Taibbi referring to Manufacturing Consent in a positive way — a rare and lovely thing, from someone who often writes for the MSM.

I have enjoyed watching Matt Taibbi’s drift further and further to the left over the years. Same thing happened with Bill Moyers. I enjoyed ‘that’ too.

Sometimes ‘liberals’ just learn too much. And they kinda break thru. Sometimes.

Anyway, I havent finished the article. I only read the first page or so.

w
v

“…Among veterans, 64% say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States, while 33% say it was. The general public’s views are nearly identical…”
===========

Well this is one of those things i really dont buy into anymore. These kinds of stats. Same with surveys on Health Care, etc.

I dont buy them because Americans continue to vote for Imperialists year in, year out, for their entire lives.
Hillary, Bill, Obama, Bush, Trump, Reagan…all Imperialists. Drones, cluster-bombs, invasions, CIA-Torture, Coups, Imperialist-plotting, spying blah blah blah.

No-one twists americans arms to vote for imperialists. The Green Party and other non-imperial parties and candidates were always there.

So all those strange numbers never make it into the voting booths.

Americans vote for CIA-Loving, Pentagon-loving, Deep-State-loving, Imperialist Politicians.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

Yes, but it is gratifying at least to see that just those few people are making the establishment very uncomfortable.

For being a freshman congresswoman in her first 6 months of time on the hill, AOC has waaaayyyyy disproportionate influence on the national conversation. While it is true that the attention she receives does not directly translate into policy, it is at least giving mainstream… .

===============

I think about this a lot. WHY does the Dem-MSM and the Rep-MSM give AOC so much air-play?

Why dont they each just ignore her?

Well, the Rep-MSM (Fox, Talk-radio)really do just hate her policy-ideas and they relish painting her as ‘the enemy,’ the Great-Socialist-Satan, etc. It great for ratings and riles up their base viewers.

Ok, but why does MSNBC, CNN, NPR/PBS, etc (The Dem-MSM) give her so much attention? What are they up to? I know they are pro-Pelosi, pro-corporate-centrist, etc — so why not just ignore AOC? Why give her such a huge platform all the time? I know they wanna control the debate, and smear her when they can, but why not just ignore her? If they ignored her, problem solved. Yes? No?

w
v

waterfield wrote:

Kurt Warner-when he was with the Cardinals.

===========

Lol

Ok, then lets add Roman Gabriel when he was an eagle.

w
v

So many, for an old man like me. My favorite players are often from the 70s. My football-formative years.

Jim Hart, John Brodie, Archie Manning, Stabler, Fouts, Sipe, Len Dawson, George Blanda, Namath.

I probably woulda liked Don Meredith, and Bart Starr but they were a bit before my time.

Quarterbacks today should just wear dresses. In fact the whole league should just wear dresses now. Pretty soon, no-one will even have a concussion till, like, game ten.

Put Brady on the teams Archie Manning had to play on, in the League Archie Manning had to play in. Then see what a genius ole Tom would be.

w
v

Kuechly? Ha. Aaron Donald would have made the tackle in the backfield.

w
v

waterfield wrote:

…. But I need to get in better shape than I am right now. Sooo…

=============

Yeah, time to get in shape. Make the dive.

w
v

waterfield wrote:

Politics is dirty-plain and simple. It shouldn’t be but it is and will always be. And I don’t think most people care. .

===================

Yeah, humans are a mess. Btw, Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy were heavily heavily implicated in the vote-buying and bribing that went on in WV back when JFK was running. Seymour Hersh has written about this.

I’ve discovered in some circumstances, i can vote for a weasel, but I am never gonna pretend like they are beacons of light.

Mainly though, its gotta be about policies. I wish they were ‘clean’ candidates but I’d vote for a weasel if i knew they’d fight for Universal Health Care and fight against Imperial-Wars/Murder.

Thats a pretty low bar, I think. Just give poor people health care, and dont bomb-murder foreigners.

Pretty low bar.

So, do you exercise these days, W? Stayin in shape? Still surf?

w
v

waterfield wrote:

wv wrote:

So, where am i wrong here?

I guess we are just talking past each other. You think Tulsi/Bernie are UNELECTABLE, and if the Dems choose them it leads to more Trump. Maybe. Could be. But it could also be that NOT choosing a progressive Dem is what leads to Trump. I mean thats what happened last time.

w

Lets assume I’m correct-that taking away private insurance from over 180 million Americans will insure another Trump term. Do you believe its ethical to take a stand on an issue that guarantees another 4 yrs of a President who will continue to push-w/ the backings of a Senate-for the destruction of any programs that would advance the health care for the poor and less fortunate among us ?

Universal health care is a critical need but IMO it needs an elective component otherwise we insure the draconian efforts of the idiot child in the WH.

BTW I think your wrong when you say that NOT choosing a progressive Dem is what caused Trump to win. Any expert on that election would also disagree with that statement. Clinton ended with millions of votes ahead of Trump. She lost the electoral votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Sanders would not have won those votes either. Besides it wasn’t that Clinton was not a progressive-it was because Clinton was Clinton. She did not have her husband’s ability and charm to talk to people. It was far more about her personality than her political views-as it always is in such a race. Few voters know enough about policies and equally important how they become enacted. Ask anyone how a bill gets passed and you will understand how truly backward we are. People don’t know and they don’t care. Its all about personality. People disliked Hillary not because she wasn’t progressive enough-they disliked her because she was not likeable.

=================

Well, I think you are being too sure of yourself here. You say ‘any expert on the election’ would agree with you, but the polls themselves had Bernie beating Trump if I’m not mistaken. Didnt the polls show that Bernie would have beat him? Yet, the DNC cheated to ensure the Hillary win. (Granted she might have beat Bernie in a fair fight, but we’ll never know)

I also dont think its totally accurate to say millions of people will lose their insurance, without also adding that they will still get health care. It will just be a nationalized system that insures everyone.
Its not like the ones that lose ‘insurance coverage’ wont have health care. So maybe they wont be as upset as you seem to think. Maybe they will. I dunno.

My point isnt that “I’m right” or that “I’m sure” about any of this. I am not sure about any of it. I cant predict the future. But I also know that you cant predict the future either. But you seem to be so sure about the “Only a centrist can win” scenario. But you cant really know.

I can see how a centrist such as yourself would say: “well, Gore came super close to winning, and Hillary came super close to winning and Obama won, and Bill Clinton won, and they are all pro-corporate-centrists. So, lets just stay the course and try harder and be a tad smarter, and the next centrist will win and the evil Trump will be gone.”

I think a LOT of centrists and prettymuch all of the corporate-MSM believe that.

I dont know. I mean we are talking about the ‘horse race’ here. I dont study that. I’m no expert at that.
Maybe its true. The horse-race part. Maybe only a corporate-centrist-type-Dem can win an election in this sad, destructive wasteland of a nation.

Could be.

But its possible that a true ‘progressive’ Dem might just be the best candidate.

A while back, I predicted Bernie would be the next president. (and I’m no Bernie fan, btw) But I only based that on a gut feeling.

Who was your favorite President in your lifetime, W ?

w
v

For me, there…is…no…ETHICAL…argument against a national-care-system.

For me its a first-grade-level, ethical issue.

Right now, with a corporate-for-profit system, millions and millions and millions of American dont have health care.

For me that outweighs everything else. Its real simple.

Everything else is minutiae to me. And any other corporate-for-profit ‘solution’ is unethical to me.

I think people overthink this.

Now do Americans give a shit about those millions and millions and millions of of folks without adequate health care? No, they do not. If they did care, they wouldnt continue to vote for corpse-dems and corpse-reps.

My ‘own’ leading-edge-point here is this is an ethics issue. Not a ‘cost’ or ‘taxes’ issue.

It either matters to people, that millions and millions of Americans are without decent health care,
or it doesnt.

Everything else is just ‘details’. We KNOW universal health care is perfectly do-able. Lots of nations do it everyday.

w
v

waterfield wrote:

Here’s another article -this one by a conservative columnist-on how the Dems can and likely will hand the election to Trump by “openly praising socialism, the Green New Deal, the abolition of private insurance, voting rights for incarcerated felons, federal funding of abortion late into pregnancy, confiscatory “wealth taxes”, and even the right to sex-change operations paid for by taxpayers.”

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-hillary-clinton-democrats-left-20190702-story.html

James Carville would be the first to call it the real “political suicide”. The party needs to open their eyes and realize there are so many republican voters (not those in Congress) who want to dump Trump and would vote for a Dem nominee-but advocating for the above won’t do it for them. Moreover that segment of voters that stayed home in 2016-namely the African American voter-won’t accept those policies either. And we do need those voters to counter the “deplorables” that Trump will be driving to the poles especially if the Dems are advancing the above policies. Talk about “political suicide”. We just don’t get it !

==============

Well basically what i hear you saying is, “the Dems can only win if they put up a ‘centrist’ against Trump.”

You may be right. Or, you just may be selectively seeing things that way because ‘you’ want a centrist President/candidate.

I dunno.

This country may very well be so far in the toilet that an FDR-type Dem cant win. Could be that only more Clinton-Corporatists are on the way.

My own view is too dark for long posts anymore 🙂

I was visiting Cape May in New Jersey a few weeks ago. And i walked along a boardwalk and chatted with a lot of young folks working at all the little touristy-shops. Lots of foreign kids were spending their summers in America, working at the beach. Girls from Croatia, boys from Sweden, etc. Everyone I talked to had an accent. So anyway, I asked them about Americans. There was a consensus among the foreign kidz — Americans are very stupid, and they ‘dont care.’

Stupid, and, they dont care. (about the environment, etc)

I agreed with them. Cept, I understand ‘why’ American are ‘stupid’ and ‘dont care’.

Corporate-Capitalism made them stupid and selfish.

At any rate, you may very well be right. Stupid, Selfish, Propagandized Americans may very well only vote for a Trump or a Centrist.

Btw, its good to see you and Mack on the lil Board. We’re all gettin Old.
Did you ever get a new Dog?

w
v

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by wv.