Supposedly attributed to FDR or one of his cabinet members when referring to the South American dictators we were supporting. Primarily Samosa.
I bring this up because it’s very representative of the the kind of thinking that goes on even today. A kind of primitive tribal/herd/clan mentality. That one is to support one of their own regardless of their current and/or past transgressions simply because they are one of their own. Usually but not always based on some ethnic/racial/cultural sameness. Combined with religious and financial classes as well.
It’s what brought Hitler to power and enabled Germans to rally around him, all the while ignoring his monstrosities. It’s what what pushed the Russians on to defeat Hitler’s armies. And what broke apart and empowered those involved with the war in the former Yugoslavia after the fall of Tito.
As well as what is behind all the problems in the Middle east. It’s also why there are those who will support policies and people who would not be in there best interest, since their support is not based on anything logical or even practical Their support is based on and emotional them vs us.
Why there are those who vilified the policies of Bush and support the same policies and actions by Obama. Obama is one of US and not one of Them. And Obama takes care of his own. The upper crust, well healed professional Bourgeois with their expensive houses and expensive cars and 401Ks with a tonne of money invested.
There is no amount of logical, practical, fact based arguments that will convince these people otherwise. One can rail against them – if that gives you comfort. But it will not change their thinking because it has little to do with thought. Just remember what it took to change Germany – who still has neo-Nazi followers. Two world wars and 40 years of cold war as two separate countries. And they still look down on some non-Germans with disgust.
We like to think with all our advanced technology and science that we as humans have risen above such things. The sad reality is we have not.
“History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon,” Napoleon said. “Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people’s minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes.”
It has always been thus, that people will glorify and embellish the past to suit their own egos. Especially when it comes to wars and the victors but even the losers as well. With stories and monuments and what not. Hollywood has made a fortune on this. Books by the millions have been written glorifying the past one way or another.
The split between those in Memphis who hold up authentic heroes—those who fought to protect, defend and preserve life, such as [Ida B.]Wells and Burkle—and those who memorialize slave traders and bigots such as Forrest points up a disturbing rise of a neo-Confederate ideology in the South. Honoring figures like [Nathan Bedford] Forrestin Memphis while ignoring Wells would be like erecting a statue to the Nazi death camp commander Amon Goeth in the Czech Republic town of Svitavy, the birthplace of Oskar Schindler, who rescued 1,200 Jews.
The rewriting of history in the South is a retreat by beleaguered whites into a mythical self-glorification. I witnessed a similar retreat during the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. As Yugoslavia’s economy deteriorated, ethnic groups built fantasies of a glorious past that became a substitute for history. They sought to remove, through exclusion and finally violence, competing ethnicities to restore this mythological past. The embrace by nationalist groups of a nonreality-based belief system made communication with other ethnic groups impossible. They no longer spoke the same cultural language. There was no common historical narrative built around verifiable truth. A similar disconnect was illustrated last week in Memphis when the chairman of the city’s parks committee, William Boyd, informed the council that Forrest “promoted progress for black people in this country after the war.” Boyd argued that the KKK was “more of a social club” at its inception and didn’t begin carrying out “bad and horrific things” until it reconstituted itself with the rise of the modern civil rights movement.
This is not limited to political history but to economic history as well. Idolizing the events and leaders of a past that was not nearly as glorious and successful as even those of us who lived it would like to imagine. The post WWII era and FDR’s New Deal. Which either helped tremendously or hindered horribly our economic endeavors. Depending on which revisionist history one adheres to. It generally was not quite that clear cut.
The Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s and (supposed) prosperity following WWII seems to be the current interest of both the right and the left. All conveniently forgetting that this was simply one of many economic downturns and may not even have been the worst. The depression of the late 1800s was by some accounts far worse and even lasted far longer.
But the economic fundamentals were shaky. Wheat exporters from Russia and Central Europe faced a new international competitor who drastically undersold them. The 19th-century version of containers manufactured in China and bound for Wal-Mart consisted of produce from farmers in the American Midwest. They used grain elevators, conveyer belts, and massive steam ships to export trainloads of wheat to abroad. Britain, the biggest importer of wheat, shifted to the cheap stuff quite suddenly around 1871. By 1872 kerosene and manufactured food were rocketing out of America’s heartland, undermining rapeseed, flour, and beef prices. The crash came in Central Europe in May 1873, as it became clear that the region’s assumptions about continual economic growth were too optimistic. Europeans faced what they came to call the American Commercial Invasion. A new industrial superpower had arrived, one whose low costs threatened European trade and a European way of life.
As continental banks tumbled, British banks held back their capital, unsure of which institutions were most involved in the mortgage crisis. The cost to borrow money from another bank — the interbank lending rate — reached impossibly high rates. This banking crisis hit the United States in the fall of 1873. Railroad companies tumbled first. They had crafted complex financial instruments that promised a fixed return, though few understood the underlying object that was guaranteed to investors in case of default. (Answer: nothing). The bonds had sold well at first, but they had tumbled after 1871 as investors began to doubt their value, prices weakened, and many railroads took on short-term bank loans to continue laying track. Then, as short-term lending rates skyrocketed across the Atlantic in 1873, the railroads were in trouble. When the railroad financier Jay Cooke proved unable to pay off his debts, the stock market crashed in September, closing hundreds of banks over the next three years. The panic continued for more than four years in the United States and for nearly six years in Europe. The long-term effects of the Panic of 1873 were perverse. For the largest manufacturing companies in the United States — those with guaranteed contracts and the ability to make rebate deals with the railroads — the Panic years were golden. Andrew Carnegie, Cyrus McCormick, and John D. Rockefeller had enough capital reserves to finance their own continuing growth. For smaller industrial firms that relied on seasonal demand and outside capital, the situation was dire. As capital reserves dried up, so did their industries. Carnegie and Rockefeller bought out their competitors at fire-sale prices. The Gilded Age in the United States, as far as industrial concentration was concerned, had begun.
As the panic deepened, ordinary Americans suffered terribly. A cigar maker named Samuel Gompers who was young in 1873 later recalled that with the panic, “economic organization crumbled with some primeval upheaval.” Between 1873 and 1877, as many smaller factories and workshops shuttered their doors, tens of thousands of workers — many former Civil War soldiers — became transients. The terms “tramp” and “bum,” both indirect references to former soldiers, became commonplace American terms. Relief rolls exploded in major cities, with 25-percent unemployment (100,000 workers) in New York City alone. Unemployed workers demonstrated in Boston, Chicago, and New York in the winter of 1873-74 demanding public work. In New York’s Tompkins Square in 1874, police entered the crowd with clubs and beat up thousands of men and women. The most violent strikes in American history followed the panic, including by the secret labor group known as the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania’s coal fields in 1875, when masked workmen exchanged gunfire with the “Coal and Iron Police,” a private force commissioned by the state. A nationwide railroad strike followed in 1877, in which mobs destroyed railway hubs in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cumberland, Md. The Real Great Depression – Scott Reynolds Nelson
But both sides of the debate really do not like talking about this part of history since upon close examination it revels how shaky the argument for capitalism really is. For this is the era that Marx was writing in and about. This crisis of capitalism that so parallels our own current situation. But that was the late 1800s and the capitalists were still able to grow and invent their way out of this mess. At least temporarily.
Inventions and growth though have built in limitations as well. This is one crisis that will not be grown out of or invented out of or even be solved by imperialistic wars, such as those used by Germany in the 1930s.
And like all eras of history, it has been glossed over by those who would like to think the years prior to WWI were so peaceful and nostalgic. Conveniently forgetting how horrific they actually were so as to vindicate their own agendas.
There is a lot of talk of getting Paul Krugman as Treasury Secretary. As Dean Baker points out – ain’t gonna happen.
If Krugman were Treasury Secretary we could envision a policy that was focused on creating jobs rather than reducing a deficit that exists almost entirely because of the downturn in the economy.We could also envision a policy that sought to tame the bloated financial sector with a speculation tax that would make much of the creative finance on Wall Street unprofitable. And, we would not have to worry that cutting Social Security and Medicare is the top priority for the Obama administration.
But, Krugman is not on the short list for Treasury Secretary. This list has the names of people who are much more acceptable to Wall Street who, by the way, have been wrong on almost everything important about the economy in the last decade. As a result, we should be very very afraid.
And there is also talk of minting some damn coin to pay off the debt. That ain’t gonna happen either. Just like they keep hoping some bankers and Wall Street executives will do a perp walk. But liberals and progressives hold onto to such hopes like a late stage cancer patient does laetrile and massive doses of vitamin C.
You see none of this was the intention or agenda of Washington from the beginning. We can see that now with the re-inflating of the housing bubble. This time in the rental sector.
Some readers have been asking how one can reconcile positive signs in the housing market with declining rates of homeownership. Indeed, homeownership is falling at an even faster pace than during the 08-10 period….The explanation is that so far a great deal of net demand growth in housing has been in rental units. …This demand for rentals is in fact one of the factors supporting the housing market – for every renter there is a landlord who buys a home.
It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.
It was never the intention of Washington to temporarily save the banks. The whole point was to continue on as if noting had happened. A giant reset button as it were. No fixes, no regulations, nothing. But everything back the way it was and continue this fascist, fraud that has been perpetrated on the American people. The whole thing was a scam. They lied about the health of the banks. They lied about the bail outs being temporary. They lied about the bonuses. Everything.
But this should not surprise anyone. As Oliver Stone points out in his series Untold History of the United States – and as anyone who has read anything by Howard Zinn would know – Washington has been lying to us all along. From the beginning of the industrial revolution at least.
All to keep Wall Street and corporate America in the green. The same fine folks who were supporting Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Franko’s Spanish armies with oil, weapons, steel and vehicles prior to and even after our entry into WWII.
There are those who think we have become fascist. Personally I think we always were. It’s just more obvious now and the propaganda more intense.
That I am no fan of capitalism or any of the Abrahamic religions should come as no surprise to anyone who has read any of my essays. To me capitalism is merely a reworking of feudalism where one can become a lord by buying the lordship and the serfs under him/her besides being born into it.
The results are generally the same. A few elites at the top of the heap making hey of the miserable lives of those underneath. “Any difference that makes no difference is no difference.”
That the Abrahamic religions go so well with feudalism and capitalism should come as no surprise either. Truly a codependent relationship. Or that the constitution says separation of church and state but nothing about church and commerce or commerce and state. Which makes the sate and the church second cousins, as it were.
Nor do I like any kind of hierarchical for of government. Leaders – whether you call them presidents, prime ministers, premiers or what have you – will invariably become dictators and/or absolute rulers, however benign they may appear. And will nearly always kowtow to those with the most monetary influence.
There are those who think the answer to this is to just let everything run amuck and it will take care of itself. They also seem to think that they themselves would some how be immune to the consequences of this. Interestingly enough, they are also the same ones who want to stock pile the equivalence of Fort Dicks in weapons. I guess their immunity comes from Smith and Wesson.
Then there are those who think we can regulate this to get a kinder and gentler version of feudalism. With kinder and gentler robber baron scum bags at the top. That these people at the top will “see the light’ and “the error of their ways” and not try to change the rules once again. And that worked so well last time. Problem with regulations is, who regulates the regulators ?
And then there are those who think everything is just fine, lets not rock the boat. These are the ones who were called bourgeoisie, who are all chummy with the elites and are more than willing to lick the elites rear ends clan when required. What these people refuse to accept – along with right – is that they too could and probably would – become victims as well. Tolerated until replace by a computerized but washer.
The third act will be a lot more of a noire troisième acte. Desperate and brutal. There are those who seem to think that the end of this act will culminate is a rising up of the people in revolt somehow and cause a capitulation of the PTB. With visions of France and Russia in the early 19th century, forgetting that the PTB have them horribly out gunned. That any stand could – and most likely would – become suicidal. In those earlier revolutions, the people and the PTB were pretty well matched. That has ceased to be the case for quite some time. For what should be obvious reasons. Like those on the right and the preppers who seem to be living under the delusion that they too could fight off a government assault. Not bloody likely. This is not Syria where rebel forces would have access to the kinds of armament needed to be successful. All supplied by sympathetic outsiders. As those same outsiders are part of the PTB.
Nor is this Egypt where the military was supportive of the protestors, but only up to a point. Remember that the military – any military – is highly structured and hierarchical and ordered. And is little concerned with how this is maintained. The situation will become more oppressive and more desperate as time goes on.
The good news is that the last act can turn out much better but will require more work and more sacrifice and a completely different view of the world and community and interpersonal relationships there in. More of an anarchist view with little or no central government. Either locally or regionally. A consensus approach not unlike OWS. As viewed by such visionaries as Peter Kropotkin and Emma Goldman . Or even Dimity Orlov. Small groups who come together by desire rather than by any decree. But it will not be easy by a long shot.
The tentacles of the system reach far. Consider real estate taxes. Even if you own the land you are living on out right and choose not to even engage in commerce and use the monetary system, you still have to pay them or you lose you land. And this sort of thing will become more and more draconian. Count on it.
The answer may even be to relocate to a smaller and yet more corrupt country. Where the corruption on a local level can be of use in this way. Ironic but maybe necessary. For large countries – like here – have the corruption institutionalized and are a closed system in this respect.
And those who choose to live outside it will be view by the PTB more and more as some kind of threat to them. Which they are, but not necessarily in the way they imagine. For the real threat would be to their status and the dependency there upon. Not wishing to be part of, or supporting of the status quo would be seen as subversive.
Working toward the kind of society we envision is never a lost cause. And passing on this vision – even in the family structure – is what will bring about any real and lasting change. And put a halt to this sick, dark comedy we have been living for the last few thousand years. Where teachers and guides replace leaders, and wisdom and enlightenment and virtue and altruism are cherished and valued.
He has been dubbed by the media as the “Poorest President in the World”. He lives a very austere life by comparison to other world leaders. On a farm outside the capital and his greatest possession is an old VW bug. He donates 90% of his salary as president to charity.
Can you imagine Obama or Romney or any of out past presidents choosing to live such a life ? Or the leaders of France or Great Briton or Germany or Russia or Iran or Greece or Spain ? And yet we look up to these folks who lead us.
“I’m called ‘the poorest president’, but I don’t feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more,” he says.
“This is a matter of freedom. If you don’t have many possessions then you don’t need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself,” he says.
“I may appear to be an eccentric old man… But this is a free choice.”
The Uruguayan leader made a similar point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: “We’ve been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty.
“But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?
“Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet.”
Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a “blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world”. – BBC
When this man truly lives a humble life. A life that we should want to emulate. A fellow who is very near Buddha-hood.
So Obama get four more years. and Elizabeth Warren is elected to the Senate along with Heidi Heitkamp and Allen Grayson, Patrick Murphy and Joe Garcia to the House. Among other notables and all those Democratic stalwarts and liberals and other lefties are so convinced that this is the beginning. That truth, justice and the American way will prevail and working with in the system is the only way.
IN A PIGS EYE !
If this were the case we would have national health, solar and wind energy popping up like bean sprouts, rail systems and public transportation systems in every good sized burgh and the jails would be overflowing with Wall Street bankers. And the last I checked the AMA and big Hospitals and insurance companies still call the shots, oil and gas and coal companies are still raking in the dough and our rail systems are falling apart.
Then there are those who firmly believe that if Jill Stein of the Green Party – the soccer mom candidate – or one of the others had been given a fair shake, they would have had half a chance.
WOT !!?? FORGETABOUIT !
Look at the results people. Nearly half the country thought some glorified sleaze bag used car salesman was a better pick than a technocratic Ivy Leaguer with no imagination. And a large number of them because he was white rather than black.
Listen up people this should give you a hint.
MORE ELIZABETH WARREN SPECULATION: FINANCE COMMITTEE? – From a top Hill watcher: “Finance may be a better fit. The banks all have tax issues that are at least as important as regulations, and that’s a better committee in terms of fundraising … and she’ll be in big demand as a Dem fundraiser the next two years. Plus … putting her on Finance would allow Schumer to tell the banks that he did something for them.” Politico Morning Money
This maybe a rumor being spread but I guarantee you that neither Warren or anyone else will be allowed to make waves. Once you’re in DC you play by Wall Streets rules or you are disappeared. Assigned to some do nothing unimportant committee to get you out of the way unless you play ball. Do not look for any changes, even little ones.
But keep looking through that rose colored mist if you insist. Cheering your favorite professional wrestler. At least it will keep you out of trouble.
Another election is upon us, wherein we choose who is to head the country. The overall outcome is generally the same. We live in a hierarchical system where those in charge have as their primary concern to maintain this hierarchy and keep those at the top – at the top. Call it what you wish but the general agenda is to maintain this structure. Representative democracy, parliamentary democracy, dictatorship, feudal society….whatever.
In October of 1962 the United States and the Soviet Union were willing to destroy most of the planet to keep their version of this from being conquered by those of the the other version. The other version of course putting different people on top. Generally those just below the top rarely – if ever – have those on or near the bottom truly considered for any place other than where they are.
So why do we insist on having a society set up in this manner? Well lets just see the characteristics of it.
For one thing, it’s based on inequality. There can never be equality between any person and/or group since it is a hierarchy by definition. Not between genders, race, income, worth…etc. A worker will never be treated the same as his supervisor. A person with income Awill never be treated the same as one with income 10xA. And on and on.
Transactions – dealings between people – are mostly based on monetary exchange rather than cooperation and mutual aid. Most of the time if you want or need help or any article, you have to pay for it in some fashion.
It promotes envy, greed, egotism, distrust, arrogance and various sociopathic traits and rewards them.
Promotes competition for everything rather than cooperation.
Most relationships are superficial and detached.
It’s easy. Hierarchical systems require little mental excursion. Just follow the rules, and all will be well.
Personal responsibility is not required. Just blame your problems on those below and/or above.
Discourages social responsibility. The problems of those below and above are not your concern.
With few exceptions, one’s place in this hierarchy is based on property. How much of it you own. Be it monetary or physical or both. Property is more important and living things unless those things are themselves property.
One might think that ditching this system is to be utopian. However there are are vast numbers of groups and societies that are non-hierarchical. In fact the first type of group outside our family that we become a part of is non-hierarchical and based on mutual aid cooperation. The kids we played with even when at school. Then there are the 12 Step groups – AA, OA, NA…etc. Native American tribes. In fact nearly all tribal cultures are based on this concept. A lot of clubs and other organization are set up this way.
So why do we as humans insist on organizing ourselves in this hierarchical manner? I think primarily because it is easy. It requires little mental effort and little if any commitment and little if any responsibility and little if any accountability. Which makes it comfortable and attractive.
But these kinds of social systems have another characteristic. They are inherently self destructive. Throughout history none have survived and most have laid waste to the planet in some way to maintain themselves. They are also very, very self centered.
In every American community, there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. -Phil Ochs
Progressivism in The United States has had a very rocky road historically, never with a place to actually call home. The history of Progressivism is also the political history of this country and the political history has as many twists and turns as the back roads of Northern PA. and just about as many different kinds of characters.
First one has to accept that unlike Europe or Asia this country from the first has been made up of a conglomeration of different cultures, ethnics, religious followers and economic and social classes. All of whom came here either to escape religious and/or political persecution, poverty, legal issues or famine. A good number could only be described as malcontents, trouble makers, ne’er do wells and out right crooks.
The Federalist Party was the first political party followed closely by the Democratic Republicans. They pretty much ran things until 1800 when they fell out of power and popularity. They were the party of the monied and financiers. Wanted a strong union, a strong federal government, fiscal responsibility, good relations with Briton and high tariffs. Their champion was Alexander Hamilton.
Their opposition was the Democratic Republican Party whose head was Thomas Jefferson. They were against every thing the Federalist implemented and wanted. Primarily the party of the southern farmers and plantation owns as wells as the small merchants, they liked small government, low tariffs, states rights, yeoman farmers. They feared what they felt were the authoritarian policies of the Federalists and giving too much power to the bankers and financiers. In a highly contested election of 1800 that resulted in a tie – only to be broken by Alexander Hamilton – Thomas Jefferson became president and the Democratic Republican Party took both houses of congress. This also spelled the end of the Federalist Party.
Out of the ashes of all of this came the first real progressive cause. Slavery. And the first political party to embrace such a cause, The Whig Party.
Another conspiracy theory from republicans…now it’s the jobs report. At the same time the apologies from the democratic regulars and Obama supporters at at a fever pitch and those further left are as convinced as ever that Obama is a closet Nixon or Reagan or both. Whatever. The right want to see him as a socialist or extremest or Muslim lover or …… And the democratic followers as some new born savior.
They are all wrong. What you see is an illusion.
To me now the answer to the question Obama is fairly simple, though I will admit it was not always thus. Like David Seaton I was pretty certain he was a question mark with multiple choice answers. Not what he wanted us to see him as.
A very good clue came from the first of the debates – and I use the term very loosely. One of the best analysis of which is given by Doug Henwoodon his blog.
Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, who famously said that he welcomed the hatred of the rich, Obama wants to flatter them. He made the mistake of calling them “fatcats” once, so his former fans on Wall Street turned on him. That has something to do with why he didn’t mention the 47% thing, or tar Romney as the candidate of the 0.1%. That would be divisive and offend the people whose admiration he craves. FDR came out of the aristocracy, and had the confidence to step on the fancy toes of the rich now and then. Obama came out of nowhere, was groomed for success by elite institutions throughout his impressive rise, and no doubt wants some of those nice shoes for himself.
I do not agree however with Doug’s assertion that Obama is a narcissist. I have personally known people like that and Obama does not really fit the mold. What he does fit is that of a “people pleaser“. People Pleasers are not necessarily narcissist nor are they totally sociopathic. What they are – if I may use the vernacular – are suck ups. Constantly wanting and needing the approval of those they deem to be higher up. Afraid of rejection and confrontation, especially face to face – they will do or say whatever they think is wanted by those above them.
I know I have worked for them and was more than a bit of a people pleaser myself for a while. But old age and some professional help cured me of it for the most part.
But this is not all that surprising when one considers his background. A child of mixed race not really fitting in on either side. Whose father left him at an early age and moving around quite a bit. I would almost bet he had few, if any, real close friends but constantly seeking the approval of those around him. Becoming the first black president of the Harvard law Review and chumming around with those of similar ilk. But never actually seeing himself as an equal. Needing to be the best to get any approval at all.
So his performance during the debate with Romney – possibly expecting Lehrer to come to his defense and be the assertive one – so not confronting Romney directly but only after the debates from a safe distance is no real surprise to me. It fits the pattern to a tee.
The democrats themselves have been the corporatist party from the get go. Unlike the republicans who worship money and those who have it, the democrats are envious of it. Not bowing down with praise but sucking up and wanting it. So Obama in a lot of ways fits right in.
This is not to apologize for Obama or even a heavy critique. He is what he is. He is a con but for his own self worth unlike Romney who is a con for money and property. Romney will steel your bank account. Obama your sanity. He will appear as whatever he thinks you want him to be and is very good at it. And as Doug Henwood notes.
Romney believes in money. Obama believes in nothing.
Most liberals want to write off Obama’s bad performance as a bad night. It’s not just that. It’s a structural problem.
All righty now. What we have here is the college perfesser and the spoiled brat rich kid who can’t keep his damn mouth shut.
The whole thing even more painful to watch than a repeat episode of My Mother The Car. And the car had more class than either of those two. With Jim Lehrer doing his best imitation of a store mannequin. Complete with black beady eyes. Couldn’t a stage hand or grip or someone just animate him a little bit ?
I watched it on the Democracy Now version with Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson and I have to tell you neither of those two came off as winner either, tho they were marginally better than the approved debaters. What was with Jill’s nasal sniffing thing any way ? It made her come off as a bad imitation of Lilly Tomlin’s Phone Company operator. And Rocky Anderson just repeated everything we already know but stilted.
More to the point though is where the hell are the statesman and real politicians ? Is this the best we can do now ?
Or is that anyone with any real smarts and common sense knows that this whole thing is going to implode any time and wouldn’t stick their hands is this crocodile’s mouth for love nor money.
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