Howard Zinn created a view of American history that appealed perfectly to the prejudices of leftist Silents and Boomers, but which has very little to do with the facts. There are Howard Zinn fans on this forum, Boomers mostly, who are I am sure going to die, whether in 30 years or next year, certain that the revolution is at hand, just as they are now--but it won't be, because his view is false. To bring about change in a democratic society requires leaders who lead, and it requires some realism about what is possible and what is not. It also requires a commitment to something beyond one's personal well-being. Boomer politicians have lacked those qualities.

I'm an idealist as well--I have a deep commitment to certain values, such as fairness and economic equality and rational enquiry, and I have had to watch my contemporaries destroy those values in practice for the last few decades. Boomers in the historical profession have adopted the Zinn-like idea that reality is in the eye of the beholder, that objective truth does not exist, and that writing about what governments do is passe. That has had a major effect on my life. It has had a much worse effect on American education and, indirectly, on American politics. Xers and Millennials were taught that government was irrelevant or simply oppressive. That's one reason we now have the government we deserve.

There were those in France who clung to the ideals of the French Revolution for a whole saeculum and didn't live to see the Third Republic. (Born around 1800.) I identify to some extent with them.

Originally Posted by Roadbldr '59

Um... because, even in middle age, they still exhibit signs of "pretty-girl syndrome". You know, the idea that they can treat people any which way they choose, and the world will still adore them no matter what... simply because they are beautiful women.

That's why.

I recall one Democrat-basher who suggested that the Democrats' problem was that their women weren't as attractive. As evidence the fellow showed pictures of aging women, especially from bad angles. A prime example was Barbra Streisand, who is never shown from the side of her face because of a large nose that makes her fit the image of a witch.

Most people find it hard to give up the habits that they developed in childhood, one of which is often a sense of entitlement. Pretty girls can often expect to find adoring suitors lavishing them with praise and gifts... especially if those men are elderly. Look at the Callista Gingrich and her husband's large credit account at Tiffany's. The dirty little secret is that those "pretty women" often become demanding of things far beyond their capacity to manage.

...

In a comment on a Forum long defunct (of the New York Times) I had a response to an editorial column called You're the Ethicist. Someone wrote in with a message like this:

My very young daughter goes downtown where merchants giver her nice goodies because they think she is cute. Is there a problem with her accepting those gifts?

The columnist gave a very blind answer, but I wrote something to this effect:

This is a very bad habit, one that you had better nip in the bud -- now! It may be cute today, but a few years from now it could be dangerous and exploitative. Little girls need to learn as early as possible that when it comes to men, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Some day she is going to find strings attached to the gifts that she receives and that those strings will not be attached to the helium-filled balloon that she probably gets today.

.........

Republicans often like to allege that antipathy toward Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin results from contempt for conservative women who don't "know their places" as liberal feminists. Bachmann and Palin are lunatic-fringe types, and politics on the lunatic fringe is always objectionable.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

According to Wikipedia, she is a 9/11 Truther. That would qualify as a conspiracy theory, in my book.

Just because she thinks that the situation should have been investigated doesn't make her a 9/11 Truther. And even if she was, so what? Much happened under the Bush watch that was filled with lies. So to question the happenings at that time just might make sense. I mean, look at Pearl Harbor and the mistakes made prior to that needless attack.

Questioning is something we American people do not do too well. If it is in a history book or spoonfed to us by the media, we have a tendency to believe it. If it is repeated enough, it becomes a belief system of group think that's etched in stone. Anyone who comes along and actually tells the other side of the story is too often called a nut case. This has happened throughout history, the demonizing of anyone who goes against main stream thinking. And it is to our demise.

We prefer historians and politicians that parrot what we want to hear. Look at the history of what happened to the Native American Indian. We basically terrorized, propagandized, demonized and eventually destroyed their culture and planted them on a reservation of our choosing. We didn't get the real story until much later, and even that was watered down so as to dilute the barbaric treatment of those human beings. This is what happens when we don't question and discount historians and politicians who are trying to tell us the other side of history.

We currently have a Money Party that upstanding leaders like Cynthia, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders and others have been attempting to warn us about. These are some of the very people who will not be bribed or owned by big donors, unlike most of the politicians in Washington. The Money Party/Corporations own most politicians. They are an equal opportunity employer. They don't care which side of the aisle that they bribe, as long as they will do their bidding. Yet the very people who will not be bought, are demonized and discounted. The very people who are trying to help the oppressed. This is why I find it so sad when some of those who will suffer the most in this economic crisis bite the very helping hands that want to assist them.

"The most important moral and intellectual voices within a disintegrating society are slowly discredited when their nonviolent protests and calls for justice cannot alter intransigent and corrupt systems of power. The repeated acts of peaceful civil disobedience, efforts at electoral and political reform and the fight to protect the rule of law are dismissed as useless by an embittered, dispossessed and betrayed public. The demagogues and hatemongers, the purveyors of violence, easily seduce enraged and bewildered masses in the final stages of collapse with false promises of vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. And in the spiral downward the good among us are reviled as naive and ineffectual fools."

"There is no shortage of courageous dissidents in America. They seek to thwart the imperial disasters, looming financial insolvency and suicidal addiction to fossil fuel. They have stood in small knots on street corners week after week, month after month, year after year, to denounce the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have occupied banks, shut down coal-fired power plants, attempted to halt mountaintop removal, interfered with whaling ships and walked in blustery weather to the White House, where they were arrested. But because the corporate state and the two major political parties are indifferent to principled calls for reform, and because the mass of the public still buys into the myths of globalization and the American dream, the plundering and destruction continue unimpeded." ........................ Chris Hedges

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Howard Zinn created a view of American history that appealed perfectly to the prejudices of leftist Silents and Boomers, but which has very little to do with the facts. There are Howard Zinn fans on this forum, Boomers mostly, who are I am sure going to die, whether in 30 years or next year, certain that the revolution is at hand, just as they are now--but it won't be, because his view is false. To bring about change in a democratic society requires leaders who lead, and it requires some realism about what is possible and what is not. It also requires a commitment to something beyond one's personal well-being. Boomer politicians have lacked those qualities.

But maybe not always. And that's too wide a generalization.
Zinn's view is not false at all; he added a great deal to the usual view of history by bringing into it aspects that have been ignored too often. That is not a false view, it is a wider view, and a more essential one, because it emphasizes the fact that modern history IS in its basic essence a history of the Revolution. If you don't see that, then you miss what has been going on for 200-plus years.

I'm an idealist as well--I have a deep commitment to certain values, such as fairness and economic equality and rational enquiry, and I have had to watch my contemporaries destroy those values in practice for the last few decades. Boomers in the historical profession have adopted the Zinn-like idea that reality is in the eye of the beholder, that objective truth does not exist, and that writing about what governments do is passe. That has had a major effect on my life. It has had a much worse effect on American education and, indirectly, on American politics. Xers and Millennials were taught that government was irrelevant or simply oppressive. That's one reason we now have the government we deserve.

It is a leap to call disregard of objective truth a Zinn-like idea. His history contains facts about real people and real events. He just highlighted the "peoples' " history, meaning certain aspects of it that are the peoples struggle for real freedom and justice. That is not to deny other aspects of history; just to remedy parts of it that were neglected. I doubt very much that most history taught today is "Zinn-like," maybe in a few places.

I understand your concern that (at least some) history teaching has been distorted by certain ideas among Boomers. The idea that reality is in the eye of the beholder is also called an aspect of "post-modernism." I disagree with it also, but I'm not so sure it is a Boomer idea. You seem sure that it is; I think the Silents were more responsible for it, and it's a general trend of our epoch in history. Many Boomers were romantics who were willing to question scientism and excessive rationality, and that is a good thing. But it can also lead in the wrong direction when false conclusions are made from this trend.

Certainly we can't put the blame for the trickle-down theory ideology on Boomers. We as a generation are divided on this issue. It was the GI Reagan and his crowd that promoted it, and the Xers learned that government is irrelevant or oppressive from him and his crowd. Left Boomers grew up resisting it, not adopting it. Many Boomers remember Kennedy and good government; those who grew up under Nixon onward have not known this. That is not the fault of Boomers, but of the GIS who gave us this bad government.

There were those in France who clung to the ideals of the French Revolution for a whole saeculum and didn't live to see the Third Republic. (Born around 1800.) I identify to some extent with them.

And there are a lot of us like that today.

You are right that Silents got the postmodern ball rolling, but boy, did Boomers ever pick it up and run with it. It would be very interesting to document the eclipse of the GI generation in the upper ranks of academia. Nathan Pusey, who stepped down in 1970 (!) was Harvard's last GI President--not that that is twenty two years before the last GI President of the United States stepped down. I'm sure that pattern was widespread. GI historians always liked my stuff. Silents and Boomers didn't, and don't, with rare exceptions. (But Xers and Millennials always loved my teaching.)

Originally Posted by James50

As someone who thinks revenues need to be raised, this actually makes sense to me. I like the analogy to the immigration issues. Sequence action to build trust.

James50

I don't think it makes sense. Experience shows that spending restriction was most effective in the 1990's when tax revenues actually covered spending. Under these conditions what was spent was real money, raised by real revenues. When Bush came into power we went back to spending virtual money. As long as there is a deficit spending, constraint is not possible because the money spent is not real.

The whole deficit issue as it has been presented is a lie. Pundits propound about how we need to do something about the debt or we will burden out children with impossible debt, which is complete nonsense. As long as the debt is in dollars, and is funded by foreign lenders, which is the case, there is no debt in the normal sense of the word.

The debt can be repaid any time we want by simply handing over the requested amount of dollars, which the Fed can create with a push of a button. It's not like we owe Euros (like Greece).

We often hear that at some point lenders will get fed up with lending to the US. That's not quite correct. At some point, China will stop manipulating their currency and let it rise in value versus the dollar. When that happens, the trade deficit will shrink, and China's funding of the deficit will taper off. At that point Congress will have to bring the budget into balance or face ruinous interest rates.

And then there will have to be massive tax increases and spending cuts, but at least the falling dollar will stimulate job formation here in the US, which will partially offset the negatives of austerity. The only thing austerity will accomplish today is to raise unemployment and push asset prices to high levels, which is great if you have tens of millions invested, but sucks if you don't.

Higher unemployment could cause Obama to lose in 2012, so right there you can see why the GOP has gotten religion on this issue of late. But in reality, the GOP has long been the party whose official stance has been that deficits don't matter (and they are right, for the most part).

Democrats have been more concerned about the deficit partly because when the shit does hit the fan (eventually the Chinese will no longer benefit enough from a trade surplus with the US to offset the losses incurred by funding our government) the adjustment will hurt the middle and working classes far more than the rich, and the blame will likely be successfully placed on the Democrats. So they wish to avoid the hard fall and this is why they are so accommodating to GOP demands.

The GOP, for its part, knows that its political fortunes are uncoupled from their performance so they have nothing to lose no matter how bad things get. After all, they launched two major wars without paying for them and without competent management, failed to take out the guy behind 911 and took an economy running on all cylinders and left it in the midst of the first financial panic in 75 years. They did all this and won politically just two years afterward. This proves that Cheney was right, deficits, or any sort of bad management simply do not matter.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

You are right that Silents got the postmodern ball rolling, but boy, did Boomers ever pick it up and run with it. It would be very interesting to document the eclipse of the GI generation in the upper ranks of academia. Nathan Pusey, who stepped down in 1970 (!) was Harvard's last GI President--not that that is twenty two years before the last GI President of the United States stepped down. I'm sure that pattern was widespread. GI historians always liked my stuff. Silents and Boomers didn't, and don't, with rare exceptions. (But Xers and Millennials always loved my teaching.)

I might disagree with you on points, but you are not some wishy-washy academic. Historical facts should be beyond dispute unless thee is cause for belief in official deceit. Interpretation is open. Prediction of later event based on existing ones is always risky.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

But maybe not always. And that's too wide a generalization.
Zinn's view is not false at all; he added a great deal to the usual view of history by bringing into it aspects that have been ignored too often. That is not a false view, it is a wider view, and a more essential one, because it emphasizes the fact that modern history IS in its basic essence a history of the Revolution. If you don't see that, then you miss what has been going on for 200-plus years.

It is a leap to call disregard of objective truth a Zinn-like idea. His history contains facts about real people and real events. He just highlighted the "peoples' " history, meaning certain aspects of it that are the peoples struggle for real freedom and justice. That is not to deny other aspects of history; just to remedy parts of it that were neglected. I doubt very much that most history taught today is "Zinn-like," maybe in a few places.

I understand your concern that (at least some) history teaching has been distorted by certain ideas among Boomers. The idea that reality is in the eye of the beholder is also called an aspect of "post-modernism." I disagree with it also, but I'm not so sure it is a Boomer idea. You seem sure that it is; I think the Silents were more responsible for it, and it's a general trend of our epoch in history. Many Boomers were romantics who were willing to question scientism and excessive rationality, and that is a good thing. But it can also lead in the wrong direction when false conclusions are made from this trend.

Certainly we can't put the blame for the trickle-down theory ideology on Boomers. We as a generation are divided on this issue. It was the GI Reagan and his crowd that promoted it, and the Xers learned that government is irrelevant or oppressive from him and his crowd. Left Boomers grew up resisting it, not adopting it. Many Boomers remember Kennedy and good government; those who grew up under Nixon onward have not known this. That is not the fault of Boomers, but of the GIS who gave us this bad government.

And there are a lot of us like that today.

You described Zinn perfectly. What I would like to add is that as a historian, he began a reassessment of war and its impact upon U.S. society. For instance, he looked beyond the US propaganda of the "good war" and pointed out that it wasn't wholly "good," much less "perfect," for women and those denied power and privilege in the U.S. .

There was/is a lot of propaganda surrounding war and he started digging beneath the rhetoric and hype. With Americans so deeply indoctrinated in one way of looking at war, for him and others to expose the rot beneath the propaganda, makes them, like so many others who attempt to tell the other side of the story, an enemy of the PTB.

I would consider him a whistleblower who has pulled back the curtain on the war machine. And we all know what happens to people who attempt to expose the truth.

Zinn does not, nor does anyone, have the entire truth, but he has a huge chunk of it that we would do well to learn. Otherwise we are just pawns in the American game of the wealthy.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

.... Experience shows that spending restriction was most effective in the 1990's when tax revenues actually covered spending. Under these conditions what was spent was real money, raised by real revenues. When Bush came into power we went back to spending virtual money. As long as there is a deficit spending, constraint is not possible because the money spent is not real.

Indeed -- debt ceilings make sense when one has no compulsion for deficit spending -- no war and no depression. The federal government would have been wise to increase existing taxes or impose new ones during the expensive wars for profit. ... which would have had the salubrious effect of stemming the fraudulent boom and related lending of the Double-Zero decade and likely forestalled the Crash of 2005 in real estate and the general crash that began in 2007. But elections have consequences, and we got the worst President in American history with now-predictable results.

(An aside: how many people who dislike President Obama think that we would be spared his Presidency had we had Al Gore as President?)

The whole deficit issue as it has been presented is a lie. Pundits propound about how we need to do something about the debt or we will burden out children with impossible debt, which is complete nonsense. As long as the debt is in dollars, and is funded by foreign lenders, which is the case, there is no debt in the normal sense of the word.

Indeed. The interest burden is still modest, and it is the Dubya-era debt (that includes the costs of two bungled wars) and the collapse of the real estate bubble for which we Americans are now paying. I think of how much better off we would be if the money spent on houses that may never have an owner paying off a mortgage had been invested in plant and equipment or in big projects (like high-speed rail) that would have also had big payoffs. But we got President George W. Nush, who never saw a well-heeled, entrenched elite that he didn't find wiser and worthier than the rest of us.

The debt can be repaid any time we want by simply handing over the requested amount of dollars, which the Fed can create with a push of a button. It's not like we owe Euros (like Greece).

Of course at some point we will have to pay any new debts in euros, yen, renminbi, crude oil, or gold because foreigners will not accept a depreciating currency.

The Greek mistake was to live beyond the means of Greece, and the financial crisis will solve that. Our problem is that we let the economic royalists take command of the economy, and maybe it will take a financial crisis to correct that. Welcome to the 4T.

We often hear that at some point lenders will get fed up with lending to the US. That's not quite correct. At some point, China will stop manipulating their currency and let it rise in value versus the dollar. When that happens, the trade deficit will shrink, and China's funding of the deficit will taper off. At that point Congress will have to bring the budget into balance or face ruinous interest rates.

And then there will have to be massive tax increases and spending cuts, but at least the falling dollar will stimulate job formation here in the US, which will partially offset the negatives of austerity. The only thing austerity will accomplish today is to raise unemployment and push asset prices to high levels, which is great if you have tens of millions invested, but sucks if you don't.

All in all a horrible non-solution. We need to quit importing so much and start manufacturing again.

Higher unemployment could cause Obama to lose in 2012, so right there you can see why the GOP has gotten religion on this issue of late. But in reality, the GOP has long been the party whose official stance has been that deficits don't matter (and they are right, for the most part).

Hypocrites! It's all about one thing -- power. What is best for America is that President Obama succeed, and the 2012 election may yet make that possible. It could also bring about a New Order that resembles some Old Orders that few people relish -- unless they are amoral aristocrats, tycoons, and dependent retainers.

Democrats have been more concerned about the deficit partly because when the shit does hit the fan (eventually the Chinese will no longer benefit enough from a trade surplus with the US to offset the losses incurred by funding our government) the adjustment will hurt the middle and working classes far more than the rich, and the blame will likely be successfully placed on the Democrats. So they wish to avoid the hard fall and this is why they are so accommodating to GOP demands.

But if the deficits constitute valid investments, then the deficit spending is wise. Take a good look at how public utilities typically finance themselves.

The GOP, for its part, knows that its political fortunes are uncoupled from their performance so they have nothing to lose no matter how bad things get. After all, they launched two major wars without paying for them and without competent management, failed to take out the guy behind 911 and took an economy running on all cylinders and left it in the midst of the first financial panic in 75 years. They did all this and won politically just two years afterward. This proves that Cheney was right, deficits, or any sort of bad management simply do not matter.

But I can still see ultimate failure as a possibility for the GOP. The GOP can go the way of the Kuomintang of the catastrophically-failed Republic of China, at least on the Mainland as it becomes increasingly corrupt, dictatorial, unresponsive, and anti-democratic. Other models include the National Fascist Party of Italy and the Imperial Home Rule Assistance Party of Japan, both of which led their nations into apocalyptic wars. Hint: the latter two Parties are now outlawed.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Howard Zinn created a view of American history that appealed perfectly to the prejudices of leftist Silents and Boomers, but which has very little to do with the facts. There are Howard Zinn fans on this forum, Boomers mostly, who are I am sure going to die, whether in 30 years or next year, certain that the revolution is at hand, just as they are now

Some people think by thinking. Others think by feeling. This statement, David, has convinced me that you are one of the latter. The phrase "convinced that the revolution is at hand" obviously seems true to you, and that can only be because it FEELS right; it resonates with your own heart: because any rational assessment of the facts by anyone with the intelligence, perception, and common sense that God gave a rutting ram in mating season will show clearly that it has no basis in fact whatsoever.

If you think I believe that "revolution is at hand," or even that I want a revolution, let alone believe one is at hand, then you are not thinking. You are only feeling.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

....Higher unemployment could cause Obama to lose in 2012, so right there you can see why the GOP has gotten religion on this issue of late. But in reality, the GOP has long been the party whose official stance has been that deficits don't matter (and they are right, for the most part).

Democrats have been more concerned about the deficit partly because when the shit does hit the fan (eventually the Chinese will no longer benefit enough from a trade surplus with the US to offset the losses incurred by funding our government) the adjustment will hurt the middle and working classes far more than the rich, and the blame will likely be successfully placed on the Democrats. So they wish to avoid the hard fall and this is why they are so accommodating to GOP demands.

The GOP, for its part, knows that its political fortunes are uncoupled from their performance so they have nothing to lose no matter how bad things get. After all, they launched two major wars without paying for them and without competent management, failed to take out the guy behind 911 and took an economy running on all cylinders and left it in the midst of the first financial panic in 75 years. They did all this and won politically just two years afterward. This proves that Cheney was right, deficits, or any sort of bad management simply do not matter.

Pretty pessimistic, but maybe there is hope when even David Brooks, Mr. Village himself, begins to finally get it -

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/op...s.html?_r=2&hp

But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Some people think by thinking. Others think by feeling. This statement, David, has convinced me that you are one of the latter. The phrase "convinced that the revolution is at hand" obviously seems true to you, and that can only be because it FEELS right; it resonates with your own heart: because any rational assessment of the facts by anyone with the intelligence, perception, and common sense that God gave a rutting ram in mating season will show clearly that it has no basis in fact whatsoever.

If you think I believe that "revolution is at hand," or even that I want a revolution, let alone believe one is at hand, then you are not thinking. You are only feeling.

By "revolution" I did not necessarily mean violent revolution, I meant the realization of the ideals of those particular Boomers. Brian, you have said dozens of times on this forum that this 4T can only have a progressive outcome along the lines that you desire. Everybody knows you've said it. It's an article of faith for you, one which forces you to jump through a jillion hoops to try to put down anybody like me who tries to put facts in the way of your beliefs. Time will tell if you are right.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

By "revolution" I did not necessarily mean violent revolution, I meant the realization of the ideals of those particular Boomers. Brian, you have said dozens of times on this forum that this 4T can only have a progressive outcome along the lines that you desire. Everybody knows you've said it. It's an article of faith for you, one which forces you to jump through a jillion hoops to try to put down anybody like me who tries to put facts in the way of your beliefs. Time will tell if you are right.

That however is in no way, shape or form properly described by the phrase "the revolution is at hand." What's more, what I've actually said is not really described by what you've said above, either. You are not addressing my views, you are only caricaturing them, in a way that feels good, without thinking, without being rational, without addressing the facts except as further stimuli to feelings.

Time will tell if I am right, but only if you have a clue what I'm saying and thus how to evaluate it in terms of the facts. So far, I see nothing encouraging in that regard.

Here's an interesting article on how the political winds are blowing. We are a center-left nation and the mainstream media lie about that:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...es_110452.html

Originally Posted by Froma Harrup

Poll after poll shows that the American people want higher taxes. That's not the same as liking higher taxes. The people have simply concluded that higher taxes are preferable to the alternative -- so vividly portrayed in the Republican plan to do away with government guarantees in Medicare.

And Republicans don't even have that ugly option to offer anymore. After voters in western New York rioted over it by handing a formerly safe GOP congressional seat to a Democrat, many Republicans have been jumping ship. Odd that House Speaker John Boehner continues to sail on with nothing in the hold but a vague threat to let America default on its debt if ... if what? If Democrats refuse to make the drastic spending cuts Republicans are afraid to push.

What do the American people think? A Quinnipiac poll found that 69 percent, including nearly half of Republicans, want taxes raised on households making more than $250,000. A later Ipsos/Reuters polls shows three-fifths wanting to raise taxes to cut the deficit.

Originally Posted by Lady Vagina

I suppose that a Gray Champion has to overcome people who claim to be on their side, first.

First and foremost, a GC needs to be seen as a leader, not a flag-bearer. Cynthia McKinney can't be a GC, any more than you can, and for much the same reason. The problems of the real world come in shades of gray. Leaders know that and deal it. Flag-beares never have to ... and don't.

Originally Posted by Deb C

I've not read anything where she supports conspiracy theories. That's not to say that she hasn't. But to my knowledge, she is an upstanding person who cares about what's going on in this country for those who live in poverty and the middle class. This seems far from what we are experiencing with too many of our main stream politicians these days.

vs.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

According to Wikipedia, she is a 9/11 Truther. That would qualify as a conspiracy theory, in my book.

Ho hum:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_McKinney

...McKinney's father stated on Atlanta television that "Jews have bought everybody ... J-E-W-S."

...she was among 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those who were killed on 9/11 who signed the 9/11 Truth Movement statement, calling for new investigations of what they perceived as unexplained aspects of the 9/11 events.

On September 28, 2008, at a press conference, McKinney announced that she had spoken with a constituent whose son was a National Guardsman. The constituent claimed her son had disposed of 5,000 bodies for the Department of Defense during the week of Hurricane Katrina. She further believed that there were credible reports that the bodies were prisoners who had all been crushed by tanks, shot in the head, painted blue, and dumped in a Louisiana swamp. McKinney said that the story had been corroborated by anonymous "insider" sources.

On Freedom:

Cynthia McKinney stated “On a previous visit to Libya, I was able to learn about the Green Book, and the form of direct democracy that is advocated in The Green Book. When I went back to the United States, I spoke with Senator Mike Gravel, who was a presidential candidate, just like me, in 2008, because he too is pushing a form of direct democracy for the United States. That is because the government of the United States fails to represent the interests of the American people now. The government is here, and the people of the US are here.”

L'Etat, Cest Moi:

On the morning of March 29, 2006, McKinney entered the Longworth House Office Building's southeast entrance and proceeded past the security checkpoint, walking around the metal detector. Members of Congress have identifying lapel pins and are not required to pass through metal detectors. The officers present failed to recognize McKinney as a member of Congress because she was not wearing the appropriate lapel pin and had recently changed her hairstyle. She proceeded westward down the ground floor hallway and about halfway down the hallway was stopped by United States Capitol Police officer Paul McKenna, who states that he had been calling after her: "Ma'am, Ma'am!"; at that time it is reported that McKinney struck the officer...

Originally Posted by Lady Vagina

...What does kaiserd2 have against Zinn?

-FWIW, Both I and His Imperial Hohenzollern Majesty has pointed out that Zinn is a sucky historian who analyzes history in an incompetent fashion. The case I remember is Zinn's "analysis" of the atomic bombings.

Originally Posted by Deb C

...Just because she thinks that the situation should have been investigated doesn't make her a 9/11 Truther...

-It was investigated. At length. At taxpayer expense. Signing the Truther thing makes her a Truther.

Originally Posted by Deb C

...And even if she was, so what?

...and apparently, so are you...

Originally Posted by Deb C

...Much happened under the Bush watch that was filled with lies...

-Like, what?

Originally Posted by Deb C

...I mean, look at Pearl Harbor and the mistakes made prior to that needless attack...

-Uh, there's a difference between "making mistakes" (which have already been investigated at length at taxpayer expense), and planning the death of Americans in order to start a war.

Uh, Deb, the Japanese (you know, the ones who launched the attack) didn't think it was "needless". Which is why we cleaned their clocks.

BTW, I thought this:

Originally Posted by Lady Vagina

Lady Vagina

...was anyother one of those weird porn sites which keep popping up. Go figure...

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Higher unemployment could cause Obama to lose in 2012, so right there you can see why the GOP has gotten religion on this issue of late. But in reality, the GOP has long been the party whose official stance has been that deficits don't matter (and they are right, for the most part).

Maybe. But I also wonder if Obama is trying to "triangulate" here so he can give the GOP just enough rope to allow them to hang themselves in November 2012. In other words, if he allows Republicans to get enough of what they want in time for it to make things worse and erode the middle/working class even more, maybe the public sentiment will be to turn them out. And *if* that's the thought, maybe he and some Congressional Democrats are merely in a "damage control" mode for now, hoping they can resume the push for what they were starting before the election of Scott Brown changed so much (and more or less forced the House to accept the flawed Senate health care bill as is).

Then again, assuming that much organization and foresight is probably giving today's Democrats too much credit.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The Greek mistake was to live beyond the means of Greece, and the financial crisis will solve that. Our problem is that we let the economic royalists take command of the economy, and maybe it will take a financial crisis to correct that. Welcome to the 4T.

The Greek mistake was borrowing in Euros. If you are going to use a currency that you don't contol then your fate is in the hands of the bankers.

Of course at some point we will have to pay any new debts in euros, yen, renminbi, crude oil, or gold because foreigners will not accept a depreciating currency.

And when that time comes we will have to balance our budget. But it will be made easier by a falling dollar, which will made America attractive as a place to produce things. American assets will be sold off and many more of us will work for foreign employers. But that is better than not working at all, which is the alternative.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

All in all a horrible non-solution. We need to quit importing so much and start manufacturing again.

But that's not going to happen absent the budget scenario I outlined or establishment of broad-based tariffs. Note that if we did the latter it would bring the day of budget reckoning closer.

In re Cynthia McKinney, here is a contemporary account of perhaps her most controversial statement and its aftermath. I don't think it sounds like a possible GC because she made highly provocative statements and then backed away from them when challenged. The statements may have contributed to her primary defeat the next year.

Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 12, 2002; Page A16

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. She added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war."

In a recent interview with a Berkeley, Calif., radio station, McKinney said: "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on September 11th. . . . What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?"

McKinney declined to be interviewed yesterday, but she issued a statement saying: "I am not aware of any evidence showing that President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11. A complete investigation might reveal that to be the case."

Bush spokesman Scott McLellan dismissed McKinney's comments.

"The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views," he said. "The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason."

In the radio conversation, McKinney delivered a stinging attack on the administration. In 2000, she charged, Bush forces "stole from America our most precious right of all, the right to free and fair elections." With the September attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, McKinney said, "an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power."

She suggested that the administration was serving the interests of a Washington-based investment firm, the Carlyle Group, which employs a number of high-ranking former government officials from both parties. Former president George H.W. Bush -- the current president's father -- is an adviser to the firm. McKinney said the war on terrorism has enriched Carlyle Group investors by enhancing the value of a military contractor partly owned by the firm.

Carlyle Group spokesman Chris Ullman asked: "Did she say these things while standing on a grassy knoll in Roswell, New Mexico?"

During her five terms in office, McKinney has often given voice to radical critiques of U.S. policy, especially in the Middle East. She defied the State Department to investigate assertions that international sanctions are brutalizing innocent Iraqis.

With her comments concerning Sept. 11, McKinney, 47, seems to have tapped into a web of conspiracy theories circulating during the past six months among people who believe that the government is partially -- or entirely -- to blame for last year's attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people.

"What is undeniable is that corporations close to the administration have directly benefited from the increased defense spending arising from the aftermath of September 11th," McKinney charged. "America's credibility, both with the world and with her own people, rests upon securing credible answers to these questions."

None of McKinney's colleagues has embraced her allegations, but a few said they are familiar with the theories.

"I've heard a number of people say it," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), who quickly added, "I can't say that it would be a widely held view" among lawmakers.

Some lawmakers have a less charitable view of McKinney's penchant for publicity. Rep. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said McKinney is simply trying to impress her constituents.

"She's demonstrated at home an ability to win," he said, "and she's demonstrated in Washington a total lack of responsibility in her statements."

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a friend of McKinney's, said the Georgia Democrat is adept at seizing on "red-meat" issues that resonate with her political base and have helped her fend off a series of GOP challengers.

"She's not as random as people think," Kingston said. "People always want to hear a political conspiracy theory."

Staff writer David Von Drehle contributed to this report.

Originally Posted by ziggyX65

Maybe. But I also wonder if Obama is trying to "triangulate" here so he can give the GOP just enough rope to allow them to hang themselves in November 2012. In other words, if he allows Republicans to get enough of what they want in time for it to make things worse and erode the middle/working class even more, maybe the public sentiment will be to turn them out. And *if* that's the thought, maybe he and some Congressional Democrats are merely in a "damage control" mode for now, hoping they can resume the push for what they were starting before the election of Scott Brown changed so much (and more or less forced the House to accept the flawed Senate health care bill as is).

I suspect you are right. And Brian points out encouraging poll information. But what he does not consider (and perhaps you too) is that sentiment is not enough. Putting Democrats back into power is not enough. What is needed is a understanding of what can fix our problems that is widely shared by a substantial fraction of the folks on your political side.

FDR is a good example. What did FDR do first? He took us off the gold standard, which was the most important factor in creating economic crises like the Depression. Now he did not know this at the time, the reason he did it was because it was a policy that had been developed and fought for by a whole string Farmers parties since the 1870's. In other words, there was a widely-shared understanding by people on FDR's side that doing this would help.

The implementation of the gold standard policy began in March 1933 and was complete by January 1934. Corn prices reached their nadir in Feb 1933. By Jan 1934 price had more than doubled. Commodity prices in generation showed a bottom in February 1933 and a rise afterward. Reflation strongly reduced the return on short-term debt, encouraging investment. A recovery began in March 1933. FDR did many other things in his first 100 days, and his party gained seats in 1934, and again in 1936.

But what FDR did was to follow templates set up by others. As Brian points out, the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign of Upton Sinclair also put forward a number of ideas developed by socialists, who had enjoyed a bout of significant popularity only a couple of decades earlier. These ideas affected the course of FDRs New Deal.

And this is what is missing today, and what I believe is Dave K's point. Ideas of what to do are not being put forth by movements on the Left. The most successful movement today promulgating solutions is the Tea Party, which is on the Right.

Movements need some sort of core idea of what should be done that they can push for, and this is absent today on the Left.

For example, I have seen no push for a broad-based tariff. A tariff is easy to understand. The short response opponents would give is Smoot-Hawley. But this is easily countered: The effect of tariffs like Smoot-Hawley is to reduce the volume of trade. In 1930, the US ran a trade surplus; trade added to GDP. Reducing trade would reduce GDP and make the economy weaker. Today the US runs a trade deficit, trade subtracts from GDP. Reducing trade would increase GDP and make the economy stronger.

Its the sort of simple argument that can work for mass movements, and it contains a core of truth (although the real picture much more complex).

Another core idea might be a 10% excise tax on the rich and/or a 28% capital gains rate and apply the revenues to deficit reduction. These taxes would reduce the pile of money circulating in paper investments that create bubbles rather than jobs. We don't need more bubbles. Cutting the deficit without cutting government jobs will stimulate the economy.

I'm not talking about implementing ideas like this, just having them out there so people talk about them.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

... Ideas of what to do are not being put forth by movements on the Left. The most successful movement today promulgating solutions is the Tea Party, which is on the Right.

Movements need some sort of core idea of what should be done that they can push for, and this is absent today on the Left...

I'm not talking about implementing ideas like this, just having them out there so people talk about them.

Sadly, this appears to be an international problem. The Tea Party may be our source, but you hear the same arguments from the Europeans and many parts of Asia. Obviously, the philosophical underpinnings have become the assumed state of knowledge, and concepts that should be considered conjecture at most are now the conventional wisdom. I'm not sure that can be overcome quickly, unless a financial catastrophe occurs.

The Right got their message across by persistance over thee decades. We should assume a similar time frame to turn the tide to the left. Planning on an interveneing catastrophe isn't planning. It's a death wish.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I suspect you are right. And Brian points out encouraging poll information. But what he does not consider (and perhaps you too) is that sentiment is not enough. Putting Democrats back into power is not enough. What is needed is a understanding of what can fix our problems that is widely shared by a substantial fraction of the folks on your political side.

FDR is a good example.

Actually, if you're talking about understanding what needs to be done, FDR is a terrible (but nonetheless encouraging) example. What needed to be done was what finally was done: encourage labor unions, provide a basic social safety net, and spend massive amounts of money to jump-start the economy and pull us out of the Depression. He did the first two reluctantly, near or at the end of his first term (second pres. term of the Crisis), under pressure from the left inside and outside Congress. He did the last one in his third term (fourth pres. term of the Crisis) under pressure from Japanese fighter-bombers. FDR did a whole lot of things that either amounted to band-aids on arterial bleeding (e.g. the CCC, WPA, and other relief programs to ease the plight of the unemployed), or were totally wrong-headed (e.g. the AAA and NRA). These were the things he did under his own steam: basic compassion moves that were heart-appropriate but betrayed zero understanding of economics, and just plain stupid stuff. So Roosevelt is actually clear proof that, if the pressure is right and the ideas are floating around, we don't absolutely need a leader who knows what the hell he's doing, although of course that's nice to have.

And this is what is missing today, and what I believe is Dave K's point. Ideas of what to do are not being put forth by movements on the Left. The most successful movement today promulgating solutions is the Tea Party, which is on the Right.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! See, this is what I mean about the mainstream media. They are all -- all of the network news, all of the cable news, all of the big pundits -- following a script laid down by their corporate owners. There are plenty of ideas from the left floating around and resulting in movements; you just don't see those ideas because you, like most Xers and even a higher percentage of Boomers, have gotten into the habit of actually believing what the traditional media tell you and, even more important (because they rarely out-and-out lie) assuming they're giving you good coverage. They're not.

Why, when we have all this poll information showing that Americans are center-left, and definitely not on program with the Republican agenda, do the media continue to depict the country as center-right? Why, when we have movements on to recall Republican legislators in Wisconsin, and a heavily-attended Netroots Nation this year, and huge amounts of writing available on line from a left-wing perspective, do the media cover the Tea Party but none of the leftist insurgency, creating the illusion -- and that's exactly what it is -- that the Tea Party is the "more successful" movement? It's "more successful," so far, in getting media coverage, and it had a temporary success in last year's election, too. But it certainly isn't the larger, nor can it in the long run be successful, as the complete self-destructive paralysis in the current GOP under their influence demonstrates. (Even the punditocracy is starting to recognize this, viz. David Broder's recent column.)

Mike, what you say here about a deficit of ideas on the left is simply not fact.

This is pure speculation, but I'm going to offer a hypothesis as to what the Tea Party really represents. Note that if this hypothesis is true, most of the participants in the Tea Party movement don't realize what's going on.

For the last thirty years or so, we have been faced with a set of political parameters that forces the electorate to choose between two parties that pursue the same corporate agenda in different ways. There are several tools for making this happen that operate within the political class itself. One is the deliberate accumulation of high levels of public debt during times when Republicans control the government, forcing Democratic administrations and Congresses to clean up the mess rather than pursuing progressive agendas. Another is the control of campaign financing, which forces almost all Democrats (and Republicans of course) holding statewide offices or the White House to toe the corporate line in order to receive the funding they require in order to campaign for reelection.

Note that this agenda is purely economic; it is not "conservative" across the board. The wealthy individuals and corporations who are doing this don't care, as a class, about social issues at all. (Specific individuals may be exceptions, of course.) Thus, when politicians of either party take certain positions on issues such as abortion or gay rights or other social matters, they are pursuing votes from their constituents or even acting according to their own genuine convictions. But when they take the positions they do on economic matters -- taxes, workers' rights, trade -- they are acting under orders. They are not doing what they genuinely believe to be in the nation's interests; they are doing what they are paid to do. These mechanisms have bracketed a range of possible government actions where the left-most extreme is represented by politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. At the same time, the corporate-controlled media have acted to create the illusion that this range of possible government action also represents the range of public opinion, even though polls make it clear that's not the case.

An inevitable consequence of this is that over time, the positions of the parties become out of step with what most of the people want and expect. Eventually, a conflict between the owner class and the remainder of the people would develop and become increasingly overt. Since the democratic features of our government have only been corrupted and not actually repealed, this has the potential of pushing a rebellion into the circles of government itself and overturning corporate control. I believe the Tea Party is an attempt to subvert and divide that potential. However, I also believe that it has gotten out of hand and begun to backfire on the corporate controllers, since those participating in it are not consciously part of the deception and genuinely believe what they are saying for the most part.

The natural line of movement for the insurgency is on the left and that is where the bulk of the insurgents may be found. This insurgency drove the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 and of the White House in 2008. But there is a certain minority of the population who, while equally disenchanted with corporate control of the government and holding an equally low opinion of big business, are otherwise more inclined to the right. They envision getting rid of corporate dominance by going back rather than forward, and at the same time take a right-wing stance on social issues. They envision a form of governance that existed prior to the last Crisis or even prior to the Civil War. Of course that's non-workable and a whole lot of it unacceptable to the corporate masters, but to actually enact their agenda isn't the idea; the idea is simply to divide the insurgency and confuse people. If the attention of the insurgents, right and left, can be focused on each other rather than on the common enemy, then the owner class can head off any effective opposition to their control, at least for a while.

In 2010, this right-wing populist insurgency, together with the disenchantment of the left for Obama (who had proven himself to be every bit as non-progressive as Clinton), resulted in an electoral victory for the Republicans. But it seems to me that the effort is backfiring at this point. Many of the new members of Congress feel under pressure from the Tea Party to take positions that the corporate controllers would really prefer they didn't, a good example being the intransigence on the debt ceiling. This has the result of discrediting the Republican Party with the electorate and opening the door for a renewed push from the main-line, left-leaning branch of the insurgency.

What I expect to see next year, if I'm right about that, is the issue of corporate dominance and of disparity of wealth come to the surface as the driving issue of the election: exactly the opposite of what is intended. All of the last three elections have been driven by the insurgency in one way or another. I believe it to be the dominant theme of the first part of the Turning: the people versus the corporations. The Tea Party is an odd part of that, but a part of it nonetheless.