From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V13 #303 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Sunday, October 24 2004 Volume 13 : Number 303 Today's Subjects: ----------------- RE: 2 weeks to go, and will a long subject line make a difference? [James] Re: anything sweeter? [James Dignan ] RE: Blame Canada (well under six degrees) ["Bachman, Michael" ] Re: 2 weeks to go to the election, will all the newly registered voters make a difference? [2fs ] 350 ton fubar [steve ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 12:55:30 +1300 From: James Dignan Subject: RE: 2 weeks to go, and will a long subject line make a difference? > > Well, third parties will never really take hold in the US > > unless it something that would allow a third/fourth/etc party > > to participate in large quantity in the government itself, a > > la switching to a Parliament-style arrangement for the House > > of Representives. As long as all elected officials are chosen > > winner take all, "fringier" parties have so real chance of > > building a foothold. > >I'm not sure that magnifying the influence of fringe parties is the way to >go. The mainstream parties tend to do better at representing the fringe >elements in their parties on at least a point or two than a fringe party >with 2 reps in the House could ever do. Think of it this way--are the >interests of Socialists better represented by having Bernie Sanders in the >House, or by being able to influence directly the left wing of the >Democratic party? It's not so clear cut as it would seem. it works very well indeed. If more fringe parties have a say, the bigger parties have their electoral base eroded into and become more core policy parties, not trying to appease everyone in the electorate in one go. Within parliamentthey then become a voting bloc within any legislative process. Temporary coalitions become more necessary on every issue. Take for instance the vote at the last US election. Picking numbers from my head here, if the Republicans got 45% of the vote, the Democrats 44% and the Greens 11%, then some policies would be based on those which both R and G parties agreed with, others on those both R and D parties agreed with. Some ight be based on those both D and G agreed with. One party wouldn't be in the position to ram home its views no matter what. James (living in a country with proportional representation) - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 12:55:32 +1300 From: James Dignan Subject: Re: anything sweeter? >James, with a mildly obscure soccer reference: > > hell, that happened back on May 26th, 1989, and at Anfield, to boot. > > Of course, times have changed now, and I suppose more people look on > > the Gunners as the arrogant ones now. Michael responded: >For the non-footy minded, this refers to Arsenal winning away at Liverpool >by two goals clear...and the season-winning goal coming in injury time. The >late lamented mag Total Football voted it "The Most Memorable" moment in >(mostly English) football *ever*, over 'The Hand of God', 1966 and all that. that's half the story. Earlier in the season Arsenal had had a comfortable lead in the lague, only to blow it towards the end of the season. The last game of the season was Liverpool vs Arsenal. Liverppol had won the leage 7 times in the previous 10 years - Arsenal hadn't won it for 18. And Arsenal had to play Liverpool in Lvierpool, with the 'pool now clear at the top of the table.A clear two goal margin was needed for Arsenal to overtake them in the league on the last day of the season, and Liverpool had not been beaten by two goals at home all season. As you say, tArsenal's willing goal came in injury time, only a minute before the final whistle sounded. I don't remember much about what happened after that. >As a moderate living in one of the most Republican counties in America, I've >been working up plans to print off some magnetic bumper stickers at work for >last-minute voter aggravation. Try to come up with one or two each day... > >"W is for Weenie" >"Shave that Bush" >"George Bush S*cks C*cks" (my fave so far, I hope to have it ready for >Sunday church) Just write out his full name, and change the L to an N. James PS - see the film "Fever Pitch" for more info! PPS - welcome back Ed! - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 17:07:53 -0400 From: "Bachman, Michael" Subject: RE: Blame Canada (well under six degrees) Rex wrote: >Keep meaning to comment on the CVB record. It's way better than >REM's, taking us right back to 1988 again. Sorry, John Kerry. Green was my first real REM disappointment. Then again, having bought so many great albums in the late Summer/Fall of 1988, I shrugged it off as no big deal. Had it not been for Wire, The Pixies and Throwing Muses etc, I would have been more focused on REM. As it was, I listened to GREEN a few times, then went back to the better stuff. Some of may fav's from that time: Throwing Muses HOUSE TORNADO Pixies COME ON PILGRIM/SURFER ROSA Wire A BELL IS A CUP UNTIL IT IS STRUCK The Go-Betweens 16 LOVERS LANE (the first G-B's I bought) 'Til Tuesday EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT NOW (Aimee Mann becomes a songwriter!) Everything But The Girl IDLEWILD Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds TENDER PREY Michael B. NP Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 19:14:51 -0700 From: "Marc Alberts" Subject: RE: Blame Canada (well under six degrees) Michael B. wrote: > Green was my first real REM disappointment. Then again, > having bought so many great albums in the late Summer/Fall of > 1988, I shrugged it off as no big deal. Had it not been for > Wire, The Pixies and Throwing Muses etc, I would have been > more focused on REM. As it was, I listened to GREEN a few > times, then went back to the better stuff. Some of may fav's > from that time: > > Throwing Muses HOUSE TORNADO > Pixies COME ON PILGRIM/SURFER ROSA > Wire A BELL IS A CUP UNTIL IT IS STRUCK > The Go-Betweens 16 LOVERS LANE (the first G-B's I bought) > 'Til Tuesday EVERYTHING'S DIFFERENT NOW (Aimee Mann becomes a > songwriter!) Everything But The Girl IDLEWILD Nick Cave and > The Bad Seeds TENDER PREY Nice collection. I think I either owned or borrowed for an extended period of time all of those discs. I would add one or two that I also rotated into play frequently, and in some cases over all but The Pixies: The Pogues IF I SHOULD FALL FROM GRACE WITH GOD Tom Waits FRANKS WILD YEARS and RAIN DOGS (which I heard for the first time in 1988) Blake Babies EARWIG My Bloody Valentine ISN'T EVERYTHING For me, 1988 blended into 1990 for me since I was in China for the 88-89 school year, but I remember coming back to the US, hearing GREEN and wondering what the Hell happened to REM in my year away. Marc ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 23:32:37 -0400 From: bisontentacle Subject: Fwd: Robyn on JOTR thanks to joe for the head's up about this. sorry to all about not getting the word on in a prompt and on-the-ball manner. woj >Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 12:13:39 -0700 (PDT) >From: "WUGA's Just Off The Radar" >Subject: Robyn on JOTR >To: woj@fegmania.org > >We'll be airing an interview with Robyn on Sun the >24th @ 4PM EST in a run up to his show in Atlanta. > >People can listen it at: > >http://www.wuga.org/listen_online.html > >or you can visit the show site, after Mon 12PM to hear >the show all week long: > >www.justofftheradar.com > >All the best...JoE > >--- >JoE Silva >Host/Producer, WUGA's Just Off The Radar >www.justofftheradar.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 23:43:08 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: 2 weeks to go to the election, will all the newly registered voters make a difference? On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 15:51:08 -0700, Marc Alberts wrote: > > If you're worried that more "fringe" parties would mean > > greater prominence given to wacko ideas...well, (a) as if > > that's not happening now, in the person of our ruling party, > > and (b) I guess you don't trust people actually to govern. > > Which is the real crux of the matter. > > On your first point, I don't think you do yourself any favors by calling the > views supported by roughly half of Americans "wacko" I'm not sure where "views supported by roughly half" equates to what you said about fringe parties. Actually, I wasn't really referring to what you said at all - I was talking about a fairly common notion, that if there were more direct democracy, greater representation would be given (by definition) to ideas that are, statistically speaking, held by a small minority of Americans (and which are therefore regarded by that majority as being "wacko"). , and on the second > point, I fully agree with your assessment. Government by it's very > existence presents a threat to individual liberties. We differ. I think the threat to individual liberties - and to social justice - is far more prevalent in the reign of profit-seeking motivations (since many socially necessary functions simply do not lead to profit) and in unrepresentative bodies generally (such as our current political parties) than in government per se. In fact, I think government is one of the few forces that can, theoretically, counterweigh those profit-driven motives in favor of socially necessary goals, and can act as a collective entity to represent people's interests. My problem with corporations isn't that they create jobs. My problem is that they're organized (and empowered, the way things are set up now) to enrich only a very few at the expense of the majority of people. It is simply not the case, from my POV, that what best serves the shareholders of GM best serves the population. Quite the contrary: those interests are often strongly opposed. Wages going up? That's in people's interests, to be sure...but not in the interest of the top tier of corporate executives. Any number of other economic indicators work similarly. To be fair, governments can also overreach and trample people's rights...but it's a lot easier to set up a governmental system that represents people's interests than it is to set up a corporate structure that does so. Whatever else you can say about the invisible hand of the market, clearly it moves more responsively to people with wealth than to people without wealth. Who else can represent those people's interests, than an entity like government, which does not (theoretically) exist solely to make profit? - -- ++Jeff++ The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:28:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: RE: 2 weeks to go to the election, will all the newly registered voters make a difference? Marc Alberts wrote: > I guess the thing is that I am strongly of the opinion > that the reason you make changes to a system of > representation is because those changes ensure > stability, fair representations of territorial interests, > and orderly transfer of power. Currently, our Electoral > College has a pretty strong record fo doing just that. The Electoral College does nothing to ensure "fair representations of territorial interests" -- it heavily transfers authority to a minority. It forces both major parties to the right, not to the center. As for stability or orderly transfer of power, well Saudi Arabia and Iran have those. > I'm not sure that magnifying the influence of fringe > parties is the way to go. The mainstream parties tend > to do better at representing the fringe elements in > their parties on at least a point or two than a fringe > party with 2 reps in the House could ever do. Well, in the sense that the GOP is controlled lock stock and barrel by the extreme right-wing Christian Supremacist and neo-con fringe of the party that's so. > Think of it this way--are the interests of Socialists > better represented by having Bernie Sanders in the > House, or by being able to influence directly the left > wing of the Democratic party? It's not so clear cut as > it would seem. Either way, it should be the option of the Socialists (or whoever) to decide whether have a couple seats or to put their faith in the left wing of the Democratic party, such as it is. ===== "[The Bush administration] deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride." -- President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland "'Bushworld' is sort of an alternate universe where things are the opposite of what they seem. President Bush said the other day, 'It is a ridiculous notion to assert that because the United States is on the offensive, more people want to hurt us. We are on the offensive because people do want to hurt us.' I mean that is a perfect 'Bushworld' quote. It's not true and it's nonsensical. It's the opposite of what is true. His new campaign motto is 'America is safer. Be afraid, be very afraid.' Everything is an oxymoron." -- Maureen Dowd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:50:18 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: 2 weeks to go to the election, will all the newly registered voters make a difference? 2fs wrote: > Marc Alberts wrote: > > Jeff [the dwarfish one]: > > > It also drives a lot of the bullshit. If you had a > > > true national election, candidates couldn't afford to > > > waste time proposing ammendments banning gay > > > marriage or other such idiocy just to curry favor in > > > the small states (which veer Republican, since > > > people who move to those states tend to be > > > conservatives). > > > > Of course, changing the election policies simply > > because small states currently vote Republican and > > thus leads to silly ideas being represented is > > nothing more than expedient gerrymandering. It's not the reason the abolish the EC; the drift of government far to the right of the populace at large is the consequence of the EC. > The tricky word above is "simply": while it's true that > right now, a change in the EC rules (or its elimination) > would benefit progressives more than conservatives, that > isn't *necessarily* true - and I, at least, have been > arguing that it's a principle of overrepresentation > of the interests of those in small states & > underrep.->large - regardless of what those interests > might be. Which is the real point -- the EC aides and abets in making larger states essentially the wetnurse of smaller states. Alaska is receiving three times the per capita money for increasing homeland security that either California or New York are. Part of this is the particular administration and the particular extremists controlling the GOP -- it's no real secret that Bush, Delay, Cheney, et cetera would all makee Macciavelli blush. ===== "[The Bush administration] deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride." -- President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland "'Bushworld' is sort of an alternate universe where things are the opposite of what they seem. President Bush said the other day, 'It is a ridiculous notion to assert that because the United States is on the offensive, more people want to hurt us. We are on the offensive because people do want to hurt us.' I mean that is a perfect 'Bushworld' quote. It's not true and it's nonsensical. It's the opposite of what is true. His new campaign motto is 'America is safer. Be afraid, be very afraid.' Everything is an oxymoron." -- Maureen Dowd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 11:09:06 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: 2 weeks to go to the election, will all the newly registered voters make a difference? On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 22:50:21 -0700, Marc Alberts wrote: > > > On your first point, I don't think you do yourself any favors by > > > calling the views supported by roughly half of Americans "wacko" > Above, you referred to Republicans as "wacko." That is what I was talking > about when I said you weren't doing yourself any favors. While you might > not agree with them, GOP views are indeed fairly mainstream in this country, > which makes them roughly as "wacko" as Democratic ideas. There's no such thing as "Republican" ideas or "Democrat" ideas: there are ideas that some Republicans hold (while others disagree) etc. Some of the ideas held by Bush etc. are generally regarded as wacko. Or for example: how else would you describe the 15-20 congressmen with the Sun Myung Moon thing a few months back? > action was the one the rest should follow. The fact is, the profit motive > itself, as it's very name implies, is the impulse to act freely to increase > profit. Far from being a restriction on liberty, it is a motive to act with > liberty. For those who have any means to make profit, yes. I think it's morally wrong to pursue a third yacht with money earned partly by people working for you who can't afford to eat. > that social justice is not just on two counts: it is not just to confiscate > from the haves, and the very act of confiscating from the haves reduces the > wealth of the have-nots as well by diminishing the aggregate output of > society and the ability for technology to disseminate, which further > diminishes the ability to create new wealth. I'm not necessarily talking about "confiscating from the haves" - but the key point is that current economic structure, by undercompensating the "have-nots" and grossly overcompensating the "haves" (even _Fortune_ magazine agrees that CEOs are ridiculously overcompensated, for no good economic reason), allows the haves to confiscate from the have-nots. Wealth is not generated only by corporate policy-making, marketing, and other prerogatives of management; it is generated by work. And our system proceeds to generate wealth for those few by stealing from those workers, in the form of underpaying them, underprivileging them, and transferring that wealth to the upper tier of moneymakers. I'm talking about a living wage, and some sort of income ceiling beyond which corporate income might be distributed proportionately among all its employees, not only and disproportionately to its upper echelon. (I'm not married to this idea, just a possible approach) Conversely, I'm not quite sure why it's fair that, if the economy's going bad, those employees least able to bear it are dumped, while the upper-level employees (who, if they've invested wisely, could surely live for years on what they've saved) are, generally, not dumped. This is particularly egregious when the economy's doing fine, but an individual company is doing poorly, and not because of shoddy workmanship: that is, it's doing poorly because of poor product design, poor marketing, or poor conceptualization of the product - all issues for which management-level people are responsible, not lower-level workers. Yet those lower-level workers are the first laid off. Or an actual example: the increase in what's considered acceptable profit margins, such that, a few years ago, Briggs & Stratton (a local-based co.) generated record profits...but claimed it couldn't afford to pay Milwaukee workers and so outsourced their jobs to Mexico. Where did those record profits go? Did the CEO and upper management take a pay cut since somehow those record profits weren't enough? > restictions of liberties are warranted, but they are still restrictions of > liberty. Liberty is never absolute. Both ethics and long-term-viewed reason dictate that some absolute notion of personal liberty won't work (and is ultimately counterproductive, even to that individual in the long run). At any rate, for example, I don't have the liberty to make explosions in a large steel drum at 3 in the morning, and then amplify it and play it back 24 hours a day. The problem is, of course, that undue extension of my liberties limits someone else's liberties. Societies attempt to balance that inherent tension in liberty. I would argue, contrary to your position, that the interests of > the people are often counter to societal advancement and personal liberties, Who are "the people" that their own interests are contrary to "societal" (i.e., of the people) advancement and "personal" (i.e., of the people) liberties? > the case. The poor may have it rougher than the rich, but they are not made > poorer by the presence of the rich, but are instead made richer. The rich, > by having money to burn, spend it on the cutting edge products, create a > profit for the companies making them, allowing them to increase production, > realize economies of scale, and eventually making the technology affordable > to the masses. Without the wealthy, this could not happen, and yet it is a > huge part of the dissemination of wealth in society. This can happen, true. But what can also happen is that the needs of the have-nots are utterly ignored in favor of the needs (or more accurately, desires) of the haves. The problem, again, is that there are many socially necessary goals (I'll be uncontroversial, and nominate garbage collection) that do have a profit motive or do not make a profit. In my wife's hometown some years ago, garbage collection was privatized, supposedly to save money. What's happened is a disaster: there really isn't much money to be made, service levels have dropped precipitously, there's no accountability (and because there's, evidently, not much profit, there's no incentive for a competing company to try to provoke that accountability), and as a result, garbage sometimes goes uncollected, which provokes people to dump it secretly in out-of-the-way places, which leads to obvious harms, and greater expenses for whoever has to clean it up, etc. Shit happens - and I'm not being facetious. One of the hugest problems in rapidly expanding cities (I think the example was Bombay) is that the population expands more rapidly than the septic system. People shit in the street; and cumulatively, this adds up to a huge health problem. Even if every individual person shit only in their own private shithole and buried it themselves, there wouldn't be enough room to accommodate the substance after a while. No, in fact you need a governmental or systemic means to accommodate the basic fact that humans produce waste - and there's not a profit in it for anyone, for obvious reasons (more shit than anyone can use). This, by the way, is something like what I mean by "social justice": a situation that benefits everyone but cannot be achieved through profit motive. Government is what we call the agglomeration of individuals who organize to accomplish such goals. The indefinite expansion of "personal liberties," or rather the privileging of one's personal rights to do whatever over all other obligations, which seems inherent in the reasoning you offer in support of relatively unfettered capitalism, runs headlong into problems like the one I describe above. That is, capitalism is full of shit ;) > The main issue I take with this is the concept of the people's interests. > Vulgar Marxist arguments aside, how can you be so certain that the people > actually understand their own interests well enough to be able to direct a > government to adequately provide for them? And because governments must, if > they are to be egalitarian, must treat all equally, does not this > automatically result in a restriction of freedoms for at least a very large > minority as a sort of dumbed-down concept of "best interests" gets forced on > everyone equally? Ultimately, this philosophy is used to justify "government knows best" governments (just as you warn what *I* say will lead to that) - only in your case, they're governments that are wholly-owned subsidiaries of corporations, whose own interests (read: the interests of their upper echelons) are given priority over the interests of the vast majority of the population. The reason we elect representatives, rather than vote on everything by direct plebiscite, is to account for the problem you allude to in your second sentence. We assume that there's such a thing as expertise, and that sometimes, we as a population can't collectively "get" certain issues (as an aside, one area the Bush admin. has truly fucked up is in politicizing everything, including science, so that rather than having scientists be the primary input on scientific decisions, politicians have it). On your second point, I think it's an oversimplification (of the "Harrison Bergeron" school of exaggeration) that "egalitarian" means "everyone is treated exactly the same." But back to that issue of liberty: you, it seems, value it over justice. I agree that justice is a more difficult, fraught concept - but I think liberty is far less simple than you paint it, if only in that, as I said, one person's liberties inevitably clash with another's. Government is one means by which we adjudicate those clashes, and laws and regulations that appear to restrict liberty in fact generally protect someone else's liberty. (Certain right-wingers are fond of "takings" law, which argue that when government makes restrictions on land-use, for example, for environmental reasons, the land-owners should be compensated for the loss of income they might otherwise be able to earn using the land as they wanted to. The problem, of course, is the very same philosophy applies to neighboring land-owners, whose land would lose money if the owners of the first property *were* allowed to put up their pigshit-rendering plant or whatever.) I'm not saying it's easy. But I am saying it appears we've tilted too far in allowing the liberty of massive money-making to take precedence over the "liberty" to, say, eat. And that's not even getting into more complex issues, such as the tendency toward monopolization evident in media, for instance, and the resulting narrowing of information and the under-informed public that results. It's not easy. But I think we've starved justice while overfeeding liberty. - -- ++Jeff++ The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:45:58 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Too Many Puppies http://www.wolfpacksfortruth.org/ ===== "[The Bush administration] deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride." -- President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Poland "'Bushworld' is sort of an alternate universe where things are the opposite of what they seem. President Bush said the other day, 'It is a ridiculous notion to assert that because the United States is on the offensive, more people want to hurt us. We are on the offensive because people do want to hurt us.' I mean that is a perfect 'Bushworld' quote. It's not true and it's nonsensical. It's the opposite of what is true. His new campaign motto is 'America is safer. Be afraid, be very afraid.' Everything is an oxymoron." -- Maureen Dowd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 22:49:43 -0500 From: steve Subject: 350 ton fubar If you need any confirmation of just how badly the preening nitwits in the Bush administration fucked up the post shock & awe part of the Iraq invasion, just take a look at the top two entries here - - - Steve __________ In terms of the power he now claims, without significant challenge, George W. Bush is now the closest thing in a long time to dictator of the world. - Michael Kinsley ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V13 #303 ********************************