If only French were Catholic, he could confess, do penance, and be done with it. Instead he has to write for the Atlantic. Sorry for him but good for us!
"TULKAS: Mairon. Or, rather, he calls himself Sauron these days. He took the form of a werewolf and ate Fiord in Tol-in-Gaurhoth—part of that Beren-and-Luthien thing, if you remember..."
Two points: 1) I am still not watching the elf show. (Also, I am not watching the dragon show. I did watch the not-Gods show.) I remember reading the hobbit in elementary school, and all I remember is the map, and only barely. 2) You are a very silly man, Brad.
"Ben joins Bob Reich as one who correctly sees that my argument is much more Galbraithian than I realized while I was writing it…"
I had assumed it was Galbraithian, given all those posts you made back in 2011-2012 (I think)? I think the issue is that we've consistently undershot on general federal R&D spending for a long long time, not so much with the bureaucracy 'needing to direct market investment' which seems more Soviet in implementation. (I am assuming I understood Galbraith's book (Economics and the Public Purpose) properly.)
French: "And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft."
What they were angry about was that Romney lost to a black man. Full stop. They wanted a guy who would go all-in on the racism (and in particular, a man who isn't Romney and would go all in on the racism against Obama) and Trump fits the bill. That's what the Federalist society is about. That's what all these other groups of right-wing billionaires are about. They are the inheritors of the Dixiecrat faction that split with the Democrats (and the Supreme Court) over ending segregation. The form of Christianity they believe in is an all-white Christianity. They are the people flipping out about having a black elf on the elf show, never mind that it's a show about elves.
You don't have to go all in on the 1619 Project and whatnot to see that, because they are yelling it out at you. Obama, a black man, getting elected president was HAH! the sum of all their fears. Fears that have been constantly cultivated in the slaveholding and post-slavery and post-Jim Crow South since way back in the 19th century.
Completely separate from that, cutting taxes on rich people wasn't going to be popular ever, and surely was never going to popular in the aftermath of 2008.
elm
it would've been nice if it were some other way, but it's not
Should schoolchildren be made to memorize "The Second Coming" as I was made (offered incentives) to memorize parts of "Canterbury Tales" in Middle English?
If only French were Catholic, he could confess, do penance, and be done with it. Instead he has to write for the Atlantic. Sorry for him but good for us!
"TULKAS: Mairon. Or, rather, he calls himself Sauron these days. He took the form of a werewolf and ate Fiord in Tol-in-Gaurhoth—part of that Beren-and-Luthien thing, if you remember..."
Two points: 1) I am still not watching the elf show. (Also, I am not watching the dragon show. I did watch the not-Gods show.) I remember reading the hobbit in elementary school, and all I remember is the map, and only barely. 2) You are a very silly man, Brad.
"Ben joins Bob Reich as one who correctly sees that my argument is much more Galbraithian than I realized while I was writing it…"
I had assumed it was Galbraithian, given all those posts you made back in 2011-2012 (I think)? I think the issue is that we've consistently undershot on general federal R&D spending for a long long time, not so much with the bureaucracy 'needing to direct market investment' which seems more Soviet in implementation. (I am assuming I understood Galbraith's book (Economics and the Public Purpose) properly.)
French: "And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft."
What they were angry about was that Romney lost to a black man. Full stop. They wanted a guy who would go all-in on the racism (and in particular, a man who isn't Romney and would go all in on the racism against Obama) and Trump fits the bill. That's what the Federalist society is about. That's what all these other groups of right-wing billionaires are about. They are the inheritors of the Dixiecrat faction that split with the Democrats (and the Supreme Court) over ending segregation. The form of Christianity they believe in is an all-white Christianity. They are the people flipping out about having a black elf on the elf show, never mind that it's a show about elves.
You don't have to go all in on the 1619 Project and whatnot to see that, because they are yelling it out at you. Obama, a black man, getting elected president was HAH! the sum of all their fears. Fears that have been constantly cultivated in the slaveholding and post-slavery and post-Jim Crow South since way back in the 19th century.
Completely separate from that, cutting taxes on rich people wasn't going to be popular ever, and surely was never going to popular in the aftermath of 2008.
elm
it would've been nice if it were some other way, but it's not
Should schoolchildren be made to memorize "The Second Coming" as I was made (offered incentives) to memorize parts of "Canterbury Tales" in Middle English?