Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I think a computer would make the best president. A comp and his army of beancounters is all we need.

agi

sounds like a totalizing utopia
my kinda utopia

fired by a program
paid by an algorithm

I dunno if I believe the picture of this back and forth, tortured Obamlet, or these fierce debates within the administration. Clinton was supposed to have been similarly tortured, glamorously unable to resist all-night intellectual discussions about big issues, before finally succombing to caring father figure Robt Rubin.

Surely, they made up their mind about war crimes several months before the election. And by they I don't mean future administration figures. The only drama was when some idiot in the Justice Dept said "gee, here are a bunch of memos about Abu Ghraib; maybe we should show them to. . .? Hey, that hurts!!! Let go of my tie . . . I can't breathe!"

off topic, but is there any more blatant a sign of absolute corruption in this country:
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/may/doctors_single_paye.php

Are you granting Nerobama a living soul, OP-san? Thou slippest here, methinks.

HCE has it right. This story is a plant.

the ways and means
of the mind of a successful
-- in fact brilliantly successful--
meritoid like ob am
escapes me

obviously he and w jefferson clinton
share capacities
not necessary if you're born on third base like the great decider

among those capacities
i assume
must be
a knack for the main chance
which may come with on board coping algorithms
worthy of hamlet 2.0
(the x rated adult version)
ie
goethe's faust

the hagiographers
claim honets rail splittin' abe
was tortured by the war of southern secession

pictures of his physical harrowing
used as exhibit A

my take he was a self torturer from way back

ob ???

ya got me

the all form no substance take
bill the second
not mayberry slick this time
but half court kool
some how fails to work for me

something deeper peeps out
but it don't look like it suffers
so much as weighs carefully

if bill had opportunity in both hands

this guy might have
a little something else in his left hand

dinner with krugman off the record
maybe unlike bill
it was to discover options
not to charm into support ...

is it possible ???

maybe but shit
the guys emperor
of THE corporate global empire

speculating
on
what he might secretly perform
as his
play within a play
will only catch the conscience
of generous fools

"Surely, they made up their mind about war crimes several months before the election"
i'm a little more confident about this:
the ob admin never closes a book
everything remains open for review

he 's shrewd
i agree the strategy coming in was to flank the cheney empire hawks

but their obvious guilt
needed to be publically officially confirmed
and has been

cheney must get the message by now
its ob
that stands between him
and
a benito finale

as to
the enhanced humanism ob
will instruct
uncle to mete out
to civilizations opponents
and their ass hole collaterals
over there in multistan....

Well, folks, here's still more evidence that Paine is SMBIVA's resident propagandist for the DLC party line about Obama and the Democrats and all their wonderful potential and agonized good intentions--whether on health care or national security.

Van, this is really quite overstated. One can wonder whether Obama, considered purely as an individual, might be a more interesting and better person than, say, Clinton, without adopting the "party line".

Of course if your point is, "what difference does it make", then that's an accurate observation. But one of the interesting things about institutions is the way they make use of people regardless of those people's own impulses and feelings and ideas. This is a phenomenon worth pondering.

Like Owen, I find Obama a little enigmatic, as a person -- the first President in my lifetime about whom I could say this. I too wonder what's going on behind that noble brow. Can't help it -- we're only human.

Never felt I had to wonder about Clinton, for example. He was always as obvious, I thought, as a turd on the sidewalk.

I definitely read Owen as a 100% shill for the DLC. That's why I come here: Owen and MJS are such good propagandists for the Democratic Party. Luckily, we have the bold radicals to remind us of how we have lost our souls as paid propagandists for neo-liberalism. Thank you, Mr. Van Mungo, for your brave role

Apparently Nixon wasn't a bad dude to slam a brew with.

Obama, meanwhile, seems to me to be the very embodiment of the idea of the "merit class," which SMBIVA has been so good at naming and tracking. I see a soul utterly consumed by looking for stepping stones, all means and no end but a supposedly rising self. Why? Why not?

Personally, I bet ZerO is quite a wreck when at home. Cigarettes and glad-handing and not much else.

Personally, I really don't care one bit about what's going on in Neo-Decider's head. It's enough for me to know that if the man had any real morals, he wouldn't be where he is. The rest, I leave up to the starfucker brigade, and their higher-paid clones in the big-time blogs.

Like Owen, I find Obama a little enigmatic, as a person -- the first President in my lifetime about whom I could say this. I too wonder what's going on behind that noble brow.

I don't know that there's too much to wonder about. "I have done the state some service, and they know't". We stop the quote here to avoid drawing unjust parallels between Shakespeare's Othello and a much less sympathetic and far more common opportunist and mercenary.

bk--
You're one of the one-sentence snark crowd out here, the type who engages in drive-by personal sniping, energized by the usual high-school sarcasm, but never posts any points of political substance. In the thread on health care, you claimed that I misread Paine's posts. I challenged you to cite exactly where I had misread or misinterpreted his posts, and I challenged you to join the debate--to go toe-to-toe with me on health care . . . and, mirabile dictu, you suddenly disappeared and shut up!

So . . . smart guy, why not answer those questions from the previous thread? Still got nothing?

And . . . since you seem to have a reading-comprehension problem, I never stated or implied that MJS was soft on the Democrats. I have repeatedly complimented him on his superb writing and shrewd political perceptions, and have been at pains to contrast his politics and Paine's.

Paine is a different story. I have documented his inveterate centrism; many posters on the health care thread acknowledged that I demonstrated that to a fare-thee-well on single payer, although there is ample evidence elsewhere as well.

But you don't traffic in such basic distinctions--details, facts, etc., are not your thing. Puerile sarcasm and gratutous distortion is your thing. Skulking away from serious debate is your thing.

In short, you've got nothing.

MJS--
I understand your point about Obama. One WANTS to believe that there is a redeeming impulse somewhere, somehow--but the reality is that he has built his political career as an unwavering self-seeking missile of personal ambition, freely dumping as so much excess baggage any remnants of progressivism that might have slowed his progress first toward the Senate and then toward the White House.

Even if one suspects that their might beat a real heart behind that sculpted chest, the question is: what's the cash value of that politically? So far, it's been zero--zero for so long that it would be foolish to invest any left capital in that stock, as you say.

As for Paine, I have repeatedly cited instances of his centrist tropisms. I think by now that it's not incidental to find him sniffing for redemptive promptings in Obama's soul, since Paine has already affirmed his hope that the Dems under Obama will engage in radical reform of the economy and turn their back on the imperial project. To this extent, is is clear that Paine's secret, tiny crush on Obama is as much political as personal.

By the way--did you catch Paine's reference, in the Luxemburg thread, to the idea of possible "rationing" under single payer? I didn't cite it at the time, but the tell-tale signs of conservative-centrist sensibility are everywhere: like other privileged centrist types, Paine is less sensitive to the price-market rationaing that leaves 50 million Americans uncovered and tens of millions more inadequately covered--he's more worried that he and others of his class might have to wait a few weeks to have a hemmorhoid removed, and thus dutifully--and instintively, I would argue--echoes the bourgeois fear of "socialist" administrative rationing based on degree of need rather than degree of wealth.

what's hard to understand about this:

"..but shit
the guys emperor
of THE corporate global empire

speculating
on
what he might secretly perform
as his
play within a play
will only catch the conscience
of generous fools "

good emperors are emperors still

what more needs saying
unless you fear your own delusions

VMungo: One WANTS to believe that there is a redeeming impulse somewhere, somehow--but the reality is that he has built his political career as an unwavering self-seeking missile of personal ambition, freely dumping as so much excess baggage any remnants of progressivism that might have slowed his progress first toward the Senate and then toward the White House.

Glue: That sounds about right. From a safe distance he and Bill Clinton are/were about the same in that regard. I wish I could execute Ms_Xeno's resolve not to pay any attention to this irrelevant stuff, but in the age of celebrity it's hard not to get drawn into middlebrow political-biography-as-water-cooler talk... as MJSmith suggests.

MDawson: Apparently Nixon wasn't a bad dude to slam a brew with.

Glue: The depiction in _Frost/Nixon_ sure made it seem that way, eh? Ironically that film will probably do more to posthumously rehab Nixon's reputation than Frost's interviews did while Nixon was still alive.

MDawson: Personally, I bet ZerO is quite a wreck when at home. Cigarettes and glad-handing and not much else.

Glue: Now THAT is a fucking funny line... until I realize the shoe fits my foot.

I am a drive-by snarker? I bow before the profundity of something like this, Mr. Mungo:

"Well, folks, here's still more evidence that Paine is SMBIVA's resident propagandist for the DLC party line about Obama and the Democrats and all their wonderful potential and agonized good intentions--whether on health care or national security."

I cannot even hope to reach this level of profundity, Mr. Van Mungo. I will now forsooth go forth and spend an hour reading through your multiparagraph, multipost drivels in order to understand the profundity of your thought. Still: Don't you have a committee meeting to attend somewhere?

bk--
Why don't you try to make an informed, thoughtful post about a serious issue? You come off as a nasty person with serious anger-management issues.

I notice that you still haven't had the guts to answer my challenge to debate the issues on national health care. Whassamatter, bk--still got nothing but a bellyful of bile? Nothing upstairs, all in the belly? Tsk, tsk.

As for your problem with multiparagraph posts: have you been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder? I suggest the following: try watching less TV, and start reading more. Start with Dr. Seuss. The paragraphs in those books are very short--maybe one or two sentences, just like your posts. Then you can graduate to the Hardy Boys or Encyclopedia Brown. In several years, you might be ready to assimilate AP press reports. Then you can rejoin the discussion. Do keep us posted on your progress!

Van
Its one thing to wet noodle me with your stale gibber

Leave the rest of the commenters alone
I find your boot licking of mjs
Transparent

This is his site
You are not here to hand out your
Feeble attacks
Mostly ghastly projections of your own inner conflicts
Rage aholic van
The other face
Unctuous patronizing mingo
Is even more repellent

Stick with me as a target
You're disturbing the fluency of comments
Believe me I welcome your links and your boilerplate horn book of serious activism
But the raging please keep. It strictly directed at me
I have copious experience with biting poodles

Its obvious why u hang here van
No one would revisit a site
Where the host raged like a dickess midget cyclops

You're a pathetic
Parasite
A raging deeply self disappointed
Neurotic nut

Too bad I suppose
Then again good but sterile brains
Without rage "issues"
Are a dime a dozen

Your prolly a retired
risk pool of.
Blood flecked Piss

Go act on your
Dogmas
This is a fun site
Not a shambles for
A visiting rage loon

How come u got so much time to piss around this back water site

No job
I have a job long hours little work plenty of time
To waste
Having internet frolic

But you purport to being this serious activist

Where in the last few weeks did you squeeze in this activism
Most folks here are honest about why they are here
And not making radical whooopee
Out there in madame x's
Real world

Hey I'm a cartoon character
I make no pretense about
Super man. Classd struggle heroics

I'm designed for a party that never
Came into existence and for all I know
May no longer need to exist and may never again need to exist

A party that would use me according to my abilities
And shut me up otherwise

A party that wouldn't allow me
To speculate foolishly about pub op
When single payer is still on the peeoopple's docet
If not their congo's

Paine--
Anyone who feels he has to write ALL his comments as prose poems clearly has a serious mental disorder.

So you've been definitively outed as an inept, delusional windbag. No one here really takes you seriously anymore.

As for your gallant defense of other commenters--you've spent so much time patronizing, sneering, and sliming them over the years that one can only shake the head in disbelief at the sheer chutzpah of your phony sanctimony.

You can babble and burble and posture from here to eternity--but your act here is over. No one knows what the hell you're talking about--least of all you. No one believes that you're a genius--or even minimally intellectually competent--except you. No one thinks that your literary exertions are anything other than a gruesome, protracted, and very bad joke.

Smith is a shrewd, thoughtful commentator and brilliant prose stylist. You are a giant, honking ass.

You're done here, de facto if not de jure.

Deal with it.

Well at least you directed that at me
Who loves the ineffectiveness of it

Btw
Forget this bluff about not understanding me van
Its a frail sham
Used to avoid the
The ham slicer

As to pretending I think
I'm writing poetry
Because I use line brakes is plain nonsense and u know I know it

Forget the shame mode
You have no conception of what might shame me

Only what shames u
Like if I were to call u something
Stilted like

U tiresome lick spittle
U craven skulking coward

Vapidity in invective wets the old noodle van

Your like of anything new to say
Is
hardly removed by parroting other's thought

U want references
Because u lack ability to aquire understanding by reasoning
only by
Memorization of the words of an authority

So go ahead try to persuade yourself by repetition
You're dis crediting me here

Its u that wants a guru role
I'm satisfied with
Muttering imp
And selective contrarian

Here's a proposal

If u'll restrict your attacks of a pseudo personal nature to me alone and stop honking like a mother goose at ever one here who even mildly disagrees with u other then
Mjs who-- u gerovel b4 him like a beagle
Licks his master's boot --
If u'll just attack me
I won't attack u
Or ever call u
A. Honking goose ever again
I'll merely respond to any substance u bring up
In the course of your nursery school
socialism lessons

I noticed your use of the word years

Have u really visited this blog that long
Or have in odd hysterical frenzy wished this like much else into existence

This really should have gone on off site
Its really way too much fun
I may even start making intentional typos to ruffle your marmish soul

When are u going to realize
What I am I am
What anyone thinks of me is utterly
Meaningless
Hell a few. Gentle souls have even tried to pet u into
Post rabidity

Van u make my
Tedious job hours complete...
My phone becomes a window on self important idiocy

U really must be a terrible disappointment to yourself
Van

Too old to face yourself

Liar fraud rage aholic
We become these
Judgenments u pass on your self
But can't face squarely
If it kools your
Tormented breast
To rage at me
God bless you
I love the attention

Paine--
A few brief points of note in the matter of psychopainology:

1. Your claim that you are merely breaking the lines in your comments rather than attempting to perpetrate prose poems is as farcical as their content. Your whole mode of expression in the comments is strenuously, studiously, affectedly more elliptical and aphoristic (to be kind) than your prose essay style, which is already plenty clotted with your overwrought, overworked high-toned flourishes. You lay on the veneer of hauteur the way a hooker slathers on cheap makeup, to no more convincing effect.

2. As far as your mental disorder--the one in which you absolutely MUST write your essays in prose and absolutely MUST write your comments as prose poems--this is clearly a manifestation of OCD, pompous-ass variety.

3. In your last few disgorgings of the churning murk of your psyche, there was one discernible truth: you love the attention. This is the essential truth--perhaps the only real truth--of everything you write here: all strutting bellowing, no meaning; all contorted style, no content; all windup, no delivery. It's all about Paine, all the time, whatever subject you seize on as a pretext for advertising your bizarre self-infatuation.

On matters of substance: So far all the other bloggers here who have commented on the issues have declared you thoroughly vanquished on substance, including the one person with serious professional experience with insurance companies. I needn't belabor the point--you have discredited yourself both with your sprawling analytical ineptitude and your increasingly deranged jags of virulence. As much as the former might merit scorn, the latter can elicit only compassion and sadness.

" You lay on the veneer of hauteur the way a hooker slathers on cheap makeup"

careful that sounds to me like your flirting with me now...lets go slow here

"...whole mode of expression in the comments is strenuously, studiously, affectedly more elliptical .... than your prose essay style..'
that's cause mjs edits my gibber
no one in their right mind allows my prose to get posted...uncut and uncombed

but alas its all prose dear man ....prose

and hey be real
i'm never really THAT hard to understand
thru the blizzard of typos
and louche heterography

PS
glad you are coming to admire me...i'm really quite 'hypnotic " if you give in to the flow eh ??

"So far all the other bloggers here who have commented on the issues have declared you thoroughly vanquished on substance, including the one person with serious professional experience with insurance companies. I needn't belabor the point--you have discredited yourself both with your sprawling analytical ineptitude .."

"... I needn't belabor the point..'

really ??

you keep repeating this
each time with greater insistence

don't you even believe it yourself ???

"thoroughly vanquished .."

whistling past the grave yard

Paine dribbled,
" whistling past the grave yard"

The graveyard of Paine's reputation as resident oracle.

like the various heavy weight wrestling
title belts

there are as many resident oracles
as there are championship venues

plenty of room for one more

btw
van
the position of residual orifice:
clacal department
is still open here
since
manfred glimmerglass
suffocated himself
with a colostomy bag

sorry we can only have one of those
lower order entrails like this site
don't like choices

caveat:
don't get your hopes up too high
super al a man of much influence and clout 'round here
has nominated
his hideously grumpy gila
for the position
kicking him downstairs so to speak

but as an old covenanteer
i have nominating powers...
i just might be persuaded ...interested ???

of course that's ....cloacal department
cloacal

despite his love of ally browl liberty
there is one rule here

a bout isn'y over till one or other of the pugilists fails to answer the bell

ie
no matter how many times i knock you off your feet van
you are entitled under site rules to continue

its strictly bare knuckles too
no folding chairs no authoritative throwns
crashed down on an opponents crown
counts for diddle

show what you got in just your own plain fists so to speak

btw i'll acknowledge defeat

madame x knocked me so silly i couldn't name the greatest native jew
in the history of trier germany

and was waved out by father S

oh ya
and once
hce and bk...no i better not go into that
i'll start to weep with shame

such a pranging...
and i deserved it
taking on the two of em
what with my glass spelling jaw and all

Paine wrote,
"no matter how many times i knock you off your feet van"

What a day for a daydream.

Van your powers of invective are remarkable

Get some ghost writers

Paine--
I cede the ground to you on invective. Your slavering viciousness crosses into the realm of pure psychopathy.

As for getting a ghostwriter--you can't even compose a printable sentence without a full-time editorial assistant. The stylistic and semantic atrocites you slather all over this blog are fit only for an occupational therapy class at a state mental hospital.

The ethical retard who sits at the back of the remedial high-school English class sets up shop as writing instructor. You got a million of 'em, doncha, Paine!