Indulge and reassure me, if you will. Which Naomi?

Naomi Wolfe - The End of America

"The End of America," she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. "Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today," she writes.

http://tinyurl.com/ynltsv

Naomi Klein - Shock Doctrine

Neoliberal capitalism, she argues, thrives on catastrophe: Not only are fortunes made from the misfortunes of the masses, but the global dominance of free-market capitalism is built on the infliction of disasters on the world's less fortunate.

http://tinyurl.com/3dr9s5

I haven't read either Naomi, yet. At this point, I tend to easily confuse the two. The Naomi-s and Hofstadter-s:I think it's a combination of too much age, and too much time spent reading across disciplines. And, I'm a lost cause for sure if their respective theses intersect.

The Yes Men? What a concept. I hadn't encountered that before. Thanks for the link. Yet another one of those things I didn't happen to catch in the press. I'm off to explore!

@ WT

Thanks (upthread) for the affirmation of N. Wolf. You are to be excused for adding the e. Half of the cites to her on the web are doing it too. But, the cover of her book, as displayed by Amazon, clearly says Naomi Wolf. Not that I'd have any reason to double check the Washington Post, right? I guess they still fact-check the correct spelling of names.

@ ondelette

Yeah. I wonder what kind of Catch-22 the military is engaging in now. I've encountered separate reports of the military over-medicating physically and emotionally wounded soldiers [http://tinyurl.com/yuhv42], under-reporting suicides among veterans [http://tinyurl.com/yoo2zk], and there's some reported caginess as to whether the military is accurately reporting soldier suicide attempts in Iraq [http://tinyurl.com/2eja44]. Desertion rates from the Army are one of those statistics that morphs from "good" to "bad" depending on which window of time you examine. Seems they're up this year as compared to last year. All of which ought to incite to violence in any thinking person who sees a yellow Support the Troops ribbon on a Hummer or SUV.

And, now, according to the WaPo article you reference, that I've admittedly only glanced at, we're gonna prosecute them for those suicide attempts they make while they're in Iraq? Words fail me.

The link re desertion rates: http://tinyurl.com/247ccg

Nuts to this. It's depressing. I'm going over to Krugman's blog. If I want to be depressed about something, I'll be depressed about our softening economy. A soft economy is sure to give those 28%-ers plenty of reason to cling to their fabulist narratives.

tap..tap...tap...heels clicking across the flagstone with an audible Harrumph!

*sigh*

December 1, 2007, 1:32 pm

Krugman’s version of his appearance is disputed

I say I’m 6′4″, and thin as a rail. But this version [underline]is disputed[/underline] by Republicans and even some Democrats, who say I’m 5′7″ and could stand to lose a few pounds.

And, what was that underlined link, you ask?

The Horses Mouth

Greg Sargent

Washington Post Editors Again Refuse To Label GOP Falsehoods What They Are: False

December 1, 2007 -- 8:01 AM EST // //

You'd think that The Washington Post's editors would have been chastened by yesterday's courageous New York Times piece that aggressively fact-checked Rudy Giuliani's multiple falsehoods and called them out for what they are -- "false."

There simply is no escape. We are drowning in media sewage.

You know... this is almost enough to make me sad you aren't practicing law right now - or, if you are I sure as the heck don't know where you find the time - because when it comes to digging down to bedrock, I imagine there are few as tenacious as you. Not sure which side of the political spectrum you're on, Glenn, but as you so ably demonstrate, post after post, it genuinely doesn't matter. If you claim the territory, it is no longer unclaimed.

If I'd wanted to be a bit more poetic, I'd have said...

The truth is no longer an orphan.

If you haven't seen it, speaking of journalists and journalism...

From: ThinkProgress today

Gregory: Blogs are to blame for polarization.

...In February — at a similar event at the Press Club — Gregory pointed the finger at blogs for the reason that “politics and political coverage has become so polarized.” Glenn Greenwald wrote at the time:

The reality, of course, is that most media-criticizing bloggers do not want journalists to be “political advocates.” They want them to do what journalists are supposed to do — which is not…sit around with their good, trustworthy, nice-guy friends in the White House and simply “ask questions” and “get information,” but instead to scrutinize that information, treat it with doubt, investigate it before passing it along to determine whether it’s true...

As you will doubtless discover, many of us don't share your assessment. I think negative/thoughtless responses to Bebop may be the first clue to a new commenter. And/or, a commenter that's not been following these threads for very long. There are actually several characters on Glenn's threads. There's a Sheriff, a School Board President, a Resident Poet, a Director of Security, several resident Philosophers, and array of Diplomats, among others... which have nothing to do with their screen names or their actual occupations. If you choose to stick around, eventually, you will figure out who all of them are. And, FASCINATING may have been in reference to your comment not Bebop's. I urge you to apply your assumptions with great caution.