i whatcha mean, when you're really up against it, whitehead isn't worth a damn.

(to paraphrase an old frank thorne cartoon about spinoza)

That was a truly entertaining romp into ironic gold.

?

Corporate America Hearts Obama
Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Election 2008: Obama’s campaign message, filled with lofty promises of change and hope, is also filled with repeated reassurances to the corporate elite.

***

from out of left field my mailbox today led me to this post:
http://zzzing.livejournal.com/481434.html

How to win an election three times in a row
Ask any Obama supporter what his issues are and you'll get silence. I've asked more than a few. Some people looked him up or watched his more obscure videos and they know a few snippets, so they can fake their way through it; but the reality is, Obama is popular because he is the least offensive candidate.

You can't pick apart his positions because he really doesn't have any. Hes a mainstream modern statist democrat who equates privatizing social security with social darwinism and the nazis. yes, he's economically illiterate...but that doesn't make him different.

This whole mess is the result of the two party system, which in turn is a result of the failure of democracy in general.

People don't care about issues when picking a candidate...since in their minds there are only 2 sides to any issue, republican or democrat... so, they just need to find one issue, match it with the correct side, and then just pick from a list of people on that side. Its fun and easy. I've talked about this before
Obama is perfect for this kind of political machinery. Issues only mattered when we picked which side we're on, so the only thing left is personality. He's nice, seems like a good guy, he's vague when it comes to specifics, he feels honest, plus he can really get people excited (about what? who cares). He's a readymade plastic candidate with everything everyone wants, kind of like the Dubya of the democrats. But he's black and hes white and hes the color of hispanics...hes everyone. He's change. After the past 8 years we've had, we want change, we want someone COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, right?

oh wait...

when we're a country of the people and by the people and for the people, this current system predicates against that very premise. that failure is so mastasized now, it's impolitic to address it. to suggest anything radical now though is well, radical. we're already in a radical circumstance.

but our radicals of yore are no longer to the fore. worse, they've 'reasoned' it out palatably. (what is it about aging that makes one so nervous? untoward seasoning? osteoporosis of the spine?)

Tom Hayden Strikes Back

My view is to be humbled and appreciative of this unpredicted upsurge of idealistic and fervent activism created in the Obama movement, and to be supportive of the candidacy while remaining independent and critical of the candidate’s moderate views on Iraq and NAFTA. It’s my sense as an organizer for 50 years that we should stand with spontaneous new waves of activism, not demand that they call off their campaigns at the most critical moment. It is possible to do so without having to surrender our independence on the issues we care most about.

For that reason, some of us have created a Web site called Progressives for Obama, including myself, Bill Fletcher, Barbara Ehrenreich, Danny Glover, Cornel West, Jane Fonda, Jim Hightower, Jean Stein, Andy Stern, Anna Burger, and 300 more.

The social movements have not disappeared in 2008 but follow a logic of their own, like a river cutting its path. If the Clintons steal the nomination, the social movements will return in force. If Obama wins the presidency, the social movements will rise with higher expectations to demand that President Obama end the Iraq war and focus on race, poverty and environmental issues at home and around the world. The left should not be a small elite outside this process.

We are a new time, calling for a new paradigm, a new
frank disclosure and admission. an immediate dismantling of the empire coupled with real and direct 'democracy'; selfgovernance. supporting pathology is in no way wisdom.

nader's words on the similarities between the 'parties' being greater than their differences has never been truer or more pertinent. we have many unrepresented consensuses about that are as unserved by the party system as it is as it disserves those whom still most fervently believe in it still...

eeyup.

would that there was a site where all millions of all views on all things could be accounted.

...but that too is off the table...

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

I think you project too much.

I seem to remember that Aids was traced to African origins. A cabin crew steward and New York? And I seem to remember reading about a person who died in about '77, and was diagnosed as a Aids case, post mortem, 5 to 8 years later.

...it was the Flight attendant whose symptoms were identified as a new illness (AIDS).

Further research, over the following 20+ years suggest that the illness was around as far back as the mid-'60s, but the symptoms were not then ID'ed as belonging to this new disease, but treated as separate manifestations of known (at the time) illnesses. In other words, they ID'ed and treated the symptoms, but not the underlying cause.

Sometimes troubleshooting a complex issue can be like that.....but the essential question is still unanswered: where did HIV *really* come from? From PIV (primate immunodeficiency virus), or something else?

The conspiracy theorist/paranoiac in me sees shades of "The Stand".....we'll probably never know if HIV was a natural mutation or artificially generated. And, at this point in time, it's moot anyway--one can't bring back the dead (and no, I don't really believe Jesus did, either).

-5.75,-4.05
"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that." --George Carlin

i haven't read up on this in a little while, but i want to say that the first human case of AIDS is believed to have been in the 40's in cameroon or the congo. this is a little speculative since it's based on otherwise-mysterious medical records being interpreted decades later, with a different reference frame.

the most compelling arguments i've seen that explain the 'why now?' question for AIDS are all ecological. the infiltration of capitalism into africa began as soon as the europeans arrived but has accelerated as global capitalism has developed. the three relevant parts of global capitalism's role are increased technology, increased market incentives, and changing family and social structures. in West Africa, this means more logging and more bushmeat (e.g. gorilla) hunting. according to this explanation, the virus could have been around for millenia in great ape populations, but rarely crossed over to humans because we were interacting much less with great apes; when we weren't killing them, there weren't a lot of ways to come into contact with their blood. if humans had been infected, perhaps different patterns of sexual practice would have kept epidemics from developing.

proof? none. but it makes a lot of sense, and relies on known phenomena (bushmeat trade, colonialism and neocolonialism) instead of shadowy conspiracy theories.

it seems to me that you're simply choosing an aesthetic rather than basing your opinion on fact. although my opinion isn't based on fact either.

however, I read that our vaccines were "accidently" tainted with AIDS and that's why it spread so fast.

since western populations desperately need africa's resources in order to survive, there's definitely a motive to cause "such a problem" and motive is the mother of action as they say.

what makes the situation worse is that during Bill Clinton's administration, Africans were told that they could only have "reduced priced AIDS drugs" if they accepted "genetic modified seeds." As I think about it, perhaps Europe's "stay green and organic" movement was based on the need to thwart a taxation on crops via genetically enginered American seeds.

obviously, when money and power are at stake, a war happens and AIDS could have been one of the weapons and similar to a nuclear bomb.

and, if you still think this sounds like a conspiracy, African clergy came to the Anglican church where I go to and when asked about protease inhibitors, they played dumb and kept talking about abstinence and funding hospice care so people could die in peace.

Such a cold attitude caused a stir in the GLBT community since even outsiders, like myself, assumed that compassion meant putting aside bias in times of jeopardy in order to ensure that the right thing was done for those in need.

Thus, I could only conclude that they (the priests) were helping others (the greedy) take advantage of the misery of others by helping them usurp resources (land, etc...) from the dead in a similar fashion to how our founding fathers took away the resources of the native americans using, amoung other things-- apparently, smallpox laced blankets.

the overwhelming weight of the biomedical community comes down on AIDS as a naturally occurring disease. this doesn't make it true - there was a time when the overwhelming weight of the biomedical community came down on phrenology as an explanation for the natural superiority of rich white males. however, it is a bit more than an aesthetic; unless tens of thousands of physicians and scientists around the world (coming from all races, all countries, all sexual orientations, and several disparate ideologies) are in on a massive conspiracy, then they must have been duped as well. which certainly isn't impossible, but it is a bit unlikely.

also, whites have never needed a disease to help us take shit from africans. we've done a pretty good job of it without AIDS since the 15th century; the modern tools of bogus development loans and crippling national debt have been plenty effective. AIDS actually makes it harder to get stuff out of Africa. Africans themselves do most of the work of extraction, whether we're talking cotton, chocolate, gold, diamonds, oil, etc.

the African upper classes (including higher ranked clergy) have incorporated a lot of the racism and class prejudice of their white colonial predecessors. their conservative theology, class, and general weltanschaung are probably sufficient to keep them from being effective spokesmen against effective AIDS prevention and treatment. as in the US, there is massive stigma in African countries against a sexually transmitted disease whose transmission can't be talked about around the dinner table. AIDS is kind of a clusterfuck.

he already made it clear that atheists and other doubters 'are the problem' with religion in america today

Interesting. I don't think I'd heard that before. Do you have a link?

Thanks!

nelson implied that racism disappeared in the US with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and that any black people who want to talk about racism are understandable but wrong. this is the corollary to the 'post-racial' campaign that obama's running. obama had almost convinced me to vote for him with the race speech, and now he's doing everything he can to keep me from voting for him. he's pretty clearly playing to the fox news crowd. pathetic.

i am really pretty offended when obama suggests that it's unpatriotic to think the things rev. wright thinks. if our 'most progressive' candidate thinks it's unpatriotic to ask why al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11/01, then we're really fucked.

i saw a great line about rev. wright, probably in a comment in another Agonist post. it bears repeating, sorry if you've seen it before: "America just learned that America's Black Friend has a black friend."

There is the problem.

The reason America always has bad leadership just might be because of the people.

Live in constant Propaganda long enough and every reaction is visceral. Everything is symbolic. The flock bleats in rhythm to the hypnotic pulse of the idiot box.

Try to reason with insanity and see where that gets you.
The only tool left is distance. When dealing with delusions, it is actually dangerous to force the delusional to see reality. Compound that with sound bytes and an environment of "gotcha"

How can anyone decent ever get elected in that environment?

Answer: They can not.

America gets the leader it deserves. And that makes me very sad.

when obama took the liberty of suggesting that every american was rightly offended by rev. wright, obama's rehetoric lost my ear.

for example, we know what Iran/Contra did to black communities and that it destroyed many african american families; the whites, of course, blaimed the drug problems on the moral character of the blacks instead of the governmental policies which not only got folks addicted but also took away their freedom by throwing them in jail.

of course Regan's hencemen, like Warren Bennett (Department of Education), effectively played the race card by writing books about virtue, etc... nowadays, however, we now know that Bennett committed the same sins (like gambling) which he said "led america into moral decline."

Al Gore is being just as clever with "global climate change" and the left gets really agitated when Gore's resource usage is brought up but those on the right see the hypocripsy.

so, yes, KK of A exists.

and amen

I like Archie Bunker better than George Wallace.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

dude's a pastor, not a politician. he isn't part of the obama campaign. he isn't trying to make gains with anybody in his church - that's what politicans do. he seems to be doing exactly what his job is (was? is he retired?) to do, which is to preach truth and virtue as he sees it, based in his analysis of the world and rooted in theology. i'm pretty sure he sees his appeal toward jesus. obama's the guy who has to appeal to voters. wright's under no obligation to make life easy for him, no matter how much racism obama says remains in the US.

and what do you mean, 'a better world embracing moderatism?' moderates base their political stance on the stance of others, the right and left, as these 'radicals' are perceived by moderates. that's a political calculation, and necessitates ignoring a direct search for a better world.

like a pastor when he's holding press conferences. He's making political statements that are affecting O'Bama's ability to garner votes. Wright undermined O'Bama's ideas by saying, "he's a politician and says what politicians have to say because they need votes." That was hardly a charitable thing for a pastor to say about one of his parishioners. He wasn't at his pulpit when he made that statement. Stick a microphone in front of Wright and he puts his foot in his mouth while speaking into it.

Moderates in my world do not make their decisions based on what other people think. They do so independently--they just don't happen to adopt beliefs and opinions at extreme ends of continuums. Moderates are not conformists and they don't parrot opinions that are politically correct. Super easy to paint a moderate that way because their beliefs are within 'normal' ranges.

Wright had an association with the Clinton's, why isn't he publically critizing them to the press -- causing Hillary to lose voter support? Wright is a loose cannon that's in the process of destroying O'Bama's chances.

There has to be prejudice going on for this to become such a major issue in the campaign. If the pastor is only speaking religion, why is what he's saying such a major issue? Aren't there more important things that Hillary and O'Bama are voicing? Why is there such a huge reaction to what the pastor said or didn't say? Make no mistake anything Wright does say gets twisted around to reflecting on O'Bama??? Isn't it possible that the two men share some values and disagree on others?

Wright had an association with the Clinton's, why isn't he publically critizing them to the press -- causing Hillary to lose voter support?

"...Doesn't strike me Wright's behaving much like a pastor when he's holding press conferences." - canuck May 2, 2008 - 1:35am

Good thing we have Obama supporters policing what's left of our free speech.

It was only three weeks ago Obama was calling for a national discussion on race, now his supporters don't want Barak's "spiritual advisor" talking about race.

Barak's supporters do him no favors with their brazen hypocrisy.

What Obama should have said:

"Rev. Wrights my friend, sometimes friendships can be inconvenient...this is one of those times. The reverend is a good man, I disagree with the Reverend on some subjects, but I'll defend his right to free speech to my dying days.

Of course, Obama is not the kind of man...not the kind of man who will allow loyalty or honor to interfere with his ambitions.

...meet the new boss...same as the old boss.

You have to be joking...I don't even get to vote because I'm not a US citizen, but I do have opinions that I express on International boards.