Wednesday Open Thread

 

"Eighties Fan" - Camera Obscura

Strangely busy given the time of year, so I think I need to turn it over to you for content.  Well a couple of things first:

- Do you think Obama's recent rebound in the polls is indicative of the public getting an eyeful of the clown car sweepstakes to pick his opponent?  Suddenly, the cool, professorial guy in the White House starts looking awfully good in comparison. 

- Did any of you old folks out there read this and envision this? 

- Not to continue to kick Hitchens whilst he lies in the grave, but I thought this piece by Katha Pollitt was an incredibly important corrective to much of the hagiography -- especially from Sully, who seems to share Hitchens' problem with women. 

- I share Sullivan's amazement, however, at this piece in the Guardian criticizing Vaclav Havel for not realizing all of the great things that communism had done for Czechoslovakia.  Jesus, I didn't realize that dupes like this still walked the earth.    

What else is going on? 

 

Comments

[oddjob]

all of the great things that communism had done for Czechoslovakia

Coincidentally it was 20 years ago on this day that the USSR formally ceased to exist as 11 of the 12 "states" of the USSR formally declared they were no longer part of it.

[oddjob]

The method behind Mitt Romney's Big Lie strategy

[Crissa]

I have to say the article was right about Havel's Czechia. It lost alot with little democratic agreement.

However, I wouldn't blame him for this, and his country is hardly the worst example of shedding Communist rule and coming out worse for the wear. On some points it's very good, and on other points, it has yet to shed the old ways. When my friend was arrested there a couple years back - his arrest report was in Russian. Neither the arresting officers nor my friend spoke Russian; they were just still using forms from the soviet era.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

Really?!! It was a prison state. The notion that the economic needs of the people came first under the old regime strikes me as bizarre. Political compliance came first, second, and third.

I would suggest you read a bit of Havel's work or that of Milan Kundera and examine whether you really think that the Czech Republic of today is in any way inferior to the Soviet satellite of yesteryear.

I am all for a state that secures basic rights for all workers, but I hardly think any of the pre-1989 eastern bloc countries or the Soviet Union qualifies in that regard.

I visited the Czech Republic a few years ago and it struck me as a place that had made pretty impressive strides.

[Don K]

I'm really astounded that twits like Clark are still around. The species of leftist who pines for the Eastern Bloc reminds me of nothing so much as the conservatives who assert that "conservatism hasn't failed, it hasn't really been tried", or "conservatism can't fail, it can only be failed".

If real people keep failing your ideology, maybe the problem is with the ideology, and not the people.

[Crissa]

Look, you'd be a partisan shill if you disagreed that Czechia during Communist rule wasn't a better place for the majority than prior. It's just that plain.

I don't really buy the argument, 'it was a prison state! Therefore anything positive it did should be ignored!' That's stupid. Poor people in the US had to live under basically similar rule without the positive benefits prior to the New Deal, and still some did until Civil Rights was enforced at gunpoint. The negatives a society don't negate the positives.

Basic statistics say the Communist countries did better for the majority. It wasn't a good level, by any means, nor was it sustainable without trade from the west, but it was better than serfdom and landholding that existed prior. Pakistan isn't a better country than Czechoslovakia because its serfs vote - in many broad based measures of quality of life, Pakistan is worse. And the whole 'prison state' is the same between the two at any rate. Yet one gets a pass because it's a democracy and gets money from the US while the other got distain and embargoes.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

But the comparison isn't between the Czech Republic and Pakistan -- look at the standard of living of the average worker in the pre-1989 Czech Republic and the worker in Austria. Or in pre-1989 East Germany versus West Germany. Basic statistics show that they weren't even in the same league. Workers in the western European democracies enjoyed both political rights and far superior material standards of living. These are apples to apples types of comparisions -- countries that had relatively similar standards of living prior to World War II and then a huge divergence between those who suffered under 40 years plus of Soviet dominated rule and those who were in the West and prospered.

The monopoly of the state over the means of production led to oppressive working conditions -- there were no free trade unions until Solidarity emerged in the 1980s -- and staggering environmental degradation. It was truly the worst of all possible worlds in many respects.

Communist economies delivered both poor results for the workers they were ostensibly designed to work for and deprived them of any meaningful freedom. Despite having workers with high levels of literacy and education, the eastern European economies had low levels of productivity and produced little of high value -- substandard cars, clothes, and consumer goods, while also struggling to produce adequate food supplies.

At the same time people lived in constant fear of informants, surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, and the loss of educational and economic opportunity that went with having unacceptable political views.

[Sir Charles]

Don,

Time to dissolve the people and elect another.

[Mandos]

So...I'm currently living in a country (though I'm on vacation from it) that was rocked by the revelation that a series of serial murders was done by neo-Nazis, and that the vein of violent neo-Naziism is wider and deeper than people were previously willing to believe.

Guess where the epicentre of this phenomenon lies.

Where: In the parts of said country that have emerged from Communism.

Yes, there are lots of people who miss Communism. For all its faults, being oblivious as to why they do, and why they would prefer the informants, the surveillance, the arbitrary imprisonment, and so on, to what they have now, is to fail to understand why a nontrivial portion of the US population would prefer informants, surveillance, and arbitrary imprisonment.

I think it's short-sighted to ignore the fact that there were losers from the end of communism, and that their loss went totally uncompensated, and that the people who brought about the end of communism have nothing at all for which to answer to them.

That doesn't mean that communism shouldn't have ended. But it does mean that there was certainly a downside to Vaclav Havel, intentional or not.

[Crissa]

I don't buy that eastern europe, which was poor prior to WWII, would not have remained poor.

Yes, they didn't grow in the 60s and their system didn't allow it. We embargoed them. But at the same time, hate crimes weren't tolerated and poverty and crime wasn't rampant.

You're saying it was bad because it was bad. No shit. But now it's bad also anew. And leaving a large number of citizens behind. His government let them down. Hate crime is now tolerated. Landed over landless is tolerated. Crime and graft is tolerated.

It should be fine to admit failings. Why does it make someone a communist apologizer to point out these failings? How can they fix these problems if merely pointing out them means you get shuffled off into the whiny police-state apologizer zone?

[beckya57]

Like Sir C, I'm a bit startled by the impulse to defend the old governments of Eastern Europe. Those countries were poor, their populations were repressed, and they lived in a police state with the full knowledge that any attempt at liberalization would be met with Soviet tanks. I consider the falling of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union one of the most positive things that's happened in my lifetime, not the least because I could stop worrying about a US-Soviet nuclear war. The one negative that I see is that the lack of a credible alternative to capitalism has enabled the Galtians' efforts to take over the world and shred social welfare programs. People like Bismarck in Germany started some of the earliest social programs not because they were progressive liberals but rather because they were conservatives who were worried about Bolshevik takeovers and assumed (correctly) that this would be less likely to happen if the masses weren't living in total misery. No such pressure on elites today, and that is a loss.

Sir C, I'm ridiculously busy too, and some of my friends are having horrid problems and lousy Christmases. Me, I'm grateful to have a good job and a relatively problem-free life. I just wish I could do more to help my friends, some of what's happening is really awful.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

Czeckoslovakia was not poor historically. It was the industrial heart of the old Austro-Hungarian empire and was a pretty prosperous place.

Once it shook off the Soviet yoke it returned to being a prosperous place.

It is also a stable, successful parliamentary democracy.

I am not suggesting it is perfect, but there is simply no reasonable comparison between the country as it now exists and its days as a Soviet satellite.

Mandos,

Of course there are losers in any upheaval of this kind. I am not inclined to lose a lot of sleep about the loss of status of former aparatchiks though.

[Corvus9]

I actually know vanishing little about the Soviet bloc countries, so can't really contribute to this discussion about whether or not Havel was a bad influence or whatever, but as a leftist I am glad that Lenin's project eventually crashed and burned. I see the Soviet project as a stain on our honor, one that must be admitted to and vowed against. Socialism or social democracy must come from the will of the people. If you have to impose it from above, or maintain it through a police state, then it fails at being left wing. If Czechoslovakia had been acceptable to its people, if it had passed the test of democracy, it would still exist. But it doesn't. It was a failure, and no one who cares about the plight of the common people should mourn it. Find a new and better way.

On the other hand, Russia still seems pretty fucked up.

[Crissa]

It's not a prosperous place. It's a ghetto filled with dirt poor farmers in Slovak and racist youth groups without jobs in Czechia.

It wasn't a prosperous place before.

When you leave people on the floor, the whole place is poorer for it. I don't buy this 'prosperity' thing when you've got subsistence people working under the yoke of a landed class along with hate crime, poverty, and general disparity of wealth and legal access.

[Paula B]

Drat! This is the second time this week that I've composed a stellar comment, gone through the posting steps, then watched it vanish before my eyes!

[Paula B]

this gist of my lost comment was this: I saw up close how awful it was in East Germany, shortly after the Fall of the Wall. For an inkling, see The Fall of the Berlin Wall on my blog. I observed scores of malnourished and disabled young people walking or begging on the streets of Leipzig, one of the East's most important industrial cities. The hospital was joke, left over from the 15th century, but electrified. There were landmines lining major roads, roadblocks and surveillance towers everywhere. No large-scale, moderate-security prison could have been worse than what I saw. One image stays with me, more than 20 years later. I drove around the outside of what looked like your typical NJ Turnpike toll plaza. The main difference was this one was deserted, and shards of plate glass filled pavement between twisted structures that once were guard booths, now scarred with bullet holes. Not the work of happy, well-fed campers.

As for hate crimes, poverty, general disparity of wealth and legal access, you can have that under any political system, can't you? The difference is in how much the will of the people can affect change within that system or from one system to another.

Judging by what's happened in this country in the last decade, I'd say such change can be swift and effective. Thanks to a few powerful people/corporations -- one in the same, says SCOTUS -- it looks like we've moved TOWARD [more]hate crime, poverty, and general disparity of wealth and legal access with lightening speed.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

I don't know where you are getting this stuff. The Czech Republic has per capita income of about $25,000, which puts it around 50th in the world -- a bit behind countries like Italy, Spain, and New Zealand.

Only 3% of the country's work force is employed in agriculture, making it not much different than the U.S.

About 40% of the population works in industry and the Czechs produce a substantial amount of industrial goods, such as cars, for export. It's industrial growth rate has been quite substantial, although the economic crisis in Europe has had a negative effect in the last couple of years.

The country has pretty modern transportation and communications services. I've spent some time in Prague, which is a prosperous, modern, and lovely city.

I know less about Slovokia having only traveled through it by train on the way to Budapest from Prague. But like the Czech Republic it has a very small amount of its labor force devoted to agriculture. The fact that the Slovaks were permitted to break away from Czechoslovakia in a completely peaceful fashion was a major achievement of the nascent post-communist goernment.

[Sir Charles]

Corvus,

Russia is pretty fucked up, although I would argue even it in its present quasi-authoritarian mode it is vastly prefereable to the old U.S.S.R.

I spent a couple of weeks there in 2003 and it is a fascinating, if disturbing, place.

I think the dislocation suffered by the Russian people is significantly worse than that of their eastern European counterparts. The absence of any democratic culture and civil society have had a negative effect on the development of open and responsive government institutions. The parts of the country that are not St. Petersburg and Moscow definitely lag behind those places and the rule of law is pretty non-existent.

[Sir Charles]

Paula,

East Germany was pretty much a nightmare state -- a government that was remarkable in its ability to take the German people, historically among the most productive and innovative on earth (yeah, I know, not always in a good way), and reduce them to a kind of demoralized penury.

Although I agree with you regarding the disturbing trend toward inequality in our own country, we have not seen a rise in crime generally or hate crime in particular even in the current horrible economic client. For whatever reasons -- and they really are not clear -- crime in the U.S. has continued to decline in a pretty impressive fashion and I would argue that hate crimes in particular are far fewer than occurred four or five decades ago. General levels of tolerance are much higher, which may be why when such crimes do occur they draw a lot of attention.

[Sir Charles]

Becky,

I missed your comment. Tony Judt made similar observations about the disappearance of Marxist modes of argument having a negative impact on the maintenance of the welfare state.

I think though that for rhose of us on the left, it is far preferable to see these horrible regimes disappear and to continue to support the kind of Scandanavian social democratic model, where private ownership is allowed to flourish, but only within the context of a state that has strong unions and governments that assure a minimally decent standard of living for all of its people.

[Paula B]

Too busy today to get caught up in more discussion but, to all friends on Cogitamus:
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, with an emphasis on the happy part.

[oddjob]

You've probably seen this video of Steny Hoyer making a request for the payroll tax holiday to be extended as the speaker pro tempore retires the session and walks away.

That Republican is Michael Fitzpatrick. He represents my parents' congressional district, immediately north of Philadelphia. That's a swing district that votes for moderate-ish Republicans and Democrats and has swung back and forth for some decades between sending Democrats and Republicans. (It was last represented by Patrick Murphy, a former Army officer who shepherded the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" through the House of Representatives before he was voted out of office in 2010.)

I'll be interested to see whether this video shows up in campaign ads in Bucks County, PA next summer and fall.

[jeanne marie]

Happy holidays to the cogblog family from a pretty faithful lurker (and sometimes commenter). I wish I had more time to write . . . but life outside the intertubes is keeping me busy and mostly in a good way. Wishing everyone the best.

[Sir Charles]

Paula and JM,

Happy holidays to you as well.

oddjob,

That seems like a seat we should be able to take back in a presidential election ear.

[Crissa]

I don't care what the average income is. That has nothing to do with the actual security of the poor.

And that was the entirety of my point.

Nor do I care to listen about sob stories that some other communist country was doing badly after the government collapsed, and was never doing well. No duh. It's an attempt to distraction.

[beckya57]

Paula, my comment just got eaten too.

I totally agree with Sir C and Corvus about the desirability of social democracy and the damage to the leftist cause overall from communist dictatorships. I'm just saying that even good changes usually have a downside.

Happy Holidays to all, and I hope that irritates Faux News. May you and the GOP get all the coal in your stockings that you so richly deserve.

[beckya57]

Hope everyone understood that the "you" above referred to Faux News, not to anyone here.

[nancy]

Our hope is to make a short pre-Christmas day-trip tomorrow to watch the bald eagles that have gathered in the area in record numbers. Four years ago they were still on the endangered species list -- who says government can't do anything right? Anyway, seems an appropriate respite before the holidays. To be able to see these creatures at work in their habitat is a humbling gift. So, good weekend all and...

Happy holidays, cheers and blessings.

[beckya57]

nancy, we've gone on several bald eagle-watching rafting trips, and those birds are absolutely awesome. And I also remember that they almost went extinct. An even better success story is the recovery of the also previously endangered Canada goose. In fact, they're so recovered that now they're pests in some places. What was I saying about the downside of mostly good changes?

[nancy]

becky -- um, yes. goose poop. ;-) lots of it, where ever they light.

at golf courses here, the geese are shooed and herded by border collies. that's a sight. i do love to hear them in seasonal flight though.

re faux: watched george c. scott in 'a christmas carol' several nights ago, while i addressed cards. if you haven't seen it, i highly recommend. i kept imagining how these all-american *yule-lovers* might translate the tale. i think there's a betting pool there somewhere. what do we suppose they do with tiny tim? any more coal for the fire? christmas day off? do they dock bob cratchit's pay or no? and best of all, is cratchit, through his lassitude and inattention, responsible for his situation?

[beckya57]

Bob Cratchit needs to work harder and appreciate that Scrooge is creating his job.

Tiny Tim needs to pull himself up by his own bootstraps, and recognize that programs designed to assist people with disabilities will only make him dependent.

How's that sound?

[KN]

Greetings all, happy solstice, just past. Longest day of the year here for us just south of the line. About 12 hours and 34 minutes.

Not a lot of xmas cheer here in the bush, mostly religious reactions and a few folks coming around to show me to their kids because they all think I am Papa Noel.

No experience on my part with communism in Eastern Europe but I have had a taste of it in China. A little bitter I'd say but perhaps better than what came before. Hard to say.

From what little I know of things at the moment in the US I would comment generally that authoritarianism is not a good thing. Since when does camping out in a public place warrant riot police?

I'm not thinking very clearly or even able to sustain a long diatribe like I usually do. Long story short apparently I have contracted my third case of dengue and it has been, shall we say, bad. Now I know why they call it breakbone fever.

I feel a little more secure being up here in the bush where the doctors really know what this stuff does to you instead of in Rio where they eschew peasant diseases. I seem to have put my foot in it this time.

PaulaB's comment at 11:24 or so was what I really wanted to respond to, I agree, we have seen a huge erosion of ordinary rule of law in the U.S. over the past decade. To my mind the worst part of it is that people are so simple minded as to think that Obama alone can turn all this around. Fat chance. He might be able to right a few wrongs and set a trend in the right direction in his next term if and only if he has a solid majority in both houses backing him up and willing to fallow his lead. I am not optimistic that will be the case.

I think it is a little silly though to quibble over the historical context of eastern europes problems when the US is facing an existential threat in terms of the corruption of all branches of government and corporate hegemony being ensconced in state governments.

I have to decide now whether to leave immediately or stick around and try to wind things up well enough to have something tangible as an outcome of all this behavior. Piss poor choice really.

Even more ominous, the rains of the rainy season have been absent I am told for two whole weeks.

Post it or lose it... here goes,

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

More on this -- as usual, I hope -- tomorrow, but I just came across Sully's defense of Ron Paul's newsletters. That one act has moved Sully from someone I might not agree with, but whom I respected, to someone who has lost all of my respect. (It was a similar defense of Paul by Glenn Greenwald -- before he went totally over the line -- that caused me to drop him from my reading list.)

Sorry, but some things are nit defensible. I'd suggest Sully do some research in Dave Neiwert's original blog, Orcinus, to see Paul's further dips into racism.

[Sir Charles]

becky,

Very sound advice for the Cratchit brood -- the parasites. Once Scrooge is given his proper due, we can rectify It's a Wonderful Life and make sure that people feel a similar sense of gratitude toward Mr. Potter.

KN,

So sorry to hear of your travails. I hope the holidays bring you a bit of relief.

Jim,

I was pretty shocked by Sullivan once again being an apologist for racism. At a certain point doesn't one have to conclude that the guy has serious issues on this score?

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Previously, iirc, his 'apologies for racism' were for the sort of 'genteel' psuedo-scientiofic racism of the Bell Curve and the like. But Lew Rockwell's rants were much more of the ugly 'neighborhood barbecue' type.

As I said, a simple search on "Orcinus Ron Paul" leads to a whole selection of articles -- written by the best true journalist in blogdom -- on Paul. And because Neiwert always credits and links to his sources, the first piece I looked at took me straight to James Kirchick's initial examination of the newsletters in The Mew Republic.

Apparently Kirchick was the first journalist to actively hunt down the whole decades-long run of the newsletters and actually read what they contain.

There is so much there I'm not even going to try and excerpt the comments, not even the ones on MLK or on gays or Jews -- and the comments about the Meises Institute alone are worth knowing. But I can't help myself. the last paragraph says so much that

From his newsletters, however, a different picture of Paul emerges--that of someone who is either himself deeply embittered or, for a long time, allowed others to write bitterly on his behalf. His adversaries are often described in harsh terms: Barbara Jordan is called “Barbara Morondon,” Eleanor Holmes Norton is a “black pinko,” Donna Shalala is a “short lesbian,” Ron Brown is a “racial victimologist,” and Roberta Achtenberg, the first openly gay public official confirmed by the United States Senate, is a “far-left, normal-hating lesbian activist.” Maybe such outbursts mean Ron Paul really is a straight-talker. Or maybe they just mean he is a man filled with hate.

may actually get you to read the whole thing -- and some of the follow-ups listed on a sidebar, including actual copies of the newsletters.

(The trouble with most of the commentary -- and this is becoming yet anoher 'pet peeve' about the blogosphere -- is that it takes off on one commenter's comments on another commenter's comments on a third piece excerpting the original. By that time, you get a few highlights that have been passed on from article to aricle, but lose the whole pattern of events that the highlights merely represent. And, sorry for riding my real pet hobby horse, but this is why the blogosphere was so helpful in creating the Disaster of 2010. They had so much fun with the O'Donnells and Engels and Paladinos that they never bothered to make the connection that this was not 'a few mad people running for office' but that their stances were mere exaggerations of the typical Republican positions -- and that they could have been used against 'Republicans in general.' Okay, whoa Dobbin and back to Ron Paul.)

Kirchick has an update dated yesterday that deals with the question why his followers don't seem to care about his real record.

[oddjob]

KN, I'm glad you're in a place with doctors who take dengue seriously. I've heard of that disease before (going to grad school in entomology will do that) and it's always sounded quite nasty! :(

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

Since I'd barely been looking at politics for a couple of weeks -- except for Benen's daily updates, I stated checking on some of my own favorite blog reporters. And again, right out of the box I got a winner, when i turned to < href="http://desertbeacon.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/job-creators-not-if-you-arent-hiring-the-unemployed/">Desert Beacon.

This has apparently ben a story that's been bubbling up under the surface for a while, occasionally letting a whiff of noxious fumes even reach the blogusphere and the Obama Administration, but it's never made a big enough noise to stay in people's attention long enough. This is the policy, not merely followed, but in some cases advertised, of companies refusing to hire someone who is not currently employed in another job, of saying, more or less directly, 'the unemployed need not apply.'

And, while Obama -- spurred by a bill introduced by Blumenthal and DeLauro of Connecticut -- issued a regulation banning such practices, it went nowhere afaik.

Seems something worth throwing in Republicans' faces, if we weren't too genteel to do such things these days.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

As usual, that isn't the only thing worth reading at DB. One of these days someone is going to take one of my links and then start reading backwards over a couple fo weeks and see why DB gets the level of praise I give her. Almost all of the recent posts are worth linking to and quoting at length. But I'll just quote one, not just because it is something worth discussing, but because it shows how much more you get from looking at original documents.

The key story, and a 'fair summary' is that the Nevada Attorney General has brought suit against a local foreclosure machine for “violation for tens of thousands of violations stemming from a “pattern and practice” of “falsifying, forging and/or fraudulently executing foreclosure related documents, resulting in countless foreclosures that were predicated upon deficient documentation.” That's the key quote, but it is the details, included in the AG's press release, that give the real picture.

The company, Lender Processiong Services "1) Engaged in a pattern and practice of falsifying, forging and/or fraudulently executing foreclosure related documents, resulting in countless foreclosures that were predicated upon deficient documentation;

2) Required employees to execute and/or notarize up to 4,000 foreclosure related documents every day;

3) Fraudulently notarized documents without ensuring that the notary did so in the presence of the person signing the document;

4) Implemented a widespread scheme to forge signatures on key documents, to ensure that volume and speed quotas were met;

5) Concealed the scope and severity of the document execution fraud by misrepresenting that the problems were limited to clerical errors;

6) Improperly directed and/or controlled the work of foreclosure attorneys by imposing inappropriate and arbitrary deadlines that forced attorneys to churn through foreclosures at a rate that sacrificed accuracy for speed;

7) Improperly obstructed communication between foreclosure attorneys and their clients;

and (8) Demanded a kickback/referral fee from foreclosure firms for each case referred to the firm by LPS and allowed this fee to be misrepresented as “attorney’s fees” on invoices passed on to Nevada consumers and/or submitted to Nevada courts.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And, before I take a bit of a break and then -- hopefully -- get back to some more notes from the Blog journalists out there -- Blog For Arizona has five stories worth checking out just in the last two days -- I want to ask a musical question and a totally off the wall one. Em got a book that opens by quoting the lines of the song "Beyond the Blue Horizon." There are a lot of different versions on You Tube -- including a wonderful one by Johnny Mathis that even includes the rarely-heard verse -- but I remember one that was a very early example of electric guitar -- I even have the vague memory that it was by Les Paul and Mary Ford -- and there's nothing at all like it that I've found. Anyone out there remember what i am talking about and who did it if it wasn't Les Paul and Mary Ford -- I even think it might have been used as a theme for a variety tv show? (I do NOT mean the hideous Lou Christie version.)

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

One last thing -- he says, donning his trenchcoat -- is a quote from 'Yellow Dog' at Blue in the Bluegrass" that shuld be posted on the wall of every Democratic campaign office up and down the ballot: (it is an intriduction to Digby's coverage of Barney Frank's debate with Paul Ryan on THIS WEEK)

Pinning repug ears back with facts, logic and liberal policy is not difficult; it's just that nobody even tries. Barney Frank shows how easy it is.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

*blush* I had a cat on my lap and couldn't leave, so I did a little more looking around. I've condemned the blogosphere for not focusing on Repub;icans in general, but another complaint is that they don't know how to actually compliment people who do things they like. Hence, achievements get overlooked.

Case in point: What Dempocratic Congressman introduced a Congressional Amendment to overturn Citizen's United, who was the Republican co-sponsor, and -- and I can't answer this even for my own Congresscritter yet, is your Representative a co-sponsor. (If not, why haven't you called her and suggested she sign?)

[Sir Charles]

Jim,

You're on a roll.

I do not know who sponsored the Citizens United repeal --give me a hint.

[KN]

Prup, good rant. I just did a quick googlie on amendment citizens united and got a variety of results, there appear to be at least three in the works. I don't know who was first.

The world is in an economic crisis for two reasons, one is the superlative that a small clique has exploited the financial system and managed to purloin a few trillion dollars from everyone else, as well as take out spurious leins upon many trillions more.

The other reason is more serious, we have, as a species, reached the point where our impact on the overall ecology of the planet is significant. It was simple to foresee that this would eventually occur, it was not so simple to foresee exactly how it would take effect. The present available evidence points to CO2 emissions being the salient factor.

Economy is a construct of our systems of dealing with each other. Climate is not something we can negotiate with. You break it you own it.

Oddjob, it's no party I can tell you that. Apparently it is cumulative. This is my 3rd go so it is quite a bit worse.

SC - Comes with the territory, things are better today. Holidays don't really happen here, but that is okay, I am looking at getting out for good by mid-January. It is interesting that the knowledge of that possibility has alit within me a kind of profound change. It is strange and contradictory. On the one hand this has been a long and complex exercise that I have learnt much from and which I should be able to write about in great detail. On the other hand it is a kind of prolonged nightmare that I wish I could forget.

Life is perverse.

[low-tech cyclist]

Just checking in - been at the in-laws' for the past few days, and little opportunity to get online. In past years, my wife's mother and aunt have done most of the cooking, but this year her aunt's in the hospital, her mother's on a walker, and she's organizing (and doing most of the prep for) Christmas dinner herself in her bachelor brother's kitchen. So she's a bit stressed, even though it'll all work out.

My main responsibility - a nontrivial one! - is keeping our son out from underfoot, but I did at least bake the pumpkin pie last night. The kid is having a good time, though, and will be having an even better one tomorrow.

As Doonesbury's B.D. said 40 years ago, "Merry Christmas, freaks!"

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

The Amendment I was thinking of was the one sponsored by John Yarmuth of KY and the strange but consistent true libertarian Walter Jones of NC. When I contacted Yvette Clarke's office, he person said she thought there was one by Tammy Balwin as well, but a search of her website and her list of sponsorede and co-sponsored leguslation doesn;t show it.

Anyway, all I am saying in different ways on my 'roll' is that we have a chance to make this a major positive election -- but that 2010 makes it more likely than not that we will fuck it up.

Remember, we engineered the loss of 64 seats -- a loss that has only happened -- since the House stabilized at 435 members -- to either party in 1948, 1938 (where the Republican resurgence that gained them 80 seats still left them 50 votes shy of a majority), 1932 and 1922 -- again a major party pick-up, 75 seats for the Democrats, left them still in the minority. Somehow you might have expected the blogosphere amd the Democratic party and progressive writers in general to be asking 'what did we do wrong?' (Even Watergate and Goldwater didn't cost the Republicans that many seats, the Gingrich revolution didn't switch 60 seats -- even Hoover only lost 50 seats in 1930. In fact, since Roosevelt this is only the second election where we wound up with less than 200 House Democrats.)

And, of course, dn't forget we only kept our Senate majority out of the 49+Lieberman range, with Biden breaking the ties was that the Republicans handed us Delaware, Nevada, and probably Connecticut.

You'd be certain that this would be the main topic of conversation, if only so that by figuring out our mistakes, we'd avoid them the next time. But nobody is taking responsibility for their own errors, nobody is even finger-pointing at the other people -- and Kroo knows there's a lot of blame for everybody to share. Nobody but one crazy old hermit from Brooklyn even seems willing to discuss the subject, everybody else is shrugging it off as just a 'normal' post-election swing.

It's so bad that I have yet to hear anyone even mention that our vote otals in 2008 were swelled by a lot of people -- many, but not all, black -- who ordinarily wouldn't have voted at all, or who might have gone third-party, but wanted to be part of 'electing America's First Black President.' We could have made extra effort to keep those people coming back to the polls, instead we ignored them and they went back to ignoring elections.

And then we have all these 'natural constituencies' like gays, anti pregnancy-forcers, religious minorities, Hispanics, blacks, and other groups the Republicans should have scared 97% into our corner and energized to vote -- if we only called out the haters and challenged the hate-enablers. But we haven't made Bryan Fischer, Bradlee Dean, Rush, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce, Haley Barbour, Louis Gohmert, and Wayne LaPierre into national figures representing the true spirit of the Republican Party. We could be running campaign against hate and the haters -- but we never actually call these figures out -- or call out those who 'lend the prestige of their offices' to haters like these.

And on, and on.

Ironically, we atill look back on 2010 as 'no big deal' which goes to prove -- to steal the Tolkein/Rand line -- that in the last election one party's national chairman was an idiot from Virginia who managed to do everything wrong and should have become a National joke. The other party was headed by Michael Steele.

[Prup (aka Jim Benton)]

And with all the grumbling of my politial Scroogishness, let me still wish all of you the happiest of holidays, and whether your Holiday Season starts with Beethoven's Birthday and Darwin Day, or ends with Eastern Orthodox Cjristmas, damn it, find something to celebrate and celebrate it.

[KN]

I celebrate making it through another trip around the sun, sort of.

I generally like your assessment of where we are in the politics of things. I think that the single most important factor contributing to progressive's apathy is the relentless drone of the nattering nabobs of negativity, AKA Faux News and their (motivated solely by profit) imatators posing as journalists. Few people invest must effort in being well informed hence they are easily mis-informed.

I don't know if we can change that, but we should sure as hell try to.

Happy times to all and sundry.

Prup - give Brooklyn a kick in the curb for me.

[oddjob]

On the one hand this has been a long and complex exercise that I have learnt much from and which I should be able to write about in great detail. On the other hand it is a kind of prolonged nightmare that I wish I could forget.

That reads like the sort of thing that might have inspired Nietzsche to conclude, "That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

Economy is a construct of our systems of dealing with each other. Climate is not something we can negotiate with.

How many civilizations do we see the buildings from that vanished because either the climate changed or the society so damaged the local ecology that the area's carrying capacity dropped below what was necessary for the society to continue?