U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
April 28, 2009 03:15 PM UTC
48 Comments
NYT has a reprise of the prospects of cyberwar (at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04… including such elements as malicious code built into chips manufactured abroad and embedded in imported PCs. One problem with this sort of vague, mysterious sort of threat–cyberwar–is that it offers an ideal platform for those who are inclined to use the threat of mysterious foreign cyberenemies [read: China] to clamp down on domestic activities that tend to undermine authorities. Hard to think of a better example of the latter then blogs (can’t you just feel the revolutionary impulses on this one, for instance?). I’d be interested in the views of people with greater technical sophistication than mine on the likelihood–and relevance–of proposals to exploit paranoia and to “protect the cyber-infrastructure” by clamping down on the internet in various manifestations with limitations that have nothing to do with cyberwarfare. Gotta wonder whether in the view of some, the internet has unleased two genies–the prospect of cybercrime/cyberwarfare and the prospect of a soapbox on every desktop.
The bottom line is anything is possible. And there are an almost infinite number of ways that the internet, and everything connected to it, can be attacked.
With that said, the proposals are not to shut down blogs or other endpoints in times of emergencies, but to shut down the connections that the attacks are coming over. So it’s for specific responses.
…isn’t what is a legitimate threat so much as how the “threat of cyberwarfare” could be exploited to push through legislation giving (for example) the government authority to shut down “dangerous” Web sites (of which I’d rank ColoradoPols near the tippy-top, but also including software downloads from collectives, such as Firefox, that may or not may not cooperate with confidential government demands for hidden monitoring features, just to cite a a mildly paranoid fantasy). I’d put this in the same bin as Comcast claiming the “technical need” —the dire and imminent need, my fellow Americans! Dire, I tell you!— to limit download volumes “in order to protect the integrity of the network” which has a permanently-fixed capacity–doesn’t it?– rather than “in order to protect Comcast’s revenue stream from on-demand videos delivered as part of their “cable tv” service” which would be a candid description.
Though you do come up with some great analytical insights from time to time, I really think those otherwise greased gears of yours grind to a halt on the rust of your “good-guy/bad-guy” obsessions. There is no evil “they” running things according to the malevolent will of maniacal power. It’s really just a bunch of people, some of whom would leap to the defense of the liberties you think they are conspiratorially ready to attack. Sure, there are tendencies of those in power to take steps to retain power, and controlling speech is one of the traditionally most relied upon (in world history), though it is of dubious practicability in the modern era, even with the subterfuges you are imagining. But freedom of speech is also a star-spangled, patriotic-song sanctified cornerstone of American ideology, and a whole lot of people in power would feel true revulsion at the idea of attacking it.
Have you ever noticed that those nine old fogies who are least democratically constrained make all sorts of decisions that protect the rights of people you and I don’t really give a damn about, splitting fine Constitutional hairs out of a genuine feeling of responsibility to try to be true to the underlying principles of the nation? Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I don’t; sometimes their decisions bend over backwards in defense of liberty, sometimes they make concessions to law and order. But a survey of constitutional case law does not support the conspiratorial indifference to the liberty of America citizens that possesses those who obtain power. And we’re talking about the people least beholden to the people in order to retain their power. They could make decisions with the goal of gradually eliminating all competition for power, amassing it to themselves, and to some extent indeed they do: But mightily self-restrained by a view of their duty not to usurp power, and usurped in ways which more often serve liberal than conservative interests.
Sure, identify all of the variables, identify all of the forces at play, identify all of the universal human tendencies and and how they translave into social-positional tendencies. But remember that it’s a subtle and complex world, not a Sunday morning serial with handsome heroes against scar-faced villains.
It’s a lot simpler if it’s all good vs evil.
The issue of cyberwar isn’t my idea; it’s the subject of concern by the Department of Defense, among other things. AND, yes, there are politicians of all stripes, some of whom are concerned about giving individuals–or some individuals–a powerful platform to spread ideas with which they disapprove. There most certainly have been times in this country’s history–the 1950s come to mind, as do the years just after WWI [Rosa Gold… Gold… ] –when individuals were attacked, or expelled from the country, for espousing certain ideas, nine old fogies notwithstanding. Your confidence in the judiciary far, far exceeds mine!
Where were the Nine Old Fogies when it came to FBI agents surveying library check-out lists without warrants…in more modern times? Am I imagining government actions to survey mosques more closely after 9/11/01? To lock up Neisi in 1942?
Now Steve, don’t give me shit about social-positional tendencies. The Internet, taken in the broadest sense of the word, is far and away the most powerful technology since printing–and do you doubt that printing led to (or, at least, was a prerequisite for) the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of Capital in lieu of property as a store of wealth? When centers of power are seriously challenged, those centers are as likely as not to react. I’m not engaged in bullshit paranoia here; my knowledge of the hardware inside my computer is limited. No idea where the origin of the chip(s), no real firm grasp on cookies, for example, except that I see them reacting with sites from time to time with some sense of wonder.
The vast majority of citizens are fairly placid. Good Cow Boys and Cow Girls. They long have been content with the version of events presented, say, by network television news. You and I are entirely aware of (a) how remarkably limited the selection of events is and (b) how remarkably similar the election of events is. I have some professional awareness of how traditional media work(s)(ed), and just how threatened that now is.
I seem to recall reading recently something about a “room” in San Francisco used by the NSA to engaged in wiretaps without a warrant, both on international calls, but also on domestic calls. We could go on, but let’s leave it at this: the notion was to “listen” to all conversations and rely on technology to pick out key words, then focus in on those calls/callers/numbers. So, is it Paranoid JO that claims: the government has already shown itself to listen in on vast numbers of calls by ordinary Americans looking for certain key words? I didn’t think so either. Question for me remains: what words were those? The issue was not: “you’re banned from speaking these words.” It was–and is, may I suggest–“IF you speak these words, someone will home in and start listening.” Not a fantasy; a reported fact.
In your eagerness to give voice to Reason and Moderation, you in fact conjure up a strawman–the “they” in “they are out to get us”–and ignore the very real ways in which the flow of opinions have long been controlled. I refer to the old “freedom of the press belongs to people who own one” argument. Ain’t never been a time B4 when printing presses were available to anyone with the energy to walk up the library steps. We have seen in Europe
only recently-how cell phones and serves like Twitter have been used to coordinate, even conjure up, large-scale demonstrations that quickly turned violent. (Now, where was I? Lithuania? Georgia?) This is a new time, without precedent, and what the impact will be remains to be seen. My sense is that the direction is towards more control –financial or otherwise–not less, compared to the very early days of the ‘net, even before the Web.And finally, let me suggest that it isn’t the cabal of Cheneys that I’m referring to. There is also the perfectly public cabal of Comcastistas who want to protect one revenue stream by identifying a false threat and applying financial pressure to thwart it. My efforts to identify a government agency that regulates Comcast in my locale are futile, and in any case the FCC has essentially barred local authorities from exerting any regulatory authority…in part by classifying cable television providers as a branch of the entertainment industry instead of providers of an increasingly vital link. If it costs $20/mo to mount your own Web site, that’s one thing; $200 might be something else. You think Alioto and Thomas are going to come running down the front steps of their glorious Temple of Justice to stop that?
I begin to rant…
but your class warfare model creates the “they,” not my response to it. The “they” is the primary, real problem with your analysis. It is not, by any measure or definition, a straw man. Because if I invented it, and you agree that it doesn’t exist outside of my invention, then there is no class warfare, there is no “they” doing all of these things you identify, there is only various coalescences of “us.” And that is exactly my point.
My post about cyber warfare said nothing about class warfare; neither did my response above. You are conflating other posts, on different topics. Naughty, naughty.
Class warfare is a useful construct to understand the fundamentally contradictory economic interests of people who own capital versus those who work for a living (i.e. get paid for their time and energy rather than for the use of their capital/money). It’s in the interests of the former to keep wages down, in the interests of the latter to boost them. That’s not “straw man.” For the historical record, of course, the argument has been floated for, what, a century and a half or so that “we’re all children of god,” or “all good Germans-Americans-Brits,” and not members of economic classes that will settle their differences with a different division of the wealth/fruits of our labors.
The straw man in this case is your line in your post: There is no evil “they” running things according to the malevolent will of maniacal power. I never posited an “evil ‘they'” (unless, of course, I can’t read my own damn words) much less a “malevolent will of maniacal power.” Your words; your straw man.
I did suggest that a variety of economic interests, and the politicians who represent those interests, may feel threatened by the free-for-all atmosphere of the Internet as it exists, especially as video melds with audio with writing, to say nothing of VOIP, WiFi access via cell phones, etc.
So yes, I know about “straw men” as rhetorical devices. I sometimes get the impression that you are of the impression that some/many/others on this site if not on this earth are in need of some 101-level course from you in the fundamentals of logic, fact-gathering, rhetoric, argumentation. That may well be; I confess that I don’t feel the need, at least not this evening.
To refer to my earlier references (that would be self-referential in the first degree, for which I apologize): Class warfare is not my “straw man.” It does conjure up a meeting of wizened old men in the Club Room at the Denver Country Club, or at the Masonic Hall, or Out Behind the Barn, plotting to oppress the masses, steal milk from sucklings, censor the thoughts of Dangerous Radicals. It is an intellectual construct that points out fundamental differences in economic interests, with the fundamental basis of ownership of “property” (no, not your box of Kleenex) that no “let’s all reason together” bullshit is going to gloss over.
(Jeeves informs me that dinner is served, so I really must dash off.)
because the dichotomy on which it relies doesn’t exist. Workers own capital, and capitalists sell a form of labor on the market. There is a space defined by various continua of what kinds and quanties of capital are owned, and what forms of and compensations systems for labor exist. And, yes, there certainly are extremes among these continua. And yes, the extremes draw our attention and become conceptual reifications that swallow the continua. But in reality, people are distributed throughout that space of possibilities. They are not neatly sorted into your two classes.
Furthermore, you are stuck in a zero-sum conceptualization of capital, when in reality it is a non-zero-sum game. It is not, precisely, in the interests of capitalists to keep wages down. Capitalists have a conpeting interest to see wages rise, and interest which Henry Ford, for instance, acted upon by raising the salaries of his workers by several fold over the going rate. Capitalists need consumers, who are workers with disposable income. So they have an interest in depressing wages in one of their capacities (as the payer of wages), and of raising wages as another (as the profiter from consumption).
Also, capitalists sometimes want workers who are motivated, and the opportunity to profit from one’s own initiative can be a very motivating force. So capitalists in some enterprises, particularly information intensive enterprises (that profit most from worker initiative) create systems by which workers can enrich themselves enormously by enriching their bosses even more.
Your reduction of reality fails to capture all of these nuances, and more.
Class warfare is a tried and failed conceptual construct. It motivates revolutions that can only succeed in changing the players who occupy power, rather then the dynamics by which power is exercised, because if it is a war, it can be one by beating the other side. But this “war” can only be won by refining institutions in such a way as to change the way in which power is exercised, not change the human beings who are exercising it. And that is exactly why the construct of class warfare is so counterproductive.
My “let’s all reason together” bullshit is this: Power exists. Its exercises exist. Its abuses exist. The challenges we face exist. They existed yesterday, and they will exist tomorrow. The challenge of dealing with that reality isn’t a challenge that one group can resolve in opposition to another, because such opposition is an attempt to shift the possession of power, not to shift the operation of power. It doesn’t matter whether “capitalists” or the “proletariat” are in power: The problem is the social institutional contextualization of power. The challenge is refining that contextualization so as to diminish the problems it produces and increase the benefits it produces. It’s not a war you can win by defeating an enemy. It’s a war you can only win by recognizing that the “enemy” is a function of position rather than identity, and can only be defeated by redifining what incentives are faced once in that position.
Now, if you find this form of analysis horribly upsetting and offensive, that’s just the way it is.
I don’t think so. Your cyber-warfare, from what I gathered, was about how the fear is used by the class against whom you are at war.
There is data, and there is the framing of that data. I can look at the sun revolving around the Earth day after day, and argue with some fool who tried to tell me that it’s the other way around, because, I mean, just look! Data doesn’t tell the whole story. How it is organized, how it is put together into a narrative about how the world works, is not fixed by the data, but is malleable. The data that you cite does not prove the validity of the way you choose to organize it. The same data can be organized differently, can be used to tell a different story. The question then becomes not whether the data is accurate or not, but rather which story you tell with it is most useful for the purpose of human welfare (however you choose to define it).
My message isn’t that you’re wrong. It’s that the way you are organizing the facts, the theoretical construct you are relying on, isn’t very useful. Both rational analysis and historical experience are abundantly supportive of that conclusion.
We done clicked prematurely before the editing was complete. Sorry for typos.
1. Do cookies react to surfing and “report back”? Are there other similar “hidden” features in your browser software that you are fully aware of?
2. Could the government “in the face of a national emergency” subpoena Google’s records? Comcast’s? Demand the distribution of cookie-like software?
3. Knowing what you know of Dick Cheney’s respect for Constitutional liberties in the face of “the terrorist threat,” do you remain fully comfortable?
People who don’t advocate disturbing ideas have no need to be disturbed. Never have.
I did my master’s thesis on media bias from a neo-marxist analytical framework. I’m not ignoring, nor recommending that anyone ignore, the real dynamics of power that play out through our social systems. But just pointing to specific examples of how they play out doesn’t make an analysis which fetishizes that aspect of social systemic dynamics any more useful or analytically powerful.
I don’t believe that you are informed by anything that I am not informed by, but this obsession you have with a really, really weak analytical framework of “class warfare doesn’t help with the basic, reasonable goal that should be at the focus of our attention: Refining our social systems so that they maximize the sustainable and justly distributed production of “utilities,” those things that satisfy our needs and desires on all levels. An obsession with class warfare doesn’t move us in that direction, and, historically, it has moved several societies in precisely the opposite direction.
Have some of the challenges you’ve identified real? Certainly. Are they best understood as, and addressed as, “us” vs. “them”? Absolutely not. We’re all us. We’re all them. You, for the great majority of people on this globe right now who think like you, are much more in the “them” column than in the “us” column.
This isn’t about being comfortable with abuses of power and infringements on freedoms, or ignoring historical episodes of witch hunts and persecutions. This is about trying to find the right lens that deals with those, and other, challenges most effectively and meaningfully. I am adamant in my assertion that the one you are using has been so profoundly discredited, both as an analytical framework and as a political agenda, that my commitment to pursuing the goal I have described compels me to draw attention to that fact.
Enough said. I won’t disturb you again.
I spent seven years in a sociology department dominated by marxists. I started out with that form of analysis, and was fully emersed in it, only bit by bit recognizing its weaknesses, and by critiquing its fundamental flaws, moved toward an system of analysis which accomplished everything the neo-marxist framework accomplished, captured every legitimate insight that it captured, but without the incredible weaknesses involving the reification of classes, the disregard of individual level incentives that divide each from each other as well as motivated group coalescences, and the folly that believed that if you move some actors from category A to category B, they would take with them some ethereal consciousness that transforms society. What bullshit!
The truth is, power exists, is inevitable, and is in many ways functional. Abuses of power also exist, and the problem involved is best understood by agency theory, which is about how to prevent abuses of an agend acting on a principle’s behalf, which includes abuses of power. There are excellent analytical tools for addressing the issues and phenomena you identify. But just getting mad and indignant and militant about it, rather than help to rectify those problems, feeds right into them, in many different ways, perpetuating them rather than moving toward refinements that ameliorate them.
And that should be the goal, shouldn’t it? Solving problems, rather than just basking in righteous indignation, and rising up to create more suffering, more abuses of power, and less effective social institutional frameworks.
Regardless of how “true” or “false” your observations are, they are not USEFUL. And the utility of ideas, the degree to which they increase human welfare and justice, is more important than gratifying one’s emotional inclinations through ideological fervor.
the factual data is useful; the emotional and theoretical framing of it isn’t.
Okay, let’s start with some simple numbers:
“Enough said. I won’t disturb you again.” Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 18:27:53 PM MDT
“Just so you fully get where I’m coming from: … ” Tue Apr 28, 2009 at 18:41:11 PM MDT
Worry not, Steve. You didn’t disturb me in the first place.
But how great to hear the name Harry Ford in a purring, adoring tone (as I perceived it). Henry and the Model T. Lovely fairy tale. I don’t seem to recall that he was a friend of unions in his later years; wonder how come.
Or more recently, how about the owners of the Hoover vacuum cleaner company who moved their plant from Canton, Ohio, where it had been for decades, to Mexico, lock stock and barrel. Of course! They wanted Mexican workers to be able to afford vacuum cleaners! Everyone in Canton already had one!
My reaction–not to say what you said–my reaction was that the most interesting thing I learned from your extended essay was that you are a sociologist. (I could claim to have suspected…. but that would be, what…self-serving, so I’ll desist.) Sociologists, to an outsider, appear to see society as complex, worthy of a lifetime of study. All sorts of elements come into play: religion, gender, how the father did or did not make a living, matriarchies vs patriarchies, tribal customs (e.g. The Sopranos versus, say, Jane Austin, Bertie vs Jeeves). Economic class may be a factor, but surely only one. Fair enough?
No doubt it was his upbringing on the steppes of Wyoming, and the rugged pioneer social interactions that came with that, that caused Dick Cheney to hold a meeting of petroleum company executives, in secret, to thrash out an energy policy in 2001. They weren’t interested in promoting the interests of the people who owned the property–the rights to drill, the refineries, the tankers. No, no. They were trying to promote the interests of people living in cities, like those on the Front Range, that were literally built around the gasoline-powered automobile. Gotta get customers with more $$$ in their pockets so they can afford the same country club dues as we can while at the same time buying bigger SUVs that burn more gas! See how we all win if we just get together and sing Kumbaya over martinis?
Then there is the uplifting story of the 19th century RR barons…err, philanthropists … who wondered day and night: however can we bring to fruition the dreams of European peasants to own their own little plot of land? And then, Revelation! Why, let’s get the government to give us vast tract of land that we can sell at low prices. Immigrants will have their dreams fulfilled, they will grow wheat or raise cattle that we can ship back to market…win/win…and the up and coming workers in the stockyards of Chicago, or the steelyards of Bethlehem, soon to be rich enough to buy steak and drive Model-Ts, well, they’ll be winners too! My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of mutual affluence, of thee I sing.
[Note: The idea that niggers should be kept down and working class whites kept fixated on keeping their relative economic class superiority to someone at least, as a means of distracting their attention from their common good…that’s all just a buncha Commie Marxist rhetoric bullshit and NOT HELPFUL.]
So, one wonders how it has come to pass in the recent decade or two that the top 1% of Americans (measured by income–probably a bunch of assembly line workers, farm workers, etc., maybe the odd executive with stock options up his kazoo) have come to absorb an ever-increasing share of the total GNP. By a good measure. Surely they want everyone else to be getting rich, rich, rich so they can buy more, more, more rather than go go go into hock, hock, hock to stay even.
Of course, your argument is easier, Steve, if you restate mine to say “everything is simple” (you’re too polite to say “simplistic,” and I appreciate your observing good form.) Good guys and bad guys, black and white, revolution and reaction. This guy JO must be some doddering old-timer from the ’30s at the latest, fresh off the ship from his Cruise to the Utopia of Soviet Russia, immune to sensory inputs, stumbling down the hallway in a Marxist-dominated economics department in North Korea somewhere. Can’t see from the evidence in front his his nose how well this other system…the “let’s reason together like good sociologists” system … is working in real life, circa 2009.
And all this sparked by an innocent, caffeinated post about a newspaper story reporting that DoD types worry about malware buried in computer chips now hooked up to the Internet as are power generating plants, about evidence of cyber probes traceable to servers in China– a story which in turn led me to wonder (no, not innocently; in full paranoid, simplistic, don’t-know-nothin’-’bout-no-9-old-fogies naivete) whether such fears, once printed on Page 1 of some obscure Eastern Newspaper, might not be used to justify restrictions and monitoring that had nothing to do with “cyberwar” but everything to do with “law and order” as defined by…well, to name one name…Dick Cheney. Naah, couldn’t happen. The Good People at NSA want us, all of us, to be better informed, to share our alternative ideas about organizing the government, or reorganizing the government (limit the powers of the Senate to delaying implementation of bills for 120 days, a la House of Lords?), or for that matter, seizing surplus food from a warehouse and distributing it to children and adults who are hungry. (See, there he goes again, that simpleton! Doesn’t he know that food distribution chains include and involve, albeit not exclusively but inclusively, end-game convolutions of in-and-out up-and-down inter-related dynamic chains of value assessment???)
Of course, none of this works! Isn’t useful. We know this from the experiences of Russia and China, two countries just crying out for classic Marxist class revolution in 1917 and 1949 respectively, to say nothing of North Korea, Vietnam…
Northern Europe, of course, well, they don’t believe in any of this class warfare stuff. They just call themselves socialists. They’re just like us…no class warfare, no conflict over the share of the pie, expanding or not.
And, as a good rhetorician, let’s throw in a few other canards–e,g, “obsession with class warfare.” Hell, that guy JO probably can’t see a blooming tulip without thinking: There it is, one lip vs the other lip, the capitalist lip trying to oppress the proletarian lip.
The planet rotates…errr, the moon rises? no, the earth sets… how did that go again Steve?), we sit on our perch overlooking history, not able to absorb the least subtleties, appreciate the least complexities, seeking simplistic solutions through the exercise of paranoia until our eyelids droop….
Have we won this year’s Longest Continuous Stream of Unadulterated Bullshit Cup yet? No? Okay, I’ll be back to post another 10,000 words just as soon as I pry the cork outta this here bottle of the Good Stuff ($1.98/litre, incl. bottle deposit)
You interpret what isn’t venom as a “purring adoring tone.” Frankly, I have no strong feelings about Henry Ford one way or the other. I don’t perceive social analysis as a vehicle of judgment, but rather as a vehicle of comprehension. That, in the end, is the fundamental difference between our approaches.
got to where they are by means of Keynesian economics, not class warfare. They, in fact, are a great example of how an analytical approach to the challenges and opportunities posed by our social systemic frameworks is better addressed by the application of analysis to the refinement of existing institutions than by the rhetoric of warfare.
1) “great to hear the name Harry Ford in a purring, adoring tone.” already addressed. I used Ford as a specific counterfactual refutation of your unqualified assertion that capitalists are motivated to keep wages low, period. His four-fold wage increase over the going market rate was an example of that not being the case. That was the only thing I said about Ford. Nothing else. The rest (about my orientation) is your own embellishment, fed by your own assumptions, devoid of any information on which to base it, and, as a result, pretty far off-base.
2) “Of course! They wanted Mexican workers to be able to afford vacuum cleaners!” This would be a reasonable response to the assertion that “capitalists” never want to suppress wages. I explicitly stated that they have two competing and contradictory interests: One, they want to suppress the wages of their workers, and two, they want to enrich the consumers so that they can buy their merchandise. An example of suppressing wages is not an argument against my assertion.
3) I have no idea what your paragraph about your perception of sociologists was supposed to mean or convey. I, personally, have little respect for the vast majority of sociologists, which ranges from a highly politicized and ideologically polluted academic discipline to a number-crunching exercise in academic noise. Only on the fringes, overlapping with other social scientists (and particularly economists), are there sociologists who make contributions to human understanding that I consider highly valuable.
4) “Then there is the uplifting story of the 19th century RR barons…err, philanthropists” Nothing I’ve ever posted, and nothing I believe, views the 19th century robber barons, or their modern counterparts, as either altruistic or worthy of praise. Another random assumption on your part, based on the belief that (favored by the right as well as the left) that anyone who looks past conflict must be in cahoots with the enemy (“You’re against invading Iraq? You’re in cahoots with Al Qaeda!” “You’re infavor of protecting he rights of criminal suspects? You’re in cahoots with murderers and rapists!” “You’re in favor of a social analysis that is not framed as a war against the ruling class? You must think they are a bunch of altruists!” Same old story).
I could go on, but you get the idea.
from the Denver Post
Guys, there’s no way Bennet is better off from your doing this, regardless of what was on the tape. There’s no way Bennet is better off regardless of what Milner did. Stupid move.
There is a great deal of he said she said going on here. If Milner is right he’s owed an apology, but if Cerbo is right and the guy came in looking for trouble, instigating the situation? That’s very different.
We’ll let the cops sort it out.
Please note the use of a hotbutton word “organizers”. The people in attendance were working woman and men, many with their children. There were union and non-union people, all attending a townhall meeting with one of our Colorado Senators.
The use of the word “organizers” is meant not as a description, but as a way of framing a message knowing full well it would be used over and over again by those opposed to people working for a living.
Sen. Bennet was given a good welcome and applause for what he has done so far as an appointed senator. The townhall meeting covered the issues working men and women face everyday of their lives. Jobs, healthcare and jobloss.
I was there and may have a picture of the tracker Wadams sent to create a problem.
who were really staffers? Didn’t they take those people out behind the event doors and giv’em the old 1-2 Chenney. Clearly the union members who confronted this “interloper” should be treated in a similar fashion.
I’m sure the ACLU will be demanding that John Sweeney be put to discovery and made to testify.
They loved little Matty so much they didn’t want him to leave, while the Denver 3 just got the boot.
http://completecolorado.com/AU…
It’s amazing it’s come to this in Colorado. This is the very type of intimidation of union rank-and-file that could be possible if card check passes.
It would be a positive developement to have a Sec. HHS in place about now.
As we speak, the U.S. Senate is debating the Kansas Governor’s confirmation on the floor.
The process was slowed to less than a crawl, the problem, according to the republicans in the Senate is Governor Sebelius’ pro choice views.
The Administration is utilizing the DHS right now to deal with the possibility of a pandemic, and is probably making the right moves. But the republican tactics of obstruction and delay should end now.
Governor Sebilius should be confirmed today.
No, she doesn’t have swine flu (I hope), but it’s interesting to note that Susan Collins campaigned successfully in the Senate to eliminate funding from the stimulus meant to monitor pandemics. Seemed innocuous at the moment–Miss Budget-Cutter On the Job!–less so now. Which brings me back to Markey’s “strongly principled” or “politically devious” decision (your choice) to vote against Obama’s budget…a subject I have trouble dropping, it seems. Gotta wonder about the wisdom of freshmen striking out on their own, blazing a new path to win Miss Independent-Minded Congresswoman of 2009 plastic cup award. Could Susan Collins have been a model? Oops, never mind.
Bobbie isn’t-monitoring-volcanoes-ridiculous-frivolous-spending Jindal. Those silly Dems with their silly science!
Many people who are along your lines politically were giving her a pass.
Looking back, the President probably should have gone the reconcilliation rout to get the Stim passed
Getting Collins on board cost 875 million to fight pandemics.
I saw quite a lot of back and forth on pols yesterday from a lot of bloggers from the other side of the aisle about the Penry McInnis thing.
Hey, maybe pols is getting some sort of balance back. Or maybe we just saw some sort of intra party kerfuffle. Who knows.
Sen. Arlen Specter is becoming a Democrat. No, this is not an April Fools joke.
Did he make up the so-called Ritter polling, or is Ritter getting in-kind help illegally and not reporting it?
He posted over in the Specter switcher story, so he’s most definitely not “absent”. Not that he needs your leave to take a break anyway…
They won a really close game last night. A mere 58 points separated them from the Hornets.
Forget about getting out of the first round now. How about an NBA Finals run?
What a whupping, and away too ! Wed night should clinch it. Its’ getting damn interesting.
Did the Hornets send in their stunt double team? You know, the one that plays against the Harlem Globetrotters all the time?
will undoubtedly be trying out for the Washington Generals in the off-season.
about Arlen Specter are way over the top. You just don’t mention someones mama that way, especially in public. Flipping the bird ? You back Toomey over Specter, who has earned his senate seat and served for decades, then you just expect Specter to take it ? Then you get the vapors when Specter kicks you back. It just dosen’t look credible.
Good riddance ?
I think riddance may be visiting Mr. Steele sooner than Sen Specter.
First, he managed to lose Jimmy “Disco” Tedisco’s Congressional race in NY-20 (a district where the GOP had 70,000 vote edge over the Dems). And now he’s chased Specter our way.
My prediction: Steele’s gone by the end of summer. Here’s hoping Dick Wadhams is Steele’s replacement.
Jared shoots some well done video in Iraq for CNN – http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/20…
I learned absolutely nothing new whatsoever about the region’s geopolitics by watching it. But it was a nice enough Reality TV show about our freshman congressman, I guess.
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Aren’t we at war with Oceana or Afghanistan now ?
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