gdp's Comments

Breitbart.com : If money was all, Chicago would have won vote - Rogge

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:00:35 +0000

8 Reasons Why Chicago Lost The 2016 Olympics (satire) http://bit.ly/2fzU9W Reason #2: IOC members frightened and confused by a bellowing Oprah Winfrey.

Antiwar.com Original Articles : The Coming Media Bailout

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:26:34 +0000

1) Churches and church-affiliated organizations performing work in the service of the public already do have public funds made available to them in the form of grants for specific programs and efforts. I have seen state, federal and municipal funds available for schools for special needs kids, for feeding hungry families, for job training etc. I know this because I work and volunteer with not-for-profit groups in economically devastated neighborhoods and it's part of my job to know this. 2) To take your example, the state very much effectively subsidizes an archdiocese by not taxing it while taxing all its suppliers. These basic realities of public interest have not produced protest from the left - indeed, the left is so over-shouted and drowned out you'd never know if there were - but there have been no such complaints from leftists because leftists are aware that a thing called the public interest exists and insist that the state should serve it.

Antiwar.com Original Articles : The Coming Media Bailout

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:50:45 +0000

Look up DARPA and ARPANET, Justin. It's not a canard, it's taxpayer and technological history. The internet tech was not discovered, it was conceived and developed solely by public money. And it's exactly why foaming libertarians on the internet are always unintentionally hilarious. I wish it wasn't true, but that's about all the right does today: it puts on a wacky show. It yells. And insults. It doesn't engage or discuss, it shrieks. "Snotnose?" "Comrade"? What is most sad, given what site this is, the right-wing view as you have expressed it, is the view that sees commies and enemies everywhere - even when there are none. Hey, uh, I wonder exactly what kind of foreign policy and domestic priorities could be favored by that kind of paranoid worldview? Why, a society might get downright warlike if it...well, never mind. I still plan to support Antiwar.com, though. To my mind, you've proven that the problem of the permanent war machine is so great that one need not even understand the why and how of it to do great work opposing it and reporting on it. I do thank you and the writers here for that work.

Antiwar.com Original Articles : The Coming Media Bailout

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:15:08 +0000

What is it about the libertarian viewpoint that produces such howling civics illiteracy? If a government arm decided to make public funds available to print media organizations who 1) asked for them 2) provided legitimate public service via legitimate journalism - e.g. sending actual reporters to cover actual things -- you think that would put the government "in charge" of those outlets? Is it possible you've never written a grant application? Private industry sucking up public subsidy IS the story of the shameful $1 trillion+ defense spending (and the story of Wall Street and of Big Agriculture). So from witnessing these private sectors growing like engorged ticks you conclude that the mainstream press are shills for the LOSER in that deal? Do you see the mansion-choked suburbs south of DC exploding with wealth from government salaries? No, you do not. There's far more to the military-industrial complex than the military - try exploring to the right of the hyphen. Markets fail the public constantly. To hand over advocacy of the public interest to them is madness. To pretend democratically elected government can have no role in serving that public interest is the depth of myopia. This country is huge and complex and unique and cannot be well described by comic-book absolutes of "control". Antiwar.com itself proves this: after all, it depends on a Pentagon-developed communications technology (TCP/IP) to do its good work.

Antiwar.com Original Articles : The Coming Media Bailout

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:00:10 +0000

Incredible fearmongering silliness. So unworthy of this site. Justin, please do us all a favor and notice that government is absolutely not the reason Antiwar.com has to beg for scraps of operating capital. It's the precious "free market" that uniquely blocks financial support from this site, effectively suppresses this site's important coverage and keeps you worried about its survival. You might want to act accordingly. Antiwar.com indisputably serves a critically important public interest, as does journalism as a whole. It is high time we stop the adolescent pretending that business interests serve every need of this society, and that democratic government has no legitimate role in defining and protecting these interests. Society no longer needs newspapers, yet it must not lose journalism. FTC and other entities absolutely should be looking at this very serious problem, lest the "free market" pull the plug on reportage as a whole and usher in a Golden Age of corporate corruption that will make the last 30 years look like a little league game. Blind market worship is pathetic enough from willing dupes and supporters of the military-industrial complex, but to see such simplistic self-defeating libertarian nonsense emanating from special vanguards of public interest such as Antiwar.com is nothing short of disturbing.

Antiwar.com Original Articles : Jon Stewart: Wimp, Wuss, Moral Coward

Wed, 6 May 2009 15:19:30 +0000

That a network broadcaster in 2009 occasionally plainly illustrates cause and effect of phenomenal American power is unexpected and laudable. That the broadcaster is a comedian is telling and tragic. And that the broadcaster must, as do all anti-war US leftists, weather criticism about his "faint protest" from experts in phenomenal American power is to be expected. But I do not believe it helps anything to wrongly conflate a cultural expression of political engagement - a politicization of entertainment, if I may - with mass political surrender. Especially not based on this show and its treatment of Truman. It seems to me, at worst, a cornerstone atrocity of one empire (the US/Hiroshima) was contextualized against the cornerstone atrocity of another empire (Japan/Pearl Harbor). Empire, not partisanship, is the issue. If, as Chalmers Johnson notes, picking a president is not a means by which to change the course of empire, one wonders how truly little picking a TV channel matters. In Raimondo's essay that we find the libertarian's chronic failure of viability put on display. Railing as in a country church against distant "Hollywood liberals", excoriating liberals for their "high moral dudgeon" over torture when the subhead of the piece calls out Stewart for "moral cowardice", and decrying the political engagement (even if it is summary and shallow) of millions of voters who rejected the bloodiest extremes of imperialism. Bravo? No. That these voters/viewers, in this rejection of imperialism's extremes surely have endorsed imperialism itself is not a point I will argue, because it is eminently true. Yet, not a single imperial decline in history has been at the hands of political action. In that, foreign disaster is the exclusive agent of change, and so shall it ever be. Either you have patience for the idea of American exceptionalism, or you do not. American liberals do not - comedians especially. But libertarians do, and nowhere is this clearer than when they criticize liberals for allowing and supporting the exact same empire in which libertarians live. On empire, Raimondo is one of my favorites. On culture, not so much.