Friday, December 19, 2014

Mr. President, tear down that pipeline!

Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post has a weekly feature on "Who Had the Worst Week in Washington." I don't think much of it; it's part of the inside-the-Beltway self-preening mechanism, and one of the numerous features that make the Post sound more childish than some of its competitors.

But even though I don't read it, as a subscriber to the Post, I know who Cillizza picks, the same way I know which Kardashian is in crisis this week: because I see the headline. Last week, in one of the more embarrassing journalistic pratfalls of 2014, Cillizza declared that Barack Obama had had the worst YEAR in Washington.

Obama then scored his penalty kick right in Putin's breadbasket, reveled in glowing economic reports and jiu-jitsu'ed the Republicans on appointments in the lame duck session of Congress. The opposition?

They managed to irritate the Latino voters, again (and they probably voted to repeal Obamacare though I didn't see that reported, but they do that an average of once a week, so they probably did).

However, I did not come here just to jeer at Chris Cilliza. I came to state what is obvious: The people who really had the worst week in Washington were the fascist lovers in the American rightwing. (Not all rightwingers are fascists but all fascists are rightwingers.)

Rachel Maddow also noted part of it. With her staff she was able to do what would have taken me days and days: Assemble a gallery of love-notes to the man she called "J. Alfred Putin" by various American fascists and fellow travelers. These ranged from Mitt Romney to Rudy Giuliani to various blowhards at Fox.

Maddow professes to find the love affair between American rightwingers and Putin puzzling, but she knows a lot of history and I suspect she really isn't all that surprised. After all, she included a photo of Putin with his shirt off, and I am sure she knows which other fascist who was the darling of the American right liked to take off his shirt for the masses.

No, I don't mean Clint Eastwood. This one:


(Digression: I had not thought of this before, but it is odd that that the man who introduced shirts into the vocabulary of politics was so eager to doff his.

(As Barbara Tuchman relates in a hilarious passage in "The Guns of August" about how the chief of staff of the Prussian Army died in his tutu (no, really), there is always a strong strain of suppressed homoeroticism and wishing to be dominated by a masterful, take-charge guy among rightwingers.)

(Query: We know Putin considers himself knowledgeable about history. Did he model his decamisadoismo on Mussolini or is it just a case of like minds thinking alike?)

It is amusing to note that -- as Maddow mentions in passing but does not highlight -- it was the rightwing hero Putin and not the leftwing demon Obama who canceled a pipeline last week. I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

In other news of American fascism, Obama stuck one in the eye of the Cuban fascists by threatening to normalize relations with Cuba. Younger Cuban Americans apparently thought, "About time" if they thought anything at all, but the older ones remained true to their anticommunism.

It is only restating the obvious to note that anyone who fled Cuba after Castro turned it left did not flee the equally antidemocratic but rightist despot Batista. Few -- perhaps none -- of the Cubans who flooded south Florida and poisoned its politics for the past half century were democrats.

They had no problems with fascism.

Curiously, the paladin who chose to snatch up the falling banner of Cuban-American fascism as it was falling toward the ground was Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the very, very few Cuban-Americans without the ancestral fascist taint.

Although Rubio's own version of his family history attempted to link it to the rest of the fascist diaspora, reporters have shown that his parents were apparently not political. They left Cuba during Batista's fascist regime but not to get away from him. They just thought it would be easier to grow rich in America and they were right. But not far right.

 









11 comments:

  1. [Doktor Zoom:] Putin’s economy is sort of falling apart, thanks to the international economic sanctions orchestrated by the guy in mom jeans.

    Not a single mention of oil prices. And you keep quoting this guy?

    Rachel Maddow also noted part of it. With her staff she was able to do what would have taken me days and days: Assemble a gallery of love-notes to the man she called "J. Alfred Putin" by various American fascists and fellow travelers.

    She's a liar, and you are a sucker.

    I am sure she knows which other fascist who was the darling of the American right liked to take off his shirt for the masses.

    No, I don't mean Clint Eastwood.


    Clint Eastwood's a fascist? Do you have something to back that up with, or are you just slinging monkey poo?

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  2. If you follow the Russian commentariat (easy to do, they swarm every story), Obama engineered the oil price fall in order to attack Russia. In any event, we aren't hearing as much as we used to from the rightwingers about Obama's war on oil.

    You cannot have it both ways. Pick one.

    I guess you never watched a Dirty Harry movie.

    As for Maddow, are you saying she manufactured those video clips?

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  3. Not many people besides you think falling oil prices are the problem:

    http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-03/russias-crimea-grab-may-lead-to-economic-recession

    That was way back in April, before oil went down.

    Krugman also noticed: "Look at what passes for a Putin success, the seizure of Crimea: Russia may have annexed the peninsula with almost no opposition, but what it got from its triumph was an imploding economy that is in no position to pay tribute, and in fact requires costly aid. Meanwhile, foreign investment in and lending to Russia proper more or less collapsed even before the oil price plunge turned the situation into a full-blown financial crisis."

    It isn't just Obama and sanctions all the way down though. As only RtO seems to have sussed, Russia's fundamental problem remains what it always has been: agriculture. It can barely feed itself even though farming soaks up the labor that would be needed to create a diversified economy. (Numbers of commenters have complained that Putin has not diversified, but, city boys all, they don't get that he couldn't even if he was smart enough to want to. Even Krugman missed this. I would have hoped he'd have gotten it, but I had never any hope that rightwingers, who disparage labor, could see it.)

    Now that the ruble is worth half what it was, I bet even the Crimean russophiles are having second thoughts about swapping their hryvanias for rubles.

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  4. Somebody else who does not think the fall in oil is fundamental but Obama's soft power is:

    But Kudrin -- a darling of investors who is credited with building Russia's $170 billion sovereign wealth funds -- asserted that sanctions over Ukraine, not falling oil prices, were primarily behind the collapse of the rouble, and warned that Russia risked having its debt downgraded to junk status in 2015.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/22/us-russia-crisis-idUSKBN0K011920141222

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  5. In any event, we aren't hearing as much as we used to from the rightwingers about Obama's war on oil.

    Clearly, if Obama (and almost all progressives except you) had his way, gasoline in particular, and energy in general would be far more expensive.

    Unfortunately for Obama and our putative progressive overlords, reality bit. What wasn't conceivable four years ago looks like being true for a very long time: North America self sufficient in energy, and a glut of hydrocarbons.

    Of course the Russians are going to accuse the US of engineering tanking oil prices. But just like I don't have to credit the baseless pronunciamentos you so often traffic in, I don't have to give any credence to Russian nonsense, either.

    I guess you never watched a Dirty Harry movie.

    To review. Fascism, noun. An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. • (in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.

    Having seen the Dirty Harry movies, I can't remember anything authoritarian (indeed, they were anti-authoritarian), nor nationalistic, or promoting any particular form or social organization, or at all intolerant (except of the intolerable). That leaves "right wing", which is, especially where you are concerned, nothing more than thoughtless slang.

    Of course, I'm sure you can point out where I got that wrong.

    Actually, cancel that. I'm sure you won't, because you can't. Which means you have scratched that progressive defamation itch yet again.

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  6. Not many people besides you think falling oil prices are the problem:

    Do you bother to read your own links? Really, you should, because you might avoid what must be painful bullet holes in your feet.

    From the second page:
    To counter the effect of existing sanctions, the government plans to buy more domestically made goods, speed up infrastructure projects, and ask state-run companies such as Gazprom (GZPFY) and Russian Railways to accelerate investment spending. With oil prices still at $107 a barrel despite an 11 percent price drop from the previous year, the Kremlin expects a balanced budget in 2014.

    How do you think the article changes with today's $61/bbl oil. Indeed, it is astonishing that you don't cite something, anything, more recent than last April. Here, let me help.

    It isn't that sanctions and Russia's own ineptitude aren't factors, but only an ideologically blinkered fool could write what Doktor Zoom did, and not even mention oil prices once.

    Somebody else who does not think the fall in oil is fundamental but Obama's soft power is:

    Pro-tip. If you are going to directly quote from an article, use some device to indicate, italics, quote marks, whatever, to indicate you have done so. Because that paragraph mixes a direct quote from the article, and something you made up.

    Here is the concluding paragraph:

    His outlook for the economy next year was bleak: Even if the price of oil rose to $80 per barrel, gross domestic product was still likely to fall by more than 2 percent in 2015, Kudrin said. At $60 per barrel GDP would decline by 4 percent or more, he added, echoing the central bank's latest assessment, published last week.

    Nowhere does the article say Obama's "soft power" is fundamental.

    As for Maddow, are you saying she manufactured those video clips?

    No, I'm saying that her characterization of them, and yours, is sneering nonsense.

    As only RtO seems to have sussed, Russia's fundamental problem remains what it always has been: agriculture. It can barely feed itself even though farming soaks up the labor that would be needed to create a diversified economy.

    Speaking of nonsense.

    Russia is a major grain exporter. The IGC puts its total grain imports at just 400,000 tonnes in 2013-14, compared with 1.2 million following the poor harvest of the previous year, while its exports are put at 18.8 million tonnes, up from 15.5 million.

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  7. And loses money on every kernel, just as the tsars did. Just because Russia exports grain while its own people go hungry -- as has been the case for over a century -- does not mean it can feed itself.

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  8. Cite?

    (Go here and cycle through the variables.)

    BTW, where in that article did it say Obama's soft power was fundamental?

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