can't be fixed

I usually use as a statement within any connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition (read as part of an argument) that contemporary repubilcanism, is not so much the conservative of the two evolved American political parties, but rather a coalition of triabalist cliques who self-identify as us, identify other republican cliques as near-us, and democrats as them.

The contemporary Republican coalition is demonstrably unconservative. This is irrelevant. The point of republicanism is increasing the access of the republican political class to federal funds.

The result of this tribalism, is policy indifferent, and focuses on us maintenance, focusing solely on the continuity of the tribe.

Typically, the tribe has policy specific origins, but the focus of the efforts has shifted among the atribal, amoral political class to maintenance of the coalition.

Let's say the coalition has 5 main parts. We could define the tribes within the Republican coalition

enough for now.

Last Night...

Hillary Clinton officially lost the presidential race...for Barack Obama.

When I wrote many months ago, that the loss of John Edwards was the line in the sand that we could someday point to as the moment John McCain became president I maintain that I was correct, but not for the right reasons.

Modest Proposals

Let's take the capital currently controlled by the wealthiest 1% of the United States citizenry and distribute that capital equally among the remnant populace. This is not revolution, this is freeing trapped value from an underperforming asset.

Scalia on Torture.

The quote from Scalia:
"Well, a lot of people think it is, but I find that extraordinary to begin with. To begin with, the constitution refers to cruel and unusual punishment, it is referring to punishment on indefinitely — would certainly be cruel and unusual punishment for a crime. But a court can do that when a witness refuses to answer or commit them to jail until you will answer the question — without any time limit on it, as a means of coercing the witness to answer, as the witness should. And I suppose it’s the same thing about “so-called” torture."

This all from an interview with the BBC on Februar 12, 2008.

So again the conservative movement engages semantic gymanstics such that the conclusion they started with allows them to artfully craft the argument. He makes actually an interesting point. That the torture as we assume it has been inflicted is not retributive, it is profolactic. That is, the torture is intent on discovery of evidence or prevention of crime which may at this time be only conspired. Except that:

1) the fifth amendment :provides that an accused person may not be compelled to testify against themself.

2)The geneva conventions explicitly prohibit the use of torture

3) The precedent at law in the United States establishes that waterboarding is torture and a war crime, as the United States has prosicuted German and Japanese soldiers for this act.


This is not contradictory amid a theoretical conservative construct because:

1) the world changed on 9/11

2) american exceptionalism posits that all American actions are defacto good acts.

Battle For the Soul of Capitalism

I've been reading Bogle's book over the last week, and I've come to a conclusion ithat he writes around but doesn't actually hit on. That's that the real commodity in our economy is stock. The definition of stock as a representation of a piece of ownership in a corporation has changed, and that the ownership of stock, and the trading of stock is an economy unto itself. Not in the way that stock is traded on the expectation that partial ownership of a corporation engaged in a particular set of industrious actions will increase the price of the stock in the future, rather, there is a "deep branding" effect, where a perception of a fictional other's place in the market of stock trading effects the willingness of a stock owner to purchase at a given price. Deep branding in this case being something I've just made up which suggests a brand unawareness so embedded in any micro-culture that it becomes a pseudo fact.

All this is said in addition to Bogle's commentary on managers capital and municipal complacency.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

"Bush doesn't know anything; he doesn't want to know anything...but he's not stupid"--William J. Clinton (citations in the ether)

This is consistently the meme that has developed among the political elite in this country, and in a triumph of trickle down theory, which has permiated into the ranks of truck stop dialogue. So we must ask ourselves: what is stupid?

Stupidity defined might most easily slip into a clinical description of intellegence quotient and or IQ extablishment testing methodologies. Let us accept first that an expeditionary stupid hunt with origins in this arena leaves the nacent Bushologist stepping away from the intended proposition vis a vie "stupid is defined as..." and turning instead to plant a flag some where on a positivist, anti-positivist, postpositivist type spectrum. I propose that this clinical technique identifies more clearly the Bushologists biases and inevitably diverts focus from the task at hand,namely, how can the Bushological community claim and apply the term stupid.

In this forum we propose that the most apt strategy is comparison in binary oppositions, on the one hand fictional character Forrest Gump and on the other fictional POTUS George W. Bush.

Paper to follow

WHAT AN EMBARASSMENT OF RICHES

The Democratic party is in a position where a woman or a minority will be the titular head of the party. What a gift.

Imagine if either of them were democrats.