The problem with progressives today is that they have become extrordenarily lazy and unimaginitive. You know there is an old saying "The best defense is a good offence". What we have to do is to be one step ahead of the tea party. We can't spend all our time just reacting to what they do. We may say "oh this or that is unfair and they shouldn't do it". Or we try to justify ourselves with a defense of "But look at how centerist I am and how much I am willing to compromise". Of course we know the tea party's slogan is "Never compromise", and guess what? It's worked beautifully for them. Back in the old days people studied in the school of civil disobediance. It's kind of a forgotten art. Many may say "Well the media will only ignore us anyhow so what's the point?" What we have to do is engineer some kind of protest that they CAN'T ignore and will really hit them where it hurts. We can't compete against them with money, that's for sure. But people like Sol Allinsky thought of ingenious ways to pull stunts that would cause havoc like have a "piss in" at O Hare airport where all the urinals were systematically tied up causing chaos. We need to think out of the box, even incorporating playing Dirty, Donald Segreti style. Now the President is good at the artistry of campaigning and making sure everything looks "good for the camera". But have you ever heard of the addage "the revolution will not be televised". Don't do your planning on cell phones or face book or anything that can be traced by the government. Do it the old fashioned way. Meet at people's homes or whatever. Use pencil and paper. One of the things we need to do right now is get several people to enter the Primaries against Obama. The President has become useless to us. His philosophy is too much in the Mark Bove vein. He likes a comfortable life and be well respected and well paid- and he hates surprises and loves to choriagraph everything down to the last detail. This makes for good artistry but if it has no substance, it's pointless. As I said, Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic Convention was one of the most pithy, vapid speeches I've ever heard in my life. Some may say "we democrats can't afford to go through a contested primary". We can't afford NOT to. Even if we enter Hillary Clinton, Joe Byden, or perhaps a newer guy like Dick Derbin, or perhaps bring back Russ Feingold- - and they ultimately lose, their presence still "raises the bar" and will force the President to put out a little more effort. Let's face it. Everybody knows Obama has an excellent change of losing big next year. If we are destined to lose anyhow, shouldn't we go down swinging. We need to think of new, imaginative political strategies. It would be good if more people listened to progressive talk radio. You should be more proactive in letting your friends know. You can do all that local party stuff like Thom Hartman talks about but believe me, we're going to need more than that. We need to come up with our own slogans instead of letting them define and frame every single issue under the sun today. We need to redefine what "normal" and "centerist" are. You know even before he was nominated, people were saying that Obama was doomed, because by virtue of being Black or whatever, he was in instant lightning rod to fire up all sorts of hate in this country that had been lying dorment. And instead of these hate mongers being embarrassed, the media has embraced them. But if we engage in civil disobediance on our own terms and hit them in ways they never counted on, we can turn this thing around. How interesting that in no other country is the left so passive. They are having their problems too with reactionary parties. But you know the saying is true that "The only thing necessary for evil people to win is for good people to do nothing". Think hard about that.
The stock market didn’t react at all well to the credit downgrading by Standard and Poor’s on Friday after the market close. That was the safest time to announce it. It’s only a tiny downgrade but still not what the markets were expecting. Michelle Bachman was talking about “people blaming the tea party for it” and the crowd behind her began cheering. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for extended periods today. He wasn’t making any sense, of course but just trying to come up with fifty ways to attack the President. He has made this one man the object of all his hatred, rather than the array of liberal groups that used to draw his fire. The Dow Jones Industrials were down over six hundred points and the drop was steady all day long. The President spoke at ten forty or so. He kept delaying the time. I ended up getting bored. That’s my usual reaction to the President these days. Rush Limbaugh said he was disgusted at “how this could happen to America” as though he actually cares. He also said that he knows Standard and Poor’s would have only decided not to downgrade if the President had accepted that “Cut, cap, and balance” bill passed with “bi-partisan” support in the House. Of course that’s not the story Standard and Poor’s are saying publicly, speaking rather of tea party recklessness. It’s all so insane today. Who would have guessed this country would come to its end by everybody suddenly going Mad. Bill Mar was saying some insane things on his show about what democrats ought to do. Today’s situation doesn’t merit comedy. It seems like every day you hear someone on the right make a statement even nuttier than the day before. Precious metals, particularly gold, is up. This is one thing contrary to what I have been predicting. But I could stress my concern is not distance from peak price, but rather a short distance in time, before the whole thing comes crashing down. This is what commodities do. They hit a speculative peak frenzy and then crash. We are over $1,700 now and at this level being over two thousand seems likely, but it won’t be for long.
Sixty Minutes had a thing on just how corrupt our banking system is, that I’d never seen. It seems they have lost the paper documents on all the mortgages that have been foreclosed on such that they cannot contact the owner to evict them. In their rush to slice up bad debts and reinvest them they did everything by computer and had all of these various people to sign “Linda Green” to a document. These people get paid ten dollars an hour and do over a thousand signatures a day. The thing is not a single person has gone to jail or even been charged from what I know, of all this mal feasence. Now they have these lines of people waiting to petition their banks for renegotiating their mortgages. I guess some of them or homeless or whatever. Then they had the Paul Allan segment. Paul Allan was “the dreamer” of Microsoft, and this episode has aired before. I know what it’s like to be overshadowed by someone. But it’s a good thing Allan got a little assertive so that he didn’t lose out in his one third ownership of Microsoft. They seemed to imply that with all his money and various interests and pipe dreams, that Paul Allan still is not happy, and they point to the fact that he has never taken a wife at his age. Bill Gates seems like a soft spoken person, but some people turn into a real hard-ass if you scratch just below the surface, but it’s a side of their personality many never see. When you've dealt with a person like that in your own life you come to appreciate their true problem. They had M & M on and everybody can shout “White Power” at his concerts. Meaning that a white person has attained to the status of a Black. He seems to have mellowed his songs a bit since his substance abuse problems. And perhaps it’s because of his kids. But I respect people with an acute mind for words.
As to the lengthly thing on my Christian past, some may argue that going into a 35 or 40 year time-warp is really not relavent for today. I disagree. Christianity is not in “the past”. Sure you get out of a raging stream with rapids pulling you down fast, and you think, “well, that’s in the past”. But the minute you get back in the stream again it’s no longer “the past” but very much the Present. [name withheld] was the guy I was referring to who seems to have been “gotten to” by the forces that Be. He’s the last person I would have expected to have been brainwashed by the tea party set. I would like to pretend that everything is “kopesetic” (to use a Richard Powers term) between Christians and myself. After all in my life I can’t avoid them. But I also can’t share with them, either. Part of solving problems in life is - - having the sheer courage to even Find Out "who your friends really are". Many people would rather not push that issue thinking that if they just "go through life one day at a time" that in day "when the time is right" their ship will come in or something. Some people have more circumstantial liabilities than other people. I particularly lack respect for anybody who doesn't even really care about "doing better than they have been" because why chase the brass ring when you were already given the brass ring as a baby in the cradle? Some people have a reputation for being intelligent but it somehow never shows up in accomplishments. The fact is that no matter how "gifted" you are or how good of grades you got, if you aren't exerting yourself now- you are letting the cosmos down, and will have to account for that in the Last Judgement, if there is one.
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