He’s called for major, across-the-board cuts to federal spending, pushed back against the Great American War Machine, and punked the D.C. establishment’s love of drone attacks and secret surveillance in a kidney-busting, 13-hour filibuster that set Twitter afire like a Miley Cyrus twerkathon.OK, forget what I said about being able to talk to kids. But Gillespie and his posse think Rand can, because he's down with their values:
“The younger generation is probably the most libertarian and sort of tolerant, and has more libertarian values, I'd say, than any generation in American history," [Joe] Trippi recently told my Reason colleague Todd Krainin. Paul and others like him are engaging issues – drone strikes, drug legalization - that terrify old-line establishmentarians but energize disaffected voters that might include everyone from Glenn Beck to Occupy Wall Streeters.Glenn Beck to Occupy Wall Streeters! Consider this about Paul:
- He had to be frog-marched back from asserting that the Civil Rights Act is anti-freedom, and followed up on this outrage with a transparently self-promotional speech at Howard University.
- Not that he's totally insensitive to African-American-related issues: He has compared food stamps to slavery. (Universal health care, too!)
- He introduced in the Senate a "fetal personhood" bill to ban abortion (but, you know, reproductive rights just aren't a big libertarian issue).
- Currently Paul is shoring up his youth cred by raising an alarm about Bill Clinton's decades-old blowjob.
For libertarians, selected social issues are the come-on, but what's really important is getting rid of the safety nets to create a neo-feudal future where moochers must sweat or starve. Just because we occasionally share a platform with Paul doesn't mean we identify with what's currently called libertarianism but remains, like I've been saying all along, merely conservatism for people with status anxieties.
That would be the Joe Trippi that's known as death to Democratic presidential candidates and, lately, part of Fox News. Yep, gotta go with a winner! With any luck, he'll sign on to Aqua Buddha's traveling clusterfuck.
ReplyDelete(Saw this at nakedcapitalism)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/links-22014.html
https://twitter.com/The_Pocius/status/435568115791826945
~
First: all my love for the covert reference to Doonsbury's "fighting you priest who can talk to the young" modeled on William Sloane Coffin who once said to my mother "wait just a minute, I've got the whole schmeer here." Truly an episcopalian one could do buisiness with.
ReplyDeletebut what's really important is getting rid of the safety nets to create a neo-feudal future where moochers must sweat or starve.
ReplyDeleteThat's not neo-feudalism. Feudalism requires serfs.** The road to serfdom is only possible with social democracy.*** Right-schmibertarians hate social democracy. Therefore, right-schmibertarians can't be neo-feudalists. QED. Trust me on this; after all, I'm the Baronet of Hoagie.
A case could be made that they're more like neo-latifundists. Think middle- to late-republic Rome rather than medieval England. A putatively electoral government actually controlled by an unelected class of wealthy property-owners who prey on the ordinary citizenry in order to further enrich their own already vast holdings? Sounds vaguely familiar. (It has the added virtue of allowing us to start referring to Biggus Kochus.)
**Depending on the particular definition, this is not necessarily true, but at worst I'm oversimplifying via ahistorical bullshit, so it's still authentically schmibertarian.
***Nay, inevitable, according to Hayek the pro-Pinochet fuckstick who was totally wrong about this, too.
" He has compared food stamps to slavery. (Universal health care, too!)"
ReplyDeleteAh, thanks for the memory jog on Rand Paul's wonderful riff on why having your fee paid by the gummint instead of an insurance company is EXACTLY THE SAME as being conscripted into slavery. In his own words:
“ 'With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to healthcare, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me,” Paul said recently in a Senate subcommittee hearing.
“It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re
going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the
person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the
nurses,” Paul said, adding that there is “an implied use of force.”
“If I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a
right to healthcare, you have a right to beat down my door with the
police, escort me away and force me to take care of you? That’s
ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be,” Paul said.
No, Charlie Pierce is right. The 5 minute rule* is going to ensure that this guy has already Peter Principled himself as far as he's going to go.
*i.e. that both Pauls seem to make sense for about 5 minutes then rapidly devolve into insane argle bargling.
Its like how Zombies help them discover why a strong police force might be necessary.
ReplyDeleteCan’t wait to hear Nick Gillespie’s jokes about Monica Lewinksy and how much airline food sucks.
ReplyDeleteTruly he is the voice of the youths.
I think there's a bit of a tabula rasa thing going on with the Pauls. Between them, they have enough "outsider" positions that its easy for passionate people to latch on to what they like and ignore or downplay the rest. It's the ol' "He'll do the things we like, but Congress will stop him from doing the things we don't like" gambit.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny that Gillespie harps on Rand Paul so much, given that he's hardly the darling of "the younger generation." This is a strange thing to say, but the Pauls have become sort of a cliche - supporting them is associated with immaturity and inexperience. That's especially true among libertarians, be they anarchists, neo-feudalists, or anywhere in between. Mention either of the Pauls around these guys, and they get upset by the fact that you would attribute such naivete to them. Yeah, the Paul brand was hot fire six years ago, but six years is a lot of time in the political sphere.
ReplyDeletePaul's Clinton material is as fresh and interesting as Leno's.
ReplyDeleteRON PAUL 2012!
ReplyDeleteRand Paul can appeal to young female voters by showing that video of two of his supporters stomping on that young woman in his presence. What war on women?
ReplyDeleteScott Sloan!
ReplyDeleteBill Pullman in Independence Day taught them why a President is necessary, but then Donald Sutherland in Hunger Games made them take it back.
ReplyDeleteBitcoins are effectively a Ponzi scheme aimed straight at the wallets of libertarians.
ReplyDeletethat set Twitter afire like a Miley Cyrus twerkathon.
ReplyDeleteSounds too much like he's channeling Richard Cohen. How about that set Twitter afire like Fort Sumter ? or, that set twitter afire like a vigilante mob in Georgia ?
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/22/rand_pauls_white_supremacy_double_game/
"So you tell me: Who's more likely to back Paul... ?"
ReplyDeleteFor large swathes of the country, Paul represents the most liberal faction out there, not that they would phrase it like that. Nor am I under too many illusions in that regard, but for normal people who don't read the NYT, other big, actually informative media and the liberal blogs, he is the only serious alternative to the Boehners and the McConnells who have done so much to unpopularize congress in pretty much all demographics outside of the super wealthy. I've spent a lot of time recently driving around Kentucky and surrounding states with the radio on and, other than a few inoccuous healthcare spots, I can't think of a single instance of any democrat or liberal in any way trying to communicate. No democrat or liberal is on the radio or local television making the case against universal government surveillance and extrajudicial assassination. No democrat or liberal is out there arguing against idiotic marijuana and other drug laws. No democrat or liberal is making any kind of public argument in favor of women's reproductive rights. No democrat or liberal is saying anything at all about the income gap, wealth based inequality or the many manifestations of corporate personhood, much less important issues like global warming or poverty. It's almost the case that no democrat or liberal is saying anything at all, but sometimes they do speak up to deny they have any liberal beliefs whatsoever.
So there are plenty of people out there willing to back Paul and the like when the only alternative is a bunch of stick up the ass Republicans that don't smoke dope.
Fuck that.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.carolinamercury.com/2014/02/moral-march-on-raleigh-draws-tens-of-thousands/
This is the Voice of Rurality, broadcasting in the clear -
ReplyDeleteRallies and marches are great, but as for being effective for anything more than cheering up the already convinced, that ceased sometime way back in the 20th century.
ReplyDeleteHaven't you heard. Mass media is where it's at, and for the Rand Paul demographic that's largely local radio stations outside of major urban areas, which is where the not democratic party voters tend to congregate.
Nick Gillespie and the whole band of Libertarians just being a bunch of dope smoking republicans isn't the biggest shame. It's the impression that they're smoking some really bad dope that is the shits.
ReplyDelete"Paul is shoring up"
ReplyDeleteI am taking the juxtaposition of "Paul" and "Shore" as a beautifully subtle dig at Paul's intellectual seriousness. (But now, sadly, I keep hearing "legislating with the weasel!" in Pauly Shore's voice...)
If it was unintentional, I'll just call it a happy serenderpity.
Who needs a road to serfdom when you can have a private toll road to serfdom:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-27/private-toll-road-investors-shift-revenue-risk-to-states.html
Not to mention, the "saying what their base wants to hear while doing what the corporations want" strategy.
ReplyDeleteP.S.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/08/1276010/-Biggest-Democratic-PAC-Sitting-Out-the-Mid-Terms-When-it-Should-Be-All-Hands-On-Deck-in-2014
~
“The younger generation is probably the most libertarian"
ReplyDeleteAccording to their definition, which is first and foremost "billionaires totally earned every penny they have and totally deserve all of it and more and should be given anything they want," I doubt it.
Let he amongst us who did not have to rely on bong snot in collage at some point cast the first booger.
ReplyDelete(But yeah, if anyone needs a serious course of medical marijuana treatment, it's Nick and the boys. Plus cold turkey on the wingnut welfare.)
~
"Take my wife...please!"
ReplyDeleteAnd the radio played that forgotten song
ReplyDeleteBrenda Lee's "Coming On Strong"
And the newsman sang his same song
One more radar love is gone.
but for normal people who don't read the NYT, other big, actually
ReplyDeleteinformative media and the liberal blogs, he is the only serious
alternative to the Boehners and the McConnells who have done so much to
unpopularize congress in pretty much all demographics outside of the
super wealthy.
... Seriously? Ordinary heartland folks are turning to Rand Paul as the "serious alternative"? Jeebus, I'm a legalization supporter, and even I think you're doing too many drugs.
I'll add the Pierce Rule Corollary: Each Paul makes sense for two minutes thirty seconds.
ReplyDeleteOh, I see, "normal people" aren't permitted to organize for political action in ways you don't approve of. Thanks again for teaching us elitists about populism.
ReplyDeleteMy media adviser shot a young black male in his pajamas!
ReplyDeleteHow he got into my gated community I'll never know.
ReplyDeleteI think the Pierce Rule Corollary explains why they will never get much farther on the public stage--because the longer they have to babble on the more bizarre ideas they end up throwing out there and people who were total believers for proposition A become revolted when they figure out that it goes with proposition Z.
ReplyDeleteBong snot collage - mixed media at it's finest. Chelsea show guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteActually, sounds like Pastor Swank to me.http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8336.html
ReplyDeleteYou left the road back at "Rand Paul demographic". Rand Paul has paymasters, not followers.
ReplyDeleteWhy is he the only serious alternative to Boehner and McConnell? As I recall we have a very serious alternative President right now advocating for important things. Is there some reason why people don't find him appealing? Hm...what could it be...why is the universe of people who can appeal to the imaginary voters of rurlandia somehow not just like the President. I wonder?
ReplyDeleteThis is actually true. Rand Paul does not have followers, except in very limited libertarian circles. There are always other people, the constitution party runs 'em, or the dominionists run them under their own brand.
ReplyDeleteWell, apparently if they organize in urban areas where the actual majority of VOTERS are thats an enormous mistake.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Glenn Greenwald - not yer typical Kentucky voter - landed on the same square of the game board during the run-up to the 2012 elections.
ReplyDeleteHe didn't like the Pauls - elder or younger - except for their willingness to put civil liberties and war issues on the table while the Dems stuck their fingers in their ears and went lalalalalaican'tHEARyou.
To me, this bodes well for Warren, Grayson, and other Dems (are there others?) who drag issues out from behind the Wall of Silence.
He could have grown up looking like his mother's side of the family, but no. He had to go full Kenyan.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that there are tens of millions of voting adults in this country who don't know a fallacy from a phallus. The Drs. Paul both know perfectly well that what is patent flapdoodle to educated ears is heard as irrefutable, self-evident logic by vast numbers of non-critical thinkers.
ReplyDeleteGillespie's 50. To him, "young" is 40.
ReplyDelete“If I’m a physician in your community..."
ReplyDeleteOr if I've had to invent an accreditation board so that I could play one on tv...
The Half Pierce applies to Lyndon LaRouche. He can go 1 minute and 15 seconds before the Full Crazy unfurls. But he's 91. Shouldn't be expected to compete with the Libertarian bobsled team.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what the hell you just wrote, but I enjoyed every word of it.
ReplyDeleteI remember how much Rand Paul hates drone strikes. They should absolutely be banned, unless the police think somebody might have robbed a liquor store, at which point you can start letting the 2,000 lb bombs fly!
ReplyDelete...an unelected
ReplyDeleteclass of wealthy property-owners who prey on the ordinary citizenry...
And whose votes were counted as 10 for every one of the Plebs. I've heard this idea somewhere recently...help me out here...
I have no idea what the hell you just wrote
ReplyDeleteThat's okay; that makes at least two of us.
4598 (or whatever) Clinton jokes. That's not why I never liked Leno (I never watched him, because I never liked him, so I never heard any of 'em), but it'd make a dandy reason...
ReplyDeleteSo, essentially, Nick Gillispie is the libertarian analogue of Ed Gillispie.
ReplyDeleteBoth of them seem uncannily interested in foisting morons on us.
Nick Gillespie and Rand Paul should do a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything). They would find it enlightening as to what the younger generation thinks about libertarian values.
ReplyDeleteStuck the landing:
ReplyDeletehttp://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/images/03-04_agassiz2.jpg
What's Nick running for?
ReplyDeletePolice? Police!? Shirley you mean the aviation wing of Blackwater/Xe/Academi/New West Executive Solutions or whatever the hell Erik Prince is calling his 21st century landsknecht shop these days.
ReplyDeleteOh, I wasn't thinking so much of Ed's current electoral ambitions for himself (although the statement works in that regard, too). I was thinking of his previous career arc in politics (especially as a campaign advisor to Little Boots).
ReplyDeleteenergize disaffected voters
ReplyDeleteAh, but does Rand Paul have his own Shepard Fairey poster yet?
That’s ultimately what the right to free healthcare would be
ReplyDeleteSimilar arguments prove that there is no right to life, or to possess property, or anything else.
Try the veal. It's organic.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise reasonable people have been fooling themselves in that way about Republicans for a long time. Didn't both Buzz Bissinger and Scott Adams defend their endorsements of Romney in 2012 on the grounds that he didn't really mean all the bad things he was saying?
ReplyDeleteNow I must go play the Moontan album in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteTin ear + cheapass transistor radio =
ReplyDeleteAnd the radio plays, I've forgotten the song
Brand new lid's coming on strong
And the newsman sings his theme song
One more radar lover gone!
that set Twitter afire like a Miley Cyrus twerkathon
ReplyDeleteThat doll has one classy chassis, you dig me Clyde? That's what's buzzin' cuzzin', so don't snap your cap--put an egg in your shoe and beat it!
Just watched a 2007 TV version of an old Robert Sheckley story, Watchbird. He had drones figured out in 195fucking3...
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Paul's going to engage a lot of young male voters by his crusade against twenty year old bl*wjob scandals.
ReplyDeletethat set Twitter afire
ReplyDeleteOne can only wish.
"latch onto what they like and ignore or downplay the rest"
ReplyDeleteWhat are they, Catholics?
Philip K. Dick says Harumph.
ReplyDeletehttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/30/VulcansHammer%281stEd%29.jpg
Hard to credit that to an actual adult, in the actual halls of power. And on TV, yet.
ReplyDeleteEveryone knows Gillespie, and Reason are Koch suckers, right?
ReplyDeleteI actually get it. Another good word in this regard is Ergastula.
ReplyDeleteAll joking aside isn't there a race on right now in Kentucky? Oh, why yes, there is, and guess what? There's a Republican and a Democrat running in it. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/ballot-2014/2014/02/03/grimes-and-mcconnell-locked-in-tie-in-kentucky-senate-race Why bless my soul but it looks like somebody is trying to appeal to Kentucky voters. And she's probably runnin' ads 'n ever thang.
ReplyDelete23 skidoooooo!
ReplyDeleteIts not doing him much good with the ladeez, either. I can tell ya.
ReplyDeleteDamn, I thought the menu said "orgasmic."
ReplyDeletePromises, promises.
ReplyDeleteBeen there taking pitchers. Lots of one-eyed snakes in them bushes.
ReplyDelete"Attack drones" are even described in the 1928 novella "Buck Rogers: Armageddon 2419."
ReplyDeleteActually pretty good reading. I read it as a teenager.
Now you're cooking with gas!
ReplyDeleteUnless they hold the AMA in one of those specific subreddits you mentioned, I think the larger population of reddit would likely down vote them into oblivion or harass them (using logic, real data & a healthy dose of sarcasm) into deleting their comments.
ReplyDeleteA libertarian is the guy (always a guy) taking up two seats
ReplyDeleteon the crowded bus (liberty for my space!) with a bong in one hand (legalized!), the latest issue of Cat Fucker magazine open in the other (no restrictions on my porn!), with a smug smile on his face as he imagines getting a furry kitten-mitten cock rub from the invisible hand (unfettered free markets make me cum harder!)
In other words, they’re intolerable fucking douchebags with a self-absorbed sense of worth, purpose, and importance. Just like a tempermental three year-old.
Gee, maybe they do appeal to “youth.” Pretty narrow demographic, though, since most people grow the fuck up.
I hear that Hitler kid can energize disaffected voters that might include everyone from Brownshirts to Reichorganisationsleiters. What man of the people!
ReplyDeleteOr, evangelical Biblical literalists. Same principle, different sect. For a perfect example, see this little diatribe that depends a lot more on Revelations than the Gospels.... (It also proves that MacArthur was wrong. Old soldiers do not fade away. They just go bugfuck insane.)
ReplyDeleteLeno's the temp filling in for Carson, right?
ReplyDeleteUmm, when they say, "younger generation," I think they mean nine-year-olds.
ReplyDeleteIt stands to reason...
ReplyDeleteHeh... twitties on flame with rock and roll...
ReplyDeleteLiberty- NOT FOR CHIX!!!
ReplyDeleteIn their case, more like 59 year olds.
ReplyDeleteNo democrat or liberal is on the radio or local television making the
ReplyDeletecase against universal government surveillance and extrajudicial
assassination.
You do realize that no democrat or liberal is on the radio or local television in what you call "rurality" period.
An appropriate place for someone who believed in Polygenism.
ReplyDeleteI know you're a classic case of Dunning-Kruger at work, but you do realize that mass media, particularly local radio stations outside of major urban areas, are in the hands of a couple of corporations owned by right wingers? Why the fuck do you think that even liberal Portland lost its progressive talk station for yet another sports talk channel?
ReplyDeleteYep. The leather jacket is the tell for how hip he is. To people who were youths in the 50s.
ReplyDeleteYes, and our long national nightmare is finally over.
ReplyDeleteWait, I thought Monica was older than 20.
ReplyDelete:::perk::: Steve Allen's coming back???
ReplyDeleteHarumph, Sir! I set twitter afire with baking products puns yesterday! Sir
ReplyDeletewell, DUH. How would they ever be able to live out their masturbatory fantasies if chix get a say in things?
ReplyDeleteLibertrian fanfic, a tissue of lies.
ReplyDeleteLaw Enforcement Volunteer Auxiliary now with moar guns and epaulettes.
ReplyDeleteGee Rand, you know what else has an "implied use of force"? Property.
ReplyDeleteIt pays to scroll all the way down, it does....
ReplyDeleteYeah, but he said it 7 years too late...
ReplyDeleteSince Dick's stories seem to translate to film better than a lot of other writers, maybe somebody should be looking at this one about now?
Oh, not more froofy lettuce.
ReplyDeleteIt's a kind of snail.
ReplyDeleteThat's not just lies in those tissues.
ReplyDeletePat Paulsen, but close enough.
ReplyDeletePAT PAULSEN 2012!
ReplyDeleteSo you say there's a race
ReplyDeleteOf men in the trees
You're for tough legislation, thanks for calling
You wait all night for calls like these. . .
Paul recognizes that the way forward on the national stage is not to get hung up on social issues (marriage equality, abortion, immigration)
ReplyDeleteRand Paul 2016: Ignoring the issues straight white dudes don't care about
..so spermatozoa = little libartarians? Figures.
ReplyDeleteA favorite sport in Canada is throwing rotten vegetables at physicians, who are kept in cages between surgeries.
ReplyDeletebake your powder?
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember a brief upsurge of leather jackets in the early 90s.
ReplyDeleteKeep googling.
ReplyDeleteNesting makes our jokes untimely.
ReplyDeleteOk, so he's hip to people who are now in their 40s, maybe.
ReplyDeleteSure, everyone for himself, all swimming in the same direction, most doomed to die without reproducing.
ReplyDeleteLets not argue about who impregnated who and who forced who to care the pregnancy to term.
ReplyDeleteThis is so full of win, it hurts! Please collect your internets as you leave the building!
ReplyDeleteAlso, too, we are aware of all internet traditions.
ReplyDeleteOh, so it's a Spartacus reference. I knew it had to do with ancient Rome somehow.
ReplyDeleteI know, right? ;-)
ReplyDeleteAhem ... You mean they have a vewy gweat fwiend in Wome called 'Biggus Kochus'?
ReplyDeleteThis is the Voice of Rurality
ReplyDeleteOr Rurgebiet, in the original German.
That'll put the marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!
ReplyDeleteFunny thing. In the `30s, Rurality used to sound like Woody Guthrie.
ReplyDeleteNow it sounds like every other fucking Clear Channel station.
Dick's stories seem to translate better because they don't translate at all. Filmmakers basically have to write a new story around Dick's concepts. It tends to work out because Dick had some great ideas. Also, if you're a devoted enough to stick with, parse, and mine the gems from a Dick novel, you're probably devoted enough to do some justice to the core ideas. (Not that he's a particular difficult writer, but he tends to drift away from the plot for patience-taxing stretches.)
ReplyDeleteBut if you read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, you will find a guy who's kind of dour about his job of deactivating androids, a woman named Rachael, an owl... and virtually none of the other things that made Blade Runner distinct and brilliant.
Speaking of sounding like an adult, an actual U.S. Senator said this:
ReplyDeleteFrankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices. There is hypocrisy that goes on when people claim to believe in some choices but don’t want to let the consumer decide what they can buy and put in their houses. I find it insulting. I find it insulting that a lot of these products that you’re going to make us buy and you won’t let us buy what we want to buy and you take away our choices.
Now it’s not that I’m against conservation. I’m all for energy conservation. But I wish you would come here to extol me, to cajole me, to encourage, to try to convince me to conserve energy. But you come instead with fines, threats of jail, you put people out of business who want to make products you don’t like.
This is what your energy efficiency standards are. Call it what it is. You prevent people from making things that consumers want. I find it really appalling and hypocritical and think there should be some self-examination from the administration on the idea that you favor a woman’s right to an abortion, but you don’t favor a woman or a man’s right to choose what kind of light-bulb, what kind of dishwasher, what kind of washing machine. I really find it troubling – this busy-body nature that you want to come into my house, my bathroom, my bedroom, my kitchen, my laundry room. I just really find it insulting...
For libertarians, chosen public problems are the come-on, but what's really essential is getting rid of the protection netting to make a neo-feudal upcoming where moochers must sweating or go without food. Just because we sometimes discuss a system with John doesn't mean we recognize with what's currently known as libertarianism but continues to be, like I've been saying all along, merely conservatism for individuals with position stresses.
ReplyDeleteSpybubble gratis
I can see the resemblance. They need leather jackets, though.
ReplyDeletehttp://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/ib140/spermatogenesis%20semen_files/image018.jpg
Whats with the dadaism, Will?
ReplyDeleteHe is NOT racialist, but (and this is a very big but...)...
ReplyDeleteWon't someone shake up a coke or something?!
ReplyDeleteJusy guessing that he found a micro-trend to follow in his twenties and now he's stuck there. Same with his sophomoric visions of society
ReplyDeleteOuting the clients for your ghostwriting can be a bit of a drag, but when your résumé is mostly blank, you do what you have to do to fill 'er up. Gillespie's Wikipedia entry:
ReplyDeleteHe worked for several years at Teen Machine magazine, where he interviewed celebrities and ghost-wrote an advice column for actress Alyssa Milano.
Alyssa Milano's Wikipedia entry:
Simultaneously, she wrote a weekly column called "From Alyssa, with love" for the teen magazine Teen Machine.
Same thing happened in San Francisco. Ask Al Franken about it.
ReplyDeleteI hear they're still looking for submissions at Cat Fucker. Angry cat needs a ghostwriter.
ReplyDeleteI really think Ta-Nehisi Coates nailed the Pauls back in 2012. They're the white version of Louis Farrakhan. They speak to issues -- state violence and surveillance -- that mainstream politics has failed to address. Their defenders latch onto these things and ignore their ultra-right-wing positions on reproductive rights and civil rights. They ignore their odd beliefs about gold, their history of racism. The corollary is that the political mainstream, in ignoring these substantive issues, helps to create people like the Pauls, or like Farrakhan.
ReplyDeleteDamn straight.
ReplyDeleteJan Koum's parents said "Jan... go to medical school", but would he listen?
ReplyDeleteDick's stories seem to translate better because they don't translate at all.
ReplyDeleteThank you. I remember being terrified as I sat alone in a theater to watch an Arnold movie called Total Recall. I saw the credit 'based on a short story by Philip K. Dick'. Oh shit! I was genuinely frightened - I thought maybe this time they'd get close enough for it to be truly terrifying. But I had nothing to fear. (I'd say Minority Report is the best of that breed). It's like Dune - too much what-happening-in-their-heads to translate to visual media well.
As my son noted the other day, "You'll know they got a Philip K. Dick movie right when half the audience has run screaming from the theater by the end of the first act".
As usual, Russia leads the way:
ReplyDeletehttp//www.cnn.com/2014/02/19/russia/sochi/pussy/riot/#
The idiot is apparently unaware of the toilet brand Toto, which is not available at home Despot or Lowes because they don't accept their draconian, Walmartian (but I repeat myself) rules for suppliers. A basic model costs less too, just get it from UBS.
ReplyDeleteAnd as to the light bulb thing, I heard the lobbyist for the American Lighting Association being quite upset that here his industry had made the transition and it had been expensive, and now these congressional yahoos want to undercut the investments they'd made by sticking up for wasteful incandescent bulbs.
Once again: Fire! Ready! Aim!
Favorited because funny, but in all seriousness, I'm not sure that they'll ever learn that lesson. Somehow, they'll bring it all around to blaming it on the poors mooching off the "job creator" class.
ReplyDeleteIs there a difference? Asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteYour description is ludicrous. A libertarian taking mass transit?
ReplyDeleteSo I should rethink my stance on what a woman can do with her own body because he can't figure out how to hold the handle down a little longer? Yeah, I find that insulting, too.
ReplyDeleteAnswering that would require me to pay attention to either one of them; sorry, no can do.
ReplyDeleteNow it’s not that I’m against conservation. I’m all for energy conservation by other people.
ReplyDeleteThe five minute rule seems to be, "Within five minutes, they can always find the exit ramp to Crazytown, population: them."
ReplyDeleteAnd yet again, we are treated to a discourse by someone who is still not over the shock of leaving a liberal enclave and is firmly convinced that no one else must know what it's like Out There, much less, you know, live there.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, this is what Dick thought of Blade Runner, at least from a preview of it. (he died three months before the film's release)
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, he sounds like a guy who needs a really high-powered toilet.
ReplyDeleteAdd the now defunct KTLK in Los Angeles, former home to Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, and other prog lights.
ReplyDeleteFuck, I shudder to contemplate what sort of advice he was giving teens.
ReplyDeleteHow dare you tell him what's going on in the jungle while he's chugging upriver, you savage!
ReplyDeleteWe're in Fat City now, baby!
ReplyDeleteWell, your average right-wing prick does tend to employ fallacious reasoning.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like the current political climate has been shaped by factors besides frou-frou Berkeley professors not deigning to muddy their Birkenstocks, almost
ReplyDeleteGillespie has never voted for a winning presidential candidate.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia's not usually that wry. Good luck with rEVOLution II: Electric Boogaloo!
He's just trying to get the Koch PACs to pay him to vote Democrat.
ReplyDeleteTrue fact: right below the email disqus link to your comment was a Newsmax Headline update "The One Thing Your Prostate Needs Every Morning."
ReplyDeleteHe'd have a car if only the moochers weren't stealing all his money through taxation.
ReplyDeleteGosh sakes, Haystack. We don't throw vegetables at physicians.
ReplyDeleteWe slap-shot them using hockey sticks.
"Become legally emancipated so that your dad can put you in indentured servitude."
ReplyDelete"Bong Snot Collage" is my new band name.
ReplyDelete... the rest of the time, it just sits around the house
ReplyDeleteDoes it surprise you that left wing ideas get limited airplay? If so, why?
ReplyDeletePaul said, adding that there is “an implied use of force.”
ReplyDeleteThis is a reference to libertarian ideology, specifically to the idea that taxes and other government actions include a "use of force" and so violate the "non-aggression principle", unlike the actions of private individuals or corporations. Here is genius blogger Matt Bruenig showing the inanity of this idea.
Pretty much all civilization as we know it, really.
ReplyDeleteAs an investment or a store of value, certainly. As a mechanism for making anonymous transactions or laundering money it seems pretty useful.
ReplyDeleteI feel vindicated in that I've always loved the film, and didn't know what to say to people who didn't, especially because "it wasn't like the book". They got his ideas right, and he recognized that that was the important part.
ReplyDeleteWell, that *is* the translation, I think. From paper to film is sometimes like Russian to Chinese. Concepts have to be tossed out, or invented, and it relies on the skill of the interpreter. Good stories get mangled every day in Holllllywood, then we get something like Blade Runner. Shame the popcorn-crunching public didn't agree in '82.
ReplyDeleteYears ago I'd be pissed if a movie was too different from a book I liked. These days I just figure, hell, I can go read the book again...
PLEASE! I always liked his TS the best. Also his Steve Allen Shows. Can't find any of his stuff on DVD either.
ReplyDeleteThat's an odd question in the context of Roy's post and my comment. For the sake of this reply, I'll use the term "liberal" where you used "left wing."
ReplyDeleteFirst, though free airplay isn't mostly what I was talking about, Liberal ideas have gotten a lot of airplay recently; it's jus that they are coming out of the mouth of Rand Paul. Professional liberals aren't out there expounding a lot of liberal ideas. And yes, I think if Hillary Clinton came out strongly against our all-seeing national security state and execution without trial policies, that would get quite a bit of coverage. Or if, say, Al Franken were doing a real, talking for as long as he can, filibuster like Paul did, that would get at least as much press. More if other professional liberals joined in.
But mainly I was talking about paid advertising and yes, I think the media would accept money to run ads. I mean, duh.
If your point is that Rand Paul is the closest thing to liberalism that you hear on the air in rural areas, then maybe that's true. I don't understand why you discount examples of liberals actually trying to influence rural areas, such as the examples given by Coozledad & Aimai. I agree that it is a problem if the left wing does not make inroads in rural areas, but I wonder if there are reasons, cultural or economic, that make this difficult. I also wonder if you are failing to notice left wingers that may have had some effect on rural areas.
ReplyDeleteThose are different issues than what i wrote about here. I don't discount the efforts of NGO's and people who are part of actual governments -- federal, state, county, and city, nor some churches for that matter who make great personal sacrifices in these areas. I seem to recall Aimai making some good points on that subject. I do discount the coozle guy's video in this conversation as it takes place in an urban area and that kind of thing has pretty much zero effect on those who do not go to them. But of course I'm not being critical of those who try, I'm being critical of those who don't. Explicitly, the Democratic party which has pretty much abandoned the more rural areas and large swathes of the country that include urban areas as well. And whether or not that has happened is not really up for debate. It was called the 50 state strategy and it has been abandoned. Spending patterns confirm it, as do election results.That constitutes a great wrong, imo and the consequences are horrible for many millions of people and likely to get much, much worse.
ReplyDelete