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November 23, 2019 at 3:54 pm in reply to: on the Weddle controversy (ie. Weddle won't share knowledge of Ravens w/ Rams) #108534
wvParticipantI love old, wise, safeties. George Allen types. Coaches on the field. Slow but more experience than anybody on the other team.
When i first heard about Weddle not ratting on the ravens, it annoyed me. But I’ve mellowed on it. As long as the Ram players are ok with it, I dont care about it.
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vwvParticipantI love finding out more and more about “pagan” culture..
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Well, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the notion of Nero’s “artistic” competition in the Olympics. How does an ‘artistic’ competition work, i wonder.
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vwvParticipantWell, my view is definitely conjecture; i cant prove it. But my conjecture is based on the NYT doing that kind of thing over and over again. Propaganda model stuff.
I think it filters down to the ‘Style Section’ and every other section.I’m gonna take a break from arguing-politics for a while. I shall think about science, books, rams, and baby Octopi, for a while 🙂
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vwvParticipantwvParticipantWell I didnt check but i suspected it was in their style section. But I still think it reflects something about the Times. I dont think its an accident they blasted Tulsi’s fashion sense. I think the Times reporters know who they are supposed to target and who they are supposed to support. I assume its not direct orders from the top. Nothing that crude and blunt. But they know. Etc.
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vNovember 22, 2019 at 2:56 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108493wvParticipantI’m saying that if the issue is the duopoly, and the system, and the concentration of wealth and power, inequality, etc. etc. . . . Trump is huge part of that ongoing problem. He and the GOP are a major part of all that. And prior to the 2018 election, Trump and the GOP held all branches of government. But it seemed that “Russiagate” just screwed with their critical abilities, so they wrote, at times, as if the Dems held all the power, and not Trump and the GOP. That the latter were “victims” of deep, dark powers that leftists should focus on above all else.
That aided and abetted Trump and the GOP, and it was hopelessly one-sided as critique…
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Well I just dont see it the same way. I cant really say anything I haven’t already said many times.
I agree with Noam/Hedges/Dore/Greenwald/Mate/Lee-Camp. They are all leftists and I agree with their take on russiagate.
You are also a leftist and you have a different take on it.Let a thousand leftist-flowers bloom 🙂
I just dont see how saying things like “The GOP is the most dangerous organization on the face of the Earth” Noam — and “Trump should have been impeached in his first six months” Hedges — etc etc, is somehow avoiding criticizing Trump.
I think they(me) criticize Trump all the time. They(me) just dont buy into the russiagate stuff or the syria stuff. Doesnt mean we give aid and comfort to Trump. Just means we have a different frame-critique of Trump/Dems/System.
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vwvParticipantThe corporate-sports-media is in super-charged-ultra-hype mode over the Ravens QB. (I forget his name)
I haven’t seen this much talk since Favre.
Apparently the Ravens QB is “redefining” the QB position as well as the game of football. Another redefiner.
Well ok. I havent watched him. Lookin forward to seeing him. Maybe he’s the real deal. Awfully early to be annointing him, though. Well not for the media of course, but i mean for hardcore fans.
For me, the Ravens ‘team’ is impressive. As well as the Ravens ‘organization’ in general.
Great test for the Rams on offense and defense.
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vNovember 21, 2019 at 1:44 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108465wvParticipantPS — Just want to add one more thing. I will say this about Hedges/Dore — They talk endlessly about supporting Leftist Policies. They talk endlessly about the evils of Corporate-Capitalist Imperialism, and other mainstream corporate-capitalist atrocities. And they talk a lot about various nefarious GOP players, including the old ones like Bush, Reagan, etc.
But. I will grant you they do not expressly pick on Trump that much. And sometimes they defend him in a way. By that I mean they dont USE THE DEMOCRAT PLAYBOOK for attacking Trump. They never go along with the DEMOCRAT version of “whats wrong with Trump.” And oftentimes they dispute the DEMOCRAT reasoning about “whats wrong with Trump.” The do ‘that’ a LOT.
Now one could interpret ‘that’ dynamic as being ‘pro Trump.’ But one would have to totally ignore the endless anti-righwing diatribes they have recorded in order to come the conclusion they were pro-trump. You’d also have to ignore the endless support they have recorded for LEFTIST (not Democrat) policies.
Having said all that, maybe you are right in this sense — Maybe they should do some particular shows detailing a LEFTIST critique of what is wrong with Trump.
Maybe they should do some of that. Its a fair criticism.I think i know why they dont, but maybe they should.
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vNovember 21, 2019 at 1:28 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108464wvParticipantUnless I misread it, WV said that people like Dore and Hedges stick with criticism of the Dems, because they don’t want to be misunderstood as supporting them.
Thing is, whether they know this or not, that helps the GOP….
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Well, I dunno. Dore and Hedges flat-out SAY Trump is loathesome, etc etc. Hedges has said many times that Trump should have been impeached in his first six months in office. I’m just not sure what you want. They are leftists. They constantly talk about supporting leftist policies. Not GOP policies. They support National Healthcare, dismantling corporate-capitalism, getting money out of politics, etc etc. I dont understand how that translates into helping the GOP. EXCEPT in one way — and this is the thorny problem for all progressive movements — ANY progressive movement runs the risk of fracturing the Dem’s chances of beating Raps. Its Waterfield’s great concern. That Progressives will fracture the DEM formula (the one that got Obama and Clinton elected) and allow the Reps to win.
Its a real problem. People like me get fed up with the Dems and we go and vote for the Green Party, etc. Progressives get fed up and dont vote at all. Etc.
In some sense, progressives in general, may very well help GOP candidates get elected. Triangulation. We either end up voting for Clinton/Obama/Biden…or….?
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vwvParticipant… and we’re all hypocrites.
i don’t know. maybe the end really is near.
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Yeah, good intentions and good activism are always filtered thru flawed-human-brains, etc and so forth.
As far as the ‘End’ being near….my understanding is, that wont happen until the anti-christ has six super bowl rings. So, dont worry.
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vNovember 20, 2019 at 6:22 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108439wvParticipantAdolph Reed Jr on the Obama-Centrist statement. (Nice to see Adolph Reed get some air time for a change.)
wvParticipantI’ve been fascinated by some of the Vids i watched today, on Kap and the NFL.
Some of the comments by some of the black commentators were interesting/infuriating/thot-provoking.
A couple of black pundits said they thot Kap started out with good intentions but has since made it more about his ‘brand.’ I see the word ‘brand’ being tossed around more and more by tv-pundits. ‘Brand’ and ‘Optics.’ Fascinating.
There’s also some talk among the black commentators about Kap and ‘street cred.’
Some of them seem to think he plays a ‘street cred card’ as opposed to ‘i wanna actually play’ mentality.Some of them think he never really gave any of this all that much thought at first. It just all mushroomed and he got caught up in something.
At any rate, at this point if he just shuts up and says all the right things — some team would grab him, i think. But then if he did that, he would be selling out his core-following or the movement or whatever one wants to call it.
He’s kinda trapped at this point. The NFL wins, in a way.
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vNovember 20, 2019 at 5:09 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108436wvParticipantI dunno. I hear what you leftists are saying, but I have no idea. I often think Waterfield/Obama is right in his political-algebra. It saddens me, and infuriates me, but I often think the ‘centrists’ are right. (no pun intended)
I think that simply because they keep voting year after year after year for…ya know. Year after year. No-one twisted their arms to vote for Hillary instead of Bernie last time. Bernie had plenty of momentum — and they voted for Hillary.
Its that way time after time after time. George McGovern. Eugene McCarthy. Etc. Sad, but true. American brains appear to be a vast wasteland.The voters may very well be so brain-dead-propagandized-colonized-DeepStated at this point that they wont vote for a wacko wild-crazy-off-the-charts-leftist-commie-socialist-tree-huggin-whale-saving-pinko-Stalinist like…uh…Bernie.
Seriously, the nation may be too far down the drain to vote for anyone to the left of the System.
I have no faith in American voters anymore. Too stupid, they are. Not their fault, but they are what they are now.
We’ll see, I guess. I dunno.
w
vAfter reading the above it would appear that you think both Obama and I are “brain dead”, “stupid”, and generally in an intellectual “wasteland”. I must admit that those descriptions may well fit me but I question their application to Obama.
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Well yes, of course, i often do indeed think that. But another way of putting it is, I think centrist-capitalists are just ‘wrong.’
But I also am pretty-damn-sure you think exactly the same way about me and the ‘leftists’ around here. I mean you’ve prettymuch said it flat-out before.
And it used to set me off, as you know. Italian-temper and all.But now, i dont mind, as you have probly picked up on over the last year or so.
I cant dislike a dog-loving-good-hearted-OffensiveLine-Loving-surfer. Political separation doesn’t blind me to everything I like about you, W.w
vwvParticipantSteve Rebeiro@steverebeiro
Have a lot of respect for the Rams organization that we know virtually nothing about what’s going on with Woods. Personal issues should stay personal. Kudos to them for respecting that==============================
Agree.
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vwvParticipantIn terms of Goff, I don’t care about the early INT, he bounced back from that. He was pressing early but settled down. To me it’s important that he was clutch at the end. To me, being clutch when it counts weighs heavily. And he found his long ball again.
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Well like I’ve said before, I think Goff is “good enough” to win a ring, if he has a ringworthy team around him. I’m not concerned about Goff. As soon as I figured out that the OLine wasnt gonna work and Gurley wasnt Gurley anymore, I figured Goff would “regress.”
As Waterfield likes to point out, everything starts with an OLine.
If these two new OLine players prove to be good, Goff will regain his rhythm. But its way too soon for me to say the two new guys are good. One good game where they didnt have to pass block much, dont prove much.
One thing I will complain about with Goff, is, his footwork has disappointed me. In his college vids, his footwork amazed me. He had this little dance he did in the pocket and he was very accurate on the move EVEN UNDER PRESSURE. It seemed a special talent. This year and late last year, his footwork has just seemed kinda average to me. Nothing special. I’m not sure what, if anything, to make of that.
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vwvParticipantPeople say organic cant feed the world…but:
November 19, 2019 at 8:57 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108405wvParticipantwvParticipantDid Feminism help Corporate-Food-industry create nutrition-wastelands?
I started this at the nine min mark:
wvParticipantI watched it. Geez, what an Ugly second half. Scrappy effort though, seein as how they were without Woods and Cooks.
Course maybe if both WR’s had been in the game, McVay would have tried to pass 50 times, and Goff woulda gotten strip-sacked. Being forced to pound Gurley maybe saved the day. I dunno.
Its nice having Clay Matthews back. The Defense is fun to watch.
And I expect the D to keep them in the game for a while next week. But i figure the Ravens will blow them out in the second half. Coz I dont expect the offense to do much of anything.w
vwvParticipantThere’s a shitload of anti nordic-model articles out there, by all the usual rightwing mags. Whatever the nordic-model is, it scares rightwingers.
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=======================Jacobin on Scandanavia:https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/national-review-williamson-bernie-sanders-sweden/
What Makes Scandinavia Different?
By Andreas Møller Mulvad and Rune Møller Stahl
What accounts for the Nordic countries’ strong welfare states? Hint: it’s not white homogeneity.
There’s a reason the Scandinavian welfare states are still the envy of many across the world. Even decades into a neoliberal project to reform them, Scandinavia sports relatively high income equality, large, tax-financed welfare programs, powerful unions, and relatively low unemployment rates.
Neoliberal textbooks tell us that the only way to societal prosperity is through low tax rates, deregulated business, and cut-throat competitive labor markets. Yet despite failing to meet the metrics of the Anglo-American variety of capitalism, Scandinavian countries stubbornly continue to prosper, and regularly come out on top of the global indexes of happiness and quality of life.
It is no surprise, therefore, to find neoliberals and conservatives devoting considerable intellectual energy to delegitimizing the “Nordic Model” of public welfare.
Earlier this year, the Institute of Economic Affairs, a British neoliberal think tank, devoted an entire book to Scandinavian “unexceptionalism.” The aim was to explain away the success story of the Nordic welfare states, arguing in classical Hayekian fashion that the success of the Nordic countries predates the era of public welfare, and that anything exceptional and successful about it has vanished since then.
Meanwhile in the US, where the Bernie Sanders campaign has thrown ideas of Nordic social democracy into the political mainstream, National Review’s Kevin Williamson has adopted the opposite strategy. In a couple of recent pieces he acknowledges the continuing exceptionalism of the Nordic experience and admits that the Nordic countries have indeed been relatively successful until very recently.
But in a strange plot twist Williamson also racializes the Nordic experience, tying the success of social-democratic policies to the alleged whiteness and homogeneity of the Nordic countries, thus undermining its credibility as a source of inspiration for American progressives committed to antiracism.
The “Nordic Consensus”In a National Review piece published in early July, Williamson calls Sanders a “national socialist” and denounces his use of “Us and Them” rhetoric as un-Scandinavian.
Williamson construes Sanders’s willingness to highlight conflicts of interest in popular power as being supposedly the “polar opposite” of how politics is done in Scandinavia — where politics is “consensus-driven” — and that where this “conformity” constitutes a “stabilizing and moderating force in politics, allowing for the emergence of a subtle and sophisticated and remarkably broad social agreement that contains political disputes.”
Scandinavian politics is much less partisan and more coalition-prone than in the US, with proportional representation effectively denying any one party an absolute parliamentary majority. But we should not mistake a contingent twentieth-century historical conjuncture of relative political civility for a supra-historical essence of Nordic political culture.
Today the universal welfare state and regulated, egalitarian labor markets, are so popular among voters that even liberal or conservative politicians wanting to dismantle them have to run as defenders of public welfare if they wish to avoid electoral suicide. But this situation did not emerge from the mists of history. It is the product of decades of struggles from organized labor and other popular movements throughout the twentieth century.
The social-democratic welfare state has faced strong historical challenges — both from the Left, by strong communist and new left movements, and from the Right, by organized business, such as the powerful Swedish employer organization SAF, and by Tea Party-like anti-taxation movements, which appeared in the 1970s in Norway and Denmark.
Simply put, the “Nordic Consensus” has never been as comprehensive as Williamson would have us believe…..see link…
wvParticipantFwiw, I ordered these two books.
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The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life
by Anu PartanenThe Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945
by Mary Hilson
——————If nothing else, perhaps I will learn why Bud Grant always seemed to have a cold twinkle in his icy eyes. I’m guessing he was a white-walker.
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vwvParticipantHaven’t seen it yet. How was this game different from the Steeler game? I mean, other than the final score.
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vwvParticipantThe Omnivore’s Dilemma is a great book.
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Pollan is in the pantheon. Along with Gould. I dunno who else. Its a peculiar pantheon.
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vwvParticipantPS — well, i guess he did write a little about Epstein, too:
wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Farrow
Wikipedia
Satchel Ronan O’Sullivan Farrow (born December 19, 1987) is an American journalist. Farrow is the son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen.In late 2017, Farrow’s articles in The New Yorker helped uncover the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations. For this reporting, The New Yorker won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, sharing the award with The New York Times. His subsequent investigations exposed similar allegations against Eric Schneiderman and Les Moonves, which led to the resignations of both in 2018. Farrow also investigated the concealment by the MIT Media Lab of its involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, leading to the resignation of the director of the Media Lab, Joi Ito, and an internal investigation by MIT [1]
wvParticipantThat’s truly admirable. You walk the walk. Major kudos, WV.
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Thanks BT, but there’s no honor in it, trust me. I think I was always a bit of an oddball. Never-fit-in. Outsider. Alienated. Nerdy. You know the type.
I could never have worked in respectable corporate situation. I dont think it was a ‘choice.’ I just kinda organically ended up where i fit in, with the riff-raff.If I’d had more ambition, i coulda been the Joker.
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vHow’s wv_ewe, btw? She’s not regretting her decision to leave us all behind, it appears. Too bad. She was a good egg.
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She’s good, Zooey. Lives in Cincy, still. She’s moved further to the left over the years though, she’d never admit it. Not quite a ‘leftist’ but in the grey-zone tween liberal and leftist.
Her thing is butterflies, now. Saving the Monarchs.
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vwvParticipantThat’s truly admirable. You walk the walk. Major kudos, WV.
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Thanks BT, but there’s no honor in it, trust me. I think I was always a bit of an oddball. Never-fit-in. Outsider. Alienated. Nerdy. You know the type.
I could never have worked in respectable corporate situation. I dont think it was a ‘choice.’ I just kinda organically ended up where i fit in, with the riff-raff.If I’d had more ambition, i coulda been the Joker.
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vNovember 17, 2019 at 2:43 pm in reply to: Obama warns democrats about moving too far to the left #108254wvParticipantI dunno. I hear what you leftists are saying, but I have no idea. I often think Waterfield/Obama is right in his political-algebra. It saddens me, and infuriates me, but I often think the ‘centrists’ are right. (no pun intended)
I think that simply because they keep voting year after year after year for…ya know. Year after year. No-one twisted their arms to vote for Hillary instead of Bernie last time. Bernie had plenty of momentum — and they voted for Hillary.
Its that way time after time after time. George McGovern. Eugene McCarthy. Etc. Sad, but true. American brains appear to be a vast wasteland.The voters may very well be so brain-dead-propagandized-colonized-DeepStated at this point that they wont vote for a wacko wild-crazy-off-the-charts-leftist-commie-socialist-tree-huggin-whale-saving-pinko-Stalinist like…uh…Bernie.
Seriously, the nation may be too far down the drain to vote for anyone to the left of the System.
I have no faith in American voters anymore. Too stupid, they are. Not their fault, but they are what they are now.
We’ll see, I guess. I dunno.
w
vwvParticipant….The polls show a close race right now, with Biden, Sanders, or Warren all beating Trump by a slim percentage. Just as polls had Clinton favored by a slim percentage…
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Just a little sidebar, fwiw — In the Taibbi/Rogan podcast I posted, Taibbi mentions that the MSM did indeed have some polls/info that the race would be much closer than the published-polls were showing. Taibbi said the MSM suppressed that info because they thought it might hurt Hillary’s chances.
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vwvParticipantWell, I only have experience with how Judges treat poor people. 🙂
And poor people usually dont get to remain free pending sentencing.
But it does happen sometimes. Totally up to the Judges discretion. Judges often weigh lots of factors. Same factors they look at to set bail in the first place. Likelihood of flight, likelihood of violence, previous record, roots in the community, etc, etc.
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vwvParticipantHis lie count in his first 1000 days was more than 13,000.
That’s not a misprint. More than 13,000. No president has ever come within light years….
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Well, see, I dunno about that. Sure, Trump tells these surreal lies (and I agree with zooey about the narcissism thing), but isn’t it true Obama/Clinton told just as many lies? I mean every single day Obama/Clinton were conducting their CIA/NSA-bloody policies, they were lying to the American people. The CIA is based on Lies. People dont think of it that way, because its all been normalized.
I just think the American Corporate-Government “IS” a Lie, at this point. Look at all the Coups, and interference by the US-CIA-Government. Was Obama/Clinton truly ‘honest’ about any of it? No. Because they internalized the notion that when “we” do it, its for the good of the world. The Dem/Reps have supported every kind of death squad you can think of. They’ve murdered all kinds of socialists all over the globe. Are they ever honest about any of it? No.
So all these ‘lie counters’ i see all the time seem silly to me. They only count a certain kind of lie. But there’s all kinds of lies.
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