walking slowly in a circle, eying each other, each with a very sharp knife behind their backs. Everyone else has either been killed, purged, or run away from the “lockstep or die” ideology.

And that’s the blowback that the republicans are facing. They’d rather be dead than wrong. And most people won’t hang with that crap….

mikey

 
 

Argonaut:

Put a reader facing his house with the current price of gas on it, the projected price of gas five years from now, and the totals for filling up his guzzler. Keep it updated.

 
 

Very well put, Mencken, and food for deep thought.

My first thought was that war mongering, unlike so many social and domestic “issues” (I use the scare quotes because they aren’t issues until they are created – that is, I suppose, they are artificial issues that become important in the way the super bowl became important), is tied to economics. The war machine and it’s R&D, the Government/Education/Institutional system for delivering cash and creating jobs, the employment – last – resort that is the all volunteer military – a lot of the economic largesse that is actually felt by the people in the trailer parks is war-related.

I haven’t thought this through at all, but it just occurs to me that if we, as a nation, a society and a culture, were to get out of the war business as you and I have been shouting for for so long, what would replace the cash on the ground?

And that’s unfortunately not an unreasonable fear…

mikey

 
Tim (The Other One)
 

Think about this word: “tolerance”. It’s a sucky concept IMHO. It’s like what you to do at the dentist’s office.

I see creativity left-of-center. All I see on the right is authoritative repression and fear.

I don’t tolerate that.

 
 

I think somebody could (counter?) argue that racism is a whack-a-mole game, where when we stamp it out of one place it pops up in another. Consider the LGF phenomenon

People are good at assembling data into patterns so it’s hard to think of racism being in check. Now the internet lets them pick and choose kooky data from all over the world to assemble theories from.

And THAT’s what I’m pulling out of my ass right now.

 
Tim (The Other One)
 

I’m blaming wordpress for omitting the word “try” from my third sentence.

 
 

Well, mikey, instead of the vast bulk of that money going to Dick Cheney types and other bloodsucker shareholders/boardmembers of military contractors, you’d do what most every other civilized country does and spend that money on housing, infrastructure, education, welfare.

Honestly, if I could only do just one thing to destroy the power of wingnuttery and build a better society it’d be this: repeal corporate personhood. Unsexy huh? Not as noble as stopping pollution or strengthening affirmative action or policing speech/art or increasing AFDC by 10 percent or making college costs tax deductable or whatever technocratic or cultural cause one might name, but it’d get more done to stop the neo-feudalism — and in the process substantively help the poor who are proportionately more likely to be minorities — than anything else. But I’m an asshole, you know.

 
 

For a good time, click this link.

(Come on, have I ever steered ya wrong?)

 
 

ittdgy – yep, it’s hard to get loonier than Bachman or Schmidt; King gives it his best damned shot, though. His stand on immigrants is particularly heinous.

He does have a challenger, and the challenger is doing his level best to win, but he’s not attracting much support as the party views its resources as better spent in more promising races. He’s attracted some support from Democracy for America but I don’t know how much help he’s getting.

 
LA Confidential Pantload
 

It might be a good start to respond to “you’re promoting class warfare” by saying loud and proud “FUCK YEAH!” Might be a tad uncivil, though.

 
 

“I haven’t thought this through at all, but it just occurs to me that if we, as a nation, a society and a culture, were to get out of the war business as you and I have been shouting for for so long, what would replace the cash on the ground?”

Space and Infrastructure.

 
 

You could build pyramids.

 
 

Solar panels on the pyramids.

 
 

That’s a cool concept. I like it, HT.

For me, I’d like to see an adversarial relationship between the executive and the pentagon. I mean, if we really believe that if we end up in violent conflict we have failed, the white house should be predisposed to tell the pentagon to go pound sand.

You want what? 5 Billion dollars for ballistic missile defense??

What. You think I’m stupid? That’s a program that can NEVER succeed. Don’t you assholes have scientists over there?

Now what? Strategic BOMBERS?

Dood, what year do you think it is? Lemme help you out. It’s 2008. A strategic bomber is worth a warm bucket of piss. At how much? A billion a copy? Try again. Try HARDER.

Ok, Navy, whaddayou got? Submarines? Cool. I LIKE submarines. Lemme ask you a question. How many submarines you got? EIGHTY FIVE?? Are you serious? Here’s the deal. I’ll request 5 new boomers and 5 new attack submarines in fiscal 2060. Guess you better start thinking about extending the lifespan of your current inventory, huh? Now get out.

Who are you? Ahh, Strategic Deterrent. Come on in. Here’s the news. We’re going to stabilize on 500 warheads. All but 10 tactical warheads on cruise missiles will be in submarines. You need a job. Submit your resume.

There is absolutely NO reason why we need a trillion dollar military. If the executive told DoD that next year their budget was 100 billion, and the next year it was 50, we could be perfectly safe. And my goodness, but we could find some good use for 900 Billion dollars. Just think about that number for a minute…

mikey

 
 

What do I, a Dirty Fighting Hippy, do?????

Get a power drill and drill a pattern spelling out the words “here” and “now” into his SUV. Now.

 
 

if we, as a nation, a society and a culture, were to get out of the war business as you and I have been shouting for for so long, what would replace the cash on the ground?

If memory serves, this is what Eisenhower (Eisenhower!) meant when he warned about the military-industrial complex.

 
 

Get a power drill and drill a pattern spelling out the words “here” and “now” into his SUV. Now.

This brilliant idea requires some sort of pledge drive. If Argonaut follows this prescription I will pony up $20.

 
 

Y’know, every time the olympics are on I learn a buncha crap that people think is cool. And most of it is weird.

Ok. I DO like curling. More than I should. But this is the Summer Games. Beach Volleyball and Badminton at least RESEMBLE real sports, and along with fencing and gymnastics, the chix are HOT.

Synchronized Diving was thought up by a tweaker. We used to think it was cool to coordinate our actions. But we NEVER went to sleep, so we time to think this wacky crap up.

Now. All that said, what’s the dealio with making the horse walk like his feet hurt? He’s a big, majestic horse. This is humiliating. It’s a wonder he doesn’t toss the rider into the latte sipping crowd. And what the hell does the rider think SHE’S doing, fer crissakes. The horse is the one limping and prancing around like his goddam shoes are too tight. I mean, c’mon. An Olympic athlete in a fucking TOPHAT? Y’kidding me, right?

I need a drink…

mikey

 
 

The proper response to “you’re engaging in class warfare” is “So are they (or you). I‘m at least on the right side.”

When someone is kicking you in the ass, sometimes you just have to turn around and kick him in the teeth.

 
 

These reins demean us both.

 
 

Honestly, if I could only do just one thing to destroy the power of wingnuttery and build a better society it’d be this: repeal corporate personhood.

Yes. You are absolutely right about this. I also agree wholeheartedly with the feudalism prospect. I’ve been ranting about this for years and by and large getting blank stares for my pains.

Sadly, I think repealing corporate personhood is the thing least likely to happen. This country is now thoroughly owned by the corporatocracy.

I’ve made this point before but it’s my particular bugbear so I’m going to make it again. When I was still working in corporate hell I was always struck by how the employees were tied to The Company for nearly every aspect of their lives. I was particularly struck by this when I worked for Citimortgage. A Citi employee could, for example, have his mortgage, his health insurance, his bank account, his 401K, his credit card, and of course his paycheck all coming from Citi. In many cases husbands and wives worked there, and were doubly tied to the company. So when the company tells you that you need to provide ten hours a week of mandatory overtime, who are you to complain? You’re scared to death to lose your job. All of your paycheck is going to the company; you are bound to that company. Then the economy goes south, Citi starts laying people off, and you’re out on your ass.

It’s feudal. You’re a serf, you work for the lord of the manor, and in return he grants you a summer softball league, a trip to Adventureland on the company dollar once a year, and a half-assed and not believably sincere promise to take care of you in your old age.

It’s one of the main reason I’ve decided to enter the law trade. There will always be lawyers, who will always need paralegals. My partner is a woodworker, and is going to school now to be a cabinetmaker. Have a skill that will always be in demand, that’s the ticket. I shudder for all the people who are taking phone calls and processing claims and doing assorted other clerical tasks. The few who are still doing that in this country are shivering in fear, waiting for the axe to fall, as so many of these functions are now outsourced to India.

 
Tim (The Other One)
 

“These reins demean us both.”

That is some funny shit.

 
 

These reins demean us both.

It’s a rein of terror!

 
 

Who is the reining champion of dressage?

 
 

Way back when, the Olympics had polo a few times and equestrian vaulting I think once. Bring it back!

 
 

“Sadly, No!”: both jocular & entertaining!
I had a good intuitive grasp of the Overton window, but am grateful for the link that illustrates it for me.

Question: how does the left do a pressed-ham on the Overton window?
Answer: rip down the right’s happy-face drapes. Show folks just how places like Europe & Japan have kicked America’s ass since the 1970s – with things like good health-care & worker benefits, co-ownership programs, a functional safety-net & smart subsidies. Point out the not-so-mysterious pattern of toxic baksheesh that has followed the far-right like the smell of death EVERY time they get into power, & how that hobbles any effort from the (slightly) more moderate Dems to produce any real progress. Then ask them if they’re sick of one-step-forward, five-steps-back yet.

I haven’t thought this through at all, but it just occurs to me that if we, as a nation, a society and a culture, were to get out of the war business as you and I have been shouting for for so long, what would replace the cash on the ground?

This is a cornerstone of the MIC: the economic spinoffs. But it’s not as if another flotilla of aircraft-carriers or a few more Stealth bombers can fix roads & bridges, or sewers, or dams & levees … all of which are in piss-poor shape by now. Military money is the #1 LEAST effective way to create economic benefit, in part because so much of it gets contracted out, sometimes overseas, & nice guys like Lockheed have this funny habit of overinflating costs by thousands of percent. You can get the same job-benefit with a mere fraction of that cash in the civilian sector. Increase that fraction, & you’ve improved the economy, with mazuma to spare.

Honestly, if I could only do just one thing to destroy the power of wingnuttery and build a better society it’d be this: repeal corporate personhood. Unsexy huh?

Oh, I dunno – you got ME all hot & sweaty with that one … society doesn’t really need vampires – & that’s what immortal corporate “persons” are, in more ways than one. I fail to comprehend why brand names need status that grants them things like freedom of speech or protection from slander. They have nothing to say, & suffer not from defamation – it’s not like Coca-Cola’s kids will be taunted by all the other corporations’ children at school if someone says a bad thing about it.

 
 

do I sneak up and slap a home-made “DICKHEAD” sticker on the bumper?

I’ve been told that a pound of white granulated sugar in the tank boosts gas mileage by over 100%.

 
 

Rightwingsnarkle, Karo syrup is even better at improving the “gas mileage” than sugar, it’s easier to pour in the tank and there’s no tell-tale granulated evidence sparkling on the ground below the gas cap to give the deed away.

 
 

Equestrian vaulting is hard; we can’t really hold the pole well in our hooves.

 
 

Here in the SF Bay area there was a group that stuck “I’m Changing the Environment. Ask Me How!” bumper stickers on SUVs.

 
 

There is absolutely NO reason why we need a trillion dollar military. If the executive told DoD that next year their budget was 100 billion, and the next year it was 50, we could be perfectly safe. And my goodness, but we could find some good use for 900 Billion dollars. Just think about that number for a minute…

Fuck yeah – I’ve been saying this for years; between the fucking Pentagon and all of the peripheral state-funded handjobbers, we could well be spending an order of magnitude more than our military could possibly use, let alone need.

That’s the funny thing about the entire ‘hyperpower’ business – all of the people woofing about being World Police were never at a loss for disapproving clucking when anyone suggested cutting down our military budget from 30% to 25% of military spending. Never mind that we’re so physically, demographically, and economically massive that nobody could effectively threaten us in any fashion a military could deter – but even with our present military we’re still wasting hundreds of billions PER YEAR.

This is why I can’t muster anything but contempt for those Paul/Flake/Trafficant/etc jagoffs who like to prance around pretending they’re another Marco Polo for finding a few thousand dollars unaccounted for in the Secretary of Mule Husbandry’s budget. Yeah, call us back about accountability when you’re not spending a hundred billion every month – on credit – to win a nuclear war in 1982

 
 

When I was still working in corporate hell I was always struck by how the employees were tied to The Company for nearly every aspect of their lives.

Fun fact: before they caught monetarism and spiralled into a horrifying collapse from which there seems to be no escape, the Japanese did this – and their CEOs made roughly 5 to 8 times, and represented in terms of total wealth roughly ten times, what entry-level employees made and represented.

As the Liberal Democrats gained a Reaganesque faith in the invisible hand of the market, restraint after restraint on the labor and finance market were hacked down – but unlike us, their extremely historically powerful and vertically integrated banks – swollen with the irrational exuberance of Friedman-reading regulators and Crichton-reading foreigners alike – began passing out essentially self-destructive loans a lot earlier, so their economy imploded without those income-maldistribution numbers more than doubling.

So if Japan relearns its Keynes it might be growing against inflation within 20 or so years of the financial crash. We, on the other hand, probably won’t live to see the American economy stable again.

 
 

So: feudalism ain’t necessarily bad, it’s just that we inhabit a special kind of feudalism in which the ideal liege is Elzabet Batory.

 
 

Again, I can’t recommend this essay enough. Yes, I probably like it so much because it speaks to all my biases, but if you are one of those people who agrees with most of what I say, and especially the direction to which I’m going in the comments to this post, then the essay is like a smarter, less vulgar, better educated, more coherent, version of my posts.

Doctorb — Very funny!

Dr. Zen – Yes.

Now I’ve already stated what I think the main problem is. How to combat it? Well, like Candy said, it’s impossible to make such radical changes to the government, to the law, to the economic structure — at this time. So, I think, the first thing we do is address the Overton Window issue; we get these ideas into circulation. How we do this, then, is to have not just to have a better press corps, but to have a better op-ed corps. Everywhere. TV, print, blogs, all of it. That means being ruthless. Mikey, this is why I’m so hard on “liberal” bloggers to my right who have been elevated to powerful positions. Institutions that run blogs are small enough — dependent enough on readers’ opinions — to be influenced by comments, e-mails, all electronic expressions of disgust. There needs to be a constant barrage of shit aimed at Sensible Liberals until they either reform or withdraw, and at the same time there needs to be a constant clamor for more leftwing voices within these establishments. Obviously the structures of some of these institutions preclude this. For instance, no amount of readership force could influence TAP to hire a truly leftwing, fulltime blogger to write about trade [i.e. someone like David Sirota] because TAP is run, in part, by Robert Reich, a guy who, if anything, is adamantly to the right of Brad DeLong on the Free Trade issue. But they might be influenced by a massive call for them to hire a full-time basher of wingnut bloggers. At any rate, what must happen first is for radical leftwing economic ideas to be put in circulation. They have to be legitimized, and to do this you first have to make it safe for them to be at least talked about.

We’ve all seen how many institutions can be forced to publish writers of a certain identity — feminists, specialists of racism (usually *of* the minority, persecuted race) GLBT writers — and rightly so. Well, use the same techniques to force institutions to publish writers who talk about class and economics and globalization and populism and war in genuinely leftwing way (i.e. no fucking economists who are to a man anti-populist — yes, truth be known, even Krugman, which is why it’s a wonderful thing that he’s in a position where he’s obliged to talk more about general politics, and be partisan hitman in that context; and no fucking Liberal Hawks or whatever euphemism [liberal internationalists, interventionists] they’ve adopted to confuse people post-Iraq). Also, on a related note, I’d insist that every major publication hire an Arab or Muslim writer, a sort of Edward Said type in every magazine. This would go a long way in countering the status quo of ‘acceptable’ discussion on Israel-Palestine in specific and the Middle East in general. We’re readers; ergo, we’re consumers, customers — and these liberal publications, print or electronic, are the product we “purchase.” We therefore, at least in theory, have the ability to influence. We gotta use it — and use it better.

 
 

I understand and share the hatred of the behemoth SUVs and their drivers. But it also depends on where you are. Some of those people in Gary Ruppert’s Heartland have to have SUVs. For my job, I need a 4×4. I drive around on field roads a lot, which aren’t really roads in any meaningful sense of the word. I have a small SUV. It’s my only vehicle. It gets about 22 mpg. I can’t afford anything new anyway, but if I could, I’d still have to buy a 4×4 with a decent amount of ground-clearance.

But retards who have SUVs who’ve never been off-road? Who think they provide a “safer” commute from the ‘burb to the city? Who buy such things as status symbols? Fuck ’em.

 
 

It might be a good start to respond to “you’re promoting class warfare” by saying loud and proud “FUCK YEAH!” Might be a tad uncivil, though.

“No, I’m promoting class SELF-DEFENSE ya big bully.”

 
 

At least the SUVs have some decent room inside. You can carry enough peeps, your man/mile per gallon COULD be pretty damn good.

The ones that bug me are the assholes in the bigass Beemer M3s and carreras and shit. C’mon, big boy. ‘Splain to me whatcher gonna do with 450 horsepower. You even can FIND a place where you can go over seventy, you’re gonna draw pink paper. All you’ve got is a highly efficient tool for converting money into carbon dioxide. Now sure, it’s your money, but your lookit me ostentatiousness has, of late, turned into something out and out obscene…

mikey

 
 

Just a note: You don’t have to use the Internet Archive to look at Pandagon’s archives, they are stored on pandagon.blogsome.com.

 
 

Hanx Kadin. I tried searching for that post on the new site to no avail and since Amanda apparently delights in snubbing me I wasn’t gonna ask her how to find it. [Gonna change teh link.]

 
 

Rightwingsnarkle, Karo syrup is even better at improving the “gas mileage” than sugar, it’s easier to pour in the tank and there’s no tell-tale granulated evidence sparkling on the ground below the gas cap to give the deed away.

Neither will actually do anything. Gasoline will eat either and they aren’t that far off from being fuels. Combustion will blow them up just fine.

Good old water will cause a huge bill, as the mechanics drain the thing. I can’t imagine acid would be good for the internal workings of an engine, and that’s not combustable. Probably also not great for the environment.

 
 

Alec implores,

Get loud, unashamedly biased, and hard left. Stop defending Obama and start defending Ayers

Is Christmas early this year? Please show us your true face and do this, liberals!

 
 

On the SUV problem –

Might be better (and prolong the enjoyment) to simply periodically loosen something non-essential like a taillight lens, antenna, windshield wiper. If you can access the inside of the vehicle without getting caught, you could, every so often, blow one of the fuses (windows, radio, dome light). Just create a seemingly endless series of psyche-grinding annoyances that may end up with this guy subliminally believing that his pride-and-joy is really a piece of shit. With a little bit of luck, it may eventually even begin to counteract his Viagra.

 
 

I’ve made this point before but it’s my particular bugbear so I’m going to make it again. When I was still working in corporate hell I was always struck by how the employees were tied to The Company for nearly every aspect of their lives.

“You lift sixteen tons, and whaddya get…”

 
 

Brandi, I was gonna mention owing your soul to the company store. 😉

 
 

Bill Ayers ate all the cookies.

Bill Ayers scared the dog.

Bill Ayers dribbled pee on the bathroom floor.

Bill Ayers borrowed my car and left the sunroof open in the rain.

Bill Ayers insulted my girlfriend.

Bill Ayers ruined my lawn mower.

I think Bill Ayers is fucking my monkey…

mikey

 
 

What, you didn’t know I had a monkey?

Yeah. A real dumb one. Kind of mangy, a lot of his hair has fallen out.

He plays with himself all the time, and MAN, he really stinks.

But he’s my monkey, so what am I gonna do, y’know?

What that? His name?

A long time ago when I got him I started calling him The Truth.

I thought it was kind of cute, y’know?

It kinda stuck. He answers to it now…

mikey

 
 

Exactly what is a liberal these days? From personal observation, it seems to include everyone smart enough to see through conservative nonsense and everyone who doesn’t automatically wet their pants when they hear the word “Muslim.”

 
 

Is Christmas early this year? Please show us your true face and do this, liberals!

Yes, Troof. Defending Ayers for killing a lot fewer people than George W. Bush is exactly what all liberals are going to do.

AND we’re going to make Kanau Kambon the vice presidential candidate! (Did I spell his name right, Troof? You’re the expert. No one here ever heard of him before you started promoting him, so I’m just asking.)

So it’s just like Christmas AND Easter AND the the Fourth of July for Troof!

(I like seeing the little fella happy. He’s so cute when he tries to look all grown up and everything.)

(McCain doing exactly what he’s been doing: that’s early Christmas for liberals.)

 
 

(McCain doing exactly what he’s been doing: that’s early Christmas Ramadan for liberals.)

Fixed.

 
 

So it’s just like Christmas AND Easter AND the the Fourth of July for Troof!

Yeah but we are going to convince some bomb-throwing judges to cancel the Fourth and declare a “Global Caliphate Day”

Easter is already Gay Witch Abortion Day. You would think that the pink bunnies and the fetal chickens would give it away, but Conservatives aren’t so bright.

 
 

Is Christmas early this year? Please show us your true face and do this, liberals!

I want your heart. I want to eat your children. Praise be to Allah.

Also, I’d just like to point out that most Americans don’t celebrate Christmas by robbing an isolated mountain valley blind. I know, latte-sipping defeatists and all, but not everyone can be as patriotic as you.

 
 

Are they still out of stock of the 12″ tall Bill Ayers action figure with self-defeating grip?

 
 

Local action. Make sure the elected politicians in your area skew left. It is not a quick fix.

Yeah, the Nixon-era CREEPs like Cheney & Rumsfeld spent 30 years getting back to a position where they could once again make a serious effort to destroy the whole effin’ planet. Rethuglicans being all about the authoritarianism, spending decades putting Talibangelicals on every local schoolboard and state drains inspection committee didn’t faze them. Nor did the possibility that their Fearless Leaderz might not be 110% correct upon all subjects, including the wearing of dress socks under sandals, cause them to even consider the questioning of authority. Tragically, those of us on the leftward side of the political spectrum will never be able to match the authoritarians’ sweep of the gold medals for synchronized knee-jerking (why they call it RightThink) but it would be really godsdamned useful if we could at least stop confusing grassroots with astroturf…

 
 

My neighbor, in our Blue neighborhood, has a bumper sticker: “Drill Now, Drill Here, Pay Less.” It’s on the bumper of a Yukon XL…

If you siphoned his tank empty every night, would it be legally defensible to argue you were just following his instructions?

All that said, what’s the dealio with making the horse walk like his feet hurt?… And what the hell does the rider think SHE’S doing, fer crissakes…

Mikey, dressage is horse gymnastics. It’s not supposed to be “practical”, it’s supposed to be beautiful — to show an aesthetically perfect animal demonstrating a combination of power and control that most of us can barely imagine. The dressage rider is the gymnastics coach, who gets the advantage of going into the ring to compensate for the disadvantages of partnering (bossing around) a “dumb beast” with a weight advantage of about 1,200 lbs to the rider’s 120 or so. (If it adds to your enjoyment, contemplate the probability that the rider’s thighs are muscular enough to crush you like a grape, and sensitive enough… not to do so.) And before we get into a side argument about how much “choice” dressage horses have about performing… a disinterested observer might think that a human gymnast who starts her/his professional training at an age when most of us are learning to tie our shoelaces has’t been given much of a “choice” either. Which doesn’t make the performances any less breathtaking, if you can focus on the aesthetics and ignore the politics.

 
 

My sisters who have been in the horse biz their entire lives tell me that dressage (controlling every move a large strong animal makes, while at the same time appearing not to do so) is merely part of their preparation for marriage.

So now you know. It’s a bloodsport.

 
 

Hmm, at least some of Teh Funny is back. I guess that’s something.

Sorry, Nelson, that doesn’t include you.

 
 

A Citi employee could, for example, have his mortgage, his health insurance, his bank account, his 401K, his credit card, and of course his paycheck all coming from Citi. …snip… So when the company tells you that you need to provide ten hours a week of mandatory overtime, who are you to complain? You’re scared to death to lose your job.

This basically describes my life for the past ten years.

Honestly, if I could only do just one thing to destroy the power of wingnuttery and build a better society it’d be this: repeal corporate personhood.

One thing that always strikes me about the concept of corporate personhood, is that it is kind of a science ficition concept come to life. In one sense Corporate Persons are created life, or a new & secretive creature living on planet Earth along with the humans. The Randian/”Objectivist” magazines that I used to read as a teenager would actually make this argument explicitly, and then start to argue for the ‘rights’ of corporations, hoping to create sympathy for the newly created lifeforms.

Call me crazy, but I basically believe that in some sense its real. Corporations, since they have been legally afforded personhood, have basically started acting like living entities, with appetities, waste products, competition for resources, a kind of mating, and maybe even “instincts”. And these entities are highly intelligent because we lend them our brains, since we’re part of the corporate body. So they’ve become parasites/symbionts on humans, and altered our social relations.

So a drive to ‘depersonalize’ corporations would essentially be a kind of war, and the corporations would realize it and attack you. There may be a way to win it, but not easily, I don’t think.

 
 

Anyhow, another great post.

 
 

pedestrian said,

August 15, 2008 at 2:21

What the FUCK is this?

Pedestrian:

One interesting thing about that video is that the announcer lady keeps trying to get the “Purpose Driven Life” guy to state his personal feelings about the candidates, to his obvious frustration. It actually looks like he wants a real honest-to-goodness forum that the whole country might find interesting, while the announcer lady, as a member of the US corporate media, only wants to think in terms of petty personal gossip.

 
 

Corporations, since they have been legally afforded personhood, have basically started acting like living entities, with appetites, waste products, competition for resources, a kind of mating, and maybe even “instincts”.

There’s a lot of thruth to this, and it’s why I’ve found it difficult to cast corporate behavior as inherently “evil”. A mama grizzly chomping on the head of a hapless hiker who got between her and the cubs isn’t inherently evil, though that’s no consolation for the hiker. OTOH, grizzlies have no instinctive desire to rule the world even as they’re destroying it, as far as I know. Probably their instinct for taking regular lengthy naps would moderate that anyway.

But, having finally gotten around to reading The Ominvore’s Dilemma, I’d have to say it’s all the diabolical plan of The Corn. Seriously, if the Intelligent Design crowd became familiar with the history of Zea mays, they’d probably have to conclude that it was designed and injected into Earth’s ecosystem by Satan. They might then start a movement to eliminate industrial “farming”. And if they were successful, it would reduce US oil consumption by the same amount as eliminating all gasoline-powered motor vehicles would. Of course, this would mean they’d have to admit that a lot of DFH were right all along.

 
 

There’s a lot of thruth to this, and it’s why I’ve found it difficult to cast corporate behavior as inherently “evil”. A mama grizzly chomping on the head of a hapless hiker who got between her and the cubs isn’t inherently evil, though that’s no consolation for the hiker.

Oh sure, I agree, the mama grizzly isn’t evil. She’s doing something we could all identify with. But if you were with that hapless hiker, it seems to me that you ought not to hesitate to shoot and kill that mama grizzly, if possible, just the same.

 
 

It actually looks like he wants a real honest-to-goodness forum that the whole country might find interesting, while the announcer lady, as a member of the US corporate media, only wants to think in terms of petty personal gossip.

Yeah, he is very professional about it. I just don’t like the precedent that our presidents should be vetted by an Evangelical poobah. Couldn’t those questions be asked by a member of the *cough* objective *cough cough* media?

 
 

Pedestrian:

Absolutely. That totally does suck. In a sense it’s the Evangelical movement rushing to fill in the void left by our media. And that’s not good because, as you said, they become the powerful arbiters of reality.

 
 

Jennifer said,

August 15, 2008 at 0:47

Every time I look out my Overton Window, I see George W. Bush mooning me while Cheney flips me the bird.

Bush tossed a brick through my Overton Window with a vaguely threatening note attached to it. I tried alerting the media and reporting it to the police, but they all tell me that somehow it’s my fault.

 
 

pedestrian said,

August 15, 2008 at 2:21

What the FUCK is this?

Seriously. I mean, what a horrible tan, and that blouse… WTF is up with that? She looks like she’s wearing a cross between an accordion and a tracksuit…

…oh, you meant the pastor!

 
 

What do I, a Dirty Fighting Hippy, do?????

Steal two gallons of gas out of their tank every night.

 
 

pedestrian–

Hear hear. And didja notice how he totally evaded her (decent) question about why 70% of evangelicals are pro-McCain? Rick Warren is the non-insane evangelical, but that answer–twinkling “good humor” and all– would have warmed the cockles of Jerry Falwell’s heart.
And didja notice how she (typically) let it slide and didn’t have the professional chops to force him to give at least a token answer?
I’ve said this before, but one night in Spain I watched a BBC interview show, and was stunned at how the interviewer KEPT ASKING THE QUESTION until the subject addressed it. And both parties seemed to accept that it was the questioner’s job to do this.
See one 15-minute segment of something like that, and you emerge with a lifetime of contempt for American broadcast journalism. Assuming you didn’t have it to begin with.

 
 

Let’s be friends

 
 

it seems to me that you ought not to hesitate to shoot and kill that mama grizzly, if possible, just the same.

I always go hiking with a Mossberg UltraMag slug gun if only because it makes corporations nervous.

 
 

What, you haven’t heard of the Smith Bear Kit?

http://www.box.net/shared/zqu8fakogf

Sheesh…

mikey

 
 

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