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Stop holding Democrats to a different standard
Considering the gravity of the allegations against the Obama IRS from the Treasury Department’s inspector general, congressional scrutiny is certainly warranted. However, there’s just one problem: most of the lawmakers and pundits today decrying the use of public resources against a White House’s political opponents had little – if anything – to say about equally troubling revelations about the Bush administration’s deployment of public resources against its opponents. In fact, conservatives said so little back then that Fox News apparently doesn’t even know (or is pretending not to know) the Bush administration used the IRS in the same way the Obama adminstration allegedly did.
And here’s the even more incredible thing: the Bush cabal didn’t just use the IRS for its political hackery – it mounted a full-scale government-wide assault on its enemies, marshaling disparate agencies in its smear efforts.
Exhibit #64,324A in the case of Why I Spend My Days in a Seething Rage VS. Are You Fucking Kidding Me?
- Jobs, jobs, jobs! They’re everywhere. The problem with all this job-creation is the new jobs are all worse than our previous jobs, which, to be honest weren’t all that rad in the first place. Some jobs, they don’t even pay money, which is still a thing you need some of to live. My mother spent the recession in multiple jobs, the most recent of which paid federal minimum wage. $7.25, baby! This is the reason why, when I hear well-paid pundits say that no one except high school kids work for minimum wage, I want to fly to their home, poop on their doorstep, and set it on fire.
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jimray: There’s something so boringly obvious about Kara Swisher’s...
There’s something so boringly obvious about Kara Swisher’s behind-the-scenes look at how Facebook came to own Instagram. To fans of Silicon Valley drama (amongst whom Swisher seems to count herself), it’s a breathless tale of luck, determination, and picking the decisive moment to pivot. From a…
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Look, I’ve told you. It’s genetic. It bestows an evolutionary advantage. And your snide little postcards aren’t helping.
(via dextercolt)
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In general, the difficulty of engaging with “the president should lead” theory of American politics is, as Jonathan Chait writes, “it’s not quite coherent enough to rise to the level of wrong.” Or, more to the point, it’s not quite specific enough to rise to the level of answerable.
Magnificent, thoughtful piece from Ezra Klein addressing the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency:
In these arguments, “presidential leadership” plays the role of the briefcase in “Pulp Fiction.” It drives the entire story, yet we never get to see what’s in it. Peggy Noonan saysof today’s dysfunctional politics, “if you’re a leader you can lead right past it.” How? Well, uh, look over there!
Maureen Dowdwritesthat the job of the president “is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership.” Actually, I think getting people who disagree with you to do what you want them to do is called “the Jedi mind trick,” but I digress.
It’s impossible to argue with these columns because they never actually say what they’re about. If Noonan or Dowd explained what the president should actually do, we could have a discussion. But they don’t, presumably because they can’t.
The National Journal’s Ron Fournier has also been a big proponent of “the president should lead” theory of American politics, but, to his credit, he has spent a lot of time generously engaging with his critics on the issue. So unlike with a Dowd or a Noonan, it’s possible to map the boundaries of his argument.
When asked what kind of presidential leadership could bridge the divisions in American politics, Fournier demurs: That’s why he’s glad he isn’t president, he says. But he’s certain that Obama can answer the question, or at least should have to answer the question. Hisoft-expressed view is that dismissing the power of presidential leadership to fix American politics is simply “giving Obama cover to fail.” It’s “raising the white flag.”
[…]
Fournier and other adherents of the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency are caught between a question they can’t answer and an answer they can’t abide. They don’t know exactly what Obama — or any other president — could do to overcome the structural polarization that’s cracking Congress. But the idea that there’s nothing the president can really do is too displeasing to entertain. It suggests that politics is broken, and it won’t be fixed, at least not anytime soon. And that’s an unacceptable answer, even if rejecting it leaves you with an unanswerable question.
There’s much more, and it’s very much worth taking the time to read it if you care about this sort of thing.
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The Greek islands, like delicate shattered eggshell pieces.
Oh hey here’s a pic of the cradle of western civilization from space. NBD
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Roctopi by Aaron Jasinski
For the Tentacle exhibit at LTD Gallery in Seattle, WA, showing May 4th through June 11th.
- In effect, what Democrats said Friday was that in any case where the political pain caused by sequestration becomes unbearable, they will agree to cancel that particular piece of the bill while leaving the rest of the law untouched. The result is that sequestration is no longer particularly politically threatening, but it’s even more unbalanced: Cuts to programs used by the politically powerful will be addressed, but cuts to programs that affects the politically powerless will persist. It’s worth saying this clearly: The pain of sequestration will be concentrated on those who lack political power.
- George W. Bush presided over an international network of torture chambers and, with the help of a compliant Congress and press, launched a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. However, instead of the bloody details of his time in office being recounted at a war crimes tribunal, the former president has been able to bank on his imperial privilege – and a network of rich corporate donors that he made richer while in office – to tell his version of history at a library in Texas being opened in his name. Kill a few, they call you a murderer. Kill tens of thousands, they give you $500 million for a granite vanity project and a glossy 30-page supplement in the local paper.
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![kohenari:
A sympathetic reader of these books will end up with the slightly exasperated feeling that Occupy wasted its chance as a political movement.
You’ll be shocked to learn that a recent book review article in the Financial Times concludes that the Occupy Wall Street movement wasn’t particularly successful.
More interesting than this conclusion, though, is the brief look inside three new books about OWS to see what the putative leadership wanted to accomplish:
David Graeber, the anarchist anthropologist who by his own account played a key role in organising OWS, writes in The Democracy Project that it was “only when a movement appeared that resolutely refused to take the traditional path, that rejected the existing political order entirely as inherently corrupt, that called for the complete reinvention of American democracy, that occupations immediately began to blossom across the country”.
Instead, for Graeber and others, what mattered was the process and the procedures that were adopted by Occupiers, not whether or not they ended up accomplishing any sort of political goal, traditionally understood. In other words, if you feel like OWS wasted its chance as a political movement, that might be because you have the mistaken impression that OWS wanted to be a political movement.
This all sounds very familiar to me, as I wrote about the problem of not having clear goals back in November 2011. Then, about ten days later, I wrote the following:
I’m still not willing to go so far as to suggest that they need to have a fully worked-out platform. Instead, I simply want to argue that they ought to be working toward some goals or ends.
But it’s noteworthy that the organizers of the Occupy movement have seemed to explicitly reject the idea of formulating political goals or ends from the first. If you haven’t read this profile of David Graeber, the anarchist anthropology professor who was instrumental to the establishment of the movement in Zuccotti Park, I highly recommend it. Graeber very clearly eschewed the concept of formulating goals when others were attempting to think of some — and that spirit resolutely remains within the movement.
One reason for avoiding the formulation of goals or ends, I’d suggest, is that these things can be accomplished. Indeed, they allow for the sort of co-option that [Glenn] Greenwald has written about more recently because they allow the established democratic system to respond to some of the things that the protesters want. And then, from the perspective of anarchism, the movement has failed. The protesters — who see the system responding to the demands at the heart of their protest — go home and the anarchists — who want, at bottom, to see the system fail (or perhaps just seriously weaken) — are left out in the cold.
This is, of course, why I think the movement ought to start trying to formulate some goals: I’m not an anarchist; I’d like to see the democratic system respond to the (very legitimate) complaints that the Occupy protests have brought to the attention of all the people who have somehow failed to understand the plight of so many for so long.
It sounds as though these three new books on Occupy support this conclusion of mine, but don’t necessarily see it as some sort of problem or missed opportunity. I wanted OWS to become a political movement and to accomplish … but, of course, I wasn’t an Occupier. My hope for OWS was different from that of its organizers.
So, just as I did back in January 2012, when I wrote a sort of farewell to Occupy, I feel like a major opportunity to push for societal change sailed right by us … in no small part because a small group (comprised mostly of anarchists and Marxists) thought the process itself was going to end up being much more important than any goal or outcome:
A whole lot of people were paying attention at one point, and they were asking what this whole thing was about … but they didn’t really get an answer that made sense to them. They were told that occupation was the point, or that no one was in charge so it was about whatever you wanted it to be about, or that it was too soon to formulate any goals, or that working within the system would only mean legitimation of the system. And so a whole lot of people found something else to look at and to think about.
Occupiers got the process — for a little while — and they eschewed any goals or outcomes … and now we have neither.
Yep. Awesome/sucks, right? I have huge sympathy and empathy for the Occupiers’ POV, but I suspect a shit-ton more might have been achieved with even a little more ideological flexibility on the part of Graeber, et al.
But what do I know. I was an armchair revolutionary at best. Viva la status quo.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/82557102453d33efef4b66603cafe7b4/tumblr_mlv6i33cFS1qzy2emo1_500.jpg)
A sympathetic reader of these books will end up with the slightly exasperated feeling that Occupy wasted its chance as a political movement.
You’ll be shocked to learn that a recent book review article in the Financial Times concludes that the Occupy Wall Street movement wasn’t particularly successful.
More interesting than this conclusion, though, is the brief look inside three new books about OWS to see what the putative leadership wanted to accomplish:
David Graeber, the anarchist anthropologist who by his own account played a key role in organising OWS, writes in The Democracy Project that it was “only when a movement appeared that resolutely refused to take the traditional path, that rejected the existing political order entirely as inherently corrupt, that called for the complete reinvention of American democracy, that occupations immediately began to blossom across the country”.
Instead, for Graeber and others, what mattered was the process and the procedures that were adopted by Occupiers, not whether or not they ended up accomplishing any sort of political goal, traditionally understood. In other words, if you feel like OWS wasted its chance as a political movement, that might be because you have the mistaken impression that OWS wanted to be a political movement.
This all sounds very familiar to me, as I wrote about the problem of not having clear goals back in November 2011. Then, about ten days later, I wrote the following:
I’m still not willing to go so far as to suggest that they need to have a fully worked-out platform. Instead, I simply want to argue that they ought to be working toward some goals or ends.
But it’s noteworthy that the organizers of the Occupy movement have seemed to explicitly reject the idea of formulating political goals or ends from the first. If you haven’t read this profile of David Graeber, the anarchist anthropology professor who was instrumental to the establishment of the movement in Zuccotti Park, I highly recommend it. Graeber very clearly eschewed the concept of formulating goals when others were attempting to think of some — and that spirit resolutely remains within the movement.
One reason for avoiding the formulation of goals or ends, I’d suggest, is that these things can be accomplished. Indeed, they allow for the sort of co-option that [Glenn] Greenwald has written about more recently because they allow the established democratic system to respond to some of the things that the protesters want. And then, from the perspective of anarchism, the movement has failed. The protesters — who see the system responding to the demands at the heart of their protest — go home and the anarchists — who want, at bottom, to see the system fail (or perhaps just seriously weaken) — are left out in the cold.
This is, of course, why I think the movement ought to start trying to formulate some goals: I’m not an anarchist; I’d like to see the democratic system respond to the (very legitimate) complaints that the Occupy protests have brought to the attention of all the people who have somehow failed to understand the plight of so many for so long.
It sounds as though these three new books on Occupy support this conclusion of mine, but don’t necessarily see it as some sort of problem or missed opportunity. I wanted OWS to become a political movement and to accomplish … but, of course, I wasn’t an Occupier. My hope for OWS was different from that of its organizers.
So, just as I did back in January 2012, when I wrote a sort of farewell to Occupy, I feel like a major opportunity to push for societal change sailed right by us … in no small part because a small group (comprised mostly of anarchists and Marxists) thought the process itself was going to end up being much more important than any goal or outcome:
A whole lot of people were paying attention at one point, and they were asking what this whole thing was about … but they didn’t really get an answer that made sense to them. They were told that occupation was the point, or that no one was in charge so it was about whatever you wanted it to be about, or that it was too soon to formulate any goals, or that working within the system would only mean legitimation of the system. And so a whole lot of people found something else to look at and to think about.Occupiers got the process — for a little while — and they eschewed any goals or outcomes … and now we have neither.
Yep. Awesome/sucks, right? I have huge sympathy and empathy for the Occupiers’ POV, but I suspect a shit-ton more might have been achieved with even a little more ideological flexibility on the part of Graeber, et al.
But what do I know. I was an armchair revolutionary at best. Viva la status quo.
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My days of losing words: a photo book about chronic migraine
I thought some of you might be interested in this photo book Kickstarter by my friend Rachel.
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This Advertising Life: obligatory "it's been a year" post
I just realized literally an hour ago that I started this dang blog a year ago today. So, in celebration, here are a few bits of TAL trivia you can employ at your next party or social event if you want to break the ice and subsequently freeze it right back over.
I started the blog due to…
So: A) This Advertising Life is one of my favorites for, well, about a year now, and B) I really, seriously, legit want to meet the guy in the gif who kisses his beer. I want to have a for real conversation with that dude.
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… theos, the Greek word which we have in mind when we speak of Plato’s god, has primarily a predictive force. That is to say, the Greeks did not, as Christians or Jews do, first assert the existence of God and then proceed to enumerate his attributes, saying “God is good,” “God is love” and so forth. Rather they were so impressed or awed by the things in life or nature remarkable either for joy or fear that they said “this is a god” or “that is a god.” The Christian says “God is love,” the Greek “Love is theos,” or “a god.” As another writer [Georges M. A. Grube] has explained it: “By saying that love, or victory, is god, or, to be more accurate, a god, was meant first and foremost that it is more than human, not subject to death, everlasting. … Any power, any force we see at work in the world, which is not born with us and will continue after we are gone could thus be called a god, and most of them were.” In this state of mind, and with this sensitiveness to the superhuman character of many things which happen to us, and which give us, it may be, sudden stabs of joy or pain which we do not understand, a Greek poet could write lines like: “Recognition between friends is theos.” It is a state of mind which obviously has no small bearing on the much-discussed question of monotheism or polytheism in Plato, if indeed it does not rob the question of meaning altogether.
Theos in Greek and Christian philosophy (via azspot)
I was Confirmed as a Lutheran when I was 14, but by most common definitions I’d be considered an atheist. Like, if Richard Dawkins and I had lunch, we’d probably find ourselves finishing each other’s sentences much of the time.
But this Friday I’m being indoctrinated (sounds worse than it is) into The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, a club whose only real entry requirements are 1) U.S. citizenship, and 2) belief in God — Christian, Muslim, Jew, or “other,” doesn’t matter so long as you can honestly claim a believe in God.
This requirement is a bridge too far for several of my close friends who would otherwise jump at the chance to join the Elks. (The local Elks Lodge is to die for.) It even caused me to delay applying for a while. But eventually I recalled my Plato, my Spinoza, and my own conception of the Universe to which I appeal whenever “prayer” is called for.
I concluded that while what I believe bears no resemblance to the God of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Abraham or even Vishnu, I’m okay calling it “God” for the purposes of securing access to a private club with an indoor Olympic pool, a gym complete with steam bath, sauna and tons of free weights, and a beautiful, historic bar — plus the chance to volunteer and contribute to some very worthy causes.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about God® more than usual lately, so the above quote was a welcome reminder that God is just a word, really.
(via azspot)
- When we deny one individual their civil rights – no matter how evil we may believe them to be – we chip away at the civil liberties that protect all of us. We must defend these rights at all costs….even when it means defending the rights of Dzhokar Tsarnaev.
