The moment I heard of this story, I thought of how different the Establishment media’s reaction would have been if it had been some group which did not have their sympathy.
Instead of the story running once and then getting buried by the regular stream of stories covering new events, the story would have been rehashed endlessly by talking heads pontificating on how violent and depraved the rebels are, how the established government in Libya is the only thing standing between the status quo and absolute anarchy, and how anyone in the USA who backs them is a naïve leftist who is ignoring reality. We’d be hearing about it for weeks.
None of this is to say that it is wrong to support the rebels (Qaddafi is a totalitarian dictator, and removing dictators is often not a clean and easy process), only that there is no such thing as an unbiased media, and you should remember that the next time they start bloviating about the violence and depravity of some rebel group that the US ruling elite does not find personally convenient or welcome.
Consider this to be Exhibit A in the case to prove that.
Really, now, the Republicans, like the Democrats, are a tool of the elite, and the elite do not want a bigger, badder recession, either. Recessions are bad for business, after all. The ruling elite would much rather have the bigger profits of a recovery than the smaller ones of a continued recession.
It’s far more logical to simply presume that Republicans, like pretty much everyone else, generally believe their own ideology. It’s a dishonestly stated ideology in this case: they are big fans of military spending and spending that benefits their core constituency, like subsidies for farmers and ranchers. The spending they genuinely hate is largely the spending that might reduce the level of inequality in society, i.e. social programs.
That having been determined, I see nothing to indicate that the Republicans want to cut the budget for any reason other than to cut the kinds of spending which their own actions have amply demonstrated that they have disliked for decades.
I think it’s a mistaken belief that doing so will bring the economy out of the recession, and it’s also highly hypocritical to also be an enthusiast for other kinds of spending while professing to be against the size of government in general. However, I also do not see any real evidence to indicate that those professing the belief do not genuinely believe that cutting certain kinds of spending is inevitably beneficial.
Of course, doing so is likely to have the effect of prolonging the recession, which in turn might help the Republicans win the White House in 2012. So the GOP’s present actions might indeed help their prospects in the near future. Then again, they might not.
We’ve been here before: it’s hardly a new development that the ruling elite is generally unwilling to spend the kind of money needed to end a severe economic downturn unless it is military spending. The US economy languished in the doldrums for over a decade during the Great Depression until the Second World War provided enough spending to pull the economy out of that slump.
During that time, the voters never punished the Democrats by kicking them out of the White House. Of course, it’s not the 1930’s anymore, and things may well play out differently this time: I’m just pointing this out to show that history shows it’s not all foreordained how things are going to transpire.
Now, while I hate the system they stand for, it is obvious even to me that those who oversee it are, in general, quite smart. It’s no surprise, really: intelligence is not the same thing as morality, and any system that fails to attract the best and brightest into its service is a system that is going to have difficulty perpetuating itself. This begs the question: why would some smart people profess something so harebrained as the accusation which is the subject of this article? It’s actually quite simple:
Regarding the latter point, it does not mean the Republicans aren’t going to fire back in response to the allegation. Of course they will. It will just be something along the lines of: “Tut, tut, your side is getting so ugly and tactless in questioning our patriotism like that. It just goes to show how unfit to govern you are.” It will not be any factual debunking.
The latter would involve facts at least as inconvenient to the Establishment’s right-wing party as a factual observation on budget priorities would have been to the Establishment’s center-left one.
US News and World Report has most likely just been had.
Really, now: think for the moment. Whatever you think of nationalism or patriotism, they are very common sentiments. The US flag is thus a very common symbol in the USA. I see at least one most every day I am in the city. There are flags flying in front of nearly every government building: public schools, police and fire stations, federal buildings, courthouses, etc. There are flag decals on every transit bus (it’s also not unusual to see them on corporate fleets or private vehicles). Many people fly flags in front of their own homes on national holidays. And so on and so forth.
Heck, there’s even a tiny one in the upper-right corner of the screen on my Mac, because Apple uses flag icons to indicate which localization environment has been selected if you have multiple ones installed.
Over the course of eight months, anyone who lives in the USA will see US flags literally hundreds of times. Yet one more time is supposed to make a huge difference in one’s political views. Yeah, right.
Right now, someone is doubtlessly laughing their ass off about how they got a major magazine to fall for their fish story hook, line, and sinker.
I may have to revise thimbleberries being my favorite food after having the good fortune to have moved nearby to a few serviceberry bushes that bear good crops of fruit.
They are finally fully ripe, and are every bit as delicious as I remember another species of serviceberry being when I happened upon them in my teens on a family vacation in Colorado: a blend of apple and blueberry flavors, and almost candy-sweet.
The trick is to wait until not only are they dark purple with a bluish bloom, but to then wait another week or so until they come off the stem almost at a touch. They don’t look any more ripe, but boy do they ever taste better. They go from sweetish but not all that flavorful to absolutely delicious.
Really, given what both “sides” are already proposing (yet disagreeing over), it matters very little who prevails in the other Washington. The end result is foreordained: a double-dip recession.
That’s because they both propose massive spending cuts, which is the absolute last thing you want to do in a recession. Not that this is fundamentally a surprise or anything — history has already amply demonstrated that the US ruling elite is unwilling to engage in the sort of deficit spending needed to end a severe recession for any reason other than warfare.
I’ve always liked papadums, and I like them even more after learning how my favorite brand of them is produced by a collective devoted to women’s empowerment and not some faceless corporation.
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