This blog is dedicated to the memory of David Weintraub, who took on insidious astroturfers and won.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Matt Stoller and the Great White .35 of One Percent Shark Jumpers


link


Wherefore art thou, Matt Stoller?


After first calling for progressives to dis-elect Obama, failing that he now wishes progressives to "hold Obama's feet to the fire." Shocking display of wisdom, that. Where were you in 2009-2012, Matt? Oh, making a name for yourself among gullible pwoggies with your wit and "wisdom..."

Remember Stoller's laughable bits in Salon the week or so prior to the election, both rife with the empty echo chambering of self-serving third party progressive cliches and bereft of any substance at all?


His first piece contained really nothing beyond a vote of supremely arrogant confidence in the "know it all" white middle class progressive elites who automatically assume the Green Party is an "optimal" choice, in Greenwald's typically ridiculous description.


Stoller, who has written some excellent stuff at times, succumbs to his audience's childlike desire for affirmation. He is playing a bad joke on a deceived people's expectations. A bad joke that continually flies right over the heads of the Obi-wan Kenobis of the Whiteysphere.The big lie is that Obama designed the system that increased US income inequality in 2009-10. An honest appraisal would and (already has! several times over!) confirmed that the recession inherited by Obama caused the acceleration of income inequality, a process that is thirty years (at least) in the making under conservative Reaganite Washington DC hegemony.




That's right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush. And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it's not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.  
This is the shape of the system Obama has designed.



These, of course, are the same type of bald faced misrepresentations of historic fact and distortions that formed the basis of Mitt Romney's failed campaign. Surely, this line of persuasion works so much better when the Great White .35 of One Percent Shark Jumpers attempt it.


But, of course, the third party progressives always have all the answers, always after the fact (AKA Monday morning armchair quarterbacking) and most importantly they have no way to implement them so will never suffer the opportunity to be proven full of shit, in any case.


Yet somehow, someway (never defined) after we elected Mitt Romney, the more intelligent, more noble great .35 of one percenters' magic beans would right the ship of state just as soon as the electorate, including the roughly half on the right who absolutely hate Obama, not to mention Stoller and his magic beans brigade decide to (again by magic) place the reins of government andbusiness into the knowing hands of the progressive jedi.




But can a third-party candidate win? No. So what is the point of voting at all, or voting for a third-party candidate? My answer is that this election is, first and foremost, practice for crisis moments. Elections are just one small part of how social justice change can happen. The best moment for change is actually a crisis, where there is actually policy leverage. We should look at 9/11, Katrina and the financial crisis as the flip side of FDR's 100 days or the days immediately after LBJ took office. We already know that a crisis brings great pressure to conform to what the political establishment wants. So does this election. We all know that elites in a crisis will tell you to hand them enormous amounts of power, lest the world blow up. This is essentially the argument from the political establishment in 2012. Saying no to evil in 2012 will help us understand who is willing to say no to evil when it really matters. And when you have power during a crisis, there's no end to the amount of good you can do.How do we drive large-scale change during moments of crisis? How do we use this election to do so? Well, voting third party or even just honestly portraying Obama's policy architecture is a good way to identify to ourselves and each other who actually has the integrity to not cave to bullying. Then the task starting after the election is to build this network of organized people with intellectual and political integrity into a group who understands how to move the levers of power across industry, government, media and politics. We need to put ourselves into the position to be able to run the government.





Perhaps the worst aspect of Stoller's commentary is its dishonesty. Well, to be fair, it could also be considered stupid, and it surely has been so considered, which makes him look only slightly better than his dishonest self. As anyone who follows fake lefty blogging about economics and finance can attest, it's a very thin line between stupidity and dishonesty and it scarcely matters which is which: teh stupid is the norm and dishonesty among the .35 of one percenters doesn't even register anywhere with anyone anyway, at least prior to entering the gates of Pwoggie Heaven.


Here is Stoller going gah-gah-goo-goo over a supposed deal Paulson offered Obama prior to the inauguration that included TARP funds release being tied to forced mortgage principal write-downs.






But the primary policy framework Obama put in place - the bailouts, took place during the transition and the immediate months after the election, when Obama had enormous leverage over the Bush administration and then a dominant Democratic Party in Congress. In fact, during the transition itself, Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered a deal to Barney Frank, to force banks to write down mortgages and stem foreclosures if Barney would speed up the release of TARP money. Paulson demanded, as a condition of the deal, that Obama sign off on it. Barney said fine, but to his surprise, the incoming president vetoed the deal. Yup, you heard that right - the Bush administration was willing to write down mortgages in response to Democratic pressure, but it was Obama who said no, we want a foreclosure crisis.




Of course, had Obama accepted that deal (if it was even truly offered. Barney Frank was the source for this report and Frank can be as slippery as any of them when ducking and re-assigning blame) Stoller and Greenwald would have blown their gaskets over this shady, non-transparent backroom deal between the Bush lame ducks and the incoming Obama PTB prior to the changing of the guard. And naturally, the stock and bond markets would have absolutely tanked worldwide had the Government forced red-blooded, God-fearing capitalist corporations to re-arrange their balance sheets against their collective will.


Full disclosure, I too believe that mortgage writedowns should have been a major part of the solution but I also do not own stocks or bonds and therefore would have had no problem with the resulting worldwide financial market crash and multiple trillions of lost wealth that remarkably Stoller either doesn't recognise or can't fathom.
The stupidest part of Stoller's argument is, that by not forcing mortgage asset write-downs, Obama somehow is at blame for $7 trillion in lost wealth of the middle class. Uhhm, dude. The mortgage write downs we both wanted necessitate also lowering of principal on the loans, which means the loss of individual's asset value in the process of "writing down" the mortgages anyway.


Here, I'll let one of the few cognitively healthy commenters on a typical pwoggie echo chamber called "Naked Capitalism" (run by a wealthy, narcissistic ex-Goldman-Sachs reach beach no less) explain it to the ignorant herd:




Yves appears to let her hatred for Obama get in the way of math. She is comparing part of $700 Billion in Tarp Funds of which I believe $350 Billion was spend on tax cuts for nation; with the $7 Trillion Dollar wealth gap.
Even accepting her argument even if every dollar was spent on the "wealth gap" it would not have made a significant dent in the overall situation. However, the remaining tarp funds would not have been available to juice the economy. 
Further, most people experienced much more than a 10% drop in housing prices.
Further, this $7 Trillion Dollar wealth gap was created by an artificial bubble. An overheated market created housing values that people now use to suggest that somehow they have lost this wealth. 
However, anybody that did not sell their house and did not buy another inflated home would have never experienced this wealth anyway. It was a bubble.  
Once the bubble burst-as it did-housing values would have had to retreat back to normal levels. 
So if you allow your hatred to shine through so that you can make Barack Obama be worse than the moral equivalence of George Bush who actually lied us into war killing over 3,000 American Citizens unnecessarily and injuring over 50,000 many of whom we will have to support for the rest of their lives, then you can bring yourself to making these riduculous comments. 
Truly, Ives, I don't know why I keep coming to your site. You have truly jumped the shark.
Of Course this reply should have been addressed to Matt Stoller.




In his second Salon nonsense, Stoller revises his own argument, probably because he recognised his first attack lacked a sense of political realism:



The President does not sit in the Oval Office and play a video game where he governs the country. The Presidency is constrained by the various checks and balances in our governance system, notably a partisan opposition and public opinion. Under Obama, that partisan opposition has been a right-wing Republican force buttressed by well-funded Tea Party activists. This has made it far easier for Obama to implement conservative policies. Under Mitt Romney, the Democrats will be far more likely to oppose Romney from the left, and the public will be much more likely, as it was under Bush, to mistrust its President and demand social justice.



Yes, the movement of the country to the right makes it easier for Obama to implement rightwing policies, just as the movement of the country left under Nixon made it easier for Nixon to implement liberal policies. I detailed this phenomenon, usually meme-ified on the fake left as "Nixon was a liberal" in any number of diaries leading up to the election, first in my now-classic masterpiece "A Tale of Two Dicks."


Of course. Any high school kid knows this already, that the President is inextricably bound to his Congress and the prevailing zeitgeist of the electorate. Only the infantile left and the Tea Party right believe that Obama is omnipotent, while at the same time blaming him for being what he is not.
RIOTOUS! Straw man much, loosers?


Obama and Nixon accomplished what they could under the constraints of their times. Nixon effectively set the stage for the coming four decades swing to the right, which Progressives and their magic beans can somehow reconfigure (macroeconomically!) overnight even with the Congressional reality that change is hard and slow, taking decades to achieve.


Stoller doesn't account for this reality. He believes falsely, as do most third party progressives, from cherry picking a handful of issues based polls, that the US is actually a leftwing country (haha) and that Obama could have any policy he wanted 2009-2012. More stimulus? No problem. Except Obama asked for more stimulus. That he got any was a result of compromise and avoiding the filibuster. Why does Stoller believe the country is leftwing when only 20% self-identify as such?


From his delusional sense of deduction and progressive echo chambering, that's how.


Politicians can't ignore electoral preferences if they desire to be elected.


Stoller can and third party progressives do ignore political reality day after day after execrable day and then every four years repeating the same ignorance expecting a different result.   And yes, the only way to "move forward" in Stoller's thesis is to ignore the fundamental reality and spin magical solutions ("woulda/coulda/shoulda") that are only available to amateur bloggers and paid pundits.

39 comments:

Anonymous said...

This came from the vaults,comments stitched together.

I think it a useful bookend to your GG classic now directly beneath. HAHA.

you might want to try socratising that Yves Smith chick.

She's a sweetie, as you would say. And old too, just how you like them.

Anonymous said...

This just in. The current recommended list of diaries at My. FDL has a grand total of 14 comments.

Of the 10 diaries listed, seven have zero comments.

It appears that your comment about hamsher being the next MSOC or wtf are truer than even you realize.

Although to be fair, MLW has had only two diaries posted to date in the month of December.

So, pffugeeca,p is in very good company indeed.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I'm just getting my act together for today, so apologies for not responding so fast.

I hope you don't mind my placement of the off-topic, Stoller screenshot. I found it to be apt or appropo or wtf, I can't find the right word, for this symbolic anchor punch delivered on Matty.

I'll tweet this one. That is you at Twitter, correct? Even if you don't tweet, you'll find it more enjoyable to log in. You can tailor your following list and oh well, you'll see what I mean. You can add The Guardian and other Twitter pages and it becomes your own home brew form of a news feed.

I am definitely looking forward to reading this new masterpiece along with your new comments. On behalf of the DFQ2 management, which I suppose is you and me, I thank you from the bottom of my blogging heart for giving this page a boost. We've already matched the page views from yesterday with many more hours to come.

We may not have a tip jar, but page hits are the equivalent of having an ego jar. Someday folks will realise that the blogosphere truly does center around us. ~[o> .... that might become my new old school, internet sign off. The squiggly is meant to represent Ed Grimley's cowlick. We'll wait and see how social media responds and then proceed accordingly.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I must say most of your entry flew over my head. It'd be nice if some people with more knowledge than I in the specifics showed up to discuss it with you.

Nonetheless, it is common sense that Mitt Romney would have been a disaster.

I like Obama's legalise marijuana schtick. He's basically saying that while new Colorado and Washington laws are in conflict with federal law, there are bigger fish to fry.

And of course his response to Baba Wawa on how he explains to his children his wild and crazy days of toking was pure brilliance. To paraphrase:

I tell them to not make the mistakes I did.

Babs and Stephanopoulos (sp?) shared a smirk with that one.

Not to hijack your masterpiece here, but it has always appeared that around 70% of folks have favoured legalisation. That includes many who don't even smoke it.

Tokyo Shemp said...

By the way, does anyone know if Helen Thomas is single. She's a sweetie.

Anonymous said...

I know that you are not a policy level political blogger and I promise not to clutter the site with too much of that beisbol.

But as you are learning about the fakeness of Greenvald and that other gay dude, I thought I'd make it a double play.

I do believe that Obama is once again too eager to make a deal, or as he did during the first debt ceiling crisis, he is giving off the appearance of wanting to make a deal knowing full well that such a deal will be rejected by the House GOP'ers.

Recall that when he bent over too far last time and it appeared that Boehner would accept, suddenly Obama upped the ante and revised his proposal to where it would not be acceptable and no deal was done.

When it finally was agreed to kick the can down the road (setting up the current contretemps) Obama actually got more than the GOP plus he was able to successfully stick the House with the stigma of not being cooperatively compromising. It was the Senate GOP that caved an it will be the Senate GOP that caves again.

Fast forward to the elections of 2012 and that smegma attached to the tea party right was largely responsible for their getting hammered at the polls. The only saving grace was the gerrymandered districting and state power that keeps the GOP alive for now.

This is why one must understand that whatever moves are made and agreements reached in the current standoff must be recognised as also being with an eye pointed at 2014. The GOP strangleholds at the state level in the House must be chipped away if not completely undone, election by election.

As long as Obama looks like the most reasonable man in the room in the eyes of the electorate he will succeed in the long term goal of turning the ship of state back around towards the left.

Admittedly, the bow is still pointing right of center to center, but it is moving in the right direction for the prior 6 years.

Tokyo Shemp said...

No, please post whatever you want to. You've earned that right. You've been blogging for many years and deserve basic respect/freedom for your efforts.

This blog was named after Dave, who was arguably one of the greatest, regular guy bloggers to ever emerge out of that sewer. You have much more of a history than me for posting at DKOS and its offshoots. It makes sense that you blog here.

I have blogged everything I've ever wanted to. This is all gravy.

I am definitely someone who has never enjoyed politics or talking much about it. Every once in a while I can relate to it and feel confident to add something.

I guess in a way I am apologising for not being able to satisfy much your craving for that kind of blog chit chat.

I definitely understand your general political schtick. For me it is clearly about the lesser of two evils. I do like to rant now and then ala Fakeleft style. But I do see the point that attacking Obama too much and especially during election season has resulted more in aiding and comforting the enemy than having much tangible influence on positive social change.

Perhaps the thing we most agree on in addition to my having deep respect for older sweeties is that the internet is a scam.

I like the idea that our last two entries have been bookends for that general point.

Maybe scam is not the best word. It is certainly a good one for many of them. I see it as basically the co-opting of left and right as business models.

Folks like us cannot be denied for the most part because we don't make a penny off of -whining- blogging. That doesn't mean we are always correct. Perhaps eventually the internet will become in practice what it is now only in theory; A means by which regular people can make a positive difference.

As we are in dire need of campaign finance reform, the same can be said about the internet. There are too many political operatives and other forms of scammer (see Friedman, Brad) to hold our collective breaths it will ever improve much.

But blogger is a nice start. We have the ability to reach a lot of people through google, especially if we fine tune key names and phrases we use in our posts.

I got pretty good at that, and that's why I ended up getting sued. I was able to make a difference, albeit I admit it was a drop in the pan.

On an unrelated side note, there is some sort of current glitch with the recent comments widget. Hopefully that comes back. If not, I'll try to find another one.

I also was trying to figure out code so that clicking links would open up in new windows. But alas, I am inept inept and that could be tough to figure out. There is a way we can manually do that for each link. I'll see if that can be done with my next entry, which I have no idea when that will be written. I have no idea what I want to write on next.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Wow, and just like that, the recent comments gadget has come back. The blogging gods must have heard my whine. Now I'm off to the fridge to find some cheese to go with it.

Anonymous said...

Good comment. I think there is something basic about the internet, nay life in general, in these here United States of Fabricated America.

The entire thing is a scam.

In order to succeed one must be a scammer.

It also helps if you are a whore.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to be perpetually outraged by these simple facts of life, but I'm infotained, so rage on rager.


Or Rajon Rondo, if you prefer. And I know you do. Not that you're gay or anything.

Does Rondo have a wife or a GF?

I think you should sell out today and put up a freakin hit jar. Maybe run some MILF Blow Job porn on the front page and change your twitter avatar to a picture of Jed Clampett, just like the other McCain.

The Alex Keaton/Nixon schtick doesnt work for me like McCain's hayseed schtick does.

I'm not suggesting sell-out for the money, necessarily, because we all know that you are a trustfund baby with a paid=for roof over your head, and you are completely happy as long as you have a bag of weed and an old movie to watch,
.but just to see what sort of ratings spike we get.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Hey, thanks dude! That was nice of you.

There was this tune. It went something like this:

If you don't know me by now. You're never, never, never...

The ...'s represent the rest of the tune. I am dreadful at remembering lyrics. So when singing in the shower, I get some of it right before eventually making up some new language ala Sid Caesar.

We probably just lost 85% of the audience of 12 wondering wtf is a Sid Caesar.

I remember that dude could fake any accent and language. Though I'm not sure if that was related to people allegedly waking up from comas and somehow being fluent in languages they never learned.

Now there's something for you to donkratise. You could title it, Donkey's Believe It or Snot.

Man, oh yeah, ok, sure now I am disillusioned and accept that everything and most people suck. But back in the day I was truly into peace, love, and saving the planet (see Costello, Elvis).

That's idealism which is tough to maintain in its pure state. I swear I could though back then before truly finding out the following truism:

It's not what you know, it's who you know.

I do appreciate you were more of a Creedence Clearwater tough guy hippie. Sometimes it takes a biker village. In my soft shell defense, I wasn't a deadhead. Sure American Beauty was a perfect album. But I was more into Bob Marley and Floyd sticking it to the man. A toking revolution.

It was quite a bummer to find out the wall was literally too high. So here I sit comfortably numb in need of a dirty woman. Haha, all that was ripped from Pink Floyd. I also liked the Allman Brothers. My Irish friends had never heard of them or the Dead, so that was pretty cool turning them on to those fellas (see infotainment, self-indulgent digression).

I am a Generation X elder. That's basically it. If I had been born five years earlier, I would probably now be so-called pragmatic and yuppified.

As for the trust, it is not as groovy as it may seem. It's provisions are minimal. Though considering how rough many in the world have it, I should count my blessings for those basics it provides.

You are quite correct I don't need much to be happy. Let me paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche:

I'd rather have dope and no money than money and no dope.

I think he said that. Or maybe that was Tommy Chong.

Tokyo Shemp said...

With new marijuana laws, how many would have to be released from prison?

I bet there are people in there who did nothing wrong but sold some weed.

I would hook on with a lawyer and defend only them and get an 80-85% success rate. Like drink & drive lawyers. But for weed.

That would be a money maker.

Anonymous said...

There's no such thing as "tuugh hippies."

Hippies were white middle class progressives, utopians and libertarian. I was a "white rat," meaning a gavacho who was down in the cholo community. I caused and found lots of trouble.

I despised all things San Francisco but most especially the Dead. Borrring.

Ersatz. Marley OK, but Jimmy Cliff better.

Allmans yeah. Gregg a very underrated vocalist. Another "white rat."

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Teddy Pendergrast pre-quadraplegia on lead vocals. Saw them live opening for the man himself at the Greek Theatre LA circa 1972.

Al Green, pre Rev Groin Grits. Dude ruled the pop and soul charts. The Greek is outdoor small venue in the Los Feliz corner of Griffith Park.

My GF were sitting in a crowd of black and brown soul aficionados at the height of soul's popularity.

We were grooving to the tunes and brought an oz of dirt weed. I rolled it up, we toked and passed them on.

Soon, we were as down with the bros and sisters as was Rev Grits Groin.

We had a sCene going that night, an unusual disay of racial harmony during those more uptight racially polarised times.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Like yourself, I love black people. Or rather Black people, since Francis Holland wants us to capitalise the first letter. And of course when it comes to Francis, we are not worthy, we are not worthy.

I'd have to move to one or two certain parts of Boston to have regular guy contact with people of colour. Ssince I do not discriminate, I do not go out of my way to meet crackers either.

I did get some nice experience from teaching to be able to meet some of them. That probably sounds racist, but I'm not.

One drawback of all this political correctness, much of it I actually agree with, is we can't simply shoot the shite anymore without someone misreading our intentions (see Chinaman, Brynaert).

One of the most ridiculous projections done by the right wingospere is when they claim we lefties are the ones who are racist. Aaron Walker loves to pimp Martin Luther King Jr.. All one need do is compare his self-defined "moderately right of center" schtick with what he actually blogs to see he is an extreme wingnut nowhere near the center.

The right is always trying to woo left. Oooh, William Weld is into the Dead. Yay for him. That's a relative scenario of righties loving Colbert without realising the joke is on them. True hippies would tell Weld to stop ruining their buzz.

When I become dictator, those posers will be the first ones I round up for the re-education camps. :)

Anonymous said...

Speaking of white people, did you know that Hamsher and Greenvald were business partners?

Maybe you socratised this schtick already.

http://theobamadiary.com/2011/07/15/here-we-go-again-2/

Whats the diff between yur enemies and hamsher/Greenvald?

Tokyo Shemp said...

Yeah I touched on that in my "Shame On You, Jane Hamsher" diary.

I have tons of enemies on both fake right and left. But your last point is correct.

Specifically one of Rauhauser's buddies who's currently smearing me with outrageous lies has also attacked Hamsher in the past.

Rauhauser had some dickhead company named Progressive Dickheads or something. And apparently actual fake left running for political office hired that fleabag to spread his kooky, sock puppet smear schtick on their behalf.

So yup not much difference. Just a different flavour of fake.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I added three to the number of popular posts showing up on the right side. You have currently made it to the big time with your Cybergod infotainment rerun.

Well played, son.

Anonymous said...

A diarist who sounds like Donk is currently atop the rec list at FDL

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By: dogbroth 40 Comments

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By: Michelle Chen 2 Comments

The Crying Game: Plots Against Speaker Boehner Begin
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Some thoughts on Michigan's 'right to work' law
By: cal222 3 Comments

Hello, Congressional Progressive Caucus members and staff
By: athena1 33 Comments

How Argentina Fell Behind the Rest of the World
By: inoljt 1 Comments

Is This Any Way to Model a Catastrophe? IPCC Methane Projections Are As Off As Temperature Projections
By: metamars 1 Comments

On Thursday night, the Tea Party took a principled stand against Boehner and GOP leadership, as they did against the Grand Bargain of 2011
By: wigwam 9 Comments

Thoughts on Careless or Irresponsible Use of the Term "Anti-Semite"
By: EdwardTeller 96 Comments

Ambassador James Hormel: Chuck Hagel "has not apologized to me."
By: Teddy Partridge 42 Comments

Tokyo Shemp said...

I'll have to check that out. I figured out how to have links open up in new windows. Use the following code.

substitute < > for { }:

{a HREF="url" target="_blank"}link description{/a}

It's not allowed in the comment sections. Here's the link for dogbroth's homepage at FDL.

dogbroth's FDL blog

Tokyo Shemp said...

It works. Hit the links for my new mailed-in entry. New windows.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I see you already got deleted as spam. I found a cache of it with 34 comments. "Of Stollers, Greenwalds and Silvers: Compare and Contrast"

I'll make it into a new entry. It will be mostly fully preserved.

Anonymous said...

You missed the best part...Greenwald was for the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars before he was against them and has since gone on to lambaste other dumbass MSM pundits for also being for the same wars.

What a phony.

The Hamsher/Greenwald pffugeecamp link was extremely well-played even if I say so myslef.

What a bunch of dipshiites. No wonder Obama got re-elected

Tokyo Shemp said...

Wow, I get no thanks for putting it together for a new diary. Gotta say thanks for nothing.

That took a bit of time. If you notice, clicked links will open up in a new window.

You lucked out and it got cached in time. You'd know the timeline. It was all over in mere hours?

Anonymous said...

Ok, Thanks, I was abit diverted by all the holiday schtick going on around me.

Also, I really found quite a bit of shite on Greenwald. Wow. He's worse even than I thought he was.

But wait a sec...shouldn't you be thanking me for providing some additional epicness to your legend?

I mean, after all, they still think I am you and you have pretty much stopped contributing so it's me picking up all the slack.

And to be totally honest, I have no idea wtf you are talking about regarding the right click BS.

I'm thinking there is more... a lot more...out there to bag the Hamsher cult on...but yes, you can thank me for a bit of holiday cheer and infotainment on a dead blog.

Sometimes I truly believe I was put on Earth to be Cyber Jesus.

Haha. Just kidding.

Whatever. If you were the true talent you wouldn't have to keep calling yourself that.

Even if it is a direct steal from my schtick.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I will cop a plea for schtick theft. Kids will be kids.

Check out the new entry. Click on the links and you will see they open up in new windows. All you have to is add after "url" a space then target="_blank"

Glenn Greenwald is a great target to pile on. That folks are sooo mad at you for "twisting" what can't be shows how difficult it is to bring enlightenment to thousands of robotic, fake leftists.

It's human nature perhaps.

You describe it as herd mentality.

I remember when one had to prove their point to carry a debate. Now it's all about (or always has been) who is on a blog for ownership and what constitutes their peanut gallery, and who can best manipulate search engines.

Anonymous said...

Just found tour site, You guys are interesting and mostly right on. Thought you might want to read this thread in Stoller's latest Salon piece. A commenter name drfarls schools Stoller and exposes his lack of historical context and basic research skills.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/elites_strange_plot_to_take_over_the_world/

Anonymous said...

donkeytale here. Pffugeecamp appears to have have been white walled. The last couple weeks' developments in Syria weren't too kind to neo-stalinist fake leftists and I enjoyed pointing out the weakness in their usefully idiotic shilling for Putin and regime lies. There are two really excellent sites for that purpose: freecow and brown moses blogs.

Also, you might find some vindication for Socratic and donkeytalian prescience from this MSOC rant:

http://www.myleftwing.com/diary/28642/the-daily-rant-hey-pal-youre-tilting-at-a-ceiling-fan

Out.

Tokyo Shemp said...

I'm at the MSOC link first. I am surprised donkeytale didn't comment on the new Stoller thingie. That'll be skimmed after.

Unfortunately, soapblox isn't blogger. They are the equivalent of cassette tapes versus digital music. Over time they will corrode, then good luck, knock on wood finding stuff at the somewhat overrated archive.org.

Davefromqueens.com is now a memorial to Dave Weintraub. I think that's a good idea. I wish Karen and all of her family the deepest of peaceful feelings in regards to Dave.

Time heals all wounds. Dave had a fairly good life. Yes, it was cut short. But he did get a lot done.

We don't know how much blogging influenced his demise, if at all. It couldn't have helped. I admit that.

Tokyo Shemp said...

It was nice to see MSOC in rare form. Karmafish was the dude who specifically went to My Left Wing to harass Francis Holland, while that blog still had some oomph and potential left in the gas tank.

Haha, Phil I. Stine showed up. I still firmly believe he is none other than the infamous Angry Rich of Fox News.

It also looks like McCain's sidekick Smitty has direct ties to the Spy Factory.

I tweeted some junk on that. Twitter's good as a honeypot for reverse-trolling. Like that dude Kurt Eichenwald. Also, now I've stumbled across the Vadum dude who I thoroughly ripped apart.

I'm not saying it's all about me. But I get intrigued by certain nuggets popping up through focused searches.

Tokyo Shemp said...

Stoller comes across as being the rich man's Lee Stranahan, someone who inflates the significance of their own ideas.

I sense that Stoller article is both tedious and unimportant.

As for this @drfarls who anonymous contends schooled Stoller, Farley appears to be as much if not more of a tool than even Stoller. I am not debating anything in the article or comments. I am just saying imho both of them are a waste of time.

He is Professor Robert Farley of the Patterson School of Diplomacy & International Commerce.

Their first director used to be in the OSS. 'Nuff said.

Anonymous said...

Stoller is a joke, no further comment necessary on him.

Today in the Graun:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2013/sep/27/seymour-hersh-obama-nsa-american-media

"Hersh is right about this and Snowden revealed the hard evidence of Obama Administration lying. Does Obama get any more of a free pass than did Bush, Clinton, Reagan or Nixon for spreading their spin and disinformation about events that effect them and their party's standing with the public?

Yes, yes, more better "outsiders" needed. The problem as I see it now is that the ostensible wellspring for said new journalists has been poisoned by the equal and opposite effect of competing propaganda interests. If the establishment press too easily repeats US regime propaganda, the outsiders in the blogosphere too easily recite Russian regime propaganda and a small coterie of conspiracy theorist infotainers such as Pepe Escobar and Alex Jones. It is stunning how easy it is for so many to be so quickly shagged into repeating the same false memes across the world.

I don't buy that. There was a more visceral street response that waned since the 70s. To me, Clinton was far more destructive to the working and middle classes and he was if anything less opposed than Obama. And now we have the preposterous idea of him and his wife back in the Whitewash House with roles reversed. RIOTOUS!

The off repeated meme "Obama is worse than Bush" really means that naive people on the left expected that Obama would be "better than Bush" with respect to national security issues, ending wars and on domestic issues.

Of course, the record is mixed, as it is with all Presidents. Of course we all wish the essentially leftcentrist Obama had pursued a more populist hard left agenda or at least given lip service, but of course this agenda would have been thwarted both by the GOP and the Blue Dogs (first term) within his own Party and the lip service alone would simply undermine Democratic Party election prospects.

Still one would have to be a pure-headed tool (hello 99% of internet commenters!) to believe that Obama has really been "worse than Bush" or the other destructive meme that goes something like it would actually have been better for the left to have McCain in the White House or (God help us) Romney. "Worse than Bush" is preposterous. People spending too much time online really do seem to be suffering serious short term memory loss.

Obama inherited the Bush economic debacle and has done a more credible macro economic job in the face of insane GOP opposition than the so-called more enlightened European leaders have done

Short of a concerted third party alliance between libertarians and leftists that would require an unacceptable swallowing of leftist purity to ever coalesce into meaningful numbers, the internet left in the US would do well to follow the strategic example of the Tea Party and try to become the "tools that rule" the Democratic Party from the leftist margins. Of course, we witnessed the easy collapse of the Occupy Movement as soon as the police decided enough. Oh well, people were tired of sleeping outside anyway and sleeping in jail is even worse! There were a few rustlings at the Ports in Oakland and Houston but never with anything resembling enough sustained numbers to shake the establishment.

The sad fact of life is that the internet Left seems entirely disinterested from escaping the comment thread purgatory of infotainment and achieving anything resembling purist dreams in the real world.

Dreams die don't die hard in the 21st Century, they dissipate softly with a bitter cynicism inside a silent cyber prison of our own design."

Anonymous said...

Clinton was less opposed because he ruled and thrived entirely inside the bubble economy his policies did so much to create and sustain.

Bush also benefitted from the bubble economy until it imploded at the end.

Obama's two terms exist during recessionary times.

History will vindicate what his meagre economic policies achieved during a a time of extreme political polarisation that FDR, for instance, or LBJ certainly never faced.

Anonymous said...

Also, ventured over to the Moon of Alabama blog. This in hopes of surfacing the recently disappeared useful idiocy of fairleft. Reprinted in here because it may well be deleted there.

I'm out, as my father recently passed away and I am clearing his final business affairs this weekend.

"This blog cracks me up.

Pure delusionality and/or tool time on a breathtaking level. Assad created this war from whole cloth (AKA his military and his official state thug organization going on the offensive) rather than respond constructively to the economic and political dissent engendered by the 'Arab Spring' in Egypt.

To expect anything other than the armed reaction by the opposition after the Assadian provocation (and knowing full well what awaits the opposition if they "settle" with Assad while allowing him to remain in power) including the ever present jihadist elements is nothing short of 'ostrich effect' on your part. Assad certainly expected the reaction, anticipated it, counted on it and announced it in advance. The armed reaction is his survival strategy and it has in fact been a desperate one since he put it into play but was his only hope short of retiring permanently to that Black Sea resort which represents his capitulation (AKA 'the right thing to do').

Assad cannot win outright. Putin's clever rapprochement with Obama over the Russian Guignol's chemical weapons is the clearest announcement of this fact, even as Putin and his useful idiots (hi, guys!) regurgitate the myriad false memes and planted propaganda of the internets, such as that (1) Assad is winning (2) the opposition is thoroughly dominated by Al Qaeda terrorists and (3) the opposition was responsible for the chemical weapons attack (the Russians have the evidence right? yes? no?)

http://www.businessinsider.com/syria-chemical-weapons-conspiracy-theories-2013-9

Please be honest and admit that at base you care nothing at all about the humanitarian tragedy in Syria and care everything about the geopolitics as it relates to Israel. In this you allow yourselves to become willing tools in service to whatever viewpoints are necessary to advance the anti-zionist cause.

I/P is everything to you guys and always has been, correct?"

Tokyo Shemp said...

This guy wonders why anyone would consider he works for the DLC.

On the surface he is people power and leftist.... but it always comes down to being nothing more than the lesser of two evils schtick.

I reject the fake left and fake right woos left. I also reject this apologist for the Democratic Party who no matter what the topic always seems to come back to the directive of keep voting blue.

Unfortunately, he means blue dog.

Charles Manson wrote some tunes. Stocks have soared under Obama. Donkeytale is living it up. We're reliving the 80's.

Anonymous said...

Why don't you actually do something, then, even if only keep Jill Stein's memory alive with a blog post or wtf. Remember her?

FYI, I did get banned/deleted at Moon of Alabama.

Also, FWIW, this be the blogger know as karmafish:

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/author/mike-lumish/

Tokyo Shemp said...

The anonymous coward probably wrote the first comment which brought in the, "Hey, this is donkeytale here."

He is probably shadowthief or works with it.

He is a little too invested in things.

He's similar to a stalker. No matter how many times I ask him to leave me alone, he keeps coming back.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I have drawn the assignment to kill your blogger muse, the DLC (for some reason known only to the inner circle) believes stifling you is the key to the final fascisisation of Amerika.

BK drew the assignment and couldnt stop you. Rauhauser also failed. Brynaert.

Bwahahaha! I win at internets!




Tokyo Shemp said...

Oh, isn't that special? The anonymous coward has exposed me as being a paranoiac.

Donkeytale's words mean so much, that he is unwilling to put a real name behind his words.

What part of please go away and leave me alone does this person not understand?

It's over between us, donkeytale. Add me to the list of folks who do not like you and get nauseous from being near your toxic soul.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Tokyo Shemp said...

Donkeytale, imho aka shadowthief, is a sick f*** on the road to hell.