You Never Send Flowers Any More

Several auto industry ideas that are dead before I post them:

1) Solidarity ratio. Bob Nardelli, the poster boy for the cancer stage of capitalism, can get paid as much as he wants as long as its not more than 20 times what the lowest paid Chrysler employee gets paid.

2) Focused federal healthcare. Right now, today, everyone with UAW retirement benefits is on medicare. Admittedly, with the hope that this is a slippery sloper toward single payer universal coverage.

3) Trust busting. Too big to fail means to big to exist. Remember if the Standard Oil Trust had been named The Standard Oil Corporation we would have anti-corporation laws today.

4) Allow foreign ownership. Honda, meet GM. Toyota, meet Ford. let nature take it's course.

5) end petroleum collusion, Exxon could buy ford with approx. 85 hours worth of PROFIT

6)

Another adventure in wordsmithery gone awry.

I've reference many times my historic affair with Derrida. In this

What is always forgotten in what has become the binary debate in american punditized economics between Marx and Smith is the breadth of the discourses. What is always landed on is the prescriptive elements of thier treaties, and what is always and necessarily overlooked is the analytical chapters which establish the assumptive truths from which the prescriptive notions originate.

The analytica chapters are necessarily overlooked because an intellectually honest appraisal of these components of the Marx v. Smith debate requires that we award Marx with the insight into the mechanism of capitalism and Smith be relegated to the ranks of foolish dogmatics, stuck in unfounded ideological merrygo rounds or con artists hocking snake oil to willing rubes and usefull idiots.

What is it boy????

When I was in architecture school, there was a point in many conversations concerning design, art and the practice of cultural production when the name Jacque Derrida could be used as a punctuation mark. Within that particular paradigmatic sliver of architectural theory that we were trained in, the very specific method of deconstructionist thought encompassed When William talks about lowering spending as a policy, dog ears perk.

I have to start writing in better shorthand. I love the turn of phrase in this, but every once in a while I should try to finish a thought.

The Golden Age of Libertainianism

"I'm from the libertarian wing of the party." William Weld on Morning Joe 11/25/2008

Ask any conservative dousche why they're still a republican and you're going to get a response like this. William is not necessarily a dousche but the stock response does remind us that republicanism was never, ever about conservativism, it has always been about coalition building in the service of consolidation of power. I'd never even heard of William Weld before this morning, but he's struck a nerve so I'm going to work out my frustration with some very silly mythologies through him.

I'll get back to this. But let me say as a jumping off point, as disappointed as I am that there seem to be no liberals in Obama's cabinet so far there are economists are specialists. This is a step up from the Republican theocracy that we've lived with for the last eight years.

Here's a list of some liberal positions we will not see with Obama:

1) minimum wage=living wage. 

2) single payer universal healthcare.

3) immediate withdrawl from Iraq.

4) policies that promote unions. By the way, number 1 on this list makes number 4 at lot easier.

5) much more restrictive federal regulations on commodities trading, which would remove the spectre of speculation from the foundational markets of the economy.

6) elimination of tax exempt status for churches [some of you know I'd probably loose my job if this happened]

7) war crimes investigations concerning the invasion of Iraq, Gitmo and related "terrorist detention facilitites" around the world.

8) two state solution at the '67 borders

9) end of corporate personhood, revolving around the revisitation of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific.

10) the end of non-salaried executive compensation systems.

You will see none of these 10 things in the next 4 years.

One more thing....

...if a majority of Californians decided former Speakers of the US House of Representatives with Irish surnames should not be allowed to be married in California, would Newt Gingrinch support this?

Couple More things

First, I had this idea about the difference between conservatives and liberals. Republicans are willing to give up democracy to save capitalism, liberals are willing to give up capitalism to save democracy. This is clearly over simplified, and the profound confusion Republicans seem to show on what both capitalism and democracy are, are enough the refute the proposal.


Also, a fantastic history of the current financial meltdown can be found here:
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/20081108_financial_meltdown_101/

Round Up...

I've been busy with the painting but let's just get into the record some ideas I've had.

With the passage of Prop 8 in California do gays still have to pay taxes and do they get a full vote in elections? Are they counted as 3/5ths in the census?

Joe Lieberman should not loose his chairmanship because of the election, he should loose his chairmanship because he sucks. Because the committee he chairs should have investigated Katrina, it didn't. It should have investigated Blackwater, he wouldn't. It should have investigated why FEMA responded to the flooding in Iowa but not formaldehyde filled trailers in Mississippi, it won't. This reminds me of one of my biggest problems with the American voter. We assume campaigning and governing are the same. The faults of Jomentum in the presidential campaign make him a bad chairman of the HS committee when in fact he's a bad chairman because he's a bad chairman. On this subject, wtf is Evan Bye doing on tv, ever? Until there's a Senate Committee on mediocrity and meaningless platitudes, could we just pretend he's not there?

There's more, I lost my train of thought.

URGET OBAMA NEWS!!!!

This video has revealed some shocking revelations about the president elect. Discussion below

Free Counter

No Real Thought Behind This...

So what do we do now?

Let's have a look at our checklist:

1) Elect a non-retard...check.

2) Elect a fillibuster proof majority in the senate...yeah, nice work kentucky (assholes)

Anyhoo, what else...

Repeal the REAGAN tax cuts and return to a 50% top marginal tax on earned income above $1 mil.

Offer medicare to anyone who wants it

Pass card-check unionization

Make the minimum wage a living wage for anyone filing as head of household

Reinstate the entirety of the post-depression banking and commodity regulation regime, reinstate Glass-Stiegel, repeal commodities futures modernization, make it legal to kick Phil Grahm in the nuts at will

Cut defense spending in half and make every public school a golden palace....

okay he's talking now.

On Second Thought...

...fuck it. He won. Let's just celebrate all that's good in that.

The Republican Brand

"...uh, Ted, I think what we're seeing here is a wholesale rebuttal of the Republican brand."

A lot of you know I consider myself expert in the field of the sociology of the brand. So take it from me, it's not the brand that people are voting against this time, it's the republican product.

In short Republican ideology sucks. It cannot suceed. More on that in another post, but this election may be one of the very few elections in my lifetime where people are not rejecting a brand. They are rejecting the very clear, very identifiable policy prefeences of one of the two available american parties.

We should talk sometime about the specific meaning and psychology of the phenomenon of the brand...And tattoos. We should talk more about tattoos.

I Hven't been posting...

...lately because I've been working on some more indepth posts. I've decided to just start talking about the election night coverage to fill in some of the gaps.

The Problem with Republicans, Chapter 2

David Plotz, Matt Miller, Madeline Albright, Robert Rueben, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Even Bye.

The Problem with Republicans

Nancy Pelosi: Lord of the Underwold

is democrats.

I think we need to have a talk.

...and I've been putting it off for a long time because, well, I just didn't know how you were going to take it. I don't like to make waves, rock the boat, whatever, but we just can't go on like this.

Being a Republican makes you a bad person. I'm sorry it's come to this but I just don't know what else to say or how else to say it. I have serious concerns about your ability to empathize, your understanding of the fundamental institutions of our political system and your pathalogical maintenence of superstitious ritual and supernatural mythologies. The ease with which you encourage amoral familism, historical amnesia and the constant redefinition of Republicanism in support of your profoundly egocentric worldview is trending rapidly toward a sociopathy that would require any alien anthropologist to conclude there are no standards by which you could be judged "a good person".

Now, let me throw you a bit of a lifeline. Being conservative does not make you a bad person. Being conservative may mean that you're wrong. Being conservative may mean that your personality developed in an environment which promoted a belief system which, though no fault of your own, encouraged suspicion of the civic, a deep soulful fear of things you don't understand, and a type of absolute confidence in your constructions which disallow the introduction of information which contradicts your suspicions, fears and confidences.

A whole other flavor of conservative believes in something called "free market capitalism". They believe in this concept so fully that they will conspire with other citizens who may or may not share their belief in order to create a coalition to with the triumph of the will to maintain the disemination of the construct.

You and I know Republicanism is not a uniform belief system. It isn't even necessarily the conservative party in America. I know, I know, the democrats aren't really the liberal party, but look this isn't about them, this is about you. The Republican party is only a collection of people who are not liberal. It is a negative project by defining itself not by the sundry hypocracies that stand in as campaign promises but as the anti-Democratic party.

This collection of anti-democrats end up being America's greedy and America's ignorant. The ignorant, would they give thier environment a second thought would realize the fantastic screw job they've been getting since at least LBJ gave them a choice between their own economic interest and really rolling up their sleves and letting thier fear of brown people set the agenda for a generation of crackers. The greedy would gladly sodomize their own grandmother if they thought it would eliminate the capital gains tax.

These identities, the fear of the ignorant and the avarice of the greedy are intrinsically tied. The greedy capitalize (as they're want to do in all occasions) on the irrational particulars of the ignorant at every turn. In short, the Republican party cannot exist if the ignorant do not believe the greedy are the leaders of their campaign to spread reductive puritanism and identify new targets for the externalization of thier personal shortcomings.

The greedy know this. They know unemployment isn't related to illegal immigrants or welfare, or any other bullshit idea. But the greedy have to maintain all myths that maintain and grow the coalition.

Let's end with this for today, and I want you to think about it after you go home. Your friends and loved ones care about you and want you to evaluate your life. We want you to stop what you're doing and come to your senses.

Please

The archetypal postmodernism of Mrs. Palin

The White Horse of the Appocolypes (maybe Red), William Kristol


[Note: cross posting today at www.projectivecaste.blogspot.com]

This week the prevailing framing from Democratic media outlets is that National Review founder and grand wizard of douschbaggery William Kristol is responsible for the nationalizing of Sarah Palin. It seems facile in the least to suggest one dillhole, no matter how mightely he might suck, could be responsible for pandemic platitudes, but let's continue under the assumption that he could. Further, lets allow that there is ample evidence to substantiate the claim that the beacon of the retardation can represent to a constituency their tribal ideal.

There have been numberous left leaning writers from Scott Horton to Andrew Sullivan are suggesting that the talented Mr. Kristol culled the G.I.L.F. not in spite of her empty suitness, but specifically for her vacuity.If her uncharacteristic character were cardianal among her endowments Bill Kristol's douschbaggery is tendind toward absolute truth. However, beyond the obscene anti-republican power to control such decisions the effect of political burlesque in this style represents either mastery of postmodernity with the cool menthol taste of deconstructionism or a rorschoch test which I'm sorry to say is going to lead to many more sessions, maybe bringing in some other members of the family, but let's do a couple more sessions one on one and see how it goes.

Peter Eisenman, Bill Kristol and Jacques Derrida. What do these characters from history have in common? They are all masters of the semantic school of the deconstructivist wing of the postmodernist party. (I think I've used that "wing of the party" gesture before...damn you Howard Dean and your lyrical word smithing)

The post Derrida-Eisenman break up to me signals the begining of the end of proper pomo, but in a way is the deconstruction of deconstruction. Somol-ien cool moves into or crafts the intellectual vacuum left by the collapse of criticality cum disciplinarity, and injects a theory of the thing dripping with faux zeitgeist optics and yearning for a criticcality of the uncritical. All this as a lyrical pathway toward expressing that postmodernism was shown to be a characture of itself, cliche and dogma dependant, stagnant and referential not of a historically crafted embeded system of knowledge but of a means of practice and a mode of product.

Damnit. I have to start writing these things earlier in the day. I've been absolutely wasting precious blogging time with this working that's been going around.

Cliff's Notes: She has substance and meaning and she is a symbol of her meaning. The meaning, sign and symbol are the same. there is no collapse of the meanings and valent representations, they develop in space coincidentally. The sign must then be emptied of it's meaning, the sign refilled with new meaning, and the sign becomes signifier of new meaning.

Anyhoo, the homework for if I decide to comeback to this: Notes Around Conceptual Architecture, The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture, Notes Around the Doppler Effect, Christy Canyon Unleashed (the Anabolic one not the Vivid Video release), Simulations (Buadrillard), The Myth of the Red and the Brown

Screw Flanders

P.O.W. Presidents and Detainee Prime Ministers

We've all seen the videos by now. When confronted by questions he cannot answer, positions he cannot defend or the unfortunately unpopular privilege of his biography John McCain has and will always present as proof of his indisputable membership in club every-man his time as a P.O.W. in Viet Nam. As surely as the seasons will turn, the Buckeyes won't live up to their hype, and Democratic leadership will always shy from a fight, the genuinely tragic reality of his time in Viet Nam will always be presented as and reported as unequivocal proof that his motivations are beyond reproach and more importantly that follow up questions would be in poor taste. 

Two recent examples of the technique. When the editorial board of the Des Moines Register noted that John McCain had lived his entire life with federally funded healthcare and then asked if that disqualified him from understanding the difficulties of the private health insurance system he replied by not really answering the question and then noting that he had no health insurance while he was a p.o.w. When he could not remember how many houses he and Mrs. McCain owned his campaign reminded us that he only lived in one house for five and a half years.

Constant reference to this chapter of McCain's life is not a reflexive response to uncontrollable environmental stimulus, nor is it the punctuation mark on a well crafted argument. It represents a calculated tactic intended to create a shield of credibility. The intent is to establish a direct causal link between his experience as a prisoner of war and his motivations and his policy catalog. That is, because he was a P.O.W. he must be working in America's best interests, and because  American exceptionalism is the foundation of republican tribalism, being a P.O.W. will make him a good president.

All this is a lengthy bit if history to establish the appropriateness of the following question:

Which of the prisoners in Guantanamo who have been or will be release without charge does John McCain feel is most qualified to be Prime Minister of their country of origin?

Joe Fucking Scarborough

"...if this election was about experience Barack Obama would lose." This is really the alpha and omega for not just Joe, who is basically a douschbag trying to sound reasonable, and in some ways the tripping point for contemporary Republicanism.

It starts with their belief that we electe leaders. I've never voted for a leader. Most people I know have never voted for a leader. I have on several occasions voted for a representative.

Now, it's always difficult to craft a logical aegis in defense of liberalism when combating republicanism because there is a unified political front, but no unified theoretical front. That is, as I've said many times before, republicanism is a coalition of disparate constituencies who do not agree in any way except that they are not Liberal.Its a perverted form of tribalism.

I digest, The phraseology, the Joe Scarborough debaters are searching for is "we don't vote for leaders with experience, we vote for representatives with judgement."

If you are coming from a point where you must have a leader. Where your starting point is cowardace and tribalism then leaders are necessary. When your starting point is faith in system, then representation within the system is adequate.

At Least 3 Moves Ahead...

Perhaps too often analysis of Republican strategizing devolve to bitch sessions over Rovian tactics. I think we frequently err in our application of the fallback "oh, how Rovian" label to seemingly dirty politicing and, I believe this for two irreconcilable reasons.

1) Bad poker players
2) Meta Rovian politicing of scale in time and space.

to be continued...

I'll tell you what's really scary

Today at 2:39 PM Central Time, there is a 43% chance that starting January 20, 2009 Phil Graham will be the sole individual charged with disbursing funds to stem the financial crisis.

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.