Tag: Power

Idiot’s guide to the Power of a Majority in the US Senate

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

Chapter #1

Dear members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, below you will find helpful definitions and other useful tools as you assemble your ability to effective use the tools of a majority party in the US Senate.

Step 1. What is a Majority Party?

   No need to fret little Harry. It’s just this simple.

Majority and minority parties

The “Majority party” is the political party which either has a majority of seats or can form a coalition or caucus with a majority of seats; if two or more parties are tied, the Vice President’s affiliation determines which party is the majority party. The next-largest party is known as the minority party.

Wikipedia.com

Until Texas or Alaska secedes, there are 50 States and 100 Senators in The US Senate. That’s two for every state!

What is power? Peet’s Geography of Power

This is a book review of an ambitious text, Richard Peet’s 2007 book Geography of Power, which gets at the issue of social power by defining it as a physical thing and by locating it in time and space.  As will be shown in this book review, this is really a thing worth doing, and so the critique of this book will be aimed at sharpening Peet’s discussion of “power” while helping him resist just being another David Harvey.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

The Legacy of War — and Lessons Unlearned

In his farewell address to the nation after spending 8 years as president, in 1961 Eisenhower warns of a growing danger.

Eisenhower on the Military Industrial Complex



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Why would a respected President, set the sights so high, for his successors, and for America, as the dawn of the Television Age, blazed its path, towards an unknown Future?  

Joseph Romm’s piece in Alternet: Are we all Madoffs?

This is another short reaction to Joseph Romm’s piece in Alternet: “Why the Global Economy Is a Ponzi Scheme and We Are All Bernie Madoffs”.  Much as I’d like to agree with Romm (as he is one of the most authoritative voices out there on the topic of abrupt climate change), no, we are not all Bernie Madoffs.  The global capitalist economy marginalizes most of the world’s population while granting the status of “Bernie Madoff” to, well, Bernie Madoff — really, even granting Romm’s metaphor, the few who are privileged to take real advantage of the economy.  And, perhaps, even for them, “playing the Ponzi scheme” means “just getting by.”  Still, Romm’s use of metaphor is creative and interesting.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Failure in Government

I have supported Barack Obama, but every time he appoints a rightwinger or a centrist (who are nothing more than rightwingers with apologies IMO) I lose a little hope.

I quote my friend TocqueDeville in DrSteveB’s earlier diary, Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General – worse than I thought:

I see it as a continuation of the same battle (20+ / 0-)

I’ve been having for the last 20 plus years.

If this pans out then it will be just another failed Obama appointment, along with a couple of good ones – maybe.

All of his appointments combined demonstrate what the late professor Carroll Quigley, of Harvard Princeton and Georgetown described about how the American political system is rigged so that we can have a great big election and real power never really changes hands. [emphasis my own ~ OPOL]

by TocqueDeville

The real power never really changes hands.

Bad Pragmatism in Theory (pt.4): Gramsci vs. the Republicans

There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1) the Republican model, in which an “aestheticized” politics is promoted (in this case, it’s the “aesthetics” of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2) the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is “bad pragmatism” and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Bad Pragmatism pt. 2: Benjamin Ginsberg’s The American Lie

Book Review: Ginsberg, Benjamin.  The American Lie: Government by the People and Other Political Fables.  Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.

This, part two in a series, will analyze Benjamin Ginsberg’s book The American Lie as a “cynical realist” take on the American political process, suggesting that even though it’s marginally useful to be “cynical,” we still must be against “bad pragmatism” and in favor of politics for the greater good even when confronted with the corrupt system we have today.

Next: either a history of bad pragmatism, or a diary on the latest bad pragmatist outrage.  There WILL be a Bad Pragmatism pt. 3.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Twenty Theses About Money

Since almost all of you forgot to read my diary of last February about Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen’s The Politics of Money, I’m going to try to encapsulate the wisdom contained therein in a series of bullet points, with links added.  Maybe I was too long-winded back then.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

Obama’s Position on WH Torture Actions

I read this, and though I’ve been self-defensively cynical about politicians’ promises, I have the (cautious) “audacity” to “hope” that there may be a sea change coming.  Yes, we’ve all been disappointed by politicians in the past, and currently.  Pelosi, Reid, and Conyers haven’t delivered on their pre-election rhetoric.  I just wanted to share the fact that one of the Presidential candidates was asked the question about holding the WH accountable, and here’s his answer:

Will Bunch asked Obama:  If he’s elected, what would his Administration do about the allegations of criminal activities by the Bush White House:   Obama Would Ask his AG to “Immediately Review” Potential Crimes in the Bush White House:

There’s more:

And I Stood on the Mountain….

My apologies to Kevin Sullivan.

As I stood on the mountain, I shuddered. Off in the distance, I could see the Golden Pyramid. I was transfixed. I could here the Pyramid calling to me, willing me to come forth a climb its many steps.

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