Tag: Open Thread

Yippee, looks like we will win!

Glenn Greenwald–

Nonetheless, it’s worth underscoring — in fact, it’s vital to keep in mind — that the option of politically empowering Democrats is the opposite of a panacea.  The Democratic Party structure in Washington, and particularly its leadership in Congress, is more corrupted and destructive than anything else there is — with the exception of the right-wing faction that has been running the country for the last eight years.

…

For the last several years, I’ve believed and have frequently written that the only worthwhile strategy is a two-pronged one:

I honestly don’t know of any “progressive bloggers” who blindly support Democrats. I think the strategy of the blogosphere has always been two-pronged — (1) remove the hideous right-wing beast from power and (2) change the Democratic Party in order to make step (1) worth doing. Those are EQUALLY IMPORTANT goals.

Step (1) is merely a pre-requisite (an absolute one) to achieving anything worthwhile.  But without step (2), step (1) is mostly (though not entirely) worthless, because the Democratic Party as currently constituted at its core is a wretched and status-quo-perpetuating institution.  If those who spent the last eight years vigorously opposing the radicalism, militarism, and anti-constitutional abuses of the Bush administration fail to oppose the Democratic leadership with equal fervor when they violate the same principles — as they inevitably will — then the humiliation of the Right and its removal from power will be emotionally satisfying, perfectly just, and a very mild improvement, but will ensure the continuation rather than the termination of most of the worst abuses of this government.

It’s certainly true that there are more good national Democratic office-holders than Republicans — it’s not even close (anyone doubting that should just review the vote totals on the key votes during the Bush era).  But within the Democratic Party, the good members are vastly outnumbered by the bad.  The (understandable) euphoria over the anticipated obliteration of the extremist right-wing movement that has dominated our politics for years (which I share) shouldn’t obscure the fact that the alternative — the national Democratic Party — shares many of the same sicknesses and is burdened by whole new ones as well, and itself will need far more opposing and changing than supporting and affirming.

Kai, over at Zuky, has a post up, Time to Throw the Traders Out the Temple (Part 1) wherein he opines about our most recent economic catastrophe:

Every action that the US government is currently undertaking to supposedly “rescue” our economy has more theatrical effect than structural impact. The bailouts, the debt buyouts, the interest rate cuts, all appear designed to artificially prop up certain nosediving assets and mildly encourage a loosening of credit markets without substantially addressing or mitigating the immediate or eventual social costs of financial meltdown.

……

Most trades these days don’t even involve stocks or bonds, but derivatives, which are contracts establishing conditions and rules for the buying and/or selling of stocks, bonds, or other derivatives. For example, a common derivative would be a stock option; which, say, gives me the right to buy GimongoCorp stock at $5 per share by a certain date; and if GimongoCorp stock hits $10 per share by that date, I get to double my money by executing the option. But here’s where it starts getting funky: the option contract itself can be assigned a current dollar value according to market conditions (using a tricky little piece of calculus known as the Black-Scholes model) and traded on that basis. So for the most part, investment banks have ended up trading not merely stocks and bonds but derivatives of derivatives of derivatives of…and so on. The result is an impenetrable layer of multi-dimensional mathematical abstraction between the allocation of physical resources (i.e. actual societal investment) and the free-market mechanisms which steer that allocation, the proverbial invisible hand.

…….

The most tangible asset that a US citizen can “own” is a plot of land with a house on it. The single biggest historical driver in the accumulation of US wealth has been the theft, redistribution, and subsequent inheritance of real estate. From plantations to Indian reservations, from the Homestead Act to post-Civil War ethnic cleansings, from Jim Crow redlining to the covert racism of modern mortgage practices, the dominant culture has worked tirelessly to build multi-generational economic structures that enrich and advantage white communities while obstructing and disrupting the accumulation of wealth by communities of color. I don’t have to explain to readers here how African Americans and Native Americans and other people of color have waged long and bloody battles to knock down many obstacles. The Fair Housing Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, and the Community Reinvestment Act all marked legal victories in anti-racist struggle; yet we all know that it takes more than legislation to reform centuries of racist cultural practice. Nevertheless, over the years many people of color succeeded in beating the odds, managing to acquire and defend real estate holdings, building thriving families and communities in largely hostile environments.

Open Thread Away!

You know, perhaps this meme is viral already but I was suddenly struck by just how much like Shelly Tambo Tina Fey is.

Well, except for the kind-hearted part.

This video is very obnoxious, but very reliable.

Figured I’d check out the NOLA blogs today.  They’ve already been through what the rest of us are now facing, so they have crediblity imo.

From Your Right Hand Thief oyster gives a sense of proportion to the robbery going on in our economy in his post entitled “We iz baelded out yet? linking to a couple of other great NOLA blogs:

Dow falls 800 points, below 10,000 (before recovering.  Forgotston has some questions.

Some good emails are making the rounds.

Here’s one I got:

If you had purchased $1,000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $42 left. With Lehman, you would have $6.60 left. With Fannie or Freddie, you would have less than $5 left. But if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all ofthe beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It’s called the 401-Keg….

Cheers.

As the title says, this is an open thread.

Bart: [speaking in a low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n_____ gets it!

Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.

Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men, he’s just crazy enough to do it!

Bart: [low voice] Drop it! Or I swear I’ll blow this n_____ head all over this town!

Bart: [now speaking in a higher voice] Oh, lo’dy, lo’d, he’s desp’it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy…

Harriett Van Johnson: Isn’t anybody going to help that poor man?

Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriet, that’s a sure way to get him killed!

Bart: [higher voice] Oooh! He’p me, he’p me! Somebody he’p me! He’p me! He’p me! He’p me!

Bart: [lower voice] Shut up!