Maybe Cala better get going on that Canadian employment agency for overeducated dilettantes just in case.
In theory, competent thieves are preferable to incompetent thieves. Mancur Olson says that Giuliani will only ask for economically appropriate juice, so there.
In theory, competent thieves are preferable to incompetent thieves.
If the end goal is taking my stuff, I think I'd prefer incompetent.
I do love a well-crafted insult. On Bush:
I really do think that he ran for president partly just to appease his Oedipal issues and partly because he needed to do something with his life and he didn't think he could pass the written test to become a pirate.
The incompetent thief is more likely to pull the trigger when it all goes wrong.
Chalibi, for example. Crooked, but competent.
There's something to be said about reasonably competent thieves as long as they're vaguely well-meaning. Tammany Hall sucked billions out of NY, but we got some well-paved roads and very attractive public buildings out of it. Rudy, on the hand, appears to see inflicting pain on the disfavored bits of the electorate as an actively good thing.
Mancur Olson says that Giuliani will only ask for economically appropriate juice
That's an, errrm, original reading of Mancur Olson.
The depressing conclusion of The Logic of Collective Action is that graft is most likely when the the damage to the public (the rent) is greatest, the number of beneficiaries the smallest, and the number of victims the largest.
If the end goal is taking my stuff, I think I'd prefer incompetent.
The competent thief picks the lock, the incompetent thief breaks the window pane.
Actually, 9 was a bit harsh. Foolish Mortal was probably alluding to Olson's "stationary bandit", which arguably fits.
I've a question for LB about Guiliani and her reaction to him.
My wife told me again just the other day that she'd had misgivings about me, during the '80 campaign, not because I supported Reagan at all, whom I opposed with real foreboding, but because I said I understood his appeal. That, just being able to understand it, was and still is an alienating thought.
You've told the talk dirty to me story. Does what I just said resonate at all, on that visceral level?
Wait, are they saying it will get worse? Crap. I need to Google up the national anthem of New Zealand so I can start learning the lyrics, don't I?
12: LB's reaction is easy enough to understand. Giuliani speaks with a New York Irish accent, but fails to live up to the high ideals of Tammany Hall.
Who *doesn't* see the appeal of Reagan? He was a genial grandfather figure, who promised to raise spending, cut taxes, balance the budget, and give you a pony.
I can't believe the original appeal of Giuliani isn't obvious to everyone, either.
13: Just mumble something about sheep, you'll be fine.
12: Reagan's different from Giuliani -- there wasn't anything evil about Reagan's appeal. He did terrible things, but the emotional appeal was that he was kind and gentle and he'd protect you from bad people without doing anything wrong. Giuliani's emotional appeal is that he's going to keep 'those people' in their place by whatever means necessary, the crueller the better, whoever your personal 'those people' are. Falling for Reagan might make you a sucker, but finding Giuliani emotionally appealing (and of course not everyone who voted for him did) makes you kind of a bad person.
14: Every member of an Irish gang that used to beat up the Italian kids just rolled over in their graves.
17 crossed with 16. Sorry, Tim. Just because you're a bad person doesn't mean I don't still like you.
17: Where's Tim Burke to remind us that we can't get rid of the people who find Giuliani emotionally appealling and need to find ways to respectfully dialogue with them?
That'd be unfinished business in our house.
I never fell for nor was in any way swayed by Reagan's appeal, which seemed like a siren song for the country except I had no trouble resisting it. It was saying I understood it that was offputting.
Was Kotsko's "get rid of" an example of "(2) The promotion of violent radicalization?"
A true patriot, a non-violent & not-radical liberal, needs to know.
Tim Burke is my role-model.
God, I hated Reagan. I was only 12 years old when he was elected and he still creeped me the fuck out.
19: Don't sweat it. I and the 59% of the population that voted for him the second time around have been talking, trying to figure out how we might "convince" you of the error of your ways. We can probably fold in "address deficiencies in character judgment" to any plan at which we arrive.
Reagan's different from Giuliani -- there wasn't anything evil about Reagan's appeal. He did terrible things, but the emotional appeal was that he was kind and gentle and he'd protect you from bad people without doing anything wrong
I think LB is basing this description on the Reagan of the later years of his second term. The first term Reagan--to say nothing of the Reagan of the 1970s--had a similar "he'll kick the shit out of those freaks and commies" appeal. Recall that he won the governor's race in California by criticizing the lax handling of campus unrest in the UC system. He kicked off his 1980 primary campaign in Philadelphia, MS with a speech on states rights. He implied that the dead protestors at Kent State got what they deserved. He ran against Cadillac-driving welfare queens. He once said that the only reason millions go to bed hungry is because they are on a diet. He joked on an open microphone about bombing the Soviet Union. The list goes on.
The degree to which Giuliani's whacked-out mix of that asshole who picks fights at the bar and a post-modern machine politician has escaped serious attention in this race is unbelievable to me; Romney obviously can't attack the former, but I'm weirded out that he hasn't started running "Kerik Kerik Kerik" attack ads.
23: I loved Reagan when I was growing up.
see, I bitch about the Democrats, but I can't pass up an oportunity to vote against this schmuck. Which is going to be true whoever they nominate but it goes double for Rudy.
*Understanding* the appeal of anyone is never a vice. It shows moral empathy. SCMT is right, the appeal of Giuliani is easy to see. All you have to do is understand what it is like to be fearful and angry. That's happened to all of us. You are only a bad person if you let fear and anger rule you.
Reagan did the genial thing his first term, too. "Its morning in America." The hostages are coming home! (Please ignore the weird timing of their release and any hint of backroom dealing.)
25: Yeah, Reagan only looks cheerful and benign by comparison to the current president. But he was batshit crazy and, as sinister as GHWB was, it was still some relief to have someone who wasn't obviously certifiable.
Eh, I'm drawing a distinction between what he said and how he said it. What he said and what he did were often hostile and evil, but he said it going back and forth between twinkly warmth and manly firmness. I found him wildly unappealing personally, but what he was trying to project on a non-verbal level was decency.
I hated Reagan before he was Governor. Frothing in San Francisco, he was the moral leader of the Goldwater spitting crowd.
But with his midwestern middle-class background, and twenty years of hitting marks in Hollywood, he was at heart one of the nicer & saner true conservatives. Raised taxes, dealt with Gorby, didn't really attack entitlements. Closed down the Lighthouses for the Blind, but nobody's perfect.
one of the nicer & saner true conservatives
As long as you pay no attention to his bloody handprints all over Central and South America.
Who was it who said that Rudy did okay on 9-11 because it was the only occasion on which the world lived up to Rudy's operatic perception of himself? (Or something like that.) I thought that was a particularly good reading of Rudy's psychopathology.
I did my part to poison the well against Rudy, reminding some family members who had somehow forgotten that he TRIED TO SUSPEND ELECTIONS after 9-11. That really should be the limit for anyone not of the rabid 28%.
Also: Rudy banned dancing. Fucker.
Well, nicer and saner is a comparative. If you can't find a true conservative that's nicer or saner, then no matter how bad Reagan was, he looks good for a true conservative.
Romney obviously can't attack the former, but I'm weirded out that he hasn't started running "Kerik Kerik Kerik" attack ads
My guess is that it's too early. Romney is arguably right where he wants to be, and there's still a non-negligible probability that Giuliani will self-destruct, so there's no need for Romney to roll out the heavy artillery just yet.
Once the primary battle gets going in earnest, though, it's likely to get really ugly. I'm gonna pop me a bowl of popcorn and enjoy when the day comes.
I did my part to poison the well against Rudy
Just last night, I mean.
Reagan was basically the bogeyman where I grew up.
I have no memory of Reagan's administration, but later on I had entirely negative opinions of him, based largely on reading my parents' collections of "Bloom County".
Eh, I'm drawing a distinction between what he said and how he said it.
I get that, but I still think there is a real distinction between the restrospective view and the view at the time, especially before 1983. Reagan always had the avuncular, just-folks side of him ("there you go again"), but he was able to draw on a darker rhetorical style as well when he was castigating the Other. When he told his tall tales about welfare mothers eating t-bone steaks and buying color tv's with their food stamps, it wasn't the congenial father figure we remember today; it was a Giuliani-like voice.
FWIW, a source of deep and abiding respect I have for my father is that he always hated Reagan, even as a lot of my father's peer group fell under Reagan's spell.
I need to Google up the national anthem of New Zealand so I can start learning the lyrics
God Defend New Zealand, "Because", as a kiwi mate of mine once remarked, "we don't have an air force anymore."
Reagan was basically the bogeyman where I grew up.
Really? I would not have guessed that.
41: Maybe. I was a kid for the beginning of Reagan's term, and was raised by people who despised him, so I'm reconstructing the emotional appeal rather than having responded to it myself, if you see what I mean. But what people reminisce about is the genial grandpa.
yeah, don't forget the ed meese side of reagan. and the jim watts side.
reagan was the first person in my experience whose approach to the executive office was this:
i cannot convince congress to close or defund the e.p.a. or to change its legal charter.
so i am going to staff it with people who hate its legal charter, want to undermine all of its legislated duties, and will bring in the corporate wrecking balls to do it.
and for e.p.a. read 'every bit of the federal govt. that didn't agree with the corporate agenda.'
he really had the attitude of 'see that the laws be faithfully executed?? fuck that!! i'll execute the laws i feel like, and violate the ones i don't like.'
and notice that by subverting e.g. the e.p.a. without actually admitting to it or fighting for it in public, we now find ourselves with the "clean skies initiative."
reagan was the one who realized that the public *likes* liberal, on a wide swath of issues, and likes a liberal congress passing liberal laws. so fuck the congress and fuck the public.
was he as bad as bush? no. but he wrote bush's playbook.
maybe you had to be as old as was then to hate him as much as i do now.
But what people reminisce about is the genial grandpa.
Exactly my point. That's what people remember today. But that's not what got him the Republican nomination in 1980. The surviving image of Reagan developed slowly, and has been further burnished since he left office. People forget that he was an incredibly unpopular president until around the beginning of 1983. Dem candidates were lined up out the door to take him on.
43.---Do you know where I grew up, Knecht? (Hint: not
Utah.)
Speaking of Kiwis, I find the end of this video incredibly sad.
I can't get an emotional grip on Rudy, tho since I don't watch TV, I shouldn't expect to. But I think there is some kind of culture gap. Reagan, the Clintons, even Bush the lesser are close to Midwesterners (Texas is midwest for the most part) and love them or hate them, I feel I understand them.
Guiliani, Romney, Edwards, all the Kennedys are from different regions, places where leadership or authority are more accepted than in the Midwest, I think.
Who was it who said that Rudy did okay on 9-11 because it was the only occasion on which the world lived up to Rudy's operatic perception of himself?
I dunno about that, but my line to my NJ-living dad on 9/13 was "Rudy did OK because his first response to any event is to suspend civil rights, and this happened to be the one case where that was appropriate."
It was funnier and less bitter at the time.
47. No. I jumped to unwarranted conclusions, as you surmised.
48--
very interesting you should say that--i completely agree.
it was such a suicidal endeavour that i found it deeply bleak.
and why not just end it with a few frames where he pops a chute? or lands on a pillow and giggles?
what sort of sick bastards would send the kiwi to his death when it's so gratuitously needless? (and when the video is so likely to be seen by kids?)
Believe me, I hated him too. And his period of popularity was really only for a couple of years around the '84 election. It all felt manufactured. Sure, you could find plenty of people who ate it up, just like dittoheads today, but most people didn't feel as warm or approving as they want you to believe.
Well, the ending is intentionally ambiguous, but the dark reading comes most naturally. The animator didn't really intend it to become a youtube phenomenon; it was just his master's thesis, and the ambiguously bleak ending is good masters thesis material.
Interestingly several other people have created videos of safe landings, which actually helps build my faith in humanity.
In the People Republic of Berkeley (where I grew up), Reagan's name was invoked as First Cause for everything bad. It was like catechism: Why are there deranged homeless people everywhere? Because of Reagan.
I've mentioned this before, but my earliest political memory is getting bawled out on the playground in first grade because my dad was going to vote for Reagan and my playmate Ari knew that Reagan was going to bomb the whole world and we were all going to DIE.
Most people outside of NYC don't know anything about Guiliani aside from 9/11 (where he looked a lot stronger than Bush) and a vague idea that you can walk around in Times Square now because he made it safe.
If that's all you knew, none of the details of abuses, none of the powertripping, just a guy who didn't read a children's book during the Biggest Terrorist Attack Ever Ever and who made the city safe, he looks pretty attractive. A lot of people like that image who I think would be horrified if they knew the details. I don't know if you want to dismiss that as dialogue, but the Guiliani love seems to strike me as similar to the McCain love a few years ago: popular because no one's read the issues.
Texas is midwest for the most part
A little early in the day to be tying one on, isn't it?
"Rudy did OK because his first response to any event is to suspend civil rights, and this happened to be the one case where that was appropriate."
This is dead on. His whole shtick is "Doing what's necessary to get us through the apocalypse", and you know, New York at it's worst wasn't the apocalypse. But 9/11 felt like it was, which made him look good for once.
59:Tim, East Texas is Southern, and far West Texas is Western, but Dallas...well, I'm originally from one of the most Republican/conservative States evah, upper Midwest, and Dallas feels like home. I sure wouldn't feel at home in Mississippi.
It's hard to explain the difference I feel. Quakers vs Baptists. Immune to charisma. Indifference to heirarchies. An underdeveloped idea and too much hassle for the morning.
Apropos of Reagan, I thought then and think now that people's inability to comprehend his appeal, and take its measure, and a certain hysteria about his election bound to be overdrawn and disproved when the sky didn't fall, both of which were typical of liberal centers, actually contributed to Reagan's success.
They suggested what was only too true, that liberals were detached from many people's American values and hated and feared them. And the resulting liberal demoralization, when the press started to fall in love with Reagan, started the cycle of despair we still experience.
Dallas feels like home
The character trait that I most associate with the Midwest is modesty/humility, and Dallas to me is all about bombast and self-promotion.
Guiliani, Romney, Edwards, all the Kennedys are from different regions, places where leadership or authority are more accepted than in the Midwest, I think.
This is incorrect, based on my anecdata. It's my (male) midwestern relative who are suckers for that "we need a strong leader in this emergency" cant.
63 seems to be right, but what do I know, I didn't think Texas was in the midwest.
61--
"They suggested what was only too true, that liberals were detached from many people's American values and hated and feared them. And the resulting liberal demoralization, when the press started to fall in love with Reagan, started the cycle of despair we still experience."
you get an a+ for that--spot on.
except i'd make one small change. the sequence of events was not: people fall in love, then press falls in love, then liberals get demoralized.
rather it was: people fall in love (or at least more than expected), then *press* gets demoralized over its failure to expect this, then *press* feels the need to pretend to fall in love and distance themselves from anything liberal.
then liberals get demoralized.
but pretty much as you said, and it's important, too.
(also not new: the pauline kael anecdote involved nixon, not reagan).
60: I think a case could be made that Dallas is a larger, richer, more materialistic version of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, minus the bike lanes and with larger highways.
10: the competent thief who steals the tires off my car in my garage at least jacks it up carefully & doesn't screw up the frame.
I've been to Dallas a couple times, and it kind of struck me as "L.A. for Southerners". All the sprawl and freeways, but minus the beach and the Hollywood factor.
You people are nuts on the "competent thief" business. The incompetent thief is the one that gets caught.
You want someone every bit as evil as Bush, but smarter? Think about that.
You want someone every bit as evil as Bush, but smarter?
That would be Nixon.
62:and Dallas to me is all about bombast and self-promotion.
And how many Dallasites can you name, for a top ten city.
Here's one:Dick Cheney (Highland Park). An asshole of the first order, but "bombast & self-promotion?" Undisclosed location with a secretive shadow gov't is more like it. I think he fits as a Midwesterner.
The last opposition to the patriot act came from Midwesterners led by Wellstone: from MN, WS, IL, IA, and even one of the Dakotas. Much of the Democratic opposition to Clinton's civil liberties incursions also came from those Midwestern states.
People around here aren't less militaristic or less racist than the east and west coast, but you don't have the yearning for a strong leader, the belief that you can't fight city hall, or the belief that the thing to do about graft is to get a cut of it.
Minneapolis is exactly like Dallas, if Dallas elected a black Muslim to Congress.
One of the great mistakes, among so very many, that the Democrats have made during the past decade has been not pushing back against the Reagan myth-making on the right. Renaming National Airport for him, the effort to put his face on money, and, most dangerous of all, the successful campaign to rebrand him in our collective memories as a happy grandfather, just brimming with good cheer and family values. All of which scrubs the historical Reagan of culpability in Latin America, particularly Iran-Contra, and leaves low-information voters with the sense that there was once this great and good Republican leader, and we just need to get back to that in order to be happy and whole again. And again, the thing that's so horrid is that the Democrats, for the most part, go along with it. "Admirable Republicans? Well, Lincoln, of course, and Ike, and good ole Ronny, he was a swell guy." Nope, not really, not at the time anyway. He was brutal, divisive, and hated his enemies, even if he did evil with a smile on his face.
Oh, I feel better now.
72, I think Nixon was less evil than Bush. He didn't have any principles, for example.
That would be Nixon.
I'll take Nixon over Bush and Giulani. Nixon at least understood foreign policy. Giulani is going to shred the Constitution even further, and with a great deal of glee. And it appears he's even worse than Bush on the "let's bomb everything" approach to world affairs.
72--
yes, nixon was smarter.
but, curiously, he was in the end more susceptible to shame.
i'd almost call it decency.
look--i'm not trying to whitewash him in any way. i hated him the whole time he was in office.
but he did eventually go quietly, and more or less of his own accord.
it is possible that the difference is not to be found in the inner heart of the men in question, but in the societies they lived in--the virtue of shame is a distributed virtue (maybe all of them are--that's the lesson of situationist psychology).
so it was partly that nixon worked in an era when doing certain things was widely considered shameful, whereas now we live in an era where nothing is shameful if you are a republican, whereas telling the truth is shameful if you're a democrat.
still--we can never judge the individual apart from their era. nixon, in his day, did do the right thing in the end. bush will not.
The Reagan of the 1980 campaign was nothing like the Reagan of popular memory today. That Reagan was an angry old man, and although it's completely forgotten today, he sounded angry. You can probably find some speeches or 1980 debates on youtube. He became kind and gentle only after he was shot in the lung (March 1981, two months into his presidency), which changed his voice--He literally couldn't sound nasty any more--and according to some of his closest associates, his personality also. One verifed change: After the near-death experience, and two months of recuperaiton, he stopped writing his own speeches. His first-term actions remained as mean as his words had been before, and unnecessarily contributed to the hardships of the 1981-82 recession.
After that he and the nation benefited from a strong economy, strong sensible Democratic leadership in the legislative branch (particularly the , and and a succession of deaths at the top of the Soviet Union. He became the sunny old man for sunny times of the myth.
And the idea that Dallas, or really any part of Texas, is like the Midwest is either dead wrong or testament to how diverse the Midwest actually is.
72:There is no one as evil as Bush, and may have never been. He is one of the few I have ever seen that literally cares about no one or nothing but himself. Laura & the kids are fashion accessories. His friends and allies are contemptible parasites. Pathological, terminal narcissism.
I think Nixon really loved Pat & the girls, really felt terrible about dumping Haldeman & Erlichman.
That competent thief thing wasn't a metaphor for Giuliani; it actually happened.
bob, are you arguing that Mass. & NY are more authoritarian than Texas?
nixon worked in an era when doing certain things was widely considered shameful
I think this is right.
nixon, in his day, did do the right thing in the end
I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Mass, NY, and California are more authoritarian than Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsisn is what I say.
83--
his resignation, that's all.
faced with similar poll numbers and similar opposition, bush would just ride it out.
or really any part of Texas, is like the Midwest is either dead wrong or testament to how diverse the Midwest actually is.
Or a testament to the diversity of Texas. It's a big state.
steals the tires
Get rims. I really like the oversize wire wheel look, especially on like a Monte Carlo with lurid paint. There's a beautiful green one about a mile from my house.
I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
Well, he did die.
88: Not in the appropriate manner.
82, see 84
Texas is complicated.
And authoritarian may nor be quite what I am looking for. I am mostly looking at how they view themselves. What is the difference between Truman/Eisenhower and FDR/JFK. Midwesterners don't see themselves as leaders or salesmen, but as workers.
Bush, and especially Cheney, aren't particularly interested in convincing anybody of anything, except to the degree it is minimally necessary. They are pretty awful salesmen.
89--
yeah, i had that thought too in writing the original line.
it would have been morally satisfying for him to have offed himself.
on the other hand, it would have been a political nightmare. there was no lack of a 28% or the equivalent back then--a core of die-hard republican whack-jobs who would never think ill of him.
they would have started in immediately with the conspiracy theories. (nixon didn't kill himself! he was stabbed by vince foster!).
probably just as well that he descended into dotage.
Could I get a hearty WTF? for the image linked in 89?
"Made in Texas" by Lind is the best thing I've read about Texas. To Lind Texas is Southern, and its leaders are heirs of the planters, specifically the faction of the planters that wanted to expand into Central America. To them an uneducated, impoverished, disenfranchised, demoralized working class is what God intended.
Bob is trolling y'all. Southern, Southwestern, Great Plains, Okie, whatever. Not Midwestern.
Reagan was all grandfatherly wisdom, folksy charm and genial humour:
My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.
What 75 said.
Cannucks have no sense of humor.
Is the post-Reagan despair the origin of the mythical "public opinion" that exists only in the minds of journalists and pundits and has no relation to actual opinion polling?
It's worth noting that Nixon didn't resign because of his shame. He went because the GOP in those days thought it would be better off without him. Even Barry Goldwater apparently told Nixon to go.
92--
you mean you clicked on a link that apo posted??
always a bad idea.
i just moused over it, saw the title involved hara kiri, and wrote my reply on that basis.
Adam, a lot of journalists are partisan opinion contractors whose job is to tell people what they think. One outcome is that even if a majority of the U.S. thinks a certain way, the teevee tells them that they're in the minority so they get discouraged. Brooks and serveral others have repeatedly misrepresented the facts of public opinion.
Even though the majority of Americans everywhere are against Bush, outside the most liberal enclaves you don't hear or see many signs of that. And when you do, it might well be the anti-immigration bigots, who have NOT been intimidated.
97--
well, what i meant about the distributed, situational nature of virtues is that it's not so easy to make this distinction. i sure agree with you that the shame in question was not a substance in the core of nixon's being. it was the result of interactions between him and lots of other people and norms and conventions.
but, the point is, that's *always* how shame is. no matter whose shame it is.
96--
it's far too simple to say "yes, that's the start of it," but:
yes, that's the start of it.
the decline of the independent press-esp. the nyt and wapo, which were the flagships of that press--all dates from the early reagan era. it was the reaganauts who really started the game of working the refs, beating up on the press, making them grovel, stripping them of their dignity until they actually come to cooperate in their own debasement.
93:What do you think Dallas is, oil? Farms, then finance/commercial, then factories. Fort Worth was cattle, not Dallas.
Great Plains, like Eisenhower, isn't Midwestern?
He went because the GOP in those days thought it would be better off without him.
Different GOP, though. I think that's the real issue, not Nixon, Reagan, or GWB.
"Made in Texas" by Lind is the best thing I've read about Texas.
Not a great book, I think.
My sister lived in Kansas for twenty years, and we reject that state in all its works and all its ways. What a hellhole.
The South starts in the middle of Iowa as far as I'm concerned. Kansa can be Western or Southern, I don't care, as long as it's not here.
A great book, I think. A Reagonaut by birth, Tim is almost always wrong even to this day.
What 75 said, with television-based hallucinations added on. RR confused events in films he had acted in with historical reality; after having been shot, true, but still.
Ed Meese was destructive and contemptible, but I don't know how much of an innovation installing him really was; selective enforcement of laws is a very old tactic.
79- With respect to his appeal, Reagan has to be looked at in context. He was Churchillian in that he'd been around for a while with the same convictions. In the early 70s, there was Vietnam and Watergate. In '76, he seriously challenged an incumbent for the party nomination. Then there was there was waiting in line at gas stations; New York as Gotham City without Batman; and a economy from which people looked to Japan as a model. And those hostages.
Before the presidential debates, the Dems ran a ridiculous ad of a little blond girl being blown up by a nuclear bomb. So, here came Reagan with his optimistic, genial self who was just too sweet to let that little blond girl get blown up.
Then the hostage release and economy recovery fell
into his lap and he was off and running to begin the Republican legacy of deficit spending, class warfare and covert interventionism. He won the election in '84 with every single state except Minnesota plus DC.
Am I wrong in thinking that Ron Paul has almost the exact same policies as Barry Goldwater?
I benefited from having parents and grandparents who remembered his film career. My mother - who hates anyone Republican and suspects anyone Baptist - despised Reagan. She took me to a Carter rally when I was six. Her mother, I remember, commented that she'd "vote for Bonzo" before she'd vote for Reagan. One of my sisters was enchanted by the "strong grandfather" mystique and my mother and father expressed their disappointment with the most withering looks and crinkled mouth-corners, too prim to come out and tell her she shouldn't vote for him but too worked up about it to wipe the half-grimace off their faces.
Before the presidential debates, the Dems ran a ridiculous ad of a little blond girl being blown up by a nuclear bomb.
Are you thinking of the Daisy ad? That was 1964, against Goldwater. And it was effective as hell. From today's perspective, it doesn't have quite the same impact: it's overly long, it's a little bit oblique, and the voiceover at the end is a little weird. But at the time it was a radical innovation in negative campaigning, in an age where TV ads consisted mostly of candidates standing in front of a camera and giving a short version of a stump speech.
I have to say that LB (and Josh Marshall) has convinced me that I do not want Rudy to be President. The cronyism is the key. Rudy is another example of the Peter principle at work. A good prosecutor, because one has to be vindictive to a certain extent. The people reward his success with the office of Mayor, where he succeeded in reducing crime (with help from Bratton-whom he shafts). The fact that he looks good on 9/11 gets him this Presidential run. He is like a small state Governor, so he picks a foreign policy team to help. He will be the nominee, however.
Am I wrong in thinking that Ron Paul has almost the exact same policies as Barry Goldwater?
Yes. Ron Paul's libertarianism stops as soon as it runs up against his Christianist beliefs. Whatever other nastiness Goldwater believed, he wasn't down with those crazy fuckers.
Am I wrong in thinking that Ron Paul has almost the exact same policies as Barry Goldwater?
Goldwater was better than Paul on immigration and gays, especially in his later years, after he had mellowed out.
Dave Barry's line about Goldwater was he "doesn't seem so bad in retrospect, but at the time seemed perfectly capable of ordering a nuclear first strike against, say, Ireland." In further retrospect, and seeing what his heirs have done, I'd say the "Daisy" ad was probably too generous to the GOP.
Further to 113: OTOH, Goldwater wanted to threaten North Vietnam with nuclear weapons, so that puts a little daylight between him and Paul as regards the leading foreign policy issue of the day.
Yes. Ron Paul's libertarianism stops as soon as it runs up against his Christianist beliefs. Whatever other nastiness Goldwater believed, he wasn't down with those crazy fuckers.
Oh, I thought he was, as a lover of traditional gender roles and the like. Never mind.
JPaul- I think that comment I made yesterday was to you. Sorry for the flame. Out of line.
People are already starting to say that we'll survive Bush and it won't have been so terrible. "The worst is not, so long as we may say, 'This is the worst.'"
Also, Goldwater supported raising the minimum wage and extending Social Security, and voted for the civil rights bills of '57 and '60. Hard to see Ron Paul supoprting any of that.
Also, Goldwater supported raising the minimum wage and extending Social Security, and voted for the civil rights bills of '57 and '60.
So, he was...less conservative than Reagan, Bush, or Bush?
117: Presumably, if you were sorry for the flame, you wouldn't call me "JPaul."
Bastard.
117: More seriously, I appreciate that. I was worried that I overreacted - and maybe I did - but I'm glad that my perception that your comment was a bit rough wasn't just the paranoia talking.
So, he was...less conservative than Reagan, Bush, or Bush?
Pretty much, yeah. Of course, those were different times.
Eric Rauchway wrote a smart piece for the New Republic about the left's willingness to embrace Goldwater retrospectively. But I can't find a live link. "So what good is that?" you ask. Not much, I'm afraid. Get used to disappointment.
Did the hostage crisis resolution "fall into" Reagan's lap? The arms sales certainly helped.
I don't think it's necessary to "embrace" Goldwater to realize that GWB makes him look good by comparison. It's like Gonzales making you nostalgic for Ashcroft as AG.
On a related note, I don't have any memory of the turmoil of the Vietnam years, so I never acquired the baby boomer liberal hostility to Lyndon Johnson. I have to say that from today's perspective, LBJ looks pretty damned good, and I think he is overdue for rehabilitation. I suspect that one reason for the utter ruthlessness with which Tom DeLay tried to purge the Texas Congressional delegation of white Democrats was to ensure that another LBJ never emerges.
The arms sales certainly helped.
The arms sales came later, in a separate deal to spring the American hostages in Lebanon. Carter cut a deal, brokered by the Algerian government, to unfreeze billions in Iranian assets in exchange for the hostages. The U.S. delivered planeloads of gold bars to Iran.
There has been a lot of speculation, possibly true, that the Reagan-Bush campaign lobbied the Iranians not to do a deal until after the election, with the implicit promise of better relations later. But to stay on the solid ground of verifiable facts, it is not possible to link the later arms sales to the release of the hostages.
Bob and others are right about Nixon's touches of humanity. If Bush has anything similar, I'm unaware of it.
I commented elsewhere a time or two that there is is precedent for just about every piece of the evil that is the Bush/Cheney administration. What's new is that all this stuff is going on at once, and to such a heightened degree. This is where quantity starts having a quality of its own, to coin a phrase. It's normal enough to have the flu, or a broken bone, or migraines, or cancer, or to be unemployed, or to have someone you love acting so badly that you no longer feel safe around them, or to be in an area having a crime wave, or to realize that you've become addicted to some nasty drug. What's rare is to have the flu and migraine and cancer and be laid up with multiple broken bones while unemployed and trying to get off heroin and living in the middle of the worst crime wave in history and trying to deal with the 50% of your immediate family who've become violent schizophrenics.
What I've read is that Khomenei needed to end the hostage crisis, but did so after Carter's term as a last measure of spite. And since Republicans had traditionally been seen as more friendly towards Iran, perhaps he was hoping for some concessions from Reagan (which he eventually got).
From a distance, LBJ seemed an odd duck. Leaving aside the war ("Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."), he seemed to be a genuinely effective liberal, while on a personal and operational level being a cunt of Cheney proportions. I'm not sure someone like that would be electable anywhere these days. (it's the media, stupid.)
What's rare is to have the flu and migraine and cancer and be laid up with multiple broken bones while unemployed and trying to get off heroin and living in the middle of the worst crime wave in history and trying to deal with the 50% of your immediate family who've become violent schizophrenics.
I know what I'm going to have nightmares about tonight!
Don't forget the fragile achilles tendon.
And giant sinkholes filled with sewage.
From a distance, LBJ seemed an odd duck. Leaving aside the war ("Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln..."), he seemed to be a genuinely effective liberal, while on a personal and operational level being a cunt of Cheney proportions. I'm not sure someone like that would be electable anywhere these days.
You hear that Rahm Emanuel is similar, but then it turns out he's a member of the DLC.
AAHHHH
I actually did have nightmares about the sinkholes, apo.
About the Achilles tendons, I was thinking: there's a damned good reason that in any dance class you spend about an hour and a quarter warming up before you're allowed to hop gently in place.
I'm not sure someone like that would be electable anywhere these days.
In a way, Jim Webb is a lot like that, though he has neither LBJ's penchant for vulgar vocabulary nor his decades of experience in legislative machinations and electoral knifefights.
Webb's SOTU response evoked Johnson for me: a tough-ass son-of-a-bitch who thinks it's *disgraceful* to leave the poor and weak to their fate. Ted Kennedy makes the same speech, and it comes across as either whining or tut-tutting. Webb makes it, and you feel his righteous fury.
Possibly related to the angry ape face theory.
He was Churchillian in that he'd been around for a while with the same convictions.
Winston never spent as long as a "while" with the same convictions. Hell, he changed party three times - Tory>Liberal>Independent(but close to the Tories)>Tory(but close to the Labour Party), and he was in many different factions in each.
The timing of the hostage release set off the alarm bells for me, but comity ruled. I can't imagine an innocent explanation not involving unicorns.
I obviously don't know if it's right, but Jackmormon's 129 qualifies as an innocent explanation that doesn't involve unicorns.
Winston never spent as long as a "while" with the same convictions.
His admirers would argue that his convictions remained, the political landscape altered. I would argue that's bolleaux of the first cold pressing, but it's commonly believed.
His admirers would argue that his convictions remained, the political landscape altered.
Oddly enough, Reagan made the same claim about himself to justify his switch from Democrat to Republican: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, it left me." (This was of course in the days before Republicans had universally adopted the "Democrat Party" slur as a verbal tic.)
It was bollocks with Reagan, too: he supported Roosevelt straight through the end of the New Deal, and didn't become a Republican until the 50's.
Reagan-Bush campaign lobbied the Iranians not to do a deal
I thought that off-the-record insiders had confirmed this happened; perhaps the report was bogus. I'll look around.
Speaking of Churchill, this book is very interesting on his early career. The picture of him that comes through is not very flattering.
143: Reagan bullshitting? Shocking.
126, 130: I thought LBJ already had been rehabilitated. He was the last president we've had who had an unabashedly Democratic economic policy. He stood up for civil rights, even though it cost him the support of a major wing of his party. Despite all his political machinations, his major decisions, good and bad, were made on principle.
One of my favorite SNL jokes ever was during the Lewinsky thing, where they had little segments on the history of White House sex scandals: "LBJ was known to his Spanish whores as 'El B-J.'"
Hey, that's one of my favorite SNL jokes too.
LBJ- bigot who done good?
LBJ was cut from a rough mold. He used to leave the door open and continue his conversations with his guests while he was taking a shit.
If anybody comes up with really good lyrics for the song "Last Night El BJ Saved My Life" please let me know, because it's maddening to just have that line looping in my head.
The night LBJ saved my life
Country & Western ballad or honky tonk style?
Ah, I was thinking more along the lines of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." You know, like
Doris K is my name and I served on Johnson's staff
'til Nixon's plumbers all came and zipped up the place again....
Country & Western ballad or honky tonk style?
It was Natchez Missisippi, on lazy Tuesday night
I met a hooker named Juanita, beneath the hazy truckstop light.
I said "Climb in Senorita, you know I'm feeling kinda sore. It's been 10 days since I've cheated, and I need a little more."
"You see I need a kind of treatment, I can't get from my wife."
Then she smiled and knelt where my seat was...
Last night el BJ saved my life.
Some recovering evangelical needs to set the "El BJ" song to the tune of "Satan, Bite the Dust," by renowned musical terrorist Carman. (The Weblog is currently the #5 result on Google for "musical terrorist," by the way.)
I need to Google up the national anthem of New Zealand so I can start learning the lyrics, don't I?
As a Brit friend put it, rather tartly, when I asked if Waltzing Matilda was Australia's national anthem: "I believe you'll find that's God Save the Queen." Although I imagine they've adapted the lyrics to something like "We love our gorgeous sheep/How we adore our sheep/We love our sheep," etc.
We love our gorgeous sheep
Or:
Our country reeks of trees,
Our yaks are really large,
And they smell like rotting beefcarcasses!
40: reading my parents' collections of "Bloom County".
No one has ever made me feel so old.
W/r/t my linking difficulties, why the fuck can't you just "copy link location" off of Google search results? And if they're not going to let you do that, couldn't they at least include the "http://" in the non-link address so as to avoid errors in creating html links? For a company that usually does everything so elegantly, they really have created the worst of all possible worlds in terms of cutting and pasting from the search results. Or do they get money from you clicking through?
Hey teo, weren't you born during the first Bush administration?
KR, teo hasn't even been born yet.
Some recovering evangelical needs to set the "El BJ" song to the tune of "Satan, Bite the Dust,"
I was imagining something like the tune of "I OD'ed in Denver (And I Just Can't Remember Her Name)" by Hank Williams, Jr.
No one has ever made me feel so old.
That sounds like a challenge.
Tell me about it. Hey Wrongshore, don't you remember borrowing your parent's copy of Depeche Mode's Violator?
163 gets it exactly right.
165: Do you think perhaps, in this particular case, maybe, just maybe, Google was trying to save you from yourself?
[... she asks, curled up into a little ball, slowly rocking herself as she waits for the flashbacks to stop.]
why the fuck can't you just "copy link location" off of Google search results?
What? Can't you right-click on the big blue text and copy link location?
172: It embeds it inside a google link, like so:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCommon_Grackle&ei=-VQiR4akHKKKggSU87lw&usg=AFQjCNEyn5yRulwO7vxereEgpKASRm7BgQ&sig2=koeANKeSScOAHzTZgRkXFA
It shows the desired URL if you hover over the link, though, which makes it doubly frustrating.
It embeds it inside a google link
It doesn't on my machine. Interesting.
It embeds it inside a google link
It doesn't on my machine. Interesting.
It does, however, double-post lying comments that insist they're interesting.
It only does it if you're logged into your google account. Or, at least, it doesn't always do it if you're not logged in.
It only does it if you're logged into your google account
Aha. An answer.
No, that's not it. I'm logged in.
Fucking slol.
But: science!
Anyway, I'm not logged in and it doesn't do it for me. Now let me try logging in...nope, still doesn't do it. Slol, do you have it set not to save your search history?
Probably, but I can't remember where to look for that setting.
Hey teo, weren't you born during the first Bush administration?
No, Reagan. 1984.
Not that this is particularly worth your time, slol, but in gmail if you go to Settings, Accounts, Google Account settings, Web History, it's there.
Hey Wrongshore, don't you remember borrowing your parent's copy of Depeche Mode's Violator?
My parents had a pretty good record collection: Big Brother and the Holding Company, Concert for Bangladesh, Donovan. In the sixth grade, I asked my mom if she had any Rick Springfield. She grabbed "Born To Run" for me, and I thought she was sech a square.
No, Reagan. 1984
All right, someone get Destroyer out here to put Wrongshore over the edge.
My parents had a pretty good record collection
My first album purchase was the Beatles' Revolver. I still have the vinyl and the original sleeve, too. Yes, I am old.
For the Watergate-as-Sunday-school-picnic files:
FEMA stages fake news conference on California wildfire response, with agency employees posing as news reporters. Heckuvajob.
But it's okay, because the White House has scolded them for it.
Scolded them for doing it or scolded them for getting caught?
189: For getting caught, naturally. They meant well, after all, and only intended to provide a badly-needed public information service.
I think "the night El J saved my life" should be sung to the tune of "last night the bottle let me down."
35: I said that, but I was certainly not alone. What really got me though, was how he turned the dust of incinerated human remains and concrete that my poor mother was sweeping off her porch on 9/12 into a lovely tiara for himself.
42: New Zealand does so have an air force! It just doesn't have any fighters or bombers in it. But there are some very nice helicopters.
