Dana Milbank - The Choler of Online Comments - washingtonpost.com »
Posted By lovemylibs 9 months, 3 weeks ago in Political NewsOn Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack.
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lovemylibs9 months, 3 weeks ago
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FTA:
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"But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture, for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote."
Also FTA:
"The left, however, is more difficult to explain. It made sense for them to be angry when George W. Bush was in the White House. But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right."-
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hyperbola9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Bush had his 30% of "groupies" who could never admit to any crimes by him. Obama will have the same. Niether group has much credibility. In fact, focussing on the so-called "left-right" divide makes it easy for the fleecing of average Americans by the corrupt super-rich to continue.
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Actually "lefties" and "righties" agree on many things. For example, not liking financial corruption and paying off criminals. Bush and Obama have followed virtually the same course in this - there is little difference in having Paulson or Summers and Geithner directing the payoff, they are all part of the same corruption.
Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism
THE Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.
Treasury hopes to get us out of the mess by replicating the flawed system that the private sector used to bring the world crashing down, with a proposal marked by overleveraging in the public sector, excessive complexity, poor incentives and a lack of transparency.
....Let’s take a moment to remember what caused this mess in the first place. Banks got themselves, and our economy, into trouble by overleveraging — that is, using relatively little capital of their own, they borrowed heavily to buy extremely risky real estate assets. In the process, they used overly complex instruments like collateralized debt obligations.
The prospect of high compensation gave managers incentives to be shortsighted and undertake excessive risk, rather than lend money prudently. Banks made all these mistakes without anyone knowing, partly because so much of what they were doing was “off balance sheet” financing.
...The main problem is not a lack of liquidity. If it were, then a far simpler program would work: just provide the funds without loan guarantees. The real issue is that the banks made bad loans in a bubble and were highly leveraged. They have lost their capital, and this capital has to be replaced.
Paying fair market values for the assets will not work. Only by overpaying for the assets will the banks be adequately recapitalized. But overpaying for the assets simply shifts the losses to the government. In other words, the Geithner plan works only if and when the taxpayer loses big time.
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hyperbola9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Dana Milbank has never been much more than the usual corporate-mass-media peddler of politically correct state propaganda that is characteristic of the Washington Post. The WP will overwhelmingly support whatever government is in power.
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One should also keep in mind that Milbank parrots the usual political correctness regarding zionist crimes against humanity in Palestine. Here is a good comment from an American jew about Milbank.
The Washington Post Attacks Walt and Mearsheimer as Teutonic Antisemites
Dana Milbank in the Washington Post today attacks Walt and Mearsheimer's appearance in D.C. yesterday on racialist grounds, saying that they are blue-eyed and have Germanic names, and he wonders about their motivation for saying what they do about the Israel lobby. He also says they have no idea how Washington works, then dismisses the idea that the attachment among Jews to Israel is a significant factor in policymaking, because while yes, Elliott Abrams and Douglas Feith care about Israel, Bush and Cheney are fervently behind Israel, too.
I also watched Mearsheimer and Walt yesterday, speaking before the Council on American-Islamic Relations, on C-Span. I saw two smart guys sincerely engaging very difficult issues, at considerable personal risk. When Milbank argues—in an underhanded, not direct way— that talking about the Israel lobby's effects on policy is antisemitic nonsense, I wonder, Is he being sincere? Is he doing what a journalist should do, and tell us what he knows about important issues? No. He's being obfuscatory. He should take M-W's argument on genuinely, and tell us, as the big Washington insider he announces he is, just how little power he seems to believe the lobby exercises, and why. ...
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2006/08/the_...
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lovemylibs9 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is a good "sister" story about media and the angry left:
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http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2009/04/18/c...
FTA:
"Mainstream media and left-wing outrage at, or contempt for, the tea parties is at once hypocritical and hysterical. It is hypocritical to now be so prudish about Presidential criticism after 8 years of protests featuring calls for the USA "Off the Planet", depicting Bush as Satan, Hitler, a baby-killer and worse, as well as the SAME innuendo from left-wing political activists, writers and political cartoonists. There was a left-wing masturbatory fantasy film featuring Bush's assassination. But now the left is suddenly concerned with decorum? Please."-
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hyperbola9 months, 3 weeks ago
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How do you feel about having zionist oligarch billionaires directing the "tea party" movement?
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Kind of interesting that the Koch family of Russian jews (who owned an oil company that created and developed the oil fields of the Soviet Union during the Cold War - which was basically an off limits area at that time to almost all Americans unless you happen to be a Jewish Communist like Fred Koch) are now stirring the mobs in America. Just emphasizes that this is not about the right versus the left, but about pludering of average americans by the super-rich.
Right-Wing 'Tea Party' Movement Was Planned Months Ago by GOP Billionaires
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/03/02/right-wi...
The latest so-called "populist" revolt against the federal government was a pre-planned PR stunt.... Populist revolt against the U.S. government is all the rage in the Republican Party, these days. As they tell the story, the public is so outraged by the recovery and reinvestment efforts of the Obama administration that Americans everywhere are turning out to overthrow the tyrannical king of the federal government by re-enacting the Boston Tea Party.
Funny thing, though: it turns out this whole "populist" movement was a planned PR stunt funded by big-money right-wing backers of the GOP who specialize in faking grassroots movements to drum up opposition to Barack Obama.
... What hasn’t been reported until now is evidence linking Santelli’s “tea party” rant with some very familiar names in the Republican rightwing machine, from PR operatives who specialize in imitation-grassroots PR campaigns (called “astroturfing”) to bigwig politicians and notorious billionaire funders. As veteran Russia reporters, both of us spent years watching the Kremlin use fake grassroots movements to influence and control the political landscape. To us, the uncanny speed and direction the movement took and the players involved in promoting it had a strangely forced quality to it. If it seemed scripted, that's because it was.
What we discovered is that Santelli’s “rant” was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger for the anti-Obama campaign. In PR terms, his February 19th call for a “Chicago Tea Party” was the launch event of a carefully organized and sophisticated PR campaign, one in which Santelli served as a frontman, using the CNBC airwaves for publicity, for the some of the craziest and sleaziest rightwing oligarch clans this country has ever produced. Namely, the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups, from the Cato Institute and Reason Magazine to FreedomWorks. The scion of the Koch family, Fred Koch, was a co-founder of the notorious extremist-rightwing John Birch Society.
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Klarissa9 months, 3 weeks ago
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"A reader from Rockville described it as a "sore winner" phenomenon. "People get used to being angry and when things change, they don't.
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So they find stuff to be mad about." Another said that some on the left "feel obligated to stay in the fight" because of the harsh treatment of Obama by the right.
But many focused on a frustration on the left caused by Obama's centrism -- his opposition to prosecuting those involved with torture,
for example. "I am angry because the whole Republican party has not been rounded up and thrown into a black site," one wrote.
A reader in Evanston, Ill., took a similar view, that true believers on the left don't want "b.s. rhetoric about looking forward." Okay, but why wouldn't this be directed at Obama? Readers explained that some of it is.
But, "if we yell obscenities at Obama," replied a reader in Dunnellon, Fla., "we get a visit from the Secret Service. Yelling them at you is worry-free."
So the angry left should thank me: I'm taking one for the team.-
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hyperbola9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Well Klarissa, it is actually about whether we have rule of law in the US. The documentation of the crimes involving torture is now public and those who broke the law should be prosecuted. No single American, even if he is president, should be able to decide that criminals have impunity before the law. That is dictatorship. You don't believe in rule of law?
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Barack Obama, Torture Enabler
America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain.
John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith wrote, authorized and promulgated the Justice Department "torture memos" that the Bush Administration used for legal cover. After World War II, German lawyers for the Ministry of Justice went to prison for similar actions.... We've known about Yoo et al.'s crimes for years. Yet--unlike their victims--they're free as birds, fluttering around, writing op/ed columns...and teaching. At law school!...
...Obama has failed to match changes of tone with changes in substance on the issue of Bush's war crimes. Indeed, there's no evidence that Obama's Justice Department plans to lift a finger to hold Bush or his henchmen accountable.
Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Gonzales, Haynes and Feith were asked by the White House to come up with legal cover for what they knew or ought to have known were illegal acts under U.S. law, international law, and treaties including the Geneva Conventions (which were ratified by the U.S. and therefore hold the force of U.S. law). Since they don't deny what they did--indeed, they continue to justify it--their presumed defense if they wound up on trial in Europe would be that they were just following orders.
However, the decision in the 1948 trials of German attorneys immortalized in the fictionalized film "Judgment at Nuremberg" makes clear that a lawyer's duty is to the law--not his government. And not just his own country's law--international law.
However, the decision in the 1948 trials of German attorneys immortalized in the fictionalized film "Judgment at Nuremberg" makes clear that a lawyer's duty is to the law--not his government. And not just his own country's law--international law.
The Nuremberg tribunal acknowledged that Nazi Germany was an absolute dictatorship in which everyone answered to Adolf Hitler and could be shot for disobeying. Nevertheless, the court ruled, "there were [German] restrictions for Hitler under international law." Despite his total legal authority within Germany, Hitler "could issue orders [that violated] international law." Obeying a direct order from Hitler, in other words, was illegal if it violated international law. And German lawyers went to prison for doing just that.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/12/barack-o... -
mesodudeComment removed: Retracted by user
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nostalgia9 months, 3 weeks ago
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FTA:
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But now, even under Obama, the anger on the left is, if anything, more personal and vitriolic than on the right.
Certainly typical of many on the left that are here on Propeller isn't it?
I can't even imagine what it is like to live in a perpetual state of anger
Perhaps this explains it:
Psychology Today, those who are constantly angry are more likely to suffer from depression. Depression, in turn, has an effect on the way in which individuals process ideas. According to psychologist Albert Ellis, people are more likely to hold irrational beliefs when they are depressed. Perhaps, irrationality is generally not caused by brief episodes of anger, but manifests itself in long term bouts of anger.-
donald51Comment removed: Hard Banned
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hyperbola9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Pretty hard up Nostaliga! Indeed sounds as though you must be constantly angry and depressed with that submission. Perhaps this is your problem?
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Educational Psychology Meets the Christian Right: Differing Views of
Children, Schooling, Teaching, and Learning
DAVID C. BERLINER
Arizona State University
Among the most unrelenting contemporary critics of public schools are members of the Christian Right, some of whom seek the destruction of public education. The theories of child rearing espoused by the Christian Right are analyzed in this article. They emphasize physical punishment, the breaking of children's will, and obedience to authority. Such theories cannot be supported by modern psychology. Furthermore, these child-rearing practices are totally incompatible with the constructivist models of learning that form the basis for the educational reforms undertaken by science, mathematics, and social studies educators. The school curriculum used in many fundamentalist Christian schools was also analyzed and found to be limited, biased, and sometimes untrue. The arguments made against outcomes based education and whole language programs were found to be confused and chaotic. The antagonism of the Christian Right to these programs is based on a fear of losing control over their children's thinking, rather than any compelling empirical data. It is concluded that many among the Christian Right are unable to engage in politics that make a common school possible. They may be unable to compromise and live with educational decisions rejecting a pluralistic democracy keeping separate church and state.
http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/differ...
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libsRfunnyComment removed: Hard Banned9 Replies
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simonsez9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Jon Stewart kind of sums it up.
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http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?vide... -
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Turner78xComment removed: Spam
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k9kssr9 months, 3 weeks ago
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Very interesting article, Love....thanks for posting.
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I've never seen this country so divided except maybe during Vietnam......I was pretty young then and probably didn't pay much attention. I think really deep, deep down both the left and the right want the same basic things for this country, we may differ on some of the details or may have difference of opinions on religion, gay rights, health care reform, etc. But I think we all want to feel safe from terrorists and even from our own government at times. We want to be able to prosper and give our families a good life. On that much I think we could all agree.-
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lovemylibs9 months, 3 weeks ago
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In the real, non-Propeller world, I see no divisions in the thought of a prosperous America. Many of my most liberal friends at work are becoming vocal about their fears that too much spending, too fast is not the answer to the best road to this prosperity.
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Icantwait9 months, 3 weeks ago
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My Fellow AMERICANS: People like Goppy are the worst of the worst they keep on pushing real racism. What I said about Americans being Americans is true. Forget about where you came from to become an American, Africa, Asia, Mexico, Iran, or Sweden (as Klarissa stated with her touch of sarcasm). I sincerely don't think it is necessary shouting racism, to respond to genuine comments. If you are not an American I feel sorry for you, if you don't consider yourself a real American but rather one with the heading of some other country, I feel
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sorry for you. One more thing right now but, maybe not for long, real Americans have the right to express their opinions without being labeled one of your news media labels. As for the FOX news network at least I will say they will attempt to give both sides of a story instead of making up their own off the wall version. The Media is supposed to be neutral, not take sides, that is what a true reporters responsibilities are to the American readership. Yes, I am a True American of Many Descents including the original, Mohawk. The Real American -
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Icantwait9 months, 3 weeks ago
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My Fellow Americans: Hyperbola a former Russian Reporter. Doesn't that say it all about his comments. Donald51 only one side of his brain ever seems to work. The Left side. Mesodude is stuck in the past. Harping on the past, not really American. America was always a future thinking country. Obama has caused all this backward talk to keep the people at each others throat. He in the meantime is wheeling and dealing while everyone in distracted. Americans are starting to reunite, no matter who encouraged it, rather than sit back and bemoan the past failings of Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton, Bush and your last divorced companion. Grow up and try to examine what is really detrimental in the present crisis. Then try to help fix it. Sitting at your desk crying about who's fault it is appears to be, rather second grade. The Real American
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