No, I believe that the rest of the world sees us in those terms, and hates us with every fiber of their being - people as well as elite classes and government.Originally Posted by Mike Alexander '59
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No, I believe that the rest of the world sees us in those terms, and hates us with every fiber of their being - people as well as elite classes and government.
I disagree. They have become marginalized from the party as the younger generation assumes more leadership roles. They are seen as a liability - just as some smarter Rethuglicans are starting to view the wingnuts in their party.Once the Democrats are back in office, said professors will expect to have at least the same degree of political influence that the theocons have now - and will not hesitate to use it, if they do get it.
The problem is the Rethugs feel they owe the wingnuts something for their support. The Dems don't owe the Ward Churchills of the world a damn thing.
You hope.
(P.S. I would hope that one of Pres. H. R. Clinton's first actions in 2009 would be to tell said group what they can do with themselves and their pet peeves, in no uncertain terms, and publicly.)
Just out of interest, why not respond to Mike's point, that all evidence points to greed rather than ideology when it comes to deceit and treason?No, I believe that the rest of the world sees us in those terms, and hates us with every fiber of their being - people as well as elite classes and government.
Why does just the thought of discussing it make you squeamish?
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
I did address a point of Mike's, or rather, his accusation - that I feel the same way about this country as do many of you left-wingers (That the country and it's people are so hopelessly, irredeemably wicked as to richly deserve to be utterly destroyed.) Or did you miss that?
Actually, that kind of thinking should be right at home in academe, where it can be analyzed, debated, debunked and put to bed ... or not. Nothing done in that psuedo-vacuum will start a war or generate a pogrom, unless the abilty to question is taken away.I disagree. They have become marginalized from the party as the younger generation assumes more leadership roles. They are seen as a liability - just as some smarter Rethuglicans are starting to view the wingnuts in their party.Once the Democrats are back in office, said professors will expect to have at least the same degree of political influence that the theocons have now - and will not hesitate to use it, if they do get it.
The problem is the Rethugs feel they owe the wingnuts something for their support. The Dems don't owe the Ward Churchills of the world a damn thing.
Let academe be. If it's overwhelmingly Leftwing - so what? Take a poll in the nation's boardrooms for comparison. Now those folks have power - regardless of who rules Washington. I'll bet they fall about 2 degrees to the right of Rush Limbaugh. Is anyone making noise about that?
Just for grins, why not tell us how many ex-CEOs it takes to rum GWB's administration?
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
David, I am not saying that views should somehow be excluded from the debate. They should however be excluded from the party. People shouldn't b e allowed to be duped by Sean "The Pope is a loony leftist" Hannity into thinking that we are somehow on the "same side" as Ward Churchill.
And neither should those the right be defined along the lines of Jerry Falwell and Kenneth Lay . . .
Separation of policy from ideology, a good norm that should be adopted by all political factions. I wish the Republican establishment could try to think in a more reasoned vein, realize that it's not just about the power and prestige and the good marks on your record. Makes me want to throw my opinions in there, but noooo I am too young to even be noticed. I merely vote.
Democrats are lucky to be the party of youth, at least young voices are better received. However I think they are patronized as lousy as the Republicans have been doing during the last election.
Right-Wing liberal, slow progressive, and other contradictions straddling both the past and future, but out of touch with the present . . .
"We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know." - Donald Rumsfeld
Just curious--how "many" left-wingers do you think feel this way? Like as a percentage of all left-wingers...just make a guesstimate.
Certainly many college professors feel that way - as Blue Stater himself admits (even as he expresses the hope that said element of the Left will end up being completely marginalized by the more mainstream Liberals). In fact, if I'm reading him right, he would say of that particular element of the Left that the only purpose they really serve is to provide gobs of ammunition to the Right Wing. And I've expressed the hope that, come Jan. 2009, one of Pres. H. R. Clinton's first acts after her inauguration would be to publically tell said elements what they can do with themselves - perhaps in the same breath with telling the theocons the exact same thing.
What does "many" mean? Like, a few hundred out of the tens of thousands of professors in this country? Again, about what percentage would you guesstimate? Can you name a few (other than Ward Churchill) who you know feel this way?
In any case, college professors make up a pretty tiny percentage of all left-wingers. You earlier said that "many" left-wingers want America destroyed, can you please give me an idea of what percentage of the total number of left-wingers in America you're talking about? Would you say it's greater than 1%, for example?
What did he say, exactly?
Andy, the Republican leadership has been making excuses for their embarassing flanks and feeding them with the notion that they matter, precisely because some exit polling showed that they did matter last November.And neither should those the right be defined along the lines of Jerry Falwell and Kenneth Lay . . .
Separation of policy from ideology, a good norm that should be adopted by all political factions. I wish the Republican establishment could try to think in a more reasoned vein, realize that it's not just about the power and prestige and the good marks on your record. Makes me want to throw my opinions in there, but noooo I am too young to even be noticed. I merely vote.
Democrats are lucky to be the party of youth, at least young voices are better received. However I think they are patronized as lousy as the Republicans have been doing during the last election.
We can feel much more secure by telling the lefty wackjobs that they are not welcome than the Rethugs can. So far you are the only Republican on this list to even mention that your leadership has some problems.
The devil, HC - they all duck the question every time we remind them about DeLay or about Cornyn, or whatever.
Then they just mumble something about Clinton or Hitler and slink away.
No, I missed an answer to the pointed question - not a comment that 'your side does it too'. If you beleive that the left wants to drag the country down in flames for some undefined list of transgressions, I'll say that's so much BS. I doubt that even 1% of the left feel that way. None of the 1% has power, nor are they likely too. They only ideologues that come to mind are Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel, and John Walker Lind - the American Taliban - a wash.
Now, the question of greed, which is documdnted as pervasive. Is this the rightwing motivator or not? Based soley on experience, plenty on your side are guilty.
I'll say those on the left are greedy. Your turn.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
What most of you forget is that liberals are as patriotic as conservatives, we all bleed red white and blue it's just mine are in different shades than yours. Al Franken put it best I think: Conservatives love their country like a 4-year old loves its mom ,liberals love their country like an adult loves. :wink:
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Hunter S. Thompson
Stop putting words in my mouth. I did NOT accuse you of feeling the same way about this country as do many of we left-wingers.
I accused you of wanting the US to go down because of this fantasy you have been touting over an over and over again for months. Nobody else here, left or right, has been as dreary and negative as you about how we are all doooomed!
The United States is not going to go the way of Assyria, no matter how much you much you wish it.
Who needs Falwell and Lay when you have DeLay and Bush?
A lot of the religious scare me 'cause they seem to want this big uber destruction so they can join Jesus in heaven. They want to destroy the world so's they can live in paradise.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Hunter S. Thompson
I hope this is true.I disagree. They have become marginalized from the party as the younger generation assumes more leadership roles. They are seen as a liability - just as some smarter Rethuglicans are starting to view the wingnuts in their party.Once the Democrats are back in office, said professors will expect to have at least the same degree of political influence that the theocons have now - and will not hesitate to use it, if they do get it.
The problem is the Rethugs feel they owe the wingnuts something for their support. The Dems don't owe the Ward Churchills of the world a damn thing.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
Funny how we let O'reilly or those bastards define college professors too isn't it? I know a handful of professors, and they are liberal. But none of them are the wackjobs that Churchill is, none of them want the downfall of America, although many are frustrated with the current leadership. This is a problem how? The point was made that CEOs tend to be just a wee bit conservative, and no one cares. The military tends to be a little conservative too. Again not a problem.
So why and how is it that the moderately left position of a tiny occupation, with little economic or political sway get to be this big bad radical bogeyman?
Here's the average conservative's way of answering it:
I'm investing my good money to put my child through the best education possible, and I don't want him/her to be subject to information and subjects that do nothing to build their degrees, and God help me if I see them come home as a pot-head anarchist vegetarian homosexual and start criticising my materialist fascist lifestyle. Those professors have to learn to get their act together and teach!
And here's my answer to this:
Because those in control of the media in certain sectors such as talk-show radio let their imaginations run out of control and personify their worst political fears into an area that has potential influence, but not really much of real value. Mind you, Bob Jones U isn't really going to cut it for the rich WASP constituency. They still want Ivy League and all the prestigious accolades without the controversy. Thus inciting the possible response above.
That and most of them in the conservative media tend to have the cognition of a light bulb, unable to discern certain levels of (insert target group here).
Right-Wing liberal, slow progressive, and other contradictions straddling both the past and future, but out of touch with the present . . .
"We also know there are known unknowns.
That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know." - Donald Rumsfeld
An Economy On Thin Ice
By Paul A. Volcker
Sunday, April 10, 2005; Page B07
Fhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38725-2005Apr8.html?referrer=emailarticlepgor For Discussion Only
The U.S. expansion appears on track. Europe and Japan may lack exuberance, but their economies are at least on the plus side. China and India -- with close to 40 percent of the world's population -- have sustained growth at rates that not so long ago would have seemed, if not impossible, highly improbable.
Yet, under the placid surface, there are disturbing trends: huge imbalances, disequilibria, risks -- call them what you will. Altogether the circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember, and I can remember quite a lot. What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do much about it.
We sit here absorbed in a debate about how to maintain Social Security -- and, more important, Medicare -- when the baby boomers retire. But right now, those same boomers are spending like there's no tomorrow. If we can believe the numbers, personal savings in the United States have practically disappeared.
To be sure, businesses have begun to rebuild their financial reserves. But in the space of a few years, the federal deficit has come to offset that source of national savings.
We are buying a lot of housing at rising prices, but home ownership has become a vehicle for borrowing as much as a source of financial security. As a nation we are consuming and investing about 6 percent more than we are producing.
What holds it all together is a massive and growing flow of capital from abroad, running to more than $2 billion every working day, and growing. There is no sense of strain. As a nation we don't consciously borrow or beg. We aren't even offering attractive interest rates, nor do we have to offer our creditors protection against the risk of a declining dollar.
Most of the time, it has been private capital that has freely flowed into our markets from abroad -- where better to invest in an uncertain world, the refrain has gone, than the United States?
More recently, we've become more dependent on foreign central banks, particularly in China and Japan and elsewhere in East Asia.
It's all quite comfortable for us. We fill our shops and our garages with goods from abroad, and the competition has been a powerful restraint on our internal prices. It's surely helped keep interest rates exceptionally low despite our vanishing savings and rapid growth.
And it's comfortable for our trading partners and for those supplying the capital. Some, such as China, depend heavily on our expanding domestic markets. And for the most part, the central banks of the emerging world have been willing to hold more and more dollars, which are, after all, the closest thing the world has to a truly international currency.
The difficulty is that this seemingly comfortable pattern can't go on indefinitely. I don't know of any country that has managed to consume and invest 6 percent more than it produces for long. The United States is absorbing about 80 percent of the net flow of international capital. And at some point, both central banks and private institutions will have their fill of dollars.
I don't know whether change will come with a bang or a whimper, whether sooner or later. But as things stand, it is more likely than not that it will be financial crises rather than policy foresight that will force the change.
It's not that it is so difficult intellectually to set out a scenario for a "soft landing" and sustained growth. There is a wide area of agreement among establishment economists about a textbook pretty picture: China and other continental Asian economies should permit and encourage a substantial exchange rate appreciation against the dollar. Japan and Europe should work promptly and aggressively toward domestic stimulus and deal more effectively and speedily with structural obstacles to growth. And the United States, by some combination of measures, should forcibly increase its rate of internal saving, thereby reducing its import demand.
But can we, with any degree of confidence today, look forward to any one of these policies being put in place any time soon, much less a combination of all?
The answer is no. So I think we are skating on increasingly thin ice. On the present trajectory, the deficits and imbalances will increase. At some point, the sense of confidence in capital markets that today so benignly supports the flow of funds to the United States and the growing world economy could fade. Then some event, or combination of events, could come along to disturb markets, with damaging volatility in both exchange markets and interest rates. We had a taste of that in the stagflation of the 1970s -- a volatile and depressed dollar, inflationary pressures, a sudden increase in interest rates and a couple of big recessions.
The clear lesson I draw is that there is a high premium on doing what we can to minimize the risks and to ensure that there is time for orderly adjustment. I'm not suggesting anything unorthodox or arcane. What is required is a willingness to act now -- and next year, and the following year, and to act even when, on the surface, everything seems so placid and favorable.
What I am talking about really boils down to the oldest lesson of economic policy: a strong sense of monetary and fiscal discipline. This is not a time for ideological intransigence and partisan posturing on the budget at the expense of the deficit rising still higher. Surely we would all be better off if other countries did their part. But their failures must not deflect us from what we can do, in our own self-interest.
A wise observer of the economic scene once commented that "what can be left to later, usually is -- and then, alas, it's too late." I don't want to let that stand as the epitaph of what has been an unparalleled period of success for the American economy and of enormous potential for the world at large.
The writer was chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987. This article is adapted from a speech in February at an economic summit sponsored by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
? 2005 The Washington Post Company
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
That sums a lot of what's going on very nicely. Now add some larger context issues (petroleum-related, mostly) and international politics (China/Taiwan, N. Korea, Iran, Iraq, potential petro-Euro market) and the picture is even more complete.
Simply put, the institutional order that arose out of the old 4T is maladaptive and decaying. That is what supplies the raw fuel. It is the new generational alignment that heats and dessicates. Lord knows what exact spark will now set it all off.
Americans have had enough of glitz and roar . . Foreboding has deepened, and spiritual currents have darkened . . .
THE FOURTH TURNING IS AT HAND.
See T4T, p. 253.
If you can't trust Volcker for an economic outlook then who can you trust? I'm an old Silent who has already lived a good 66 years, and I'm afraid the younger gens will know harder times, maybe much harder by comparison.That sums a lot of what's going on very nicely. Now add some larger context issues (petroleum-related, mostly) and international politics (China/Taiwan, N. Korea, Iran, Iraq, potential petro-Euro market) and the picture is even more complete.
Simply put, the institutional order that arose out of the old 4T is maladaptive and decaying. That is what supplies the raw fuel. It is the new generational alignment that heats and dessicates. Lord knows what exact spark will now set it all off.
--Croakmore
Kinda makes you wonder why they don't just all commit suicide and be done with it.
If you can't trust Volcker for an economic outlook then who can you trust? I'm an old Silent who has already lived a good 66 years, and I'm afraid the younger gens will know harder times, maybe much harder by comparison.That sums a lot of what's going on very nicely. Now add some larger context issues (petroleum-related, mostly) and international politics (China/Taiwan, N. Korea, Iran, Iraq, potential petro-Euro market) and the picture is even more complete.
Simply put, the institutional order that arose out of the old 4T is maladaptive and decaying. That is what supplies the raw fuel. It is the new generational alignment that heats and dessicates. Lord knows what exact spark will now set it all off.
--Croakmore
Yep. It was the Volcker by-line that caught my (56-year old) eye. And I'm afraid, Mr. Frog., you're right.
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
