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Monday, June 10, 2013

Nancy Pelosi With President Kennedy

Once and, we may hope, future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reminds us that "President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act fifty years ago today... call[ing it] 'a first step'." She then points out that right now Republicans are predictably blocking the Paycheck Fairness Act from coming to the floor. A petition is available at http://dccc.org/EqualPay by means of which you can express your outrage mostly ineffectually but possibly edifyingly until such time as Democrats manage to outnumber Republicans in both chambers and in the White House again -- let is hope that 2016 goes against type and the Democratic Base actually votes in its overwhelming numbers -- hence allowing for anything good happening on this front against the know-nothing greed-head white-racist patriarchal pricks of today's GOP.

12 comments:

jimf said...

I wonder how long it's been since she's had to wear elbow-length gloves.

Dale Carrico said...

More to the point, how long will it be before I can get away with elbow-length gloves?

Y. said...

Two extra-strong douchebags together.

Kennedy, he of the stupid and wasteful Apollo programme, the guy who cracked in face of Soviet pressure but lied about it publicly so the Missile crisis resolution would look like a win for the US.

Political classes everywhere are the same. Liars, thieves, narcissists, high-born morons.

But hey, at least in democracies they can theoretically be chucked out after elections.

Funny how you Muricans never manage to throw them out..

Dale Carrico said...

Plenty to criticize in both of these politicians, of course, but plenty to praise in both as well, far more than most. If you simply hate all elected officials one wonders why these two especially inspired your ire. I personally think Apollo was a stunning accomplishment, and I'm not sure we would be alive if Kennedy hadn't "cracked" as you call it. Who knows what you specifically have against Pelosi. On this blog you will find fairly exhaustive critiques of what passes for US democracy and proposals for what I take to be achievable improvements.

Y. said...

Actually, right around the time of the Cuban crisis, the balance of forces was such that if USSR fired first, US would still win, probably with 30-50 million dead, tops, depending on the breaks. (I can't help quoting media I like. Sorry)


In case of first US strike, US could destroy all Soviet ICBMs (there were few - all slow to fuel, could not be stored ready to launch etc). First minutemen missiles came online just during the crisis. First comparable Soviet missiles appeared years later..

I am not sure what to praise in Kennedy? Vietnam escalation?
He did have a decent economic and human rights policy.. that is true.
As far as elected representatives are concerned.. I would say Mencken is right. In big democracies, decent and able men get to the top only by accident. And lately, US is a sham democracy. The media manipulation and campaigns ensure that whoever is elected is going to have strongly pro-business elite policies. And screw the rest.

See how US productivity and incomes have de-coupled since you lot elected that two-bit actor from California? Good and hard..

Apollo program seems stunning, if you have no knowledge of Project Orion. It was brief, just perfect for a country that cannot maintain national attention longer than two electoral cycles..

Apollo brought US the moon. It was nothing more than a bigger version of Von Brauns Amerika rocket. No imagination at all: launching rockets from a Maglev can massively improve efficiency. Would it have been so difficult to build a hundred mile long massive maglev track somewhere in the Rockies, and launch thousand ton rockets at slightly below the speed of sound?
No. NASA never attempted that..


A later, successful project Orion would have brought humanity the whole planetary system. The designs were easily capable of travelling to Saturn and back on one fuel load inside half a year .. and could have brought a way more reliable nuclear deterrent system.

It was a very ambitious project, but if the physicists who were on it thought it tough but feasible, it probably was ..

Submarines can launch surprise strikes .. flight times of three-five minutes, or even less, and are relatively easy to destroy.

Nuclear-armed spaceships lurking somewhere beyond moon orbit .. those could only launch retaliatory strikes, never surprise one. It would take hours to days for the missiles to get back to Earth.

Furthermore, Orion spacecraft would highly unstealthy, due to the propulsion system. So performing a sneak attack would be highly difficult.

Developing such deterrent would also make further space exploration cheaper. It'd also massively lower cost of orbital structures.

Kennedy signed the atmospheric test ban treaty.

Pity no one thought later (1970s) about sharing all the data with the Soviets, who by then had enough nukes so they would not really benefit from the data.

A joint space project..

Y. said...


Who knows what you specifically have against Pelosi.

Her husbands business deal. Seems to profit quite handsomely from her political position.

Also, she was one of the proponents of the fairly idiotic assault weapon ban.. which banned guns depending on mostly cosmetic features.

Which also ignores the point that murder rate does not really depend on gun availability (that only really influences the percentage of murders commited with guns).

Homicide rate is mostly determind by social variables. If you would like to dispute this, first look it up. Even tribal medieval mudholes like Yemen, where almost every adult man has an AK are less violent than mostly disarmed US cities, especially those with big disadvantaged populations..

Furthermore, all such hasty legislation following statistically insignificant atrocities like Sandy Hook is odious to me. It usually aims to confiscate or outlaw billions worth of property from law-abiding citizens.. for what? There would be no reduction in death rate, since various US nuts have proven that deer rifles (Charles Whitman) or just handguns (such as can be easily stolen by clubbing a cop from behind and taking it from his holster) would still be available to various narcissistic assholes ...
Failing that, they'd have to stick to trucks, truck bombs, swords and such, which, well...cannot be really banned.

Everyone ignores the 5000-7000 victims of black-on-black gang violence. That is about eighty to hundred times worse when it comes to loss of life than spree killings, even in the worst years.

Of course, no is willing to admit that they do not care about dead blacks in inner cities. A problem which is not really solvable with gun bans, since confiscating all the guns from Americans is practically and politically impossible.

And why should they? Implicit association tests have shown that most Americans subconsciously hate or fear black Americans..
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test)

Drug legalisation would greatly diminish the violence very quickly, just like scrapping the similarily moronic Volstead act ended the prohibition gang wars..

Dale Carrico said...

Needless to say, your alternative history didn't happen and had any episode of history unfolded a bit more like you seem to think it should have it too would have turned out differently than you seem to think it would have, and in ways you would denounce just as ferociously as measured against the slightly different alternative history you would have crafted in consequence instead.

Actual politics is a series of compromises between stakeholders mediated by conspicuously inadequately accountable institutions maintained by mostly scared scarred parochial error-prone people. As a general matter all this is made worse by the comparative geographical historical resource-rich insulation of America's highly privileged population from the consequences of their wasteful, violent, polluting conduct, as well as by the fact that our notionally democratic governance is stratified by plutocracy and both legacies and realities of white-racism.

Nonetheless, one can engage in efforts of education, agitation, organization, and electoral participation to reform the status quo in the direction of a more sustainable accountable equitable consensual polyculture. Party politics are inadequate but nonetheless indispensable to these efforts.

I disagree with you that the ready availability of military weapons has nothing to do with the catastrophe of gun violence in this country, as do the facts, but I agree with you that the racist war on (some) drugs has been a catastrophe that should end -- I advocate legalization, safety regulation, and taxation supporting rehabilitation programs for those who need or desire them. I won't even get into what seems to me to be the madness of your contemplation of "better" or "worse" nuclear wars -- nuclear war is always only an absolutely unfathomable catastrophe. <-- period.

But whatever our agreements or disagreements about ideal outcomes, there remain the whole range of judgements connected with the effort to arrive from where we are toward where we want to be in the actually-existing world of actually-existing institutions and actually-existing diverse stakeholders using actually-available means. Too many of your glib denunciations seem to me to amount to the self-satisfied refusal of available means to achieve ends closer to the ones you claim to care about all the while pretending you care about these ends more purely or clearly precisely because you refuse to endorse or engage the processes that might painfully bring something like them about.

Dale Carrico said...

For what it's worth I profoundly DO care about dead black people in cities (that association test notwithstanding -- a test which also suggests those who suffer from racism have inculcated such racist prejudices, so presumably they don't care about their own deaths or those of their families? -- not to mention that is isn't ought so a test demonstating the obvious legacy of the irrational rationality of racism among Americans hardly endorses that racism as you seem to with your "should") and millions of others do as well -- I daresay Nancy Pelosi is one of them. Who knows if that makes her more odious or less to you.

And by the way, Apollo still seems stunning to me even knowing all there is to know about Orion -- and also knows Orion did not nor would have actually happened (feeling rather differently about nukes than you seem to do, nor do I think it really should have happened). You are right when you point out that Apollo was a glorified conventional rocket -- the lander was the real engineering standout in the project in my estimation -- but to me this doesn't make coulda woulda shoulda any more compelling than reality, though it does suggest why a real Mars program implemented by an international consortium of real governmental space agencies (none of this for-profit McVegas smoke and mirrors crap) would contribute so much more substantial civilizational progress than Apollo did.

I honestly don't see why your point about the shortness of the American attention span and the evident unwillingness of most people to invest in long-term outcomes from which they would obviously benefit themselves without palpable in the shorter-term as well seems not to represent a fact altering your sense of pragmatic possibility and realistic reform strategy but one recommending instead the superiority of escapes into wish-fulfillment fantasizing as if that demonstrates greater integrity rather than folly conjoined to mild cowardice.

Y. said...

Of course, you're right where alternative history is concerned. Pointless to worry.

About nukes.. are you aware of the fact that the worst catastrophe ever, Chernobyl, in killed mostly the people who were liquidating waste right around ground zero.

The widely-cited cases of thyroid cancer in children had.. one fatality? It was very well treatable.

Orion flights, unless we were speaking of some absurd volume of them ..if they were taking place would likely pollute less than the atomic testing of the 1950s.

Also, the vehicles themselves could be launched by some innovative systems, like the maglevs, or perhaps ground-based laser propulsion now that powerful lasers seem to be heading towards practical utilization..



I honestly don't see why your point about the shortness of the American attention span and the evident unwillingness of most people to invest in long-term outcomes from which they would obviously benefit
themselves without palpable in the shorter-term as well seems not to represent a fact altering your sense of pragmatic possibility and realistic reform strategy but one recommending instead the superiority of escapes into wish-fulfillment fantasizing as if that demonstrates greater integrity rather than folly conjoined to mild cowardice.


Folly?

I see things from a different perspective. I care little for social justice or such. I would prefer to live in a non-murderous democracy where franchise would be limited to rational, productive members of society who are not getting any subsidies or welfare (except maybe retirement benefits).

Or an orderly, efficient non-democratic society.

Such societies are more likely to make people invest in what they prefer less, than let them squander their resources on short-term luxuries, such as bigger housing, cars, as Americans are wont to do..

From my own experience, and from what I have seen in others, I am convinced that people mostly do not have a clue about what is good for them, and often only get it after a failure of some kind.

This egalitarian notion that people are in any way equal is just ridiculous. They are not. Social justice is mostly impossible, simply because some people are more able, or more motivated than others. Equality of outcome is a complete crock of..

I believe that societies where elections, sloganeering and propaganda stunts such as Apollo program would be less important could take a longer view where infrastructure, basic research and such are concerned.

There is also the notion that Europe was at the pinnacle of it's power and success in an age when franchise was limited to wealthy individuals..

Of course, there is little hope of bringing about such change, short of armed revolt, or some sort of elite coup.

Which of course would be unlikely to result in what Id like, since the present elites do not care about the greater good, but are rather selfish. Maybe if some real trouble happens in EU.

Even then, we would probably just get fascism like so many predict.

On the other hand, fractional improvements to the abysmal representative democracy can be envisioned.

Imagine letting people have a say in legislation, in a process where lawmakers would have to explain, and have each part of new law approved by (literate and intelligent) citizens - who could be selected via some sort of open-source complex IQ and grammar test.

Business is greatly hampered by suddenly changing laws, and there is little evidence the frenetic pace is necessary.

This kind of improvement.. I believe is doable. No doubt has been suggested..

Dale Carrico said...

I would prefer to live in a non-murderous democracy where franchise would be limited to rational, productive members of society who are not getting any subsidies or welfare (except maybe retirement benefits). Or an orderly, efficient non-democratic society.

Who determines the limits of the franchise? Who determines who the "rational" "productive" members of society are? I certainly know a lot of people who fancy themselves rather who are the most ignorant wish-fulfillment fantasists imaginable. I certainly know a lot of people who fancy themselves uniquely "productive" while disavowing their dependence on the efforts of historical Why do anti-democratic assholes always assume that they would be the ones running things, they would be the rational ones, they would do everything better than the people they look down on without knowing them or really knowing themselves? It is interesting that you do not seem to conceive of the benefits of a stable legal system and efficient administration of common and public goods as welfare entitlements -- only money "stolen" from the "good" people for the "bad" people counts as that, right?

Such societies are more likely to make people invest in what they prefer less, than let them squander their resources on short-term luxuries, such as bigger housing, cars, as Americans are wont to do..

That's rich, you glibly refer to "Such societies" as if any actually exist -- or can you possibly be pining for historically actual examples of monarchical or plutocratic tyrannies?

From my own experience, and from what I have seen in others, I am convinced that people mostly do not have a clue about what is good for them, and often only get it after a failure of some kind.

You are definitely demonstrating the truth of that insight. Funny that you seem to believe that some people should tell others what is good for them whatever their preferences in the matter even though the ones doing so are just as prone to wrongheadedness as the ones they dictate to.

Dale Carrico said...

This egalitarian notion that people are in any way equal is just ridiculous. They are not.

What you describe as "this egalitarian notion" is a straw man. The aspiration toward equity is not an aspiration toward homogeneity. I regularly refer to the value of equity-in-diversity precisely to circumvent such confusions (to treat you generously here).

Equitable recourse to law is indispensable to the sustainability of a stable trustworthy legal system in a complex functional division of labor with even a notionally mobile, meritocratic rather than inherited selection of roles in the labor force.

The universal provision of basic education, healthcare, and income (at any rate a living wage coupled with a comparable unemployment benefit) are indispensable to the maintenance of a scene of actually informed, actually non-duressed consent to the terms of commerce if that system is to benefit from market efficiencies without endorsing forms of fraud, exploitation, and slavery it presumably disapproves.

While it is true that some people are stronger than others, and some people exhibit different forms and measures of intelligence, but of course co-ordinated inquiry and effort are incomparably more accomplished than individual effort, and individual differences in strength and knowledge are always rendered negligible when people act in concert.

Social justice is mostly impossible, simply because some people are more able, or more motivated than others. Equality of outcome is a complete crock of..

Apart from your repetition of the facile confusion of equity with homogeneity here, what you really mean to say is that your vision of social justice is different from mine. That is obvious.

I believe that societies where elections, sloganeering and propaganda stunts such as Apollo program would be less important could take a longer view where infrastructure, basic research and such are concerned.

Because non-democratic societies built such better infrastructure (pyramids, possibly?) or facilitated such research -- contrary to the apparent correlation of comparatively more mobile and responsive governments with periods of greater experimentation and discovery?

There is also the notion that Europe was at the pinnacle of it's power and success in an age when franchise was limited to wealthy individuals..

Not to mention gorging itself on the wealth of non-European societies -- do you pine for slaves and imperial conquest too or are we pretending not to know about all that bloody business?

Dale Carrico said...

Of course, there is little hope of bringing about such change, short of armed revolt, or some sort of elite coup.

Dizzy daydreams, eh?

Which of course would be unlikely to result in what Id like, since the present elites do not care about the greater good, but are rather selfish. Maybe if some real trouble happens in EU. Even then, we would probably just get fascism like so many predict.

Yes, armed revolt would be ugly -- not because the wrong elites would be in charge instead of the right elites you would prefer -- but because armed revolt is ugly, and elites are almost never elite in the sense you mean anyway (which is why your politics are so foolish).

On the other hand, fractional improvements to the abysmal representative democracy can be envisioned.

I agree. Ever increased and improved provision of education, healthcare, support paid for by steeply progressive income, property, and transaction taxes eventually coupled with more and more public funded elections and wider and wider enfranchisement of consenting adults would in my view yield an ever more competent, accountable government in an ever more sustainable, equitable, consensual, diverse society.

Imagine letting people have a say in legislation, in a process where lawmakers would have to explain, and have each part of new law approved by (literate and intelligent) citizens - who could be selected via some sort of open-source complex IQ and grammar test.

IQ tests? Testing for what? And just who decides who isn't intelligent enough or intelligent in the right way to deserve to have a sasy in the public decisions that affect them? Somebody a lot like you, right?

Business is greatly hampered by suddenly changing laws, and there is little evidence the frenetic pace is necessary.

No small amount of what passes for "business" should be hampered.

This kind of improvement.. I believe is doable. No doubt has been suggested..

Well, we agree that reform is possible. Otherwise, I think your politics are profoundly misguided and your anti-democratic assumptions mostly based on self-congratulatory fictions.