Affirmed:Lenin really is the tits

Dum, de dum, de dum.

So while waiting for the Lenin’s breached compartments to fill and the lights to off, I came across the following by Jon Stewart. I believe Lenin would have said, I told you so.

  1. Our govt-issued corporate licenses to steal.
    The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - TV Series | Comedy Central US
    Get out your checkbooks and keep 'em out. Every day is Corporate Taxman Day.

  2. Our govt-sanctioned corporate irresponsibility and lack of accountability.
    The Daily Show with Trevor Noah - TV Series | Comedy Central US
    Hey, by “saving” BP, et. al. the cost of some wasteful regulatory overhead (and the planet some inconsequential environmental destruction), we’re keeping gas prices down.

At risk of putting too much on the table at what may be our last supper, I will just comment on Obama’s Kagan nomination for SCOTUS. Also on his short list was Diane Wood. Diane Wood - Wikipedia . Compared to Kagan, she has an impressive judicial record, a clear respect for the Constitution and is also, IMHO, much better looking. Why haven’t we head more about her? Me, I write it off to corporate media control of political debate. Anyone differ?

That is your prerogative.

This is pure invention.

My comment regarding the validity of Lenin’s statement explained why I had not returned to the thread after reading the first few posts. It says nothing about your belief that he managed to make some point. It clearly does not indicate a “winner” of the thread. It also has nothing to do with any “threats” to shut down the thread. The thread was closed because after it trailed off and died on its own, it was twice forcibly resurrected for the sole purpose of making snide comments–which promptly ensued. Snide comments, standing alone in GD, have a habit of turning into flame wars. This was the reason that I have already explained. I have no idea what “bogus quotes” you may be going on about or where you have imnagined that I accused you of making “veiled threats,” but rather than hammer you for accusations of lying, I will simply ignore your posturing as the actions of a disappointed poster.

You have also made ludicrous and hostile accusations about my actions and have demanded that I respond to you.
Since I have already noted that I am uninterested in the topic as presented, I am under no more compulsion than any other poster to respond to you. You wanted a debate; you set it up in a way that doomed it from the start–live with it.
You can always try, again, setting forth your views with no reference to Lenin or to this thread and see whether anyone chooses to dispute your claims.

You cannot demand that any poster participate.

First of all, I don’t know what Diane Wood has to do with Lenin, but who says we haven’t “heard more about her”?

Diane Wood is profiled by the AP here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404312.html

She was one of the 10 people listed as on the shortlist by Newsweek here:

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/pages/race-for-the-robe.aspx

The New Republic profiled her here:

The NY Times profiles here here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/us/politics/22court.html

And gives some of her bigger cases here:

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com falls all over himself in his praise of Diane Wood:

I see it as apt hyperbole.

Color me happy.

As far as i am concerned, anything ludicrous or hostile about my so-called accusations is still in your court.

Taking the 5th, eh?

If it’s OK with you, I’ll take my chances here with the historical record.

Only if he thinks his views are to be respected.

I hope this will not be seen as a ‘snide comment’, but I feel obliged to make you aware that if somebody gives up arguing with you in disgust, it likely means they are not interested in whether you respect their views or not. And given the balance of opinions posted in this thread, most likely anybody opposing you in here can feel fairly safe in the assumption that majority of the peanut gallery will not judge their views too harshly, whether they post further or not.

(Now I feel guilty for bumping the thread.)

Give up “arguing” with me? tom has not argued or debated with me, he has simply decreed himself and those with whom he agrees, right. He (as a poster) in GD made an uncited assertion namely, that we may " simply dismiss his [Lenin’s] erroneous essay." I asked him several times on what he based this conclusion. His reading of the essay? He actually answered exactly once

. Since then, he’s simply ignored the question. This GD, not IMHO.

The balance of opinion, as you put it, has been as uninformed and uncited as tom’s. The bulk of it has been directed against Lenin’s atrocities or the failure of his economic theories in general and has ignored my repeated pleas to limit comments to the OP’s cites of Lenin’s essay and my opinion of them. The one person who seems to have actually read the cites in question agrees with me, if I am not presuming, that Lenin had something worthwhile to say in Imperialism. I would not expect this “peanut gallery” to judge tom’s unsubstantiated views to the contrary “too harshly”.

But were unable to restrain yourself?

Hey, it’s not your fault. This thread was revived several times by tom, himself.

The question to me is, given what we’ve heard about her and the unremarkable Kagan, why is Obama pumping Kagan? Ultimately, because Kagan is more likely to go along with the expansion of executive power, the further shredding of the Bill of Rights along with more wars and corporate deregulation, things Lenin would have expected to happen in a corporate run state.

With my post #9 as a reference,

let’s take a look at some of the members of begbert2’s “peanut gallery” starting with post #15.

I consider Sam a skillful if somewhat creative manipulator of statistics that he uses to make a case for the benefits of predatory capitalism.

I don’t doubt that Sam considers me an idiot incapable of a cogent response to any question, worth nothing more than a quick hand wave. No pile-ons, please.

I will say one thing tho, Sam has been polite enough not to labor the issue. One stale Lincoln joke has been enough for Sam and it’s enough of Sam for me unless he’s willing to address post #9.

Let me know if I’ve misconstrued anything, Sam.

But that wasn’t your question, though. Your question was, why was the media not talking about Wood, not why did Obama pick Kagan over Wood. Why he picked Kagan isn’t hard, and doesn’t require much deep analysis. She knows him and agrees with him on most of the issues.

But like I said, that wasn’t your question. Your question was why the media wasn’t talking about wood, and you assumed some corporate conspiracy. But your assumption was wrong, because the media did talk about Wood.

And here is the first contribution from a most influential member of the “peanut gallery” himself in post #116.

This was an attempt to bring some light to the discussion? What do you think?

Note his lack of mention of my post #9.

Had tom been doing his job, he might have said here what he said when he rejoined us at post #199.

He didn’t and the rest is history.

Sad, if you ask me.

And I’ll just add that, when Lenin wrote his essay, the United States, at least, was involved in a war that dwarfs any current wars we’re in.

Not only was there next to no constitutional protections for the black population of the US, even for the majority, the bill of rights was treated in a way we’d find shocking today, with the mail being censored and it being illegal to say in public that the draft was wrong, not to mention the discrimination suffered by people who believed in a minority religion.

There was almost no corporate regulation at all, the first major regulation bills having just been passed about 10 years before and only sporadically enforced. There was almost no regulation of working standards, they having been declared unconstitutional by the courts. Unions and union actions were regularly broken up by violence; violence which the US government not just turned a blind eye to, but actively participated in. In terms of banking, even though the Federal Reserve had just been established in order to rationalize the economy, it still had very few powers. There were almost no restrictions on what banks could do, and agencies regulating the banking and financial industry, like the SEC, were 17 years off., as was the Glass-Steagall Act, regulating banking activity.

The US had just, 25 years ago, competed its first major colonial war, and had, for the first time, colonies where the people had no say at all, not just in national affairs but even in their own local affairs.

We are in a far better position then the Americans of 1917 in terms of peace, in terms of civil rights, in terms of corporate regulation, and in terms of imperialism. As much as you can complain about things now, they improved since then. And they improved, not through revolution, as Lenin said was required, but through a democratic process, by people putting pressure on the government and bringing about gradual legislative change.

They could hardly have said nothing at all about Wood given that she was on Obama’s short list.

Seen any mainstream media editorials like this? http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/14

You mean like this:

Or this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/opinion/11tue1.html

or this?

Besides, you keep moving the goalposts. First, you want evidence that the “mainstream media” talked about Wood. Then you want to know why President Obama picked Kagan. Now you want to know if anybody in the mainstream media criticized Kagan on civil liberty issues. Every time I prove a claim you make false, you just make another claim. It’s like playing Whack a Mole.

I stand corrected. Don’t know how I missed the NYT article, I scan the headers online every day.

But I am in no doubt as to why our “populist” and Harvard-trained Constitutional lawyer President would prefer a lackluster political friend favorable to an imperial executive on SCOTUS to an excellent, decorated jurist and brilliant legal writer with populist ideas about the Bill of Rights and some reservations about an unrestrained executive. Wood would have brought some balance to the Court. With Kagan on it, it’ll be a rubber stamp for whatever Obama’s next imperial adventure or intrusion on human legal rights turns out to be. YMMV and time will tell. Just my opinion and I certainly don’t want to “debate” my speculation on the matter.

I will attend to your post about US corporate history.

Stipulated.

Which war was that? I’m assuming you’re talking about US Marines in Hawaii in 1893 and it’s eventual annexation by the US.

The US has a long history of intervention in undeveloped/developing countries on behalf of US corporations. This is just in Latin America. History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America Our record of repressing indigenous populations either with military occupation or by installing and supporting corrupt and murderous regimes friendly to US capital is unbroken to this day.

That depends on who you talk to. I’d like to hear some Afghani and Iraqi opinion.

Quite so. And it only took SCOTUS 48 years to reverse Plessy v. Ferguson with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Eleven years later we got the Voting Rights Act.

Compared to 1916, that’s true. Since the 80’s, however, we’ve experienced ongoing deregulation which produced the S&L fiasco, Enron and since the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, the global financial meltdown we’re living with today. Did you like that Jon Stewart bit on big banks? Here’s an interesting cite detailing the long corporate war on Glass-Steagall. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

Really think so? American exceptionalism, our “preventive” wars, Goldman Sachs’ rape of the Greek middle-class and poor which is still reverberating thru the world financial markets, our endless “war on terror”? You’ll never convince me that we are less imperialistic than we were in 1916 when much of Congress and the electorate were of an isolationist bent.

They got better and then they got worse and are still worsening. And if Obamas and our corporate owned Congress represent “hope and change”, I say there is no hope for change for the better.

I don’t even know what to say to your statements. We are less imperialistic now than we were in 1916. We don’t have any colonies anymore, except for, arguably, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa, and in all those cases, the people of those places have elected legislatures and generally control their own fate. In other countries, we have influence, but we don’t directly control. And American companies do business around the world, and I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.

Even in your little Goldman Sachs in Greece example, Goldman Sachs isn’t responsible for the Greek debt. The Greek government is, by spending like drunken sailors. Goldman Sachs dealt with the Greek government to cover some of that debt up, which they shouldn’t have done. They broke the law, and that was wrong, and I hope that the EU punishes them somehow. But Goldman Sachs didn’t “rape the Greek middle class and poor”; the Greek government did, ironically, by the extensive public welfare programs they introduced to try to help the poor and their refusal to raise taxes in the fear that it would upset the middle class.

And we are in a far better position than in 1917 in terms of peace. In World War I, 2.8 million Americans were drafted to fight in a war that killed 16 million people and wounded 21 million more. About 117,000 Americans were killed. As bad as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are, they’re nowhere near that bad on any metric.

Has deregulation caused problems? Sure. Have we deregulated too much? Probably. Have banks been up to some nasty stuff? Definitely. But your whole idea that we live in some sort of a corporate dictatorship is just twisted.

To be honest, he hasn’t had much to say. But with 3% of the precincts in, not too bad.

But you really should put that one to tom. I can’t much out of him. He took the 5th, that’s his story and he’s stickin’ to it.

You need to talk to him. He likes you and lets you get away with anything, at least on this thread. Somehow show him that if he simply confesses his mistakes, all is immediately forgiven and we get on with the debate which is, as Second Stone so rhapsodically put it,

This is an irrefutable affirmation.

Care to debate it?

And what goes for tom goes for everyone here. I hold no grudges.

I will say that SDMB has finally conquered my ignorance and it’s only taken you guys a year to do it. (golf clap)

I came on board here, like everyone else, biased by my years of culturally derived self-propaganda. I knew it all and I wanted to share it. GD would be my vehicle to bring about Dopedom’s Salvation.

I’ve had many false starts. For those interested, I can offer cites. We all have. Let’s get over it and take an honest apolitical look at things. Too much to ask?

Bryan, as evidenced here, your input is invaluable. Please reconsider your resignation as class clown. How about Court Jester? Get the king laughing while you fuck the queen. It could be a life.

Now then. I have (finally) said everything I have to say about Corporate Amerika and our oncoming, inevitable Global Calamity. If you can’t get with the possibility that Lenin, may his soul be praised, might have been right in a single instance of sanity as he expressed it in his largely disregarded essay, Imperialism**, STFU.

I’m out of here for 50 posts. keep it alive or kill it.

Keep the faith.

Whew!

I believe that citing the Daily Show as proof that Lenin had it right is entirely appropriate and correct, even if it did cost me yet another industrial strength irony meter and the need to buy yet another new monitor due to a high velocity spray of Dr Pepper impacting it shortly after reading your post there…

-XT

By God, I cannot resist.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20946.htm

FWIW, I’ve seen similar cites from similar rock solid sources indicating that Nostradamus also predicted it. Frankly, I think Nicky was actually a better predictor than old Vlad the Impaler Lenin, track record wise…though neither were what I’d consider rock solid in this regard.

Please…strive for more self restraint in the future.

-XT