... A great review in a recent issue if the Cleveland Free times by Pam Zoslov (a tremendous writer on "the kultchuh" if ever there's been one) of the recent film about Hunter Thompson includes this quote:
“The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists — in Washington or anywhere else where they meet on a day-to-day basis. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in.”
Check out the complete review at http://pamelazoslov.blogspot.com/
Which leads to this link this article by Eric Alterman & George Zornick titled "Loving John McCain" in the June 19th issue of The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman
Which leads to the inevitable hopefulness that all of this crap with McCain as the impossible heir to the Bush Family/Neocon Debacle reign in American national politics will be moot if only Obama wins in November. But while I find my own hopes hopelessly rising like a schoolboy's crush throughout my naively willing to believe psyche I know that even an Obama victory will only be a small step toward what needs to be accompished for a legitimate new Progressive Renaissance to even be on the radar screen of what's possible.
So despite the fascination with the sporting event styled competition with its high profile jousting ad and spin campaigns I feel the need to do more than just join the pro or con side of either of the mainstream "bipartisan" choices.
Ultimately I may "work" for Obama in one or another of the door to door GOTV campaigns. I know he represents the best hope for the possibility of the needed progressive pendulum swing that is needed in American politics, economics, and throughout Society to finally counteract and roll back the horrific consequences of the 40-60 year right wing backlash that "has my head spinning," (see http://dialogdemocracy.org/what_and_whom_we_oppose.htm for more detailed commentary) just as deposed Nixon Attorny General John Mitchell supposedly said it would as he was leaving Washington in disgrace some 35 years ago.
Monday, July 28, 2008
So now John McCain starts to play the racist's cards the Repubes...
... Have been playing successfully at least since Ron Ray-Gun's successful stressing the coded language of "states rights" all through his presidential campaigning career throughout the south. Hell, it's the biggest reason for the biggest electoral shift in modern times: the Solid South going from solidly Democratic to for sure pure Republican. And every Republican candidate since has played the same race baiting tunes and now McCain tips his hand. Check out this article by Kevin (freaking) Freking of AP: http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/politics-16/1217163842282220.xml&storylist=president
Well well well. Good to be in the post racist era of the American experiment. And good, too, to be in the post surge stage of the Iraq debacle so the Republicans can go around the country demanding loyalty oaths to the "commanders on the ground" and testemonials to all the mission accomplished successes of the preemptive seizure of a resource rich trouble spot whose cooperative and complicit U.S. backed strongman had gotten a little too big for his britches.
Well well well. Good to be in the post racist era of the American experiment. And good, too, to be in the post surge stage of the Iraq debacle so the Republicans can go around the country demanding loyalty oaths to the "commanders on the ground" and testemonials to all the mission accomplished successes of the preemptive seizure of a resource rich trouble spot whose cooperative and complicit U.S. backed strongman had gotten a little too big for his britches.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Norman Soloman is out there and should probably be more ...
...widely known and read than he is.
Check him out at his blog: http://www.normansolomon.com/
He has written War Made Easy; How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death- http://www.warmadeeasy.com/ and I think even more recently Made Love Got War; Close Encounters With Americas Warfare State.
Of course guys like him have been around forever conducting highly admirable careers and doing great work and some Im sure really fighting the good fight and yet we have the mainstream business and politics as usual that we have today. "Speaking truth to power" is of course a necessary part of what is needed but we have to use and better develop the projected potential of DemocracyWeb 4.0 (beta) to get better coordinated, organized, and mobilized. What say, eh?
Check him out at his blog: http://www.normansolomon.com/
He has written War Made Easy; How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death- http://www.warmadeeasy.com/ and I think even more recently Made Love Got War; Close Encounters With Americas Warfare State.
Of course guys like him have been around forever conducting highly admirable careers and doing great work and some Im sure really fighting the good fight and yet we have the mainstream business and politics as usual that we have today. "Speaking truth to power" is of course a necessary part of what is needed but we have to use and better develop the projected potential of DemocracyWeb 4.0 (beta) to get better coordinated, organized, and mobilized. What say, eh?
I'm getting closer to operating on...
...at least a couple two tree cylinders, which is a start. And which also means I will soon be getting a little less smarmy and journalish at least in my post titles on this here blog. The titles should be a concise nutshell of what the post's contents is going to be about. And pretty soon after that I am going to have to take it all to the next level and start up brazen communications with other seemingly progressive democracy types I find "out there" in the ether of the Internet- so to speak. One of these guys is going to be mentioned in the title of the next post and he will be linked to in the post itself.
Monday, July 21, 2008
A conundrum wrapped in mystery posing as an insoluble dilemna...
...and that's the problem of what do we do about the best and the brightest when a huge bulk of them are, one way or another, serving as one kind of functionary or another in the current mainstream business as usual Neoliberal "New World Order."
Or something to that effect. And let's face it- part of the reason for that is that the way of the world is what the way of the world is. Which is another way of saying "Salga lo que Salga," or loosely translated "go what goes". Or for more of the song type of reference that I like so good: "Que serra serra..."
Obviously, a lot of people are doing great things and admirable work outside the mainstream and they are dedicated to peace, social justice, and economic Democracy. But in order to attract more talent and strength to that kind of endeavor we have to develop more viable livelihoods to the cause of our ongoing "Great Work." (http://dialogdemocracy.org/on_berrys_the_grerat_work.htm) And in the mean time, we have to make an appeal to the "Best and the Brightest" who would in fact join in the effort of doing that kind of Great Work but unfortunately most of the quality livelihoods "out there" to be earned and had are working for the aforenetioned "New World Order".
So check out http://dialogdemocracy.org/to_the_best_and_brightest.htm and please make some suggestions on how to create more and more employment opportunities for not only them- the current crop of the so called "Best and the Brightest"- but also everybody else- especially those at the other end of the economic spectrum and most especially among them young people who do not have the opportunity structure they should and that mddle class or better affluent Americans pretty much take for granted.
Or something to that effect. And let's face it- part of the reason for that is that the way of the world is what the way of the world is. Which is another way of saying "Salga lo que Salga," or loosely translated "go what goes". Or for more of the song type of reference that I like so good: "Que serra serra..."
Obviously, a lot of people are doing great things and admirable work outside the mainstream and they are dedicated to peace, social justice, and economic Democracy. But in order to attract more talent and strength to that kind of endeavor we have to develop more viable livelihoods to the cause of our ongoing "Great Work." (http://dialogdemocracy.org/on_berrys_the_grerat_work.htm) And in the mean time, we have to make an appeal to the "Best and the Brightest" who would in fact join in the effort of doing that kind of Great Work but unfortunately most of the quality livelihoods "out there" to be earned and had are working for the aforenetioned "New World Order".
So check out http://dialogdemocracy.org/to_the_best_and_brightest.htm and please make some suggestions on how to create more and more employment opportunities for not only them- the current crop of the so called "Best and the Brightest"- but also everybody else- especially those at the other end of the economic spectrum and most especially among them young people who do not have the opportunity structure they should and that mddle class or better affluent Americans pretty much take for granted.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Not really gaining too too much momentum all too quickly…
…which is O.K. and just means that the grinding- again, much like Tiger had to do at Torrey Pines- has to be the emphasis. And then it’s salga lo que salga, Bru… No what I am saying?
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0275989968 will link you to Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere price compare page on allbookstores.com’s Web Site which is a great- from a consumer’s point of view anyway- bookbuying site in that it gives you a whole range of sites that sell a particular book and their prices etc. and then y’all can do what you want.
I mentioned Barlow’s book in a previous post and if interested in some comments made during a perusal of it check out…(oops, I am having trouble with my Web Hosting so I will go ahead and post the somewhat lengthy comments on Barlow’s book here and when I can link to it at dialogD I will.
Blogs as the New Free Advocacy and Organizing Press- Some Notes while reading Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere
Thursday, May 01, 2008, 11:45 AM.
A quote:
“Certainly, in looking over the backgrounds of political blogs, one quickly finds that blogs are simply allowed by technology, not that they are caused by technology. The cultural forces that led individuals to adopt the blogs so readily as a means of political expression arose long before the technology appeared. In fact, those forces first arose along with the momentum toward revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, only to be suppressed as the growing commercial and professional news media squeezed the public sphere almost to nonexistence.”
-From Aaron Barlow’s Introduction-
*
Blogs as a new incarnation of citizen journalism. And in the case of my blogging a direct advocacy call for major citizen activism to the point of calling for a revolutionary change in American political reality…
*
5/8/2008 12:53 PM
Chapter 2 “The Rise of Advocacy Journalism”
Blogs and bloggers as a new public space outside the mainstream. From which not only advocacy for candidates and ideas and policies still rising through the ranks of and under the fundamental control of the mainstream gatekeepers (IE corporate MSM, the two major bipartisan and thoroughly co-opted by mainstream funding interests Political Parties, the perceived consensus of money’s overriding and rightful place as the be all end all of whose voice can be taken “seriously” in the course of “business and politics as usual”) but an actual advocacy and organizing entity for an entirely different agenda than mainstream everything as it now carries out it’s relatively narrow and limiting function on how things are allowed to get done. And the way things now are able to get done or not get done is at the heart of the matter, is the crux of the problem that we collectively face.
*
Blogs and what evolves from where they’re at now can also create new “Public Spaces” from which the new 2nd American Revolution can emerge out from. It will be made possible by the new technologies available through the Internet with respect to communications, education, organization, and cost efficiency in all these and other areas that will achieve a sort of flattening of access to the spheres of influence and power. It is the development of this new kind of access that a genuine peaceful yet Radically Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity movement can actually be built from and eventually successfully gain and wield influence and power in the real world…
(a real world by the way where the Netroots play a role in organizing but are not confused as being the be all end all arbiters of what’s needed-given that the earliest bloggers and Netizens are mostly made up of “up from the upper middle class elites” and heavily techno gizmo oriented and entrenched and that crowd is so incredibly privileged within the current social, economic, and educational milieu that they can hardly be expected to be the sole cause or articulator of the radical sea changes that will be necessary for any of the semi progressive agendas they may be advocating for to be even remotely attainable)
*
Now reading about Tom Paine (again in Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere) and very nearly falling deeply asleep… (Aside to Reader: not the fault of the book, author, it’s publisher, or any of their respective heirs)
“Paine united the rebellious faction of the colonies as no one else had and expanded the universe of political discourse to include even the unlettered… Eventually someone will take advantage of 21st century possibilities in a similar way…” -p.22 par.4-
Unlike most other pamphleteers Paine actually did present a plan for the future and not just complaints about contemporary injustice. -p.23 par.1-
The genesis of the law…must lie in the people. -p.23 par.3-
Just as bloggers are stepping around… (MSM) …Paine was sidestepping the colonial elite… -p.24 par.4-
A central American debate: more Democracy for everyone or Democracy just as a media show of the elites… to facilitate the efficient governance as they see fit of everyone except them and their cronies… while living with as little public sector Democratic control styled “smaller Guv’ment” over their self interested and aggrandizing shenanigans as possible. Currently we are in the throes of a new Gilded Age reactionary backlash of perhaps the most elite centered conservative dominance in this debate as ever in our history as a Nation.
*
“Again, to date, no one of impact remotely akin to that of Paine has arisen from the blogs. It is possible that no one ever will (though, always the optimist, I believe such a person is just around the corner). However, when one remembers that is was societal demand for change along with technological change that set the stage for Paine’s entrance, it is hard to imagine that the social needs of the 21st Century, on top of the technological advances of the late 20th century, will not force Paine’s modern-day equivalent to step from the wings. –p.26 par.2-
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0275989968 will link you to Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere price compare page on allbookstores.com’s Web Site which is a great- from a consumer’s point of view anyway- bookbuying site in that it gives you a whole range of sites that sell a particular book and their prices etc. and then y’all can do what you want.
I mentioned Barlow’s book in a previous post and if interested in some comments made during a perusal of it check out…(oops, I am having trouble with my Web Hosting so I will go ahead and post the somewhat lengthy comments on Barlow’s book here and when I can link to it at dialogD I will.
Blogs as the New Free Advocacy and Organizing Press- Some Notes while reading Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere
Thursday, May 01, 2008, 11:45 AM.
A quote:
“Certainly, in looking over the backgrounds of political blogs, one quickly finds that blogs are simply allowed by technology, not that they are caused by technology. The cultural forces that led individuals to adopt the blogs so readily as a means of political expression arose long before the technology appeared. In fact, those forces first arose along with the momentum toward revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, only to be suppressed as the growing commercial and professional news media squeezed the public sphere almost to nonexistence.”
-From Aaron Barlow’s Introduction-
*
Blogs as a new incarnation of citizen journalism. And in the case of my blogging a direct advocacy call for major citizen activism to the point of calling for a revolutionary change in American political reality…
*
5/8/2008 12:53 PM
Chapter 2 “The Rise of Advocacy Journalism”
Blogs and bloggers as a new public space outside the mainstream. From which not only advocacy for candidates and ideas and policies still rising through the ranks of and under the fundamental control of the mainstream gatekeepers (IE corporate MSM, the two major bipartisan and thoroughly co-opted by mainstream funding interests Political Parties, the perceived consensus of money’s overriding and rightful place as the be all end all of whose voice can be taken “seriously” in the course of “business and politics as usual”) but an actual advocacy and organizing entity for an entirely different agenda than mainstream everything as it now carries out it’s relatively narrow and limiting function on how things are allowed to get done. And the way things now are able to get done or not get done is at the heart of the matter, is the crux of the problem that we collectively face.
*
Blogs and what evolves from where they’re at now can also create new “Public Spaces” from which the new 2nd American Revolution can emerge out from. It will be made possible by the new technologies available through the Internet with respect to communications, education, organization, and cost efficiency in all these and other areas that will achieve a sort of flattening of access to the spheres of influence and power. It is the development of this new kind of access that a genuine peaceful yet Radically Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity movement can actually be built from and eventually successfully gain and wield influence and power in the real world…
(a real world by the way where the Netroots play a role in organizing but are not confused as being the be all end all arbiters of what’s needed-given that the earliest bloggers and Netizens are mostly made up of “up from the upper middle class elites” and heavily techno gizmo oriented and entrenched and that crowd is so incredibly privileged within the current social, economic, and educational milieu that they can hardly be expected to be the sole cause or articulator of the radical sea changes that will be necessary for any of the semi progressive agendas they may be advocating for to be even remotely attainable)
*
Now reading about Tom Paine (again in Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere) and very nearly falling deeply asleep… (Aside to Reader: not the fault of the book, author, it’s publisher, or any of their respective heirs)
“Paine united the rebellious faction of the colonies as no one else had and expanded the universe of political discourse to include even the unlettered… Eventually someone will take advantage of 21st century possibilities in a similar way…” -p.22 par.4-
Unlike most other pamphleteers Paine actually did present a plan for the future and not just complaints about contemporary injustice. -p.23 par.1-
The genesis of the law…must lie in the people. -p.23 par.3-
Just as bloggers are stepping around… (MSM) …Paine was sidestepping the colonial elite… -p.24 par.4-
A central American debate: more Democracy for everyone or Democracy just as a media show of the elites… to facilitate the efficient governance as they see fit of everyone except them and their cronies… while living with as little public sector Democratic control styled “smaller Guv’ment” over their self interested and aggrandizing shenanigans as possible. Currently we are in the throes of a new Gilded Age reactionary backlash of perhaps the most elite centered conservative dominance in this debate as ever in our history as a Nation.
*
“Again, to date, no one of impact remotely akin to that of Paine has arisen from the blogs. It is possible that no one ever will (though, always the optimist, I believe such a person is just around the corner). However, when one remembers that is was societal demand for change along with technological change that set the stage for Paine’s entrance, it is hard to imagine that the social needs of the 21st Century, on top of the technological advances of the late 20th century, will not force Paine’s modern-day equivalent to step from the wings. –p.26 par.2-
Thursday, July 17, 2008
An Interesting link here...
...to an article sent to me by one of my plant guys http://jim.com/killer.htm
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