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4936 [lbo-talk] Close the Prisons Re: Irish priests beat, raped children -- rank: 1000

On May 21, 2009, at 7:55 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > I left out, however, one more important slogan: Open Borders. What a pair of self-marginalizing slogans, guaranteed to attract about 0.5% of the population and repel over 90%. Why not some that could actually build a movement? "Free health care! End college tuition! Child care for all! No more foreign wars!" Etc. Oh, right: "Those who object to it or quibble about monsters are not part of the intended audience." A very t ...

Document Size:	5396
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 17:14:50 PDT 2009

4937 [lbo-talk] Close the Prisons Re: Irish priests beat, raped children -- rank: 1000

On May 21, 2009, at 1:22 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > My definition of a leftist: Someone who wholeheartedly accepts the > slogan, "Close the Prisons." Except as you conceded earlier, it doesn't really mean close the prisons. It means, fewer people in prison and more alternatives to incarceration. But never let complexity get in the way of a slogan! Doug

Document Size:	5233
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 10:56:47 PDT 2009

4938 [lbo-talk] liberals falling out of love with BHO? -- rank: 1000

On May 21, 2009, at 11:50 AM, Michael Pollak wrote: > He really wrapped himself in the constitution this time -- he filmed > the speech standing in front of it at the National Archives. Corollary of Cockburn's law: never doubt anything until it's officially affirmed.

Document Size:	4946
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 09:24:40 PDT 2009

4939 [lbo-talk] card check: he dead -- rank: 1000

<http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2009/05/21/card-check-dead > Card Check Is Dead Unions are surprisingly bad at politics. By Liza Featherstone Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009 - 11:18am Last Thursday, President Obama pronounced "card check" dead, saying that the current Employee Free Choice Act didn't have the votes to pass but that a "compromise" could work. By compromise, the president meant a version of the bill without card check, the provision obligin ...

Document Size:	5646
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 08:27:16 PDT 2009

4940 [lbo-talk] liberals falling out of love with BHO? -- rank: 1000

<http://gawker.com/5263813/michael-isikoff-reveals-details-of-secret-white-house-torture-meeting > Michael Isikoff Reveals Details of Secret White House Torture Meeting By The Cajun Boy, 2:16 AM on Thu May 21 2009, 2,497 views Are Barack Obama's liberal supporters turning against him? One couldn't escape sensing that watching Rachel Maddow's show last night. Not only did Maddow express her own grievances, but Newsweek's venerable gumshoe Michael Isikoff reported on a meeting between Oba ...

Document Size:	7254
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 07:40:31 PDT 2009

4941 [lbo-talk] Irish priests beat, raped children -- rank: 1000

On May 21, 2009, at 8:32 AM, Chris Doss wrote: > And the conclusion is that baby-rapists should not be in prison? Who are you arguing with here? Who thinks that actual baby rapists shouldn't be jailed?

Document Size:	4816
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Thu May 21 05:44:25 PDT 2009

4942 [lbo-talk] CAPITAL AS POWER -- A new book by Nitzan & Bichler -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 9:19 PM, Alan Rudy wrote: > I don't know who taught Nitzan and Bichler their Marx and Marxism > but it > certainly wasn't any of the Marxists who trained me - across a > variety of > disciplines - or any of the many I regularly read I'm a little mystified by the assertion that the idea that capital is power is novel. It's certainly in Marx as I understand him, and is at the core of the way I interpret finance. But I haven't read the book. Doug

Document Size:	5346
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 18:29:46 PDT 2009

4943 [lbo-talk] why I love Workers Vanguard -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 5:44 PM, Chris Doss wrote: > There was no popular upsurge before Clinton that I can remember. No but there were shitloads of discontent. The Bush recession, the Angry White Man, really nasty public mood. Doug

Document Size:	4780
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 15:23:19 PDT 2009

4944 [lbo-talk] why I love Workers Vanguard -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 5:28 PM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote: > Me thinks that Doug is confusing cause and > effect cincerning the relationship between popular > upsurges and the existence of Democratic > administrations. The existence of a Democratic > administration is a symptom of the existence of > a popular upsurge. It's not its cause. It's dia-fucking-lectical, man. Upsurge->Dems. Dems->disappointment. Disappointment->more upsurge. Then it's time for a Republican ...

Document Size:	5188
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 15:21:31 PDT 2009

4945 [lbo-talk] shot or hanged? -- rank: 1000

[Candidates for the alumni seat on the Yale Corporation, the aptly named governing body of that distinguished institution. Why do these choices always remind me of the U.S. states that offered the condemned their choice of mode of execution? My favorite is the liberal softie, working in "transitional environments" like Afghanistan and Iraq.] Nelson Cunningham is managing partner and cofounder of McLarty Associates, an international strategic advisory firm based in Washington, D.C ...

Document Size:	16027
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 12:47:02 PDT 2009

4946 [lbo-talk] why I love Workers Vanguard -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 3:35 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: > Bill O'Connor wrote: > >> For all the evils of lesser evil-ism, the lesser evil is less evil. > > Not if it is the lesser evil that maintains the existence over time of > both lesser and greater evils. And that is the case, as it happens, of > the DP & the RP. Hence the _greatest_ evil is the left (or > progressive) > wing of the DP, which will _never_ have a significant impact on > policy > but will prrovi ...

Document Size:	5629
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 12:42:15 PDT 2009

4947 [lbo-talk] Interview with Left Party Leader Oskar Lafontaine -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 3:01 PM, joseph noonan wrote: > In a roundabout sort of way. It might be helpful to know what the > German average is to compare it with the proposed minimum. And I > guess I misread somebody's tone, because I got the distinct > impression you and shag were dumping on German proposed min. And > since the German min would be significanty higher than some > *collectively bargained* wages in this country, I didn't see the > point in dumping on it. Nor do ...

Document Size:	5386
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 12:10:08 PDT 2009

4948 [lbo-talk] why I love Workers Vanguard -- rank: 1000

On May 19, 2009, at 1:48 PM, Chris Brooke wrote: > This one? > > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n05/ande01_.html > > It ends like this: > > *** What conclusions follow? Simply this. Mewling about Blair s > folly or > Bush s crudity, is merely saving the furniture. Arguments about the > impending war would do better to focus on the entire prior structure > of the > special treatment accorded to Iraq by the United Nations, rather than > wrangle over the secondary i ...

Document Size:	5448
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 11:01:24 PDT 2009

4949 [lbo-talk] why I love Workers Vanguard -- rank: 1000

"What distinguished the oddly demented regime of George Bush and Dick Cheney is that it openly reveled in its barbarity and sought to give torture legal sanction.... Obama seeks to return to the bourgeois norm." - "U.S. Imperialism: Torture, Repression and War," Workers Vanguard, May 8, 2009

Document Size:	4865
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 10:08:19 PDT 2009

4950 [lbo-talk] Interview with Left Party Leader Oskar Lafontaine -- rank: 1000

On May 18, 2009, at 7:06 PM, joseph noonan wrote: > And WTF with comparing the *average* wage with a minimum? I really don't get the question. Our min wage, $6.55/hr, is 35% of the average, $18.51/hr. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was 45-55% of the average. Taking it up to 50% of the average - which is just Good Ol' Days levels - would bring it to $9.26, a 41% increase. The Left Party's proposed minimum for Germany would leave even that in the dust. Isn't that a valid point to make? By the ...

Document Size:	5372
Author:	Doug Henwood
Date:	Tue May 19 08:25:31 PDT 2009