Displaying 0 To 0 Of 0 Comments And even with all the new technology, this still holds up as an animated masterpiece. Night on Bald Mountain, from Fantasia » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 17, 2011 @ 3:03 am Fascinating, AD!
» Posted By whatsthatsound On April 17, 2011 @ 2:57 am The Top PlanetPOV Posts of 2010! Congrats to All and Sundry! Pass the Dom! » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 18, 2011 @ 4:37 pm The United States vs. Barry Bonds … a $5 million witch hunt? Great article, HH. Bogart, Mitchum, Gable, Grant, even Brando, didn’t look like that. They had regular bodies, some beefier than others. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 14, 2011 @ 2:41 pm The Country We Believe In–Transcript that’s a very justified rant, Abby. Like bito says, who would have expected it to be a wonkish lecture in the first place? » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 14, 2011 @ 2:49 pm WATCH LIVE: Pres. Obama Speaks On Fiscal Policy – 10:35 am PDT I’m with you, Adlib. I really LIKE the style of argument that happens here, as opposed to all the name calling. People from the outside, and at a glance, may see us here as a kind of “echo chamber” because we are all on the left side of the political spectrum. But at HP, the RW posters are almost, to a person, insulting and unwilling to intelligently discuss anything. They think just posting links and tossing out one liners is enough. POV may not be everybody’s cuppa, but the caliber of intellect here, and the range of topics discussed and argued about, is well beyond what I’ve encountered on other forums. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 13, 2011 @ 2:59 pm I don’t keep up with everything he writes, but thought that this was an excellent article of his. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:27 am GOP Economics – How to Become Taller by Digging Holes yeah, this is a real problem. We have become a dumbed down audience that goes for the quick and easily digestible. Information, entertainment, politics, “news” have all merged into one big industry, controlled by the same giant conglomerates. We have become a country of Entertained Consumers, rather than Informed Citizens, taught to look down on nuance and go for the quick and easily digestible. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 14, 2011 @ 3:04 pm Indeed, Truth, I am neither a racist nor a pony craver. However, if you really held my feet to the fire, you may get me to grudgingly confess to a slight prejudice against pony-getters. 😉 » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 13, 2011 @ 2:00 am Hi Truth, » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 8:21 pm Truth, I make no mention of what role I play politically, if any. I think it isn’t necessary to participate in a debate like this only if one can demonstrate that they are out there, walking the talk. In fact, I find the whole idea somewhat ludicrous. Not everyone who criticizes a movie needs to direct a film, and not everyone who criticizes a professional coach’s decision needs to be coaching their high school football team. Not everyone who criticizes my essays here needs to write their own or take drawing lessons. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:37 pm Truth, I am not sure I agree with your assertion that there is no one “remotely better”. What I agree with about that is that in the current American political paradign, it is not remotely possible that someone better ( a relative and subjective term, obviously) would get elected. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 5:20 pm Thanks for the very good links, Adlib. Like BDM, I have adjusted my opinion somewhat. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 5:12 pm Ha! Buddy the Flan Man! » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 5:07 pm E-cat, that’s understood. But look at the Tea Partiers. Their ranting and complaining and challenging the Republican status quo has gotten them a place at the table. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 4:24 pm Truth, we have a very different perspective on both those people. It is not Paul Krugman’s “job”, nor his responsibility, to support the president. It is his calling to write from his own perspective, as an economist, about what will benefit, or not benefit, the nation. If he had been given any position of economic advisor to the president, he would not be forced into the position of sniper that you perceive. But, as we all know, the president looks to Wall Street for his economic advice. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 4:20 pm I find that discrepancy interesting too, Truth. And in fact, what you write above, I agree with and agree with…. UNTIL you pull out the argument via apologia for Obama, what would have been the alternative? See, that just stops me dead in my tracks. I just don’t go for the “but it would be so much worse” argument as anything I should be cheering for. I have never NOT criticized a president, to tell you very honestly. And I am not going to stop criticizing this one. I didn’t imagine a super progressive alternative, but I desire one. For that, there should be implications that I -“didn’t get a pony?” Not only me, but really smart people like Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, Dennis Kucinich, etc. etc. They DARE to criticize the president and all of a sudden they are personae non grata? This I just don’t understand. Frankly, it seems like cheerleading to me. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 8:12 am Well, see, cynical person that I am, that’s why I referred to it as “the money quote”. Because Rachel says it not triumphantly, but dripping with sarcasm because of how things turned out. She is scathing, and rightly so, I feel. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 8:02 am Whoops, sorry, this was meant as a reply to BDM’s comment. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:42 am How can you not love Tom Tomorrow? » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:41 am Hey Buddy, They leveraged the financial meltdown to grab all the rewards and pass off the risks to the American people. They leveraged the needs of struggling Americans, for health insurance and unemployment benefits, to create giveaways to the insurance companies and extend the Bush tax cuts. They leveraged a small and disparate group of Tea Partiers to back the administration into a corner with threats of a shutdown. Leveraging is a distasteful term, but even more distasteful is how it has been applied. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:35 am Hey BDM, I love her. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 7:21 am Oh, Truth, I realize that I added quite a lot to that comment through editing, so didn’t take into account that your comment was to my briefest comment. Understood. You state that the forces arrayed against the Obama administration and the Dems in Congress are very powerful, yet you imagine that nevertheless there is hope that they will do as Adlib recommends in the article, and force a fight with the Republicans on the issue of spreading the sacrifice around. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 5:38 am also, Truth, let me note that it goes without saying that with this as your argument, you hold as little hope as either I or Buddy do in terms of seeing the administration and Congress act the way Adlib is recommending. Just too many forces working against that happening too, I guess? » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 4:56 am I say nothing whatsoever about it being a cakewalk, Truth. Something as big as this needs to be done through a series of steps, some bold, some less so, but all responsive to the opportunities that present themselves along the way. This is an administration that seems unable to seize historical trends and thus gets caught up in the results of not doing so. Blame THE NEW Congress! That new Congress is there, lets remember, partly because of dissatisfaction with the current administration. Well Then, BLAME the Voters! » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 4:45 am I agree with you, Buddy. Sadly, it seems to me that Adlib’s optimistic recommendations for what the administration and Democrats in Congress “should” do is not all that different from what they should have been doing all along. The Obama administration “should” have: – leveraged the Wall Street bailout to shrink financial behemoths, curtail obscene bonuses, and channel funds directly into Main Street/small business needs, instead of waiting for the “trickle down” dependent on the largesse of Wall Street, which used its “helplessness” to hold the administration and the rest of the country hostage. The economy would have recovered more quickly and fairly, and, as above, two years later the midterms would have unfolded differently. – leveraged the GM fiasco to insist upon greener engines, smaller cars, and a new generation of automotive engineering that would not only improve the economy, but would also help, in at least some way, to preserve the rapidly slipping away health of our environment – leveraged the disaster in the Gulf to further push an environmental agenda that would give hope to the future for finally weaning ourselves off oil dependency, the need to pour blood and treasure into the Middle East, and again, help keep the planet breathing and so on and so on. Ending the corporatocracy just frankly doesn’t seem to be the Democratic endgame in this day and age. Waiting for this administration to grow stones in its second term seems a bit like that play by Samuel Beckett to me, but I would LOOVE to be wrong. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 12, 2011 @ 4:14 am Beautiful painting and very poignant and eloquent words. I didn’t realize that Atlanta was going through that. It was a fast growing city while the Rust Belt cities like Detroit and Cleveland emptied out. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 11, 2011 @ 5:22 am Time to Stand Up to the Undermining Pundits Really well said, Kes. I totally concur with the sensibility and incisiveness of your first paragraph. Shall we form an Eloquence Mutual Respect Society? 🙂 » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 11, 2011 @ 5:57 pm Hi Kes, I just really don’t like it when folks get slapped with what I feel are exaggerated and unsubstantiated charges of villainy just because they dare to be critical of this president. As they are not here to defend themselves, I feel it almost as a duty to stand up for them. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 11, 2011 @ 4:43 pm Buddy, thank you so much for that light shedding link you posted! Here’s C.U. doing a surprisingly good imitation of someone who is not in fact a racist, drawn from the link you shared. » Posted By whatsthatsound On April 11, 2011 @ 5:07 amComments Posted By whatsthatsound
Here’s Walpurgis Night, from the opera “Faust”
Fans tend to look the other way on this stuff, because they just want to be entertained, game by game. Watching a sports game is nothing more than an entertainment choice, after all. We go to movies to watch people do things no human can do, and sports has just become an extension of that.
In fact, all this body building effects the movies too. Do you remember that “scene” in Top Gun where all the pilots play volleyball without their shirts? It was nothing more than a Hunkfest.
Ditto Chamberlain and Jabbar. They didn’t look like Dwight Howard and Lebron James.
I realize a lot of this is that the science of physical training has progressed, so that sculpted look is now more possible. But I’d be very surprised if the medicinals weren’t playing a very big (pun intended) role.
Totally OT, but if we were to do a survey of films up until the 70s, and then from the blockbuster age onwards, I think it would be interesting to see how many titles for both eras consisted of just one word.
Jaws, Splash, Hook, Up, Tangled, Saw, Alien, Enchanted, Seven, Insomnia, Scream etc, etc….don’t think, people, just watch!!!
btw, what’s your background, Truth? Are you Indian, or living there as an expatriate, as I am in Japan?
I got that you weren’t specifically referring to
me. As I wrote before, I have never in my adult life NOT criticized the standing president. I was too young to really educate myself about Carter’s policies, and that was a while ago. But from Reagan onward, I have bitched, groaned and moaned. 🙂
I realize it hasn’t done any good, but at least I’ve been consistent. ;)So if anyone wants to try to argue with me that I am perhaps racist, and holding this president to a higher standard, etc., that pov goes absolutely nowhere with me.
In all cases (other than my own), we are talking about professional people who campaigned for their positions, and now have it to do as a full time job. I have my own job to do; I think I can engage in a political discussion without revealing how much or little of my free time I devote to grassroots activism.
If we become wimpy and think we have to just get behind the president, we become invisible, while the goalposts keep moving further and further rightward.
Ditto Kucinich. As the most staunchly progressive rival among the Democratic candidates, had he been invited into the “team of rivals” by the new administration, his views would not be coming, as it were, from a man in the wilderness, and would not appear to you like sniping.
Had this administration been more inclusionary toward progressive persons and viewpoints from the beginning, AT LEAST as inclusionary as it has been towards business interests, I feel that not so many folks like the ones I mention would end up being thrown under the bus by the “support the president at all costs” crowd, of which (honestly) I consider you to be a member.
– am perhaps racist?
Respectfully,
wts
just as sad as the missed opportunities are the seized opportunities that the reactionary forces used.
The money quote from that Rachel Maddow segment was,
“Your ancestors have to have been very, very good people in their lifetimes, for you, in your lifetime to have earned the luck of being the political opponent of the Republicans this year”.
I understand that we don’t see eye to eye on this, of course. But I do hope we revisit the subject, because I would like to know how you can hold what to me seem like opposing viewpoints, namely:
Anything, ANYTHING, but hold the administration remotely to account.
There is a business term which I don’t like, because it is one of those MBA tricks of turning nouns into verbs, but it is called “leveraging”
– leveraged its landslide victory into a push to bring folks like Kucinich, et al., into its so-called “Team of Rivals”, instead of just Wall Street insiders. With a REAL Team of Rivals, more progressive policies regarding the Middle East Wars, Gitmo, energy policy and making the rich pay their fair share could have been spearheaded from the get go. Two years later, the midterms would have unfolded differently.
I agree. I think that in any case, we are talking about a fairly limited audience for all this punditry to begin with.
I’m fine with people calling out Cenk, Maher, Arianna, Ed, KO, whoever, frankly. It’s no skin off my nose. I don’t love these folks. I like Michael Moore, and Thom Hartmann, because I have been reading their books for many years and consider them to have insights that go beyond election cycles. When they began writing and filming about the subjects they continue to write and talk about, I’m pretty sure they had never even heard of Barack Obama, much less had any idea as to his race.
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