Grandma and motorcycle dude.
cherry valley forever
$LAYYYTER
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Peter Solarz
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occasionally subtle
Not today Justin
styofa doing anything

tannertan36
Mike Driver
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
d e v o n

#extradirty
Xuebing Du

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Stranger Things
RMH
hello vonnie
NASA
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@sweetidiot
Grandma and motorcycle dude.
In the early 1800s a man named Little Jon lived in this so called earth cabin (swe. ‘backstuga’) located in southern Småland, Sweden. An earthen cabin is built partially buried in the ground, in this case there’s three walls of stone and one wall made of wood. In Sweden earthen cabins was common in the forests from the 1600s until the late 1800s. Link
i Småland
Obama.
For all of the crushing disillusionment of the past 8 years, Obama is still the best president we have had since FDR, (maybe Eisenhower if you forget that he helped give us modern Iran ... JFK made a mess of foreign policy in just two years and never rated very highly in my book).
At his zenith Obama was mainly hamstrung by his own party (the massive health care reform compromises), one that paid for it with losses in every single election through today.
Obama will never be remembered as an FDR because he was too conciliatory. Like a lawyer and a professional he tried to forge consensus rather than fiat. But he also never had the solidarity either. Pelosi could only have congress at his back for two years. The other six he dealt with increasingly little room to maneuver. Still, there is so much he didn't do that he was perfectly capable of (the foreclosure crisis and the Yemen crisis in particular). By his own admission the Libya intervention was short sighted. But like a decent representative of America he at least embraced it's changing landscape and tried to reflect it in his own administration. He scooped up some of the sharpest minds in academia. Managed to draw down two wars, and mostly avoided getting fully involved in another one (kind of). He also kept blood pumping into important federal institutions and even expanded some (yay parks!).
Obama is, unfortunately, the exception to the Democratic party, not it's norm. It will take tremendous work to defeat the pathology of technocratic managerialism from (fully) overtaking the Democratic party again.
But still, it happened. Barack Hussein Obama II, a first generation mixed African-American became president by electrifying Americans into believing in political public life again. In such a raw and insular country it's a truly exceptional thing.
Mt Shuksan looms over the Mt. Baker Ski Area with a fresh coat of snow from last weekend’s storms. Winter is coming! Photo by Our communications guru Christian Martin.
Ancestry Pt. 2
Ancestry Pt. 1
Malaysian space program
Fear is such a vicious thing It wraps me up in chains
Vote or Get Laid Off
Voting rights are increasingly explained like the "privilege" of having a blue collar job. You have a duty, you have a responsibility. Its not a choice, it's not creative, it's not emancipatory. In fact, it has all of the Marxian worker alienation/estrangement of an industrial line worker. The Gattungswesen is totally denied. "Show up at the prescribed time, assemble this part here, and maybe one day you will see the final product and have pride in it, but understand that (your) progress is incremental (ours is realized immediately)" Voting has become as soul crushing as clocking in at your job. I would even say that the pride of wearing that "I Voted" sticker is the realization that it's finally done. This is the inherit problem with the two party establishment. It still functions in the old time-clock order. It also explains the professionalization of Democrats; this is the only class that realizes finished production. But the increasingly social production of people means new agency and new transparency outside of this order. So don't expect people not to be frustrated and not turn out.
We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success. Schopenhauer
Chris Marker - Le Joli Mai (1963)
Guy Clark 1941 – 2016 And him he hit the driveway with his feelin's in a case. And her she hit the stoplight and touched up her face. So you tell them the difference between caring and not. And that it's all done with mirrors, lest they forgot.
Clarification: American Liberalism Is Falling Behind and You Don’t Need Leninism to Fix It
The generation of lazy sound bite smug-’nalysis just can’t die off soon enough. Jonathan Chait’s article, Reminder: Liberalism Is Working, and Marxism Has Always Failed, is loaded with hand-me-down free market fundie tropes that we ought to have moved beyond by now. But the thing that sticks with me from his article (and others like it) is the dishonest math that Social Democracy = Denmark.
Yes, Bernie Sanders has mentioned Denmark before as a model of social democracy with a structured social safety net, but he has more often name-checked other Northern European countries besides the little kingdom. But they only repeat Denmark when trying to dust away his very basic ideas. Even Van Jones quipped one evening that no one in the US cares about Bernie’s obsession with a small “hamlet” in Denmark. Now Chait echoes this in his piece and says that Sanders endorses “Denmark as the closest thing to a real-world model for his ideas.” Why this obsession with Denmark?
Denmark is a small and not at all diverse country with an economy that mainly exports Legos and very tall people. It’s a country of less than 6 million that relies on banking and international shipping, much like the Netherlands, but with it’s own soverign currency.
But when Sanders compares the USA to other socially funded societies, he rarley mentions Denmark. In fact, what he says, ad nauseam, is pretty much some variation of these quotes;
“In Germany, Scandinavia, and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.”
or
“You go to Scandinavia, and you will find that people have a much higher standard of living, in terms of education, health care, and decent paying jobs.” The reason the example of Denmark is used by Chait, Hillary, and just about everyone else is it fits the often repeated denial of why democratic socialism would not work in America like it does in Europe — Those societies are different. They have a homogeneous society (white), with a common ideology, common values (the love of discotech, coffee, fish roe in squeezable tubes), and small populations the size of New England states.
They want you to believe that social democracy only works in Denmark because it’s like Massachusetts; small (also 6m), white, and a ridiculous accent.
But the problem of that logic is that Sweden is also a social democracy, also part of Scandinavia, and it has nearly twice the population of Denmark (10m), and contains about 15% foreign-born citizens in both urban cities and sprawling countryside. It’s also a highly dynamic economy giving us such blockbuster startups as Spotify and several of the video games you can’t avoid, like Minecraft, Assasin’s Creed, and Candy Crush. Of course it also has it’s big profitable employers like Volvo, Ikea, Astra Zeneca, or H&M. It’s a country so stable that Facebook stores the bulk of it’s data there. Despite all of this pro-business private sector ingenuity, the dominating political party in Sweden is the SAP, which in Swedish is an acronym for the “Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Sweden.” Sweden has all of the same social welfare systems as Denmark, including it’s legendary paid family leave program.
Now, should I continue on to Germany, population 10m or roughly twice that of the State of California, and the undisputed economic powerhouse of Europe? A country that, despite its high wages, despite it’s powerful trade unions, and substantial taxation, still manufactures and exports far more than it imports?
Chait excuses all of this like you would expect a neoliberal to: by saying “While Denmark’s success suggests that a modern economy can afford to fund more generous social benefits, it does not reveal an alternative to the market system.” Doesn’t it though? Isn’t that what all of Northern Europe shows? That the alternative isn’t to follow market liberalism, but to define and to lead it with pretty damn leftist democratic action, and that doing so can be remarkably stable and fiscally sound?
It’s also worth noting the nascent racism in praising America’s diversity only to use it as a reason why we can’t coalesce around the European model of socializing essential services. Is the argument really that people of color (also known as Americans) just aren’t that into it? Because there isn’t really much of a demographic point to be made. While Northern Europe is indeed pretty damn white, it’s immigration rate is nearly on par with the USA. When simplistic comparisons to Northern Europe fail to net the rhetorical goods about the left that Chait is out for, he defaults to McCarthy mode like an unpaid intern for the National Review. Oh those Bernie kids and their Marxism!
I always find it funny when liberals separate their post-enlightenment thinkers into piles like blue m&ms. Hard candy shells on the outside, Max Weber goodness on the inside. But yes, Marx did indeed co-author The Communist Manifesto. It was 64 pages long in it’s original edition (double ruled, huge margins, all of that stuff). Soviet Russia adopted very little of it outside of the nomenclature used in Paris. No one is sure if Mao even bothered to read it. These days China tends to represent the ultimate pro-business model that no one wanted.
Regardless, in comparison, Marx’s Capital took 3 volumes. The first volume alone is 1,152 pages in our modern condensed paperback format. It never (at least very rarely) mentions communism. It examines and critiques Capitalism and is taught in every sociology classroom (and many of the better Economic classrooms along with Adam Smith) because he got an amazing amount of things about capitalism figured out, and quite a bit more about it wrong. One thing is easy to be sure of though. In none of these publications did Marx write about “political correctness.” To be fair to Chait, there is often little in common between “Marxists” and Karl Marx himself. Marx is on record as saying to his son-in-law: “What is certain is that I am not a Marxist.”
However, if Jonathan Chait had ever bothered to comprehend Marx outside of Lennon (John) and Guevara — in other words, if he tried to comprehend Marx not like the college-aged kids in berets that he derides — maybe he wouldn’t write like one.
People who are most positively passionate about their form of government are the ones who embrace it’s critique the most. In fact, I would say this is where the Bernie bros and dorm room whippersnappers have done the best service to the Democratic Party — by illuminating it’s horrid record by firm critique so that it can make the badley needed corrections.
Instead, the cavalcade of Chait liberals have determined that staying put and becoming the “Party of Nope” is good enough. It’s routinely said that Hillary is the only sure-fire way to beat the Democrats political nemesis, the demagoguery of Republicans. But to do this too many take aim at the vibrant leftist youth culture that was the key to getting Obama into the Whitehouse. I guess they think that making small offerings of personal liberties works as a fine consolation prize. It may be the under educated that decide our electoral fates anyways so why offer hopes of concrete benefit when it seems progressive enough just to prevent the inevitable backslide. But I like to think of the USA as capable of exceeding what other nations have already done, not ducking below that threshold. We are, after all, the richest nation that has ever existed. We just have to dare ourselves into moving that wealth and using it for something beneficial. To quote a Dane “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
Superficial Delegates
“The superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow..They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country.”
- Geraldine Ferraro
Lord Darlington: Mr. Spencer would like a word with you.
Mr. Spencer: My good man, I have a question for you. Do you suppose the debt situation regarding America factors significantly in the present low levels of trade? Or is this a red herring and the abandonment of the gold standard is the cause of the problem?
Mr. Stevens the Butler: I'm sorry, sir, but I am unable to be of assistance in this matter.
Mr. Spencer: Oh, dear. What a pity. Perhaps you'd help us on another matter. Do you think Europe's currency problem would be alleviated by an arms agreement between the French and the Bolsheviks?
Butler: I'm sorry, sir, but I'm unable to be of assistance in this matter.
Lord Darlington: Very well, that'll be all.
Mr. Spencer: One moment, Darlington, I have another question to put to our good man here. My good fellow do you share our opinion that M. Daladier's recent speech on North Africa was simply a ruse to scupper the nationalist fringe of his own domestic party?
Butler: I'm sorry, sir. I am unable to help in any of these matters.
Mr. Spencer: You see, our good man here is "unable to assist us in these matters." Yet we still go along with the notion that this nation's decisions be left to our good man here and a few millions like him.
- Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro, 1993
Map of Bygdeå, Sweden shortly before the arrival of Henrik von Walter from Germany (1642). #vintagemaps #oldmaps #sweden #17thCentury
https://embed.itunes.apple.com/us/embedded-player/idsa.155bf937-d023-11e5-8c4c-249ac1e30390
Persian Oil
"The single biggest national security threat facing America right now is the threat of a nuclear Iran. We've seen six and a half years of President Obama leading from behind. Weakness is provocative, and this Iranian nuclear deal is nothing short of catastrophic."
- Ted Cruz
"The U.S. embargo will generally remain in place, even after Implementation Day, because of concerns outside of Iran's nuclear program."
- US Treasury Website
"Oil prices hit fresh multi-year lows Friday amid fears of what effect Iran flooding the market with crude will have on the commodity.
Commodity analysts expect a drop in oil prices as European sanctions imposed on Iran when it refused to scale back its nuclear proliferation are lifted and a fresh agreement begins."
- CNBC
“One of the things that’s hurt this country in the Middle East has been this president’s betrayal of our allies in favor of Iran with this deal,”
- Marco Rubio
"Saudi Arabia’s finances are under pressure as it fights a war in Yemen at a time when crude prices are languishing at the lowest level in almost 12 years. The country, which counts on energy exports for 70 percent of government revenue, sold domestic bonds for the first time since 2007"
- Bloomberg Business
State of the Union
Obama gave the closing opus he set out for in last night’s State of the Union address. However he managed to splice in a little bit of Orientalism into his casual dismissal of US imperialism. That is to say, he implied that sectarian issues were the underlying factor of the Middle East’s perpetual state of war. Why else would he qualify issues of failed states being from matters “Millennia” old? Why not refer to the modern past? Let’s compare the soundbite in question with some quotes from those in the know:
"In today’s world, we’re threatened less by evil empires and more by failing states. The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia."
- Obama, State of the Union Speech
"The American sectarian approach has created the civil war. We saw Iraqis as Sunnis, Shias, Kurds. We designed a governing council based on a sectarian quota system and ignored Iraqis (not exiled politicians but real Iraqis) who warned us against it. We decided that the Sunnis were the bad guys and the Shias were the good guys. These problems were not timeless. In many ways they are new...."
– Nir Rosen, “Anatomy of a Civil War” for Boston Review, 11/8/2006
"The Syrian revolution did not start sectarian, and sectarianism isn't its driving impetus. Sectarianism was imposed upon it much later." - Iyad El-Baghdadi, Activist
"The shift toward identity-based or symbolic forms of sectarianism can probably be explained by the existential character the struggle in the Levant is taking, whereby both “communities,” however imagined or over-constructed, are coming to perceive themselves as defending not only their share of resources or power, but their very survival."
- Joseph Bahout, Carnegie’s Middle East Program