Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 813 Editor's Choice: 48
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funny thing...
[Read the article: The Islamic enemy within]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...I was just thinking about you Glenn, doing a bit of casual research into Italian Fascism in the 1920s.
The next time ANYONE on the Right gets all shirty (pun intended) about being called a fascist, just hit them with the opening 'graph of the Wikipedia entry for Benito Mussolini, to wit:
"Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 – April 28, 1945) was the prime minister and dictator of Italy from 1922 until 1943, when he was overthrown. He established a repressive fascist regime that valued nationalism, militarism, anti-liberalism and anti-communism combined with strict censorship and state propaganda."
Sound familiar?
Also note, apropos of your current updates to this piece, that the fascisti were notorious for committing murderous violence against their enemies, and then blaming their enemies for said violence. Sound familiar?
Yes, indeed. It can happen here. It HAS happened here. To a degree. Not like 1920s Italia..no. But to a degree.
The neocons call it "islamofascism" to deflect the obvious connection between fascism as practiced by Mussolini, and their own political philosophy.
Ah, George Orwell. Where are you when we need you?
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hah
[Read the article: Goodling's mea culpa]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]all this inarticulate bullshit from Goodling is really entertaining. Does ANYONE think she didn't know what she was doing? Didn't intend to break the law? Please. She must think we're every bit as stupid as Cheney thinks we are.
She knew exactly what she was doing from the start, and all this *poor me* crap is a way for her to try to look better.
This is gonna be interesting.
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bitter
[Read the article: With friends like Bob Shrum ...]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shrum's just bitter. Wouldn't you be? Your career in ruins, symbolically if not actually. No-one takes your calls, or calls you.
The man must have been good at his job at some point. Or has he been a loser his entire career? If that latter, no wonder he's bitter.
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reality check
[Read the article: CNN -- the 24-hour all gas price network]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only way fuel conservation in the First World will ever be anything other than symbolic, is to institute *draconian* measures to limit fossil-fuel consumption, and then trumpet those measures to the rest of the world, in effect, shaming China and India into conservation measures too. It might even work.
Because fossil-fuels are totally fungible: what we don't use, someone else will. The *whole world* has to conserve, otherwise, all we're doing it moving the fuel around a little more.
Additionally, draconian measures are now just about all that are left to us. North American natural-gas supplies are poised to dive over a cliff in the next five years. Natural gas fields do not deplete gradually like oil fields. Basically, one minute you get full pressure, the next minute, you get zip. Of course, we have a lot of natural gas, but all the major sources are at the edge of decline. And that decline will be rapid.
Conservation buys us time. Time we can use to at least attempt to soften the permanent decline in fossil-fuels that will inevitably follow the Peak...the Peak we are experiencing right now. We're in it folks...or, rather, the plateau that follows the Peak, according to theory and practice. World fossil-fuel production probably peaked last year at about 85-million-barrels a day. It is quite likely, if not certain, that we will never again see that level of world production.
Conservation, meaningful conservation, will prolong the party a little longer. That's about it though.
It's going to be interesting times, by-and-by, as the Chinese curse has it.
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@cosmo...we agree.
[Read the article: Immigration's irresistible force]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cosmo, we may differ on the existence of God, or lack thereof, but on economics, we're pals.
Economics as Jabberwocky. That's a good one.
Your post put me in mind of this, by Robert Nelson, from his book "Reaching for Heaven on Earth," to wit:
The members of the American economics profession, as Arnold contended, performed a vital practical role in maintaining this unique system of corporate socialism American style. It was their role to prevent the American public from achieving a correct understanding of the actual workings of the American economic system. Economists instead were assigned the task to dispense priestly blessings that would allow business to operate independent of damaging political manipulation. They accomplished this task by means of their message of 'laissez faire religion, based on a conception of a society composed of competing individuals.' However false as a description of the actual U.S. economy, this vision in the mind of the American public was in practice 'transferred automatically to industrial organizations with nation-wide power and dictatorial forms of government.' Even though the arguments of economists were misleading and largely fictional, the practical -- and beneficial -- result of their deception was to throw a 'mantle of protection ... over corporate government' from various forms of outside interference. Admittedly, as the economic 'symbolism got farther and farther from reality, it required more and more ceremony to keep it up.' But as long as this arrangement worked and there could be maintained 'the little pictures in the back of the head of the ordinary man,' the effect was salutary -- 'the great [corporate] organization was secure in its freedom and independence.' It was this very freedom and independence of business professionals to pursue the correct scientific answer -- the efficient answer -- on which the economic progress of the United States depended.
*******
see more good stuff at www.dieoff.org
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nothing to see, move along, eh?
[Read the article: Gonzales vs. Gonzales]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You know, I'm beginning to think that if I asked a random GOP House member if the sky was blue, they would insist that the sky, was, in fact, bright orange, and then go outside, point at the sky, and say "see? Orange. What did I tell you?"
How fucking stupid do they think we are? Well. Scratch that. They KNOW how stupid their Base is. They've been depending on that fundamental fact for a long, long time.
Man. A person hardly knows what to say. Even an idiot could see that Goodling's testimony there at the end is very damaging. What planet is Lundgren living on?