Lemkin: Archive

“On the domestic side, both Democrats and Republicans have really made it very difficult for the president to be anything like a chief executive. This has led to a kind of frustration.” —Bill Daley, White House Chief of Staff. This is why they fail.
Anyone, and I mean anyone who holds this opinion, much less speaks of it to a journalist of any stripe, should resign immediately or have been fired long ago. You think this is frustrating Bill? You think “your” side is equally to blame? Then go the fuck home. You are part of the problem and we’ll get nothing truly worthwhile done until everyone who thinks like you has long since left the scene.

Oct 28, 20117 notes

#tnr #noah #Daley #this is why #bloodrage #obama #2012 #messaging #MSM #serious person

“Yeah, I’ve drank bathtubs full of hooch, but I never craved it. I didn’t drink because I was depressed or anything. I used it because funny things tended to develop when I was drinking. It took me a while to see how repetitive it is, how people do and say the same things at a bar. Now, maybe I’ll have a drink, maybe a beer once a month at the most, when me and Dian go out.

I had a strange relationship with the bottle. I never met anyone who drank as often as I did, but who did it purely for recreation. To me, going to the bar was like going to the circus every day.” —Pete Dexter, journalist, novelist, writer, and former circus aficionado on his relationship to hooch and hooch purveyors.

Oct 28, 20110 notes

#drinking #writing #art

Compare and contrast Jonathan Chait’s approach to Paul Ryan’s fantasyworld with dread Liberal Mouthpiece NPR’s view from nowhere approach in which Ryan is simply allowed to say whatever he wants, without challenge or even follow up of any kind.

Day by day, hour by hour, brick by brick NPR is building its own tomb. Once they’ve chased off all thinking individuals from their “coverage,” a defunding move by the GOP will be a non-event. NPR has vastly higher listenership than FOXnews and still, occasionally, reports facts. Therefore NPR must cease to exist. This is who they are. This is what they do. They want to destroy you, NPR, and you are going out of your way to help.

Oct 28, 201113 notes

#NPR #2012 #messaging #go die in the streets #acorn #tea klan #GOP #Paul Ryan #Chait #Foxnews #idiocracy #serious person

“…this is the way the right goes after everyone who stands in their way: accuse them of everything, no matter how implausible or contradictory the accusations are. Progressives are atheistic socialists who want to impose Sharia law. Class warfare is evil; also, John Kerry is too rich. And so on.” —Paul Krugman, sole member of the mainstream media who seems to understand this simple concept.

Oct 27, 201118 notes

#krugman #yep #sharia #socialism #2012 #messaging #tea klan #ows #nyt

Oct 21, 2011903 notes

#chartsngraphs #military #Budget #taxes #2012 #messaging

“You have a one-half of one-percent surtax on the 1,000,0001th dollar — in other words it doesn’t affect anybody who makes $999,000, it doesn’t affect anybody making $999,999 — and if you want to find the guy who make $1,000,0001, it only affects that $1. That’s the only thing the rate goes up on. If you make $1.1 million, and god-willing this passes, you would pay next year, $500 more in taxes. […] I say to the American people: watch your senator. Watch him or her choose: Are you going to put 400,000 school teachers back in classrooms; are you going to put 18,000 cops back on the street, and 7,000 firefighters back into firehouses? OR are you going to save people with average income over $1 million a one-half of one-percent increase in tax on every dollar they make over a million.” —Joe Biden and every other Democrat in Washington DC should’ve been talking like this since day one. But now is as good a time to start as any. More please.

Oct 20, 201128 notes

#yep #math #Biden #2012 #messaging #tax reform

Wash it Off

CNN's Piers MORGAN: let's talk about homosexuality because -- and is that wrong? Do you think it's a sin?
GOP Presidential Hopeful Herman CAIN: I think it's a sin because of my biblical beliefs and although people don't agree with me, I happen to think that it is a choice.
MORGAN: You believe that?
CAIN: I believe that.
MORGAN: You believe people -- seriously, you think people get to a certain age and go, I think I want to be homosexual?
CAIN: Let me turn it around to you. What does science show? You show me evidence other than opinion and you might cause me to reconsider that. [...Crosstalk...] Where is the -- where is evidence?
MORGAN: Just common -- you're a commonsense guy.
CAIN: Are you a common sense kind of guy? [...]
MORGAN: Wait a minute, let me ask you. You genuinely believe millions of Americans wake up in their late teens normally and go, you know what, I quite fancy being a homosexual? You don't believe that.
CAIN: Piers.
MORGAN: Do you?
CAIN: You haven't given me any evidence to convince me otherwise nor has anyone else. [...]
MORGAN: It would be like a gay person saying, Herman, you made a choice to be black.
CAIN: We know that's not the case. I was born black.
MORGAN: Yes, maybe if they said that, you would find it offensive.
CAIN: Piers, this doesn't wash off. I hate to burst your bubble.
Lemkin: The MSM eternally believes that the GOP field doesn't actually believe any of this stuff. Inevitably, when they bother to probe what they assume is just bluster and/or red meat for the far right, they are shocked, SHOCKED to find that, yep, they all actually believe and plan to act on all this stuff and more. You'd think that on the 4 millionth occasion of this sort Serious People would start to see a pattern and begin to report on it accordingly. Herman Cain believes the gays should just wash it off and join "proper," Herman Cain's Christian God-fearing society. Perhaps this sort of incredibly unpopular, far right opinion both imparts important information about his dedication to personal liberty (that the GOP spends so very much time talking about but zero time actually implementing for anyone in the 99%) and furthermore speaks to how he'd govern on a host of similar wedge issues. A version of this country with a functioning media would be a very different place indeed.

Oct 20, 201122 notes

#cainTrain #beliefs #civil liberties #constitution #sex #idiocracy #MSM #serious person #cnn #GOP #2012

“Americans are hurting across this country, and the president’s out there campaigning. Why isn’t he governing? He doesn’t — he doesn’t have a jobs plan even now.” —Mitt Romney, who must be referring to the fact that the GOP minority in the Senate has already filibustered said “jobs bill” to death and plans to filibuster its pieces to death as well. That pretty much means “Obama has no jobs bill,” right? After all, it’s been uniformly reported as “Democrats fail to pass…” and “Obama jobs bill fails” and never, ever the decidedly shrill “GOP blocks…” or even “Republicans outmaneuver Democrats on jobs…”
Note to Anderson Cooper: this is precisely the sort of thing you might mention next time it comes up in a debate amongst the folks vying for the Republican nomination for President of these United States. To quote some future Sam Jackson movie: “You the moderator? Then moderate, motherfucker.” Or we’ll just let Watson do it the next time. Frankly, I don’t see how Our Computational Overlord could do any worse.

Oct 19, 201132 notes

#GOP #filibuster #employment #senate #mittmentum #slj #MSM #idiocracy #watson #this is why #messaging

“Does that mean that you would raise taxes on the 47 percent of Americans who currently don’t pay taxes?” —Anderson Cooper, buying into the entirely wrong, entirely Tea Klan promulgated notion that about half of Americans pay no taxes.
Anderson, and everyone else, everyone, every single adult citizen pays federal taxes in this country or they are breaking the law. Even this 47% to which you refer still pays payroll taxes related to Social Security, Medicare, and etc… if they are employed. However, they may well earn too little money to exceed the standard individual/married filing jointly deduction. Thus, they effectively pay no federal income tax. They do, however, still pay all the rest of it. Period. They do, however, still pay state and local taxes. Period. In any meaningful case: This adds up to a lot more than one dollar (which was Bachmann’s suggested “solution” to the “issue”). But that’s all too boring or too partisan to mention, apparently.
In a functioning society, the media individual selected to mediate this event might just see fit to mention this. Worth noting that, in our society, that sort of thing never, ever happens, and this tax thing is but one of literally hundreds of such opportunities for meaningful intervention in last night’s debate. The level of foreign aid, the current funding totals for defense (with regard to the suggested cut), the real impact of immigration on the economy of this country, foreclosures, and on and on and on.
And so the Republic crumbles.

Oct 19, 201117 notes

#MSM #cnn #idiocracy #2012 #GOP #this is why #bachmann #tea klan

Oct 19, 20114 notes

#999 #cainTrain #tax reform #plutocracy #chartsngraphs #2012 #tea klan #go die in the streets

Oct 17, 201146 notes

#this is why #chartsngraphs #polling #thinkprogress #2012 #ows #banksters

gonzodave:

Aside from being an egomaniac, Cain is a plagiarist.

~g

Long before Cain was running for president and getting attention for his 999 plan, the residents of SimCity 4 — which was released in 2003 — were living under a system where the default tax rate was 9 percent for commercial taxes, 9 percent for industrial taxes and 9 percent for residential taxes. (That is, of course, if you didn’t use the cheat codes to get unlimited money and avoid taxes altogether.)

Cut to: Bachmann press conference in which she breathlessly announces that she’s gained access to the secret government cheat codes which, when entered into a secret keypad in the Bible on the day of her inauguration, will allow for unlimited revenue on no taxes whatsoever. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new national GOP polls leader.

Oct 13, 20116 notes

#bachmann #idiocracy #999 #cainTrain #GOP #tax reform #2012 #tea klan

“In the coming days we will force members of Congress to vote on the individual proposals in the American Jobs Act. They’ll have a chance to vote on whether they believe we should keep teachers out of work or whether we should put them back in the classroom where they belong. They’ll get to vote on whether they believe construction workers should stay unemployed while our roads and bridges fall apart, or whether we should put these men and women back to work rebuilding America. They’ll be forced to decide whether we should cut taxes for middle class Americans or let them go up next year.” —Barack Obama talks tough. Finally. Imagine if we’d had this guy (and every other Democrat) out there saying words like these starting on January 21, 2009 and then continuing to say them every day since, each and every time a microphone turned on. The economic and legislative situation might well be very much the same, but the political situation would be very different indeed.

Oct 13, 201144 notes

#obama #yep #messaging #2012 #governing #economy

“Skynet once again uses its (apparently not all that limited) time-travel device, this time to send a far more advanced liquid metal T-1000 Terminator back to 1990s L.A., this time to kill the ten-year-old John Connor (played by the extremely annoying Edward Furlong [13], whose voice keeps cracking pubescently and who’s just clearly older than ten), and that the intrepid human Resistance has somehow captured, subdued, and “reprogrammed” an old Schwarzenegger-model Terminator — resetting its CPU’s switch from TERMINATE to PROTECT, apparently [14] — and then has somehow once again gotten one-time access to Skynet’s time-travel technology [15] and sent the Schwarzenegger Terminator back to protect young J.C. from the T-1000’s infanticidal advances. [16]” —David Foster Wallace again provides a singularly descriptive sentence; this one for T2. Imagine if all capsule descriptions read like this.

Oct 11, 201117 notes

#dfw #cameron #film #criticism #writing

“Most Republican voters believe, with good reason, that Romney stands a strong chance of winning the nomination and beating President Obama. The question is whether he would put repeal front and center—whether he would emphasize it in the general election campaign, and whether he would go to the mat for repeal once in office. Would Romney’s campaign build enough momentum for repeal to achieve 60 votes in the Senate and defeat a potential filibuster? If not, would Romney be willing to advance repeal in the Senate via reconciliation, the complicated and unconventional process that takes only 50 votes but which would also require a far greater expenditure of political capital?” —Jeffery H. Anderson makes me wonder if he’s even been paying attention. If we assume that the posited chain of events occurs: GOP holds some kind of House majority and gains a new but non-60 vote majority in the Senate (and, of course, President Mittmentum) then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to derive the complex psychohistorical formulas for what happens next?!?!?
The GOP eliminates (by simple majority) the filibuster on the first day of the new Congress. The MSM declares this an entirely reasonable, “sensible center” approach to governing. Wholesale dismantlement of the New Deal follows, coupled to and justified by the oncoming tax revenue collapse from a 0% effective tax rate on the rich and consumption-based, maximally regressive tax on everyone else.
It’s what they’ve been talking about for years. They are entirely serious. They mean to do it at the first opportunity, and this would be it. There will be no fiddling with reconciliation or anything approaching “normal order” as we define it in 2011. How many times do they have to say this stuff before someone in the MSM takes them seriously and asks a follow-up or two? Or, for that matter, before The Democrat starts using these positions against them. (Shrill! Class War!!).
The far-right GOP candidates and elected officials are not “blowing smoke” or “providing red meat” for the “true believers.” This is who they are. Everyone else can kindly go die in the streets.

Oct 11, 201115 notes

#go die in the streets #GOP #messaging #filibuster #2012 #mittmentum #idiocracy #tax cuts #ACA #psychohistory #Shrill

Oct 11, 20110 notes

#yep #ows #occupy wall street #tom tomorrow #MSM #messaging #banksters

“What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage.” —Paul Krugman, hosting another edition of Krugman Explains it All in 200 Words or Less. Shrill.

Oct 11, 20115 notes

#krugman #nyt #yep #occupy wall street #ows #plutocracy #MSM #messaging #wall street #banksters

“Fox wants to cut our salaries in half because it says it can’t afford to continue making [The Simpsons] under what it calls the existing business model. Fox hasn’t explained what kind of new business model it has formulated to keep the show on the air, but clearly the less money they have to pay us in salary, the more they’re able to afford to continue broadcasting the show. And to this I say, fine — if pay cuts are what it will take to keep the show on the air, then cut my pay. In fact, to make it as easy as possible for Fox to keep new episodes of “The Simpsons” coming, I’m willing to let them cut my salary not just 45% but more than 70% — down to half of what they said they would be willing to pay us. All I would ask in return is that I be allowed a small share of the eventual profits.

My representatives broached this idea to Fox yesterday, asking the network how low a salary number I would have to accept to make a profit participation feasible. My representatives were told there was no such number. There were, the Fox people said, simply no circumstances under which the network would consider allowing me or any of the actors to share in the show’s success.” —Harry Shearer makes a fantastic point in his statement about the ongoing negotiations around the 24th (sigh) season of The Simpsons.
I post this because it fairly precisely captures one of the core issues that’s grown quite pervasive in the country at the moment and is a key fact of current US society that the MSM categorically refuses to admit about the dirty fucking hippies, er, Occupy Wall Street folks.
The voice talent on this show self-admittedly make good money under the current contract terms; however, it’s a fraction of what the folks “upstairs” make off the back end of the show, a back end to which they, the folks upstairs, have contributed nothing (or at most: vanishingly little).
Faced with an entirely reasonable request that would a) keep the gravy train going —and— b) dramatically cut current salaries in exchange for a vanishingly small sliver of the real profits of the enterprise, they respond: “Nooo, I’d still prefer not.”
I guess it’s very hard to hear anyone when you’re wearing a jacuzzi suit…

Oct 07, 20112 notes

#Simpsons #the rich #Fox #greed #MSM #dfh

“I didn’t go to Harvard. You know, I went to the school of hard knocks.” —Scott Brown, describing his time in the urban hellscape that is the Medford campus of Tufts University. Later in life, he took on the mean streets of Boston College Law School. Chestnut Hill is about to get real.
Also worth noting that Harvard tuition is ~$39,849. Tufts: $42,962. Warren’s actual alma mater, University of Houston? That would set you back $9,211.

Oct 07, 20118 notes

#code brown #idiocracy #anti-intellectual #big h #Boston #yglesias

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” —Steve Jobs

Oct 05, 20117 notes

#yep #Steve jobs #Goodbye #Apple #Art

Lemkin

October 2011

21 posts