Thursday, June 9, 2016

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/the-definitive-case-for-why-bernie-sanders-should.html

j reacts to hillary's perception of herself as popular and bernie as unpopular

as mentioned. she's basically stuck in the 80s - she thinks she wins by winning reagan democrats, which means running against her own party. or, what used to be her own party, anyways.

absolutely predictable. completely tone deaf. sure. but predictable.

if anything at all, what you will hear from her is that the primaries prove that the democratic party is not leftist and america has left socialism in the 40s, or something.

stuck in the 80s.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-kuzmarov/damning-report-on-mexico_b_10364942.html

j reacts to the media's false equivalency of 2016 with 2008

obama and clinton had very few policy differences. clinton and sanders are so different, it's hard to believe they're running for the same party. in the end, voters may turn out to be less informed than people like me are assuming - as angry as people like me get when crackpot sociology goofs try to argue for identity "politics". but, it's very hard to see why sanders supporters would consider it worth their time to vote for somebody that they are systematically opposed to on every single policy position on the table.

the truth is that clinton & trump are closer together than clinton & sanders are. sanders lost a three-way race early in his career, and never seems to have gotten over the guilt of being responsible for electing a republican. i don't know what the precise consequences were. but, he's still holding on to this. so, the circumstances are going to have to be extreme for him to avoid endorsing clinton.

but, his supporters are a different story. this is a different scenario than we've seen in a long time. past metrics are not going to be applicable.

what stein is going to need is a tipping point. there was a lot of mathematical research that came out about this around the arab spring. what was learned was that you only need to sway a small number of people to spur a movement. in fact, that appears to be what happened with sanders, too. he went from 10% to 45% almost overnight. it wasn't gradual. there's a lot of literature out there about this. stein's team should be reading up on it, because what it suggests is that she doesn't need to go after all of sanders' supporters, but just enough of them to get the tipping action.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/09/bernie-sanders-thorn-in-hillary-clintons-side#comment-76032206

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Sociology

j reacts to the future of the american left

i actually agree with this.

sanders has not changed the democratic party, and is not the party's future. rather, what he's done is demonstrate that the democrats are a dead-end for substantive change, and created a third party in american politics. that third party is not yet organized, but if it is not organized by sanders or stein then it will organize itself.

so, no - sanders is not the future of the democratic party. the democrats put themselves in an opposite direction back in the early 90s, with clinton/gore. rather, he's representative of the final fracture point that the clinton/gore/obama direction has pushed the party in.

the democratic party as we know it will not survive the belligerence of a hillary clinton presidency, or even the belligerence of a hillary clinton candidacy.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11867810/bernie-sanders-obama-future-democrats

but, let's be clear. the democratic party has been fracturing for twenty years. what happened around obama was....he wasn't what people thought he was. people shouldn't have thought he was what they thought he was. and, a lot of people never realized he wasn't what they thought he was - still haven't, never will. they've still got this weird meme in their head. if that's the future of the party, it's a brave new world, indeed.

so, the better analysis is in terms of fracture points rather than approval ratings. and, what we're seeing this cycle is the consequence of a process, not the result of a personality.

if you want to blame somebody, the people responsible are the clintons.

j reacts to what the democrats really mean when they talk of "unity"

i just want to point something out, though.

if you look at how the "democratic party establishment" is reacting to sanders right now, it's all hands-off. the media is reporting this as though it's some sort of enlightened epiphany of libertarian agency or something.

"I'm not pushing him to do anything." - harry reid.

the implication is they'll give him space to work it out on his own.

but, i think you need to take these people more literally. what they're literally stating is that what they really want is for him to just shut up and disappear. to not do anything.

they don't want him at rallies. they don't want him getting out the vote. he's just not on the same page, ideologically. so, all he can do is corrupt the narrative - as they see it.

i've been pointing out for a while that this is a lot harder than even the most cynical want to accept. sanders has successfully articulated a third-party vision in a way that has already broken the spectrum open. he just doesn't seem to realize it yet.

maybe, it's actually better if he gets behind clinton in a way that destroys his own credibility. maybe, he should be purposefully martyring himself; maybe those jesus comparisons were less crazy than initially apparent. watching his supporters abandon him for that third party might be the best way to get what he's been advocating for.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/09/politics/bernie-sanders-washington/

08-06-2016: kubler-ross through time dilation

tracks worked on in this vlog:
https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/period-1

and, remember kids...

j reacts to the outcome of the democratic primary some more

"I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore." - elizabeth warren, explaining her decision to switch parties in her....40s.

that's the 1990s.

you rightfully criticize clinton for being a republican when she was a kid, yet you give warren a pass? it's just inconsistent.

"I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role."

--

i'm tuning out. for real. and, i think it's a matter of days before the media pulls a massive u-turn and starts ganging up on clinton. but, moving forwards over the next few months, we have to understand what cllinton is.

more than anything else, clinton is a salesperson for the international arms industry. i know she's campaigning as anti-gun. and, the nra isn't likely to endorse her. but, it's broadly a huge charade.

what she does is that she acts as a conduit between american weapons manufacturers and buyers overseas. she's a salesperson. and, the policies she's going to put down are going to be largely with the purpose of maintaining the export market.

most of what you're going to hear from her, and see from her, is ultimately just a big excuse to sell weapons. even the geostrategic part of it is only able to exist due to the economics.

the war economy is not inevitable. this idea that america needs the war economy to thrive is wrong. there's lots of ways out, and if you combine them together you get a way forward.

but, that's what we have in front of us - the imminent spectre of total arms industry lobbyist control of the presidency. and, it's what you need to prepare yourself for.

hillary or condi?

probably neither. but it's eerily appropriate, too.

even at this late date, i do remain convinced that mark foley was, in fact, right.

see, at least when this kind of rhetoric comes from this guy, it's a reasonable expectation.

put another way: when you talk like this, you sound like this guy. take a look at yourself in the mirror, folks.

an unexpected new recording by the future of the left

this is unexpected, actually. i thought they were done.


it's also the best thing from falco in quite a while.
this is the kind of thing you need to average out, and the conclusion is probably right: most people that you suspend from school need more integration, not less. they need hugs, not ostracism. social programs & restorative justice designed to reintegrate are the smart approach, here. punishment is the dumb approach.

but.

i was a punk kid. i used to get suspended for pranks. all the time. i wouldn't be surprised if somebody told me that i spent more time in the hall in grade 8 than in class (although, note that i often had a book with me). the pranks were of varying severities. i actually dynamited the school mascot once and then put it back in place, still smoldering. they blamed it on the rivals across town. i got away with that one. but, i got caught for lots of things, too.

see, i wasn't a bad student, though. to the contrary. in fact, one of the tactics the school used to try and get me to behave was to take me out of "advanced" courses and put me in "enriched" courses, so i wouldn't have anybody to get in trouble with because the enriched kids were just not going to do that. and, that actually ultimately worked.

what i want to get at more is that i remember spending in-school suspensions doing homework: reading books, doing math, writing essays. and, i arguably got more work done in that situation than i did in class.

but.

there may have also been social consequences, too.

it's not at all surprising; they're both liberal republicans. what i know about elizabeth warren suggests that she was probably a goldwater girl, too.


"I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore." - elizabeth warren, explaining her decision to switch parties in her....40s.

"I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role."- elizabeth warren

i think the actual truth is that elizabeth warren, like barack obama, has not been properly vetted. and, the results of promoting her will be just as disappointing.