Stop Me Before I Vote Again

see

i like ohbummer so far maybe not quite as much as i liked carter ..in his first two years in office

will i hate ohbummer more then
i hated carter as he like carter seeks re election ??
i doubt it

i'm tired of punishing the dems
they never learned these past 40 years
because they shouldn't learn
at least not from defeat
defeat was their calling
in the now extinguished
orthrian rig

this is a new era maybe
we'll see
if the repugs can moderate themselves in deeds if not in rhetoric
between now and the election of '12
i doubt it i think they're headed for a goldwater moment in 12

oddly clinton infuriated me after his election
but once he'd caused his own catastrophic
emasculation in 94
i settled into a certain complacency
figuring
now they will learn eh ??

only after he left office did my hatred boil up to the vapor like fury i have today
because of course the jack asses never learned a thing

will ob's go that way too ??
will i hate him too
i doubt it

after all is done with him
will i hate him the way i now hate billary
no

err so long as he fails in re election i might like him again almost as much as i like jimmy now

and if he's re elected it will mean
the new era of national democrat dominance has arrived
and good emperor ohbummer
will be the personification of a resurgent empire

u can't hate a winner

unless your a sour apple

i mean hating a black reagan

why bother

yeah op... but isn't the foundation for your criticism somehow flawed -- that there is a functional difference between Donkeys and Elephants?

isn't the example of Our Obamessiah and the current Donklecongress one which suggests there is no such difference in any way but rhetorically and other image-bound means?

Corporations hate him? Is that why he was playing golf with the UBS prez as the UBS whistle-blower rots in prison?

These people crank out more disinfo than Sorcha Faal.

As for Obie he at least disgusts me. A black guy quotes MLK while blithely attacking kids with drones and giving trillions to the banksters. He's probably done more damage to race relations in this country since the WUO ran around screaming "all white babies are pigs".

If I hadn't already sworn never to vote dem again the sight of Rachel Maddow firing an AK-47 in Afghanistan would have done it.

oxy
the system is a bit more like yin and yang

each party has a role to play more or less
in the process the repugs today can look back on about 40 years of stuff moving their way
ie more regress then progress
now the system needs to correct for over swing some
so the dems get to play lead head
this means
if i'm correct on balance more progress then regress

for a nihilist
this makes no sense
history is just one damn evil trick after another
the consolation of job alone
soothes this breast

and as u say
"the dimes worth of difference"
is just weighing
the extra hot air on one or the other side

but if like some a person a human person believes they see progress in society over the long arc since
the pyramids were built

then there must be a party of progress a ying party that ever so slightly moves us on net
forwad more then the yang party moves us backwards

its silly reducing an n dimensional trajectory
to a simple line of march
--especially if the n dimensions are really z
complex dimensions where to boot z is a function of time z(t)
and has all sorts of different
added new dimensions and lost old dimensions as we trot along ---

but we hu souls seem to be pleased
or displeased by such a simple totalization
even if its hardly a "summation"

as a notion we seem to come by it spontaneously
despite coming to very conflicting
personal totalities
vide u et moi

"the sight of Rachel Maddow firing an AK-47 in Afghanistan would have done it."
when one has a shot at a top rung
in the newly dominant wing
of establishment
the duties of empire weigh heavily
but only on the inflexible
the un ambitous and the dead

yin and yang exist within a single self contradictory social totalization of course
in this case
the dictatorship of the bourgeoiseeeeee
comes the rare cataract and ..boom
we are launched into
an interval of great upheavel where
the expropriators are expropriated
"with the inexorability of a law of Nature"

this exists behind a pay wall
but
the liberal punch toy
morty zuckerman must be getting paid
to hurl these mud pies
at our commander in chief....
paid that is...by rahm E zion himself

"The predilection to blame business was manifest in one of President Barack Obama’s recent speeches. He was supposed to be seeking the support of the business community for a doubling of exports over the next five years. Instead he lashed out at “unscrupulous and underhanded businesses, who are unencumbered by any restriction on activities that might harm the environment, take advantage of middle-class families, or, as we’ve seen, threaten to bring down the entire financial system.”

This kind of gratuitous and overstated demonisation – widely seen in the business community as a resort to economic populism on the part of Mr Obama to shore up the growing weakness in his political standing – is exactly the wrong approach"

great stuff if you
are trying to boost the ohbummers standing among the west side liberals

imagine getting morty into such a huff...

fight on .. fiercely fight on Oby !!!!
we wee libewals count on you

like mighty mouse
u fearlessly
joust with these wall street tom cats

Ha ha ha

Make them relinquish....on second thought, don't make them relinquish anything at all.

Mighty OP, you are not going to "hate" Obama, you see "progress" now more than "regress," but before "this makes no sense to a nihilist."

Actually, this all makes great sense to a nihilist.

Of course there are differences, mostly in the area of somewhat less moronic rhetoric and a liking for rock, between oxtrot's relentless stock formulation of "no difference," but a nihilist sees the grand technological progress of human engineering now flailing and hitting reverse. The gears are stuck, and the only way that seems to engage even one or two teeth is through far rightist nuttery. On the job, in the community, on the road, on the Web, with the family, our modern world is so very, very clear and correct to the nihilist.

"a nihilist sees the grand technological progress of human engineering now flailing and hitting reverse"

it often looks like that is happening when existing institutional arrangements
run up hard against widening
technical production possibilities

its of course a very hope filling sign
for the likes of me

the social ground under us shakes

Hating Presidents is an interesting thing. There's a purely personal element in it. I hated Nixon at the time (and only came to love him like a brother when he was out of office). Never have felt a thing one way or other about any of the other Republicans -- they all just seemed like such characterless nonentities. Hated Carter while he was in office, don't anymore. Hated Clinton like poison from the first moment I ever set eyes on his big cheesy moon-pie face right up to the present moment, with absolutely no diminution or increase of virulence at all. Can't manage to feel a thing about Obama -- he's so contrived and controlled there's nothing for one's affinity/antipathy machine to get a grip on. Though his hectoring midwestern schoolmaster's voice annoys me a lot.

i love to react to everyone
particularly if its wildly inconsistent

over enough ground
i never found any president
non entertaining
nor any prez candidate

though this guy might be the first
that bores me some

i completely agree
clinton is easy to despise

nothing about this love hate gig effects
a political evaluation of course
and why should it

the potus might as well be in a movie
for all the difference he makes to
every day reality
not even either hoover or the second roosevelt
budged clio's path very much

Your reaction to grand and consequential obsequious striving that reaches to the White House and beyond is - indifference? As if the guy sprang from some colossal nowhere? Obama is every bit the product of the credentialing sector that spawned the loathsome likes of Bush and Clinton, mutated into a New Age of anti-intellectual public relations charlatanism - there should be nothing but hate for that brand of sub-prime post-War toadyism embodied so perfectly in the AIPAC Obama.
You liked Nixon? Wow. What was the matter with you? Why would you reveal that in public?

mjoseph
why make nixon or clinton or ohbummer
or reagan for that matter
the face of contemporary corporate capitalism ??

they're just strivers all three
that reached the top of the political heap

on a human level i suspect
none are too much worse
then your average movie star

nixon i suspect was much more interesting
then say fred macmurray

the bush pair??
well that's another class story entirely

mjosef -- OP anticipated me, as always, but I'll just add that my liking for Nixon is purely personal; though even on the political level, every President since, Democrats and Republicans alike, has been much more reactionary.

But that's really neither here nor there for me. On the personal level the guy is a fascinating, tortured, appalling and yet deeply sympathetic figure.

My dear wife asked me the other day, What is it about guys and Dick Nixon? Why are guys so interested in him? The best I could come up with is that we all have an inner Richard Nixon, though some conceal it better than others, and some conceal it even from themselves. No guy with any heart or any imagination can fail to understand, from the inside, Nixon's anguish and Nixon's awkwardness.

uh, no - any sentence that starts out "every man has a Dick Nixon..." is foolish from the start. He was an appalling, bigoted, creepy no-talent. He had "anguish" and "awkwardness" - what? Can you tell that lie to the liberals and communists and he conspired to indict or exile or marginalize - or the Vietnamese or Cambodians he bombed and murdered to a record degree? There's some sort of secret Dick Nixon Appreciation society out there in those stacks of middle-aged golfers now? I'll never for a minute let that possibility fly.
The phlebitis in his legs deserved more sympathy than that odious Quaker. I guess Bull Connor probably has his Facebook fan club too, but Jesus, let those dead Republican tyrants spin in their well-deserved ignominy - and yes, OP, I'll take Fred MacMurray over that malevolent idiot - look at the life Bob Crane led. You don't think Beverly Garland was a better catch than Pat Nixon?
Give those politicians credit for being the -preeminent snake oil salesmen of their time - every one of them a world-class dissembler and lunatic, and now the counterfeit credential class salesman of the year, Obama.

Golly! And I thought *I* was a curmudgeon!

mjoe

u inspire me to open
a white boy reds for nixon site

i submit
any college educated
white guy
born in the first 56 years
of the last century
who can't see
either a dick nixon
or a bob mcnamara
inside em
is dangerously unself aware
in fact dangerously unnaware of the human condition

mjoe:

do u read dosty or dickens ???

are their darker characters
--toonish as they may be---
not "in u " ???
if not
u must be a venusian

Dare I suggest that Bull Conner was not much different than Nixon in that he played to his constituency ... which he didn't invent but was, rather, invented by?

This ought to draw out the southerner despisers.

I hold no affection for the man. However, his implacable racism/segregationism was a cultural norm of the widest currency in the Birmingham of my youth.

The Bull Connor/Nixon parallel baffles me. I can't see much resemblance between the two.

Connor was the last gasp of the old dying Bourbon South, and its courthouse gangs -- all that complicated system of cousinship and favors owed and ancient history long borne in mind.

Whereas Nixon is pure California -- a man with no family to speak of, no past, a self-invented novus-homo striking his bargains anew as he rose. The thing that makes him human, and likable in a horrible way, is his awareness of how flimsy the construct is.

Whereas Bill Clinton, an equally flimsy creature, and far less intelligent, Rhodes Scholar or not, experiences no discomfort at all with his own flimsiness. He's deeply pleased with himself, as Nixon (though a far more substantial man) never could be. It's the difference between Hamlet and vilely cross-gartered Malvolio.

My comment is concerned with the public performance of duty as perceived rather than with tortured-or-not inner life. Did Nixon agonize over the decision to bomb Cambodia? Does it matter that he may have? Was Nixon a bigot? Was Connor?

Both men (and almost pervasively among public 'servants') balanced the needs of their monied-class support and the demands of the prejudices of their broader constituencies.

What annoys me is the use of Bull Connor as the epitome of human evil, even when discussing politicians such as Nixon with millions of corpses on their charge sheets.

Connor was a Democrat, incidentally.

Rhodes Scholar

as i recall billy had a fulbright
shameless rubber faced fuck ball

flexible where nixon was tragicomically rigid

shameless where mr dick was deeply deeply
scaldingly inwit burned
swallow enough brimstone at mumma's knee and ....

he and ted willians and reagan all had
lower middle class
mothers
of a generation
from hell's heaven

but each one of em had a different
soul's genetic humor mix
and as they varied on entry
subjected to the intermix of intricate
dyadic contradictions
indeed made men they were
but each of a mighty different
weave of beastiness

the contrast i like with each is lincoln of course
the paradigm bright boy from the out back

measure clinton's mom
--dickensianly melodramatic and oddly individuated but sanguine and adoring
if not exactly jolly sided --

up against dick's ....
quacker keeper of accounts

al had self preterizing men in out and /or about em

oh how the brews do vary
like belgian beer

i'm addicted to bios btw

i never read much else for pure escape
never did

not any sort of ....novel

but false fragments from a real soul's memoir

now that's a worthy genre of fiction

nixon on his own life

unbeatable

its the acid test of his gradeur really
to read his gim-crack retakes
on 'the great spirits '
ahh i have known personally ..ah in the arena

one only has to see ohbummer on the view
to get back to his black jack magic stick act

if that doesn't start you to wonder
you've contrived some how over the years
to abstract your spirits
into a brain vat

u've lost the flavor of the flow
the tang of time passing

the futile poignance of
our brutish and short
common existence for a graceful moment
transcended

lived life itself ought to lead
to a craving at least every once in a while
for the sweet sincere dancer

contrast ohbummer to clinton
stick to it

why he's hyperion
to a shameless burlesque show parlor boar

lunch:

i think it is precisely NOT
the public "life" and actions
of these men
that interests me about....these men

yes its without question
their role
in the great melo-comedy
that attracts me to them
as with all celebrated figures

but its their black box
i wish to bust open
their inner reaction set
the blow back within
of it all
the flow and filtering
of their "great role"
back into their very individuated
only partly 'prepared 'soul

"i could have made a difference ...did i ??
what difference ..is there a hero here in me
ahh what have i done ..."
or do we find a richard the third

can either outcome displease

those that not quite king r 3's
and yet surely not hank 5's

imagining their ghastly self reflections
must twist the deepest most conflicted of em
into something sublimely toweringly hideous

or even better the dwarf in giants robes
whatever
ought it not draw on eager
fellow souled minds ....no ??
especially for us
who at heart remain
the never to be called upon understudies

---
ps mjs has nixon and channeled and clinton dead to rights in his cross hairs
i bow to his mastery of both

now as to orson welles and winston churchill
i'll let no man stand ahead of me

--------------
--clinton like the lead in a sit com with a message
in the end always sees himself just as he wants us to see him
...he is always more or less in public
being exactly what he loves about himself --

op:
all very rich and entertaining. could u do something on the inner life of Bull Connor? jes kiddin.

bull
became the icon of the southron shurr-iff

i'm more of a george c wallace oficionado

a man well worth contrasting
with his rough contemporary pols
specifically
the half generation older dick nixon

old southern comfort vs
20's southern california
on up makes for bad cross references
as mjs points out

better contrasts
the almost generation older types
like the gub for years of clintons arkansas orval faubus or for that matter earl long
the great divide between them
and james earl carter and between jimmy
prefigured DLC paradigm
and the new GOP south
makes for difficult cross references all around

bull connor vs bull lee now that's a contest

No guy with any heart or any imagination can fail to understand, from the inside, Nixon's anguish and Nixon's awkwardness.

Father Smith, your empathy is deep, wide, non-judgmental... and... hmmmm.

Admirable?

Fictional?

I find as one gets older one can tolerate and even enjoy odd fusion-cuisine blends of sharply contrasting emotional flavors. My attitude toward old Dick contains elements of horror and mirth but these strangely no longer exclude a sense that I also know him from the inside out, and feel his pain, or something like it -- to borrow a phrase from my least-favorite President.

Of course my attitude toward myself also includes horror and mirth, so this is all rather easy, actually.

Nixon and LBJ, of the presidents in my lifetime, are the only ones for whom I have this feeling of knowing what makes them tick. Clinton is familiar and deeply loathesome to me as a social type, but I have no sense at all what it is like to be Bill Clinton.

Hypothesis:

Because Clinton was a bit of a new archetype for the formless, shapeless POTUS -- the projection screen for everyone, onto whom personal fantasies were grafted in order to give some shape and content to the hollow form of William Jefferson Blythe Clinton.

This mannequin-esque prototype has been refined with the Saintly, Noble POTUS of the present era.

I dunno. Hard for me to see many affinities between oral-aggressive Bill and anal-retentive Obie. Both of course serve as projection screens for the "base", but 'tis ever thus; the "base" could project their hopes on a stray dog, or a side of beef.

Bill is the fast-talking con artist, or rather pickpocket; Obie the managerial meritocrat. Bill has too much personality, Obie too little. Bill sucks all the oxygen out of the air; Obie doesn't seem to breathe at all.

It's a useful lesson in how little personal character really matters, except when it comes to the armchair sport of hating one President more than another. They all deserve to be hated, of course; that goes without saying; but then the personal equation comes in, and we find in practice that for each of us, it's easier to hate one than another.

Can't dispute any of that.

But as you properly note the differences between Slick Willie and Herobama, I think there are some important thematic similarities. Clinton also was a merit-stuffed managerial type, he just played more on the "I feel your pain" game. And just as Obama is the miraculous bi-racial child of university professors who salves the latent White need to see the articulate Black man advance, Clinton was the miraculous redneck boy who supposedly fulfilled the dream of rising from eating dirt to sitting in the Oval Office. Democrats that I know seem to love that fable of succeeding despite the stereotype suggesting one won't or can't succeed... it reinforces The American Dream of a nobody becoming a somebody through hard work despite the odds.