Really, photoshop is fun but sometimes it’s not enough…

Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes:

Ultimately, comes the kleptocracy, and chaos. What Herbert points out today, focusing on the health care infrastructure, is that we have an underlying systems problem, not a crisis. The crisis exists because of short-sighted solutions, thirty years of greed, exploitation, and the return of the Robber Barons. He concludes by saying that at no time since World War II have we required a president who can lead on so many fronts.

Ultimately, Ronald Reagan sold snake oil, and George H.W.Bush was right in 1980. Ever since then, we have had a national addiction to…snake oil. Whomever leads going forward has to wean us off snake oil. Yeah, the marginal tax rate needs to go up, probably higher than 39% on income over $250K. Payroll taxes need to go up, in that they need to cover income earned up to $250K. We’ve been spending like drunken idiots and we need to pay down the debt while at the same time spending money where we need to spend it. Infrastructure, health care, education, basic research (Fruit Flies, I kid you not) and defense. I see a massive jobs program as one possibility.

Monsieur IOZ:

But to the reluctant Obama supporters, the hedging anti-imperial types, McCain’s bellicosity is the central issue, and they delude themselves into believing that the principle danger of a McCain administration is that he would “start more wars.” That may or may not be true, and given the current political climate, any Republican administration, particularly his, would be hamstrung by the factional corridor politics of the American imperial court in Washington. The characteristic of McCain’s jingoism to bear in mind, though, is that it actually represents the unintegrated, incoherent mindset and world-view of most ordinary Americans; an unstirred suspension of nationalist pride, cultural ignorance, fear of otherness, and flag-waving military pride. None of these is good, but they all occur simultaneously in minds prone to dissipation, inaction, indecision, and fear of consequence.

Obama, meanwhile, has all the marks of a man with an integrated and coherent view of the central issues to the maintenance of American hegemony, and he should be expected to pursue the project of American dominance with more focus and more success. I won’t make bones about it. By the standard American-history-text measures, I expect an Obama presidency to be a successful one, surely at least a gradual reversion to mean. This will please his partisan supporters and most progressives (read: Restorationists), who will remain blithely oblivious to what precisely it represents: the more skillfully executed subjugation of other peoples to the needs of the American empire. To those who claim to oppose the American imperial project, that should be the focus of opposition.

Captain Capitulation:

you know, there was a time – gearing up for 2000, for example – when the american right was insanely dogmatic and absolutely herd-like: little political peons. “ditto-heads” – limbaugh fans – were well-named in that they just recited the script. it was the “echo chamber” where everyone said the same thing as everyone else and they all reinforced each other in their mindless unanimity. if you want to see what’s become of the political left, just hit kos or keith olbermann: sites of completely uncritical unanimity. everything that mccain says is stupid; everything obama says is inspired. everything palin ever said is a confirmation of her evil stupidity. that’s not about her; it has no reference to anything in the world at all: it’s about the fact that we feel so good saying the same thing together over and over. olbermann’s enemy bill-o is less partisan and more thoughtful than olbermann these days, which i wouldn’t have thought possible.

now: if whatever happens shows that republicans are evil idiots, you are not operating empirically; you’re just reciting the implications of your a priori structure. it is literally impossible to take the crap seriously, because the commitment is obviously entirely to having a certain effect; the connection on the other side of any given assertion to the way the world actually is – to truth, that is – has been entirely severed. it’s incapable of convincing anyone who’s not already convinced, but that’s not what it’s for: it’s a strategy for the construction of a group: every empty yapyap is only a declaration of solidarity, like the lowing of cows. it’s not…semantic: it doesn’t refer to the world. in every way and on both sides, it’s a sheer expression of epistemic cowardice: ‘true’ means what we all say, not what’s out there. i hope people take comfort in their group membership, but there is really no point in, like, talking or apparently making assertions: olbermann and his audience should just retreat to inarticulate simultaneous grunting, because what they say – really – has no meaning. it fails to refer.

-Sometimes it seems pointless to write, when others do it so right.