Desiring Machine

I have been reading Geoffrey Nunberg’s latest book Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show.

It is a great book because it does an excellent job outlining the specific ways language permeates our politics. I will attempt a full review once I am finished but I do want to showcase this excellent point Geoffrey makes early in the book about Orwellian “Newspeak” and political language:

That’s the paradox of our attitudes about political language: each of us believes that we’re inured to manipulation, but that everyone else in the room is susceptible to it. There’s always an undercurrent of condescension when people describe some bit of language as Orwellian: “Mind you, I’m not fooled for an instant, but Joe Sixpack is likely to fall for it.” When we picture the prison house of language, it’s always from the outside looking in.

Interesting article on how some top Israeli doctors have been accused of unethical experimentation on elderly patients.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but one would think with the history of Nazism and Josef Mengele these doctors would be a little more aware and sensitive to the realities of their practices.

I guess it is a testament to the health ministry in Israel that these folks were found out.

It is well known that G W Bush was a terrible failure in the business world before he became president. And since becoming president his tanking of the U.S. economy has been nothing short of remarkable. The only thing that prevents it from being a total loss is really how little direct control a single president has over the entire economy. No president can completely dominate or micromanage an entire economy with desirable results. Stalin proved that fact. The best a president can do is lay the groundwork for a successful and thriving economy. However, if you need empirical evidence of how Republicans are failures all around don’t take the word of us Pinkos. Look at your sacred free markets and the corporate world.

This interesting article from Market Watch explains:

According to the firm’s research paper, “The Blue Factor,” an index of 76 companies in the S&P 500 meeting certain ethical criteria and favoring Democrats — “blue” stocks — would have topped a group of about 380 Republican “red” stocks by 15.6 percentage points annualized over the five years through August.

…

A $100 investment five years ago in the large-cap blue companies would have grown to around $239, the paper noted. An equivalent investment in large-cap “red” companies, such as ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM : 66.55, -0.97, -1.4% ) and Dell Inc. (DELL : 23.56, +0.31, +1.3% ) , would be worth around $118.

This is something we on the left have known for years. Prosperity and advancement under FDR, Truman, Republican lite Ike, Kennedy and Johnson. 8 years of Peace and the greatest expansion of the US economy under Clinton. What do we get under the Republicans? Secrets, lies, corruption and fiscal lunancy under Nixon, Ford, Reagan and the Bush boys,

However, whenever the left tries to present sensible and fair fiscal policy we get accused of being communists. Simply because we think a economy should be run in a way that expands opportunity for more people, not line the coffers of a rapacious elite whose only business plan for the last 45 years seems to be guns, bombs and cronyism.

So much for G.W. Bush the “CEO President”. His and his party’s business acumen and sheer ineptitude couldn’t even qualify them for a position to manage a mutual fund whose only goal was to keep pace with inflation.

I guess the real point is never trust a Texan with your wallet.