Green Eagle

For the first time, I am going to repost something I wrote a couple of years ago.  I hope some people will have the patience to read it, as it is by far the most important thing I have ever written.  It is going to consist largely of quotations, as I wouldn't expect anyone to take my word for what I am going to say. The quotations below are from Arthur Schlesinger's The Crisis of the Old Order, which I heartily recommend, in conjunction with John Kenneth Galbraith's short book, The Great Crash, which lays out a similar scenario.  As you read this, I beg you to think about what has gone on in this country since the days of Reagan. I will begin with a comment by Schlesinger about Andrew Mellon, Coolidge's Secretary of the Treasury, and one of the richest men in America at the time:  "The government is just a business," said Mellon, "and can and should be run on business principles."  The first necessity, accordingly, was to balance the budget, a...

Ron Paul today.  Paul and Michelle Bachmann are scheduled to appear in a Republican "debate" at the same time that Obama is delivering a speech to a joint session of Congress about the economy: "Our campaign, however, thinks it is undignified that the President of the United States would resort to such transparent tactics to step on our Republican debate. The real losers here are the American People who deserve the opportunity to hear from both the President and the GOP contenders." Well, there you have, in a nutshell, the whole thrust of Republican ideology today.  Whatever serves the interests of their party is far more important than the welfare of the country.  And I'm not joking about this.  Could you imagine the uproar they would create if Democrats had dared to have a campaign event at the same time that Bush or Reagan were addressing Congress?  But no, another chance to hear Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry spin their lies and their hatred is far mor...

Some comments at Talking Points Memo today reinforce something that I have been thinking for the last few weeks: "Polls show relatively few Republicans clamoring for a Palin run on a national level as the one-time supernova is eclipsed by a crowded presidential contest and an array of new rising stars... It feels as if Palin's fabled 2012 run, a source of fervent speculation since before the 2008 contest even ended, has already gone out with a whimper. " Here's my suspicion:  Politicians have a certain amount of shelf life, earned or otherwise.  Otherwise, no one would have ever heard of Newt Gingrich since the last century.  But Sarah Palin chose, for her own economic benefit, to package herself as a celebrity more than a politician; and celebrities come and go in the blink of an eye.  Sarah Palin is now suffering the fate of a thousand ex-TV stars- she's yesterday's news.  People are bored with her.  She hid away for so long waiting for the other ...

A note on the current, predictable, Republican tantrum, from Daily Kos: "You knew this was coming. Despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Irene this weekend, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) today stood by his call that no more money be allocated for disaster relief unless it is offset by spending cuts elsewhere.[...] Meanwhile, FEMA is having to divert funding that was earmarked to "rebuild roads, schools and other structures destroyed during spring tornadoes in Joplin, Mo., and Southern states" to pay for hurricane relief." And hooray for FEMA.  If the voters in Southern States continue to elect these corrupt jackasses, let them be the ones to do without disaster relief.  Let them pay, as far as is possible, for having voted based on their greed and hatred, and based on which politician promises to cut their taxes the most, and let us all stand by and see where it gets them. This is exactly why I believe we should let these ignorant, malicio...

Not much in the news the last few days.  Man, I wonder if someone somewhere will add up the number of minutes of news coverage that Bush and Cheney's failed war in Iraq got compared to how much Obama's success in Libya warranted.  Anyway, what I have been wondering about is which way the Republicans will try to blame Obama for something having to do with Irene, the hurricane moving up the East coast. At first, I thought that their take on the whole thing would be to find that Obama totally over-reacted to the hurricane, playing into their narrative that Democrats don't do anything except spend money and expand government intervention.  But then I got to thinking about Bush and Katrina, and it occurred to me that they might need to pretend that Obama grossly under-reacted to Irene, since they love to pretend that Obama shares Bush's monstrous inadequacies, hoping to get people to forget what an abominable job Republicans did on everything when they were in charge. Pr...

With its typical fair-minded, dispassionate analysis. You may remember the Astute Bloggers post I wrote about in Wingnut Wrapup, which used some story about neanderthals as an excuse to print this photograph: Listen, I know, I know, these people are without conscience and it is useless to communicate with them, but I was so repulsed by this that I had to respond.  Here is my comment, posted at the website of these evil people, and their reply: Green Eagle said...   "This is one of the most disgusting, degraded pieces of racist trash that I have ever seen. I don't know who you are, but you should be deeply ashamed of yourself. Sad to say, you have so given yourself over to the lowest of human emotions that I know it will never happen. You are one contemptible specimen of life."  Reliapundit said...   "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE GREEN EAGLE. I AM NO RACIST." No, you were just making a point concerning recent advances in physical anthropo...

From Talking Points Memo: "You probably won't be surprised to hear that Glenn Beck welled-up during his "Restoring Courage" rally in Israel. You might be surprised to hear that there were show tunes." Not if you read Green Eagle.