#77869 by Tony B. on 6/13 at 11:11 pm
(11 comments total)

Redundant, derivative and proselytizing.
Did you go to Oxford or Bob Jones, E.J.?
Couldn’t this space be used for something constructive?
This is why I cancelled my cable subscription.
The WASP perspective is nauseatingly clear.

Dionne is not WASP.

Otherwise, he’s correct.  How many times in my life have I heard criticism of a particular politician sidestepped by the assertion, “It’s the system.”

That evasion is an excuse to either maintain the status quo, or to remain disengaged and do nothing.

Exactly as the above niether says nor does anything _constructive_.  Because the 2000 election was stolen, we should avoid the fact that that was done by persons by instead eliminating the Electoral College.

But even then, let’s not bother learning why the Framers incorporated the Electoral College in the Constitution.  They couldn’t possibly have been correct in so doing; after all, what did they know about writing constitutions?

Let’s just throw up our hands and do nothing; it’s “the system”.  Let’s reinforce our helplessness: it’s “the system”.  Let’s continue our excuse-making by reinforcing out sense of helplessness: it’s “the system”.

Ah, but in this case it isn’t so much the “syetem” as it is the alleged WASP E. J. Dionne.

Gratuitious and false cheap shots are oh so easy.  Maturity is more difficult.

Redundant, derivative and proselytizing.
Did you go to Oxford or Bob Jones, E.J.?
Couldn’t this space be used for something constructive?
This is why I cancelled my cable subscription.
The WASP perspective is nauseatingly clear.

I love the idea about the politicians on electric collars/leashes. Matter of fact, just thinking about it makes my day.

I’m not sure I’d wanna be wired up to them though...even through the internet. It wouldn’t work with this gang anyhow. Dick Bush shut down his government e-mail address the first year.

I don’t feel it at all impossible to work the “program” though. The Constitution that is. We’ve done it before, and it won’t cost anything compared to what we give to the Corporations and the feds. I mean, this war is throwing bad money after bad money.

My guess is we could just use the original plan to run things, and save the middle man TRILLIONS to use on OURSELVES..housing, education, health care, food, jobs, that sort of stuff.

So, I know all of the Washington copies of the U.S. Constitution might have been burned, but I still have mine. We can take turns making runs to Kinkos. Maybe if everybody had their own copies, they would realize that it isn’t a bad plan when it’s utilized.

This idea that America should go back to some founder’s notion of what the country should be seems like a waste of time. Obviously it wasn’t enough to keep things from turning out the way they have.

Seems to much like throwing good money after bad to me.

There is one notion the founders had, that god was monitoring and judging everyone’s behaviour, especially the wealthy and powerful, to ensure they wouldn’t abuse their privilege. Obviously this was a fool’s dream but it was a good one

Thankfully we now have the technology of the Internet. Just hardwire the government to it and let people log on to it like it was American idol or something.

I always thought it would be neat to wire politicians up with those collars they put on dogs to keep them in line. If their ratings fall below a certain point they get an electronic correction.

It seems the only way we can Throw Them Out now, Since Bushit now owns our government as well, is to physically throw them out.

I still think a Million Man Long Rifle March sounds appropriate. Maybe that would show King George II that it is OUR Government. NOT HIS !

Our system IS the greatest in the world. It’s the current and past 45 year ass wipes that have marred and disgraced it.

To a Better Day…

HokeHey !

Throw all the bums out!  Been hearing that for 30 years.

Now that would that be a real symbolic gesture.

If EJ was presenting a case for why people need to take responsibility and transform the system then he’d have a point. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

Term limits begin at the state level.

E.J. Dionne maybe figures he’ll be among the “chosen few” making it into the “lifeboats” when this Titanic “system” sinks beneath the waves of Herstory.  He seems here to be trying to stifle the rising panic of the lower classes in hopes of keeping them in their always less fortunate place, until the privateers and their professional apologists are safely away.

This old Heathen has been visiting awhile with a GreatGrandDaughter.  Her part in what the Hopis and others call the Purification Ceremony has taken her for now to one of the big feedlot operations called “cities,” on the Sunset shores of Turtle Island.  These past few Moons have provided an up-to-date “diagnosis” of the condition our domesticated sisters’ and brothers’ condition is in.

This old medicine person can report first-hand there’s bad news and worse news.  Or, depending on the scope of one’s vision, there’s good news and there’s better news.  For example, “things” are going to seem to get one helluva lot worse, here in the civilized world, before they can begin to actually get better.  That’s because the tame two-leggeds who’ve dug their own selves and each others’ so deeply into this horrible hole are no longer able to do the obvious commensensical thing....to-wit, just stop digging.

Stopping isn’t really organically impossible.  Rather, it’s become constitutionally and institutionally (i.e. virtually) forbidden.  Which is to say, the domesticated peoples have come to believe totally that they depend utterly, for their “daily bread,” on the minimum waqes they get from their tormentors (by-way-of the reign-of-terrorists plutoligarchy) “in-exchange” for digging their own mass grave....no workee no money, no money no eatee.

So it isn’t any wonder what passes for “life” inside the contraption has truly become here in these latter days, for “saints” and “sinners” alike, a dog-eat-dog proposition.  It has been a “god"-eat-dog deal, of course, ever since the terminally-ill tormentors first reared their ugly heads (or was it vice-versa?) here.

Watching day-after-day the futile rushing hither-and-thither, only to end-up right back where it all started, with nothing to show for it but more degenerate “energy” spun-off from all the wasted vitality, is no picnic even for one who is only watching.  The toll this seemingly interminable rat-race is taking on those being ruthlessly run in it is every bit as grievous as it is all-too-plain to see.  Those paying it with their very lives, however, remain convinced they’ve no other choice.  So, to all intents and purposes, they don’t have.

Yet even in people as abused as these the instincts of free wild humanity are not entirely smothered....the good news.  The already frenetic yet still accelerating pace of all their otherwise pointless activity is evidence of their intuitive sense that the sooner they can get this “global” stress-to-destruct test over-with, the greater the chances at least a few of ‘em might live to tell the tale to their own GreatGrandChildren.  So it’s “....full-speed ahead,” in the slap-happy words of one Jabba the Hutt Cheney), and “Every man for himself!”.  It’s a sure-fire formula for catastrophic systems failure if ever there was one.

Oh yeah, what’s the better news?  Just this.  Us free wild natural human beings, along with All Our Relations, have got it covered.  The Song ‘n’ Dance of Life Herownself has not missed a step or a note through all these trials and tribulations here.  She will not lose even one of Her own, either, to the feckless and fatal machinations of those cosmic fools who thought they could tame Her and put Her “to work” for their own obnoxious selves.

Meantime, this old Indian’ll be drifting back to the High Plains, to help out at the SunDance and other Ceremonies.  To all those here who’re of goodwill, and even those who maybe are not so much, don’t panic....we’ll catch y’all sooner than later.

HokaHey!

E.J., I’m going to take you up on the discussion of names, dates and events, (because while I don’t agree with you, I do respect the argument). But for now, I’m rushing to do other work.

Meantime, Mr. Boldin gave the obvious solution, which is the one that I’ve been promoting as well....
Why don’t we just go back to actually USING the “system” that we have? The Constitution still works fine, IF somebody would USE it. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel, and the system was actually designed quite brilliantly.

So, it’s not the “system” that we’re blaming as much as the people who have failed to administer that system, based on it’s original principles and values. And, while I know that you would like to discuss names, dates, etc, etc, it just seems to me like it should be OBVIOUS.

Still, I’ll see if I can work something up for you after final exams.

Anyone have the weather channel? Is it snowing in hell? Not a bad article E.J. It does serve to highlight some issues.

We as a nation need to actually get to those who are to blame. Not just blame all dems or all reps we need to pay attention and remove EVERYONE from office who is guilty. Corruption, privitization, electoral activities...so many areas we need to watch to do our jobs as citizens.

B

http://b-political.blogspot.com/

EJ, aren’t you the fella who was last “heard” a couple of posts back blaming the “ immature left”, some nebulous self-defined group that became your convenient punching bag?

Well, there is a system and we do have structure and systemic problems. Yes, there is individual responsibility on all levels. But the system is not a THING, external to the people who work within it. All systems have a structure which limits and constrains. But no system is stagnant, systems emerge through a community of practice. But systems have, as mentioned, limits, they are defined as much by what they are not as what they are, and those limits shape the behavior of the body politics.

To say, simply, that the system is perfect, people are bad, is to say that any system is perfect and it is only the people who “use” the system who are at fault.

This is just not true. Our system encompasses an economic system based on selfishness, and non-sutainability. It promotes free trade and globalization which exploits the world’s resources, both human and natural at the expense of sustainability. This is an overdrive, pathologically determined system of endless growth, producing endless wars.

Now, the system is a designed system. Our political system, our economic and cultural systems are all human designed (not natural). So, they work as we intend them; i.e., they are NOT perfect. Please stop thinking that this is a perfect system that just needs the right “people”, like they’re going to parachute “perfect” people to manage this “perfect” system!

We can talk about solutions when you’re ready.

I agree with the overall analysis, but I wanted to respond to one piece because of how important it is: “So a bill aimed at creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is full of grudging concessions to the anti-immigration side.”

I think this presumes that the bill actually created a real path to citizenship.  It created a narrow path for a tiny percentage of the millions of undocumented immigrants - and piled on top of that were many bad concessions.  Many groups on the left opposed this bill - something much of the “progressive media” is ignoring.  For example, the National Lawyers Guild, LULAC, and the National Network on Immigrant Rights.  Some Senators, like Barbara Boxer, ultimately put out statements against this bill from a progressive point of view.  So, please stop acting as if this was a progressive bill that just happened to have a few concessions to the (bring back the Sensenbrenner bill) crowd.

http://www.shoplifters.us

A solid article.  If we just returned to the law - the Constitution - we wouldn’t be having all these problems.

So much of what our government does these days is in direct violation to the constitution.

That doesn’t mean rounding up illegals, or building a wall, or worker cards or any of these bills in congress.  All these do is give the feds more power.  Returning to the constitution reduces their power and solves our problems.

Maybe that’s why no politician is talking about doing that.

Some follow up reading:

“The Immigration Scam”
http://www.populistamerica.com/the_immigration_scam

The “system” is just a thing, its what people do with it that counts. The people most likely to be doing things with it are powerful and or wealthy people. Lets face it power and wealth, like space and time are pretty much one and the same thing. No matter what kind of system you are discussing power/wealth becomes concentrated within them through completely natural processes.

If we the people truly want to claim that the system belongs to us then we have to get between money and “the-man” so to speak.

Outlawing secrecy and total public awareness of what politicians, burecrats and CEO’s are doing in the public domain in our name via cameras, microphones and the technology of the Internet would go a lot farther in terms of maintaining the system than voting in more of the same.

That said, power and wealth are also just things, meaning its what we’re doing with them that counts. Given all the apparent angst in the world, not much it seems.

Of course we have no one to blame but ourselves. Obviously responsibility lies with the individual. While I agree with that and degree that needs to be said I also agree that the writer of this article is a pinhead.

President Bush made some bad decisions? Misguided war? Has your head than up your ass for the last few years or are you simply enjoying a case of rapidly increasing dementia?

George Bush’s agenda was in place well before he and his brownshirt goons stole the election in which they lost the popular vote. Bad decisions had nothing to do with any of the crap that’s happened since that stolen election. To characterized the Bush reign has been plagued with bad decisions exposes an infantile inability to grasp the reality staring all of us right in the face. A misguided war? Holy crap. You’re an idiot or a shill or you have a very perverted sense of humor.

Other than sadly severe brain damage it’s very difficult to see how one could characterize the Bush presidency with words such as misguided and bad decisions. George Bush is the most successful president we’ve ever had in many respects. He’s grabbed more power for the executive branch and destroyed more of the freedoms of American citizens than any of his predecessors. He’s transferred more wealth from the many to the few than anyone in the history of the world. Not bad for an average intelligence, spoiled, preppy, draft dodger with a lousy vocabulary.

Politicians and CEOs often try to worm out of their illegal and self-serving actions by claiming they just didn’t know or maybe even made some bad decisions. But instead of being jettisoned and replaced for their incompetency insist that in spite of the fact that they ran their country or Corporation into the toilet, they’re still the best ones for the job. Mr. Bush repetitively uses this mindnumbing non-logic. Reporters such as the writer of this article are no better. There really are only two choices. Either you’re a shill working for the other side or you are a hopelessly incompetent idiot. I don’t care and it doesn’t matter. There is also the remote possibility that you really are one of those bleeding heart, knee-jerk, out in left field LIBERALS we hear so much about. If that’s the case, please sit down, there’s something you need to hear. There really are bad people in the world who will screw you and laugh about it. That may hurt your feelings. Sorry. Get a dog.

Once again, E.J. Dionne proves that he is a pinhead of the highest order.  This article is yet another typical example of idiot journalism.  E.J. thinks he has a catchy theme - political hypochondriac - and so, to impress his fellow pinhead journalists, he constructs a non-existent universe to fit his fantasy theme.

Another brain fart from E.J. “Zippy” Dionne, the political journalism tapeworm!

The system is broken and will be as long as corporate lap-dogs are in power. Until a ban on big money comes into existence nothing much will happen for the citizens who elect these bums. How many senators can you name that doesn’t have a secret agenda and is supporting millions of give-away-money for some corporate scheme? Long ago corporations realized that presidents alone could not do their bidding, hence, the senate was the place to control.
With only a 2 party system control is an easy task...just give money to both sides.