Tuesday Open Thread

Mill on slavery... (9.00 / 1)

It is curious, withal, that the earliest known civilization was, we have the strongest reason to believe, a negro civilization. The original Egyptians are inferred, from the evidence of their sculptures, to have been a negro race: it was from negroes, therefore, that the Greeks learnt their first lessons in civilization; and to the records and traditions of these negroes did the Greek philosophers to the very end of their career resort (I do not say with much fruit) as a treasury of mysterious wisdom. But I again renounce all advantage from facts: were the whites born ever so superior in intelligence to the blacks, and competent by nature to instruct and advise them, it would not be the less monstrous to assert that they had therefore a right either to subdue them by force, or circumvent them by superior skill; to throw upon them the toils and hardships of life, reserving for themselves, under the misapplied name of work, its agreeable excitements.

source: [http://cepa.newschoo... ]

"Fascism is attracting the dregs of humanity- people with a slovenly biography - sadists, mental freaks, traitors." - ILYA EHRENBURG

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by: durrati @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 06:51:07 AM CDT

i accordance with a pledge to leave no platitude behnd (7.00 / 1)

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can see that I was the Natural. I made a pledge, a pledge with teeth, not to carry water for the special interests. In a spirit of bipartisanship I reached across the aisle and found common ground, while building support at the grassroots and netroots levels. With straight talk, I fought as hard as I'd ever fought in my life for working families to keep our children safe.

I was a rising star with a big tent and a clear mandate. While others bogged down in cross-party sniping, I triangulated, working both ends to provide much-needed relief to our vanishing middle class. With a clear road map to real change, I put the pocketbook concerns of the voters first while saying no to the naysayers. The result was a bi-directional win.

Perhaps it was hubris to touch the third rail of American politics. I freely admit my Achilles' heel was that I ignored the elephant in the room. But I could not let a rogue actor continue to thumb his nose at the international community, while handing money hand over fist to the same old tunnel vision and short-term thinking. This is not about politics; it goes to who I am. To understand my decision, you'd have to go back to my recently discovered Jewish ancestor Madam Valdez, who arrived on the Mayflower. Those are the kind of deep roots and local values I brought to the Capitol. At a hastily called prayer breakfast, I consulted my deeply held beliefs, and mistakes were made.

Do these youthful errors in judgment rise to the level of indiscretions? Many say they do. However, I do have my defenders. It's felt that my frankly well intentioned efforts were made with the best interests of the American people at heart. In any event, the political buzz was that I'd shot myself in the foot, and while I strongly disagree, I accept the findings.

Some claimed my admission was too little too late. I tried to lead the horse to water, but it was impossible to herd all the cats we needed to get community buy-in for my first one hundred minutes. The old guard turned this non-issue into the camel's nose under the tent, and as the slippery slope reached critical mass, I was faced with a Hobson's choice. Let us make perfectly clear up front that there were no easy answers; on that we can all agree. But I refused to take any option off the table.

Before long, it was clear that my hard work to move beyond business as usual was a non-starter. My opponents in the "loyal" opposition grumbled that I'd not only shot myself in the foot but shot my hunting partner in the face. The high-tech lynching they had in mind for me was clearly rejected by the American people, but unfortunately, these guardians of the status quo kept reading their old tired drumbeat off the same page. I concede that many honest Americans may have built consensus with some of the well meaning but misguided proposals of those in the pockets of big-money lobbyists. Unfortunately, a few bad apples decided to launch a spin campaign claiming that the fish was rotting from the foundation up. A charm offensive ensued. I decided it was time for a course correction.

But at the end of the day, my new slate of initiatives was in meltdown mode. The dog that previously didn't bark now wouldn't hunt. My gaffe morphed into a climbdown as I stumbled across the fourth, fifth and sixth rails of American politics. Instead of walking back the cat, I had jumped the shark. Where once I had been a dark horse, I was now a wingnut. The last straw that broke the camel's back left my platform for clean politics in a lockbox. My Sister Souljah moment came during a perfect storm that was unprecedented in its magnitude, just as my political star was beginning to ebb. It was Me-gate.

Should I have gone out all guns blazing? Some would answer in the affirmative. But the odds were always going to be very long for a battle of David and Goliath. And with so many Goliaths in the field, the fact remains that in the final analysis, I concluded that due to circumstances beyond our control we simply could not subject the American people to a bruising showdown.

Since leaving office under a cloud, I've been busy resurrecting my tarnished image from the ashes, by helping our very poorest. No one can fail to be impressed, indeed astonished, by my stunningly fresh memoir (well worth reading just to follow the wide swath of my humane and encyclopedic wisdom), a book that can only be described as a life's work.

I'm down but not out. The voters didn't send me here just to continue the politics of soundbites and pandering. I'm ready to keep fighting the entrenched tide of mud-slinging and restore hope to the people of this nation. Will Me-gate bring me down, or do I have the right stuff to be the next Comeback Kid? All I can say is: I ain't no ways tired.

Tim Cavanaugh
web editor of The L.A. Times' editorial page

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by: shiloh_kj @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 07:46:28 AM CDT

more thoughts on the French presidential election... (10.33 / 3)

  Alain Duhamel :  "Do have thoughts of becoming president in mind in the morning as you're shaving?"

  Nicolas Sarkozy: Not only when I'm shaving.

  Interview, France2, 20 November, 2003

  On the French presidential election---

  When Nicolas Sarkozy first came to my attention several years ago it was accompanied by a palpable sense of revulsion at someone so obviously consumed with the ambition to gain power.  To gain power, not to advance the general welfare, not to replace strife with greater harmony, not make a society more just and equitable---just to gain power for his egotistical purposes.  I saw that he was so determined to become president  that he would never let up in that quest until he had gained the office he craved or suffered so crushing and definitive a defeat that it placed all realistic hope of success far into the realm of the absurd.

  The best thing that I as a confirmed democrat can say about his election is that it puts a sort of end to one aspect of his truly maniacal ambition. He has his office and now he's going to have to deal with what comes with it: responsibility for failing the expectations of the public which elected him.  I have thought for the past couple of years-ever since President  Chirac replaced Prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin  (who joined in supporting Sarkozy's candidacy) with Dominique de Villepin (who also "supported" Sarkozy but held out to the end before caved in)---that it would have been much, much better if Chirac had appointed Sarkozy, then a cabinet minister, to be his choice as prime minister replacing Raffarin.  Sometimes, the only way to adequately inform and impress people on a matter of political controversy is to allow them to see the practical consequences of their faulty beliefs.  Now, for example, virtually every American who is intellectually capable of recognizing it, sees what others tried with all their might to explain and convince them of about George W. Bush---namely, that he is an unmitigated disaster for the people and government of the United States, to say nothing of the terrible harm he's done to the rest of the world.  Those who today still have not grasped this-if only to themselves-shall never, ever, be able to grasp it.

  The French people are going to suffer---though not equally---under Sarkozy and their regrets shall not be long in coming, I believe.  And that is, it seems, the only way that they were going to learn this lesson to a sufficient extent and in sufficient numbers.

  Lots of French people took a lesson from the example of Bush.  But not enough of  them.  Sarkozy, like Bush, is a dangerous authoritarian who, despite what he says, does not believe in anything like what you and I mean by "the common good". 

  That said, it's a mistake, I think, for Americans to interpret the election of Sarkozy as a straight-forward endorsement on the part of French people of Bush and Cheney's world of "conservatism"---the ruinous scorched-earth reign of the power-mad.  The French in general have not suddenly found Bush and Cheney to be admirable.  They remain widely and deeply disliked and distrusted, continuing menaces to the world.  When the French get a load of Sarkozy in practice, the same public which flatly turned down the recent European Constitutional Treaty as being impossibly complicated and wholly lacking in regard for their needs and interests are going to treat Sarkozy to a cold shower.  And he's going to bend and yield because he'll have to.  But it could become very ugly between the first rejections and his bending to the public and that won't surprise me.

Read - think - speak - doubt; create - explore - give - love.

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by: proximity1 @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 08:26:19 AM CDT

Thanks! (5.00 / 1)

I've been having a bit of difficulty getting a handle on the election in France, so it's interesting to get your perspective.

A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She doesn't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.

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by: gatoscuro @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 09:34:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

you're welcome, (10.00 / 1)

of course.

  There are other factors in Sarkozy's election.  One major one is that Ségolène Royal did not convince the broad group of lefists who would typically have voted for her that she was both a real and legitimate representative leader of the panoply of the Left, which is quite  diverse and differentiated in France--something that's perhaps not easily recognized by Americans who have a tendency to look at the Left/Right dichotomy as "the "Left" versus the "Right".  In France, there are numerous "flavors" of the "Left" and Ségolène  Royal did not encompass them all, to say the least.

  Some of them, because they are very  much of the center-to-right "Left", chose to vote for Bayrou in the first round and then abstained or voted 'blanc', that is "null", in the second round when Sarkozy faced Royal.  That, by the way,  was not my case.  I favored Bayrou purely for his principled defense of democracy coupled with a view of Royal that she possessed nothing at all of a true Socalist, where I am most naturally politically "at home".

  Others on the Left also rejected Royal for this same reason: not "Left" enough for them.  In the first round, they had choices  of  Communist candidates, Environmentalist candidates, José Bové, whose campaign was the main Anti-Globalisation one.

  In addition, and here I join this view, some viewed Royal as  being far far from  having the "stuff"  to be president.  In a spectacular move, her principal economic advisor--right in the midst of the campaign, and prior to the first-round voting,  broke openly with her and explained that he could no longer defend economic policies which were sheer folly in his opinion.  He quickly published an éxposé called  "Who really knows Ségolène Royal" in which she was portrayed as exactly what I'd already gathered she was, all "sparkle" and virtually no substance.

  Her campaign veered wildly, seeking its "center", its form and "reason", first as a frankly reformist one which ostentatiously eschewed the party's core "male dinosaur" elements, and then, in a panic at very poor opinion polls, she back-tracked, making a great show of bringing these same "dinosaurs" into her circle--which, somewhat to my astonishment, they obligingly cooperated--not wanting to see their party go straight to defeat.

  Now there are questions which concern whether and how much "score settling" there is going to be in the Socialist Party which, for some, now has a good deal of rebuilding to do.

Read - think - speak - doubt; create - explore - give - love.

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by: proximity1 @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 10:06:06 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Hrm... (0.00 / 0)

Yeah, I got the impression that the 'left'--that is, the many groups not to the right--was more fractious and muddled than those tilting rightward. To what extent, if any, is there a sense in France that the country can ill-afford an ineffectual leader (as Royal appeared), even if the seemingly more efficient version (Sarkozy) is, well, as you described him?

A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She doesn't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.

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by: gatoscuro @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 10:23:41 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

to a great extent... (7.50 / 2)

"To what extent, if any, is there a sense in France that the country can ill-afford an ineffectual leader (as Royal appeared), even if the seemingly more efficient version (Sarkozy) is, well, as you described him?"

  To a great extent, if the people I asked are any indication.

  During the first-round I developed a habit of asking strangers whenever I encountered them in  the street and discussing the campaign for their opinions of Bayrou--without first mentioning that I worked as a volunteer in his campaign. 

  Again and again, when people told me why they favored Sarkozy, it boiled down to a firm belief that he, unlike so many others before him, was really  going to shake things up and produce some of the changes which others had promised but not followed through on.

  The proprietor of a newspaper kiosk I frequent told me, on the  morning following  the sole direct live national debate  between Sarkozy and Royal--carried on television, I listened to portions via radio,--that on the basis of the argumentation, Sarkozy "won" the debate from a forensic point of view.  Both camps, of course, claimed victory in the debate.  My view was that each candidate strived hard and succeeded over more than two and a half hours of debate in presenting himself and herself as the mirror-image of what in fact he and she are typically actually like when not "on stage".  That means in effect that, in my view, Sarkozy did a remarkable job of seeming to be a calm, collected and reasonable fellow when, by the indications I've read, he's really hot-headed, impetuous, not given to reflection but to acting forcefully even when force isn't the best course.

  Royal, by contrast wanted to appear impassioned and committed---and she did, for the time she was on.  Not only did neither of them convince me that these presentations were in accord with their usual habits, they did the opposite, convincing me that I was seeing exactly what they were not usually  like and in each case I found that disappointing. 

  The reason that each would want very much to present their counter-personality is quite obvious and prefectly understandable.  In this, the only debate they had face to face, each recogized with complete justification that this was their big chance to impress and win over those not already inclined to  vote for them.  Thus, they had to be, for two and a half hours everything  that their not-natural supporters had found them failing to be---in the case of Sarkozy, that would be "calm, composed, absolutely  disinclined to be demagogic", and, for Royal, "resolute, sure of herself, clear, precise and uwavering".

  Each gave a great performance and those who wanted to  believe Sarkozy were more convinced than those who wanted to believe Royal.

Read - think - speak - doubt; create - explore - give - love.

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by: proximity1 @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 10:48:16 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

FWIW - "Energy Bulletin" (11.00 / 1)

If you care to browse around sometime, I think this site has some interesting articles.

http://www.energybul...

Mainly, various contributors talk about such things as Peak Oil and what its effects have been or might be on such subjects as economics and the environment.

There is very much a sense of 'how can we live so that we form some sustainable local unit?'.

If you click on the main link, obviously you'll get a collection of the most recent entries.

Some articles from the past/archives at "Energy Bulletin" I thought were interesting include:

"The Long Road Down: Decline and the Deindustrial Future" at

http://www.energybul...

"Peak Oil - Peak Economics" at

http://www.energybul...

"On Catabolic Collapse" at

http://www.energybul...

"Economics: Hallucinated Wealth" at

http://www.energybul...

"Closing the 'Collapse Gap': The USSR Was Better Prepared for Peak Oil than the U.S." at

http://www.energybul...

 

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by: grunmann @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 09:30:11 AM CDT

I just double-posted (0.00 / 0)

a comment in Damnit Janet's essay. Can anyone with the power to delete do so for me?
(fucking "page not found" fooled me...should have remembered to check first)

Give me love, give me love, Give me peace on earth Give me light, give me life Keep me free from birth ...WWGHD

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by: anniethena @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 13:15:33 PM CDT

no worries. (11.00 / 2)

Thanks for stopping by my youtube diary thingy. :)

Mothers Day.. so much has changed in my life and how I view this upcoming day.

I'll be out in the street that day. You can count on that.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." ~Jimi Hendrix

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by: Damnit Janet @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 13:18:52 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

no problem dear (5.00 / 1)

will do.

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by: Diane W @ Tue May 08, 2007 at 16:07:50 PM CDT

[ Parent ]