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Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 14 Sep 2009, 8:00pm
by Dr. Medulla
IkarisOne wrote:Forget Obama-
Glenn Greenwald for President, is what I say:
Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now. All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency -- to say nothing of the Bush years -- to see that none of this is remotely new. Nothing they're doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it's just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.
Which is why Obama's conciliatory gestures were useless. Mediation and compromise only work when there's good faith on both sides. I'll give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt for now (only because they aren't obviously foaming), but it's crystal clear that the Republicans never had any interest in making a good faith effort to find agreement. Accordingly, the Democrats should adopt a more parliamentary attitude and stop consulting the opposition altogether. When the kids calm down and want to come back to the table, fine, but until then why waste time and resources.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 14 Sep 2009, 9:10pm
by Still216
Dr. Medulla wrote: I'll give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt for now (only because they aren't obviously foaming), but it's crystal clear that the Republicans never had any interest in making a good faith effort to find agreement. Accordingly, the Democrats should adopt a more parliamentary attitude and stop consulting the opposition altogether. When the kids calm down and want to come back to the table, fine, but until then why waste time and resources.
When Arlen Specter left the Republican party, that should have been a sign to all sane Republicans to seize their party back from the zero-negotiation maniacs. No one stepped up. I have no sympathy for maniacs, or those in a position of power who passively tolerate them, being shut out of the political process.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 14 Sep 2009, 9:17pm
by Dr. Medulla
Still216 wrote:Dr. Medulla wrote: I'll give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt for now (only because they aren't obviously foaming), but it's crystal clear that the Republicans never had any interest in making a good faith effort to find agreement. Accordingly, the Democrats should adopt a more parliamentary attitude and stop consulting the opposition altogether. When the kids calm down and want to come back to the table, fine, but until then why waste time and resources.
When Arlen Specter left the Republican party, that should have been a sign to all sane Republicans to seize their party back from the zero-negotiation maniacs. No one stepped up. I have no sympathy for maniacs, or those in a position of power who passively tolerate them, being shut out of the political process.
There's an irony—and an unsavoury one at that—that the Republicans, who go on about ideological purity and principles, are the party that no longer has any real principles. They are solely about tactics and getting power any way possible. They are operating on the belief that destroying Obama will necessarily mean that they gain power. Which may be true, but not for certain. But their way of going about things devalues the prize more and more. It really wouldn't surprise me (much) at this point if a Republican member of Congress publicly said that Obama should be killed.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 14 Sep 2009, 9:42pm
by Rat Patrol
Dr. Medulla wrote:It really wouldn't surprise me (much) at this point if a Republican member of Congress publicly said that Obama should be killed.
I give it four months, tops. State of the Union time, when he's announcing next year's new big thing and wingnut incumbents are ready to float some election-year meme trial balloons early enough that any backfires are long forgotten by the time they have to primary.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 14 Sep 2009, 9:49pm
by Dr. Medulla
Rat Patrol wrote:Dr. Medulla wrote:It really wouldn't surprise me (much) at this point if a Republican member of Congress publicly said that Obama should be killed.
I give it four months, tops. State of the Union time, when he's announcing next year's new big thing and wingnut incumbents are ready to float some election-year meme trial balloons early enough that any backfires are long forgotten by the time they have to primary.
And how crazy is it that I don't think you're over-reaching for saying that?
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 16 Sep 2009, 11:42am
by eumaas
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 16 Sep 2009, 12:23pm
by Flex
Even Greenwald is under the thumb of Big Minotaur.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 16 Sep 2009, 1:31pm
by Dr. Medulla
Flex wrote:
Even Greenwald is under the thumb of Big Minotaur.
If you take the m, o, and a from minotaur, you only need an a and a b—
the first two letters of the alphabet!—to spell Obama.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 26 Sep 2009, 3:30pm
by IkarisOne
As Greenwald has proven, only teabagger fucktards and equally braindead liberal groupies think Obama is anything but a corporate shill, carrying on the same exact policies as his predecessor. And now here's more proof, from that hotbed of right wing hysteria...uh, I mean Salon:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/20 ... primaries/
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 24 Nov 2009, 6:44pm
by Dr. Medulla
Matt Taibbi on the media: it's not left or right, it just follows the soccer ball of power.
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/11 ... onspiracy/
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 03 Apr 2013, 5:37pm
by Flex
Reviving the Glennzilla thread. In one of his tightest and most satisfying articles in a while, Greenwald takes on the New Atheists and, specifically, Sam Harris and his brand of muscular, tribal neocon Islamophobia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... lim-animus
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 03 Apr 2013, 5:56pm
by Dr. Medulla
Very good column. For all the valid stuff that Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins say critiquing theism in the abstract, when it comes to discussing behaviour and policy, they often make me wince horribly. They make me think of Theodor Adorno's critique of the Enlightenment, how the pursuit of reason and scientism has given rise to a new barbarity, not driven by the irrationality of religion but of cold logic where all is reduced to a bloodless abstract.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 18 Aug 2013, 4:59pm
by Rat Patrol
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/1 ... 76825.html
That's a nice family you got there, Glenn. Shame if something happened to it.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 18 Aug 2013, 7:12pm
by Dr. Medulla
See, the system works. It identified a sodomite terrorist and made him miss his flight. Nothing to see here except the preservation of our freedoms.
Re: Glenn Greenwald cuts through the bullshit- again
Posted: 19 Aug 2013, 2:04am
by Flex
Dr. Medulla wrote:
See, the system works. It identified a sodomite terrorist and made him miss his flight. Nothing to see here except the preservation of our freedoms.
This is news you file under "intellectually not even a little surprising, but still causes a gut level of outrage"
Bleh. And it sounds like he would have been kept longer, and potentially arrested, if not for Brazilian intervention.