tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post4870633696454651655..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: Co-Opting OWS: Hollywood Hotties of the One PercentKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-67643875868215215192012-04-30T15:53:10.428-04:002012-04-30T15:53:10.428-04:00Hi Karen thanks for expressing what I have suspect...Hi Karen thanks for expressing what I have suspected about MoveOn and the DNC's attempts. I recently signed on again to MoveOn, having dumped them as hopeless after their cowardly refusal to push Obama in 2009, and receive their "training session" calls. I am also a participant in OccupyOakland, and have to say that they still stand apart from the MoveOn/DNC shimmer, are spreading grass-roots democracy in Amartya Sen's sense, working with and helping the local communities and leadiing action thrice a week. Occupy Oakland heartens me. <br />Ranjeet<br />PS I liked your multiple choice comment on Gail Collins article on the talking pineapple.ClimberT8https://www.blogger.com/profile/12302281220153714545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-31880606647712890112012-04-10T08:20:41.398-04:002012-04-10T08:20:41.398-04:00The attempted exploitation by the Democratic Party...The attempted exploitation by the Democratic Party and the Obama administration of the Occupy movement is insulting.<br /><br />James MacLeod’s “What a crumbling oligarchy looks like”:<br /><br />http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-occupy-movement-is-about.htmlDenis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-29928158854803253312012-04-10T00:32:13.439-04:002012-04-10T00:32:13.439-04:00Loved your response. Why does the NYT keep paying ...Loved your response. Why does the NYT keep paying Brooks to parrot the WSJ!jeffrey butts•nycnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-10819926419343904462012-04-10T00:32:09.969-04:002012-04-10T00:32:09.969-04:00Hottie A or Hottie B, 99% Spring or May Day, MoveO...Hottie A or Hottie B, 99% Spring or May Day, MoveON or OWS, Economy I or Economy II, Romney or Obama, and ultimately Obama ‘08 or Obama ’12? – American politics has become a hall of mirrors. It is good that Sardonicky and others help us keep track of what’s fake and what’s real.<br /><br />In his regular Monday essay Chris Hedges revisits the TLOTE issue via a hard look at the Affordable Care Act, the one so many among us still consider half a loaf when it is in fact a stone. The following is from the last half of Hedges’ opening paragraph. By nailing the passage to the wall over my desk I hope to eliminate a lot of the confusing make believe in our political house of mirrors.<br /><br />“[The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] is a law by which President Barack Obama, and his corporate backers, extinguished the possibilities of both the public option and Medicare for all Americans. There is no substantial difference between Obamacare and Romneycare. There is no substantial difference between Obama and Romney. They are abject servants of the corporate state. And if you vote for one you vote for the other.”<br /><br />http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_real_health_care_debate_20120409/Jay–Ottawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10360356126450612113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-33508042572266844252012-04-09T23:37:44.439-04:002012-04-09T23:37:44.439-04:00I used to sound just like Ms. Adams a few years ba...I used to sound just like Ms. Adams a few years back when I was giving 100% to OFA. And the "purists" hated me for it. I didn't understand them at all. Well, now I do. They were right. And in my own small way, so was I.<br /><br />Elizabeth, I support you. And, I bet, so does Karen. Keep us abreast of your work, we're all in it together.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-69993215085324663512012-04-09T22:32:04.388-04:002012-04-09T22:32:04.388-04:00I understand your remarks about MoveOn. I went to...I understand your remarks about MoveOn. I went to a "train the trainer" event in San Francisco in order to do a training this Saturday in my small conservative town, and not everyone there was from or in support of MoveOn. There are other groups involved, such as 350.org and ruckus.org. MoveOn has great web tools, and we 99%ers don't have a lot of money to start from scratch or reinvent the wheel. <br /><br />Not everyone can be in the big cities like New York and remain "pure" like the OWSers. No one person or group has all the answers, including OWS, so I am choosing to take what I can from where I can, even if it is from MoveOn. As soon as MoveOn starts pushing me to vote for a particular person, I will leave.<br /><br />Each person going to the training is coming from a different background and level of comfort. People who want to do something are probably encouraged by the "nonviolent direct action" language. This weekend's training doesn't pretend to be more than just a beginner's course in activism, and I am totally new to all this myself. But the way it is around my town, if not me, who?Elizabeth Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05996557196169451999noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-66485547606274449112012-04-09T22:23:05.416-04:002012-04-09T22:23:05.416-04:00Hi all,
Wrote a response to Our Mister Brooks and ...Hi all,<br />Wrote a response to Our Mister Brooks and his Two Economies crapfest. Here 'tis:<br /><br />This column is one more attempt to keep the myth of trickle-down economics alive. It also celebrates Social Darwinism in a very genteel way. Why not just call Economy I the deregulated capitalism that it is? Why not admit that Economy I, in all its unmitigated greed, caused the biggest financial collapse in modern history? Why not come right out and say that Economy II should just get with the austerity program proclaimed by the plutocrats, instead of this nonsense about making "a bumpy transition" away from public schools and decent jobs to banana republic status? Why not just define Economy I as privatized profits at public expense?<br /><br />Of course, the USA of the 1% is not in decline. The sky is the limit. The ultra rich are doing very well, and our "public" servants, from the president right on down to the ALEC-controlled State Legislatures, ensure they continue to thrive. Neither party really has the interests of the middle class at heart. There is no money in it.<br /><br />Take fracking, which is nothing more than the rape of the earth by noxious chemicals used by equally noxious oligarchs to add a few more bucks to their endless pile. The irony is that much of the extracted gas will not even be used to heat the homes of those whose water is being poisoned by it. It will be sold abroad, and the profits hoarded overseas instead of being used to give medical care to the victims of the pollution.<br /><br />Economy I should be euthanized. Support OWS!Karen Garciahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-63173505749547630062012-04-09T21:36:53.880-04:002012-04-09T21:36:53.880-04:00Karen,
Young Mr. Penn Badgley, for what it's ...Karen,<br /><br />Young Mr. Penn Badgley, for what it's worth, was terrific in "Margin Call", which is to date one of the few films (documentary or dramatic) besides "Inside Job" and Spike Lee's "25th Hour" to portray with any veracity Wall Street culture, such as it is. (I claim to know, having wasted a good part of my youth in said Wall Street culture. And Spike Lee's "25th Hour" deals only marginally with one aspect of the industry.)<br /><br />All that aside, I'd like to bring to your attention a review by Stephen Holden of an important new documentary about the financial crisis by Donald Goldmacher, called "Heist: Who Stole The American Dream." I can't believe an inherently conservative film critic like Stephen Holden gave "Heist" such a glowing review, but I was thrilled that he did.<br /><br />http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/movies/heist-who-stole-the-american-dream-a-documentary.html<br /><br />I quote from the review:<br /><br />"...this project, produced and directed by Frances Causey and Donald Goldmacher, has the virtue of taking the long view of a crisis that recent films like “Inside Job” and “Too Big to Fail” have only sketchily explored. It makes a strong case that government regulation of business is essential for democracy to flourish. One of many pertinent observations from a host of experts is that the rich really don’t need the government as much as everybody else.... To say that the ideas in “Heist,” which locates the source of our current troubles in a famous 1971 memorandum, belongs to the paranoid conspiracy school of history is not to suggest that its point of view isn’t fairly persuasive. Conspiracies exist."<br /><br />I'd seen an early version of "Heist" while Goldmacher was working on it some years back. Definitely want to see the new version. Hope you will, too. <br /><br />Goldmacher's a former M.D./psychiatrist whose previous documentary was on the machinations of the pharmaceutical industry.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com