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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 4 to 28 of 93. Go back in thread:
Posted by beckett2 on September 26, 2018, at 1:21:26
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 25, 2018, at 13:11:59
> So much pain, yes!
>
> He was pretty good, wasn't he.
>
> The culture wars have not been good for us, not for understanding and empathy, social media too.Yes, a very good speaker. Truth-speaker with courage.
My father lost the tips of his fingers in a metal press, and he worked hard with his hands his entire life. He was a difficult man, but we loved each other very much.
I was given an enamel pin recently with two words, and I thought of you: cheerful despair.
What do you mean, culture wars? I hear the term often but not sure what it means.
Posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 18:11:35
In reply to Re: Australia » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 26, 2018, at 1:21:26
>What do you mean, culture wars?
I'm not really sure either. Is it how we do politics today? Instead of real politics (ending wars, health care, gerrymandering, reducing inequality, you know the list) we argue about political correctness, free speech, confederate statues. Is it the smokescreen to hide the transfer of wealth?
Posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 18:33:34
In reply to Re: Australia » beckett2, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 18:11:35
This is shaping up to be the most colossal wreck.
Posted by beckett2 on September 26, 2018, at 19:22:21
In reply to Re: Australia » beckett2, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 18:11:35
> >What do you mean, culture wars?
>
> I'm not really sure either. Is it how we do politics today? Instead of real politics (ending wars, health care, gerrymandering, reducing inequality, you know the list) we argue about political correctness, free speech, confederate statues. Is it the smokescreen to hide the transfer of wealth?Oh my goodness, thank you! I'm positive you're right.
Posted by beckett2 on September 26, 2018, at 19:23:35
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 18:33:34
> This is shaping up to be the most colossal wreck.
There or everywhere? The AU is having a commotion at the moment, yes?
Posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:11:18
In reply to Re: Australia » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 26, 2018, at 19:23:35
The AU? Us? Maybe. I don't know, I'm recovering at home from a medical procedure. Reading the news, counterpunch, the real news, truth dig, the intercept, local stuff, climate science, the eastern front.
You didn't mean the African Union?
Posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:16:03
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:11:18
To be more serious, I do like Stephen Kotkin. It's not his politics I like. He just knows how to write history.
You haven't said much about Christopher Clark. I read him when I was on a boring and depressing Greek Island. Which may have helped. Stephen Kotkin is even better.
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 2:01:12
In reply to Re: Australia, posted by sigismund on September 26, 2018, at 23:16:03
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:16:05
In reply to Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 2:01:12
So Mark is in Mexico?
I assume Brett has blown it. Believable?
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:31:53
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:16:05
'A rigorous all boys Catholic high school.'
Rigorous? What kind of rigour?
Posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 16:57:11
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 14:31:53
'How many beers is too many?'
No easy answer there.
Posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
In reply to Re: Varoufakis with Corbyn, posted by sigismund on September 27, 2018, at 16:57:11
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 13:52:50
In reply to Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
Says video not allowed in my country? (permission not given)
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 13:52:50
Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane. Did he die yesterday?
I had watched 4 hours of Kavanaugh testifying. Thinking about my feelings, I was embarrassed. What's my investment? Kavanaugh as a man? (Too silly to answer.) The dignity of the US Supreme Court?
Had to imagine this anywhere else. Embarrassed (once again) to say, 'Not even here'. Western Civilisation?
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:05:09
In reply to Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
Imagine this in Japan.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:31:00
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:05:09
The particular line I had in mind was
This generation's got no destination to hold.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:32:18
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:31:00
Did you see the video of Jeff Flake in the elevator? I posted it above, but I understand if you don't want to.
I can imagine this happening over much of the world unfortunately :(
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:38:11
In reply to Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 14:04:29
> Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane. Did he die yesterday?
>
> I had watched 4 hours of Kavanaugh testifying. Thinking about my feelings, I was embarrassed. What's my investment? Kavanaugh as a man? (Too silly to answer.) The dignity of the US Supreme Court?
>
> Had to imagine this anywhere else. Embarrassed (once again) to say, 'Not even here'. Western Civilisation?The power struggle is real. Kavanaugh hasn't demonstrated the temperament to be a (lifelong!) judge, and he's already come close if not outright perjury, but what stops the clock here is a story from HS. A believable story. But what amazes me is no one has made much of previous statements about his political work under oath.
This seems like a perfect example of what you described as a culture war.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:49:15
In reply to Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 28, 2018, at 23:47:49
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p53KddneD-k
An article mentioned a lawsuit over heart surgery?
Which song did you send? I can look it up.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:36:42
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:32:18
>I can imagine this happening over much of the world unfortunately :(
Not the emotional performance. When a train is late in Japan I worry the driver may commit hari kiri or whatever it is for losing face.
The sex stuff, of course.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:38:49
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:49:15
The album is Volunteers and so is the song. It's the last one.
(Meadowlands is taken from the anthem of the Red Army.)
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:47:14
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:36:42
> Not the emotional performance. When a train is late in Japan I worry the driver may commit hari kiri or whatever it is for losing face.
>yes!
From what I've read, the US is a loud culture on top of it all.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:48:08
In reply to Re: Kavanaugh, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 16:38:11
> he's already come close if not outright perjury, but what stops the clock here is a story from HS.
What is HS?
His questioning of Monica Lewinski, his work on torture. What's the other one?
How many beers is too many? That was a moment. I would guess not less than 20, but young people are resilient before the light goes out of their eyes.
Bloody prep schools. I went to one. No wonder they have to draw a line under it and ascend to sanctimony. Still, I felt the wounded narcissism was a cover for something else. (What?) He didn't believe it (the performance) and neither did anyone else, particularly his wife, and it didn't matter. The midterms are coming.
Posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:51:44
In reply to Re: Marty Balin, posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 17:38:49
> The album is Volunteers and so is the song. It's the last one.
>
> (Meadowlands is taken from the anthem of the Red Army.)I can't recall where (Not Bob Woodward?) I read that neocon strangled the 60s. I don't have enough history to understand this.
Posted by sigismund on September 29, 2018, at 18:13:52
In reply to Re: Marty Balin » sigismund, posted by beckett2 on September 29, 2018, at 17:51:44
The reference is to the Powell Memorandum, halfway down the wiki page.
Powell Memorandum[edit]
On August 23, 1971, prior to accepting Nixon's nomination to the Supreme Court, Powell was commissioned by his neighbor, Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., a close friend and education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a confidential memorandum titled "Attack on the American Free Enterprise System," an anti-Communist, anti-Fascist, anti-New Deal blueprint for conservative business interests to retake America for the chamber.[14][15] It was based in part on Powell's reaction to the work of activist Ralph Nader, whose 1965 exposé on General Motors, Unsafe at Any Speed, put a focus on the auto industry putting profit ahead of safety, which triggered the American consumer movement. Powell saw it as an undermining of Americans' faith in enterprise and another step in the slippery slope of socialism.[14] His experiences as a corporate lawyer and a director on the board of Phillip Morris from 1964 until his appointment to the Supreme Court made him a champion of the tobacco industry who railed against the growing scientific evidence linking smoking to cancer deaths.[14] He argued, unsuccessfully, that tobacco companies' First Amendment rights were being infringed when news organizations were not giving credence to the cancer denials of the industry. That was the point where Powell began to focus on the media as biased agents of socialism.[14]The memo called for corporate America to become more aggressive in molding society's thinking about business, government, politics and law in the US. It sparked wealthy heirs of earlier American Industrialists like Richard Mellon Scaife; the Earhart Foundation, money which came from an oil fortune; and the Smith Richardson Foundation, from the cough medicine dynasty;[14] to use their private charitable foundations, which did not have to report their political activities, to join the Carthage Foundation, founded by Scaife in 1964[14] to fund Powell's vision of a pro-business, anti-socialist, minimalist government-regulated America as it had been in the heyday of early American industrialism, before the Great Depression and the rise of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.
The Powell Memorandum thus became the blueprint of the rise of the American conservative movement and the formation of a network of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as well as inspiring the US Chamber of Commerce to become far more politically active.[16][17] CUNY professor David Harvey traces the rise of neoliberalism in the US to this memo.[18][19]
Powell argued, "The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism came from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians." In the memorandum, Powell advocated "constant surveillance" of textbook and television content, as well as a purge of left-wing elements. He named consumer advocate Nader as the chief antagonist of American business. Powell urged conservatives to take a sustained media-outreach program; including funding scholars who believe in the free enterprise system, publishing books and papers from popular magazines to scholarly journals and influencing public opinion.[20]
This memo foreshadowed a number of Powell's court opinions, especially First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, which shifted the direction of First Amendment law by declaring that corporate financial influence of elections by independent expenditures should be protected with the same vigor as individual political speech. Much of the future Court opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission relied on the same arguments raised in Bellotti.
Though written confidentially for Sydnor at the Chamber of Commerce, it was discovered by Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson, who reported on its content a year later (after Powell had joined the Supreme Court). Anderson alleged that Powell was trying to undermine the democratic system; however, in terms of business' view of itself in relation to government and public interest groups, the memo only conveyed the thinking among businessmen at the time. The real contribution of the memo, instead, was its emphasis on institution-building, particularly updating the Chamber's efforts to influence federal policy. Here, it was a major force in motivating the Chamber and other groups to modernize their efforts to lobby the federal government. Following the memo's directives, conservative foundations greatly increased, pouring money into think-tanks. This rise of conservative philanthropy led to the conservative intellectual movement and its increasing influence over mainstream political discourse, starting in the 1970s and '80s, and due chiefly to the works of the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.[21]
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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