StephenKMackSD's Blog

I am going to re-post a comment that I tweeted to Mr. Schama on February 21, 2016 via TwitLonger:

Link to Schama’s Financial Times essay:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6a75c3c-d6f3-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.html#axzz40l84ZKpE

@simon_schama
Just the latest on the pressing question of ‘Jewish Money’:
A link available to subscribers of W.S.J.:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-congress-1451425210
A link to Occupy Democrats that reports on the W.S.J. news story:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/2015/12/31/treason-leaked-wiretaps-reveals-netanyahu-bribed-republicans-to-sabotage-obamas-iran-peace-deal-2/
My comment is in response to your hysterical diatribe against B.D.S. in The Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6a75c3c-d6f3-11e5-829b-8564e7528e54.html#axzz40l84ZKpE
‘Jew hatred’ is the response of that notorious hybrid creature Antisemite/Self-hating Jew, constructed by Zionist apologists/propagandists like yourself, and accepted as the Party Line by your allies at A.I.P.A.C.,Sheldon Adelson and the Bronfman’s Sr. & Jr. Who would have thought, that this report would have come from the utterly dependable defender of Zionist settler colonialism The Wall Street Journal?
Karl Kraus’ Ghost

I also posted this comment, as it was, to the Financial Times as a reply to the Schama essay, and after a few hours it was removed.What I meant to indicate by my use of rhetorical binary of Antisemite/Self-hating Jew was that a politically rational critique of Israel and Zionism is an impossibility: given that this hybrid makes any critique impossible, as the critique is the product of a prima facie prejudiced source.  Any critique is immediately identified as either one or the other. The practice of nuance is antithetical to political apologetics as practiced, but call by its rightful name propaganda.

Here is my subsequent comment to my first,that I hoped would clarify and add depth to my first attempt:

StephenKMackSD

From the Occupy Democrats essay:

‘You may remember the ridiculous doomsday prophecies and outrageous fear-mongering that defined the Republican campaign against President Obama’s nuclear peace deal with Iran. The motivation behind their unwise and ultimately ineffective resistance to the President’s diplomatic agenda has finally come to light. A new report from the Wall Street Journal reveals that NSA wiretaps found that the the Israeli Prime Minister and other officials of the Israeli governments attempted to, and most likely succeeded, to bribe American legislators in exchange for their support against the deal. “A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: “How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take? Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes.” The answers to Israeli proposals have yet to be fully revealed, but it is clear that favors were offered – bribes were proposed – and from the subsequent behavior of Republican lawmakers, we can only infer that our legislators accepted those bribes, from a foreign government in exchange for opposing the diplomatic efforts of the Obama Administration. At the very least, the very discussion itself indicates that they conspired with a foreign government to undermine the foreign policy agenda of their elected Commander-in-Chief, which certainly amounts to treason.’ http://www.occupydemocrats.com/2015/12/31/treason-leaked-wiretaps-reveals-netanyahu-bribed-republicans-to-sabotage-obamas-iran-peace-deal-2/StephenKMackSD

There is no doubt that the author of this obituary is schooled in the Scalia patois, in fact she/he is adept at sounding the notes of witless bulling insult that is the hallmark of that Scalia style!
But was Scalia an ‘Originalist’ Or as Scalia described himself  as a ‘faint-hearted originalist’? Here is a partial answer provided by Bruce Allen Murphy,the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

‘When I teach about the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion at Lafayette College, which used to occupy a routine pair of classes, I now wheel into the classroom a large white board that will occupy us for weeks, filled with all of the exceptions that the Court has created here restoring, in piecemeal fashion, the pre-Scalia, 1990 decision, world. I explain what has become the “Swiss Cheesing” of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, allowing, among others, for claims to be considered for exceptions for federal prisoners and others being held in government institutions, for a religious group in Hialeah, Florida seeking to sacrifice animals in religious ceremonies, and for a small religious group seeking to drink ceremonial hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon. The string of exceptions to Scalia’s Smith rule has created so many holes that there is almost no cheese left. After the Hobby Lobby decision, I will have to make one more change to the top of my board, one which risks doubling the number of exceptions, adding next to the words “person’s Free Exercise of Religion rights,” the phrase “and closely-held corporations’ religious rights” Even though the majority in Hobby Lobby has further limited Scalia’s Smith case holding, since that result comports with his pro-religious accommodation, pro-corporation constitutional rights, viewpoint, he silently votes with them. While Scalia likes to say in his public speeches that his version of the Constitution is “Dead. Dead. Dead,” once more his reading of Founding era history to construct his originalist interpretation of the Constitution is very much an evolving work in progress.’- See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156300#sthash.BWyZ4mgK.dpuf

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A political observer could call Mr. Ganesh a Tory Hazlitt,  who has accepted the notion of political compromise, as a coming to terms with the responsibilities of governance, as practiced in Western Democracies. Sometimes we must govern as part of a coalition because wholesale victory is out of our reach. Better to share power than to be an outsider, although  dissidence has its place. That doesn’t sound too highfalutin for a thinker and stylist of Mr. Ganesh’s talent ? not to speak of literary – skill isn’t the word because he writes with verve and concision-is panache the almost correct descriptor? Mr. Ganesh has a penchant for considering himself like Messieurs Wolf ,Rachman, and  Luce to be an integral part of an Elite that is under attack from the riff raff of both Left and Right. In Mr. Ganesh’s case he is unable to mask his contempt for Corby and Sturgeon, if it is masked with wit it can be tolerated, or even relished in an exercise of perverse  admiration,  but it is most times churlish:it displays a lack of wit that Mr. Ganash usually wields with dexterity.

American Writer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b594caf4-d1a1-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40NQzoyl3

Gone this week is the hysterical tone of The Rebellion against The Elites of last week. Replacing that ‘Rebellion’ as the current rhetorical frame is the ‘Isolationism’ of Trump and Sanders, far right and hard left respectively,  as opponents of TPP an exemplar of ‘Free Trade’, ‘The Pivot to Asia’ and other bloated locutions, of the political hirelings of Global Capital. And ,of course, no pundit here at The Financial Times can resist a bit of political melodrama, which is provided by that all purpose villain Vladamir Putin. As a reason to maintain America’s ‘Internationalism’ in the face of Putin’s aggressions in Ukraine and now his Syrian intervention. The double standard that is exhibited by American apologists is always evident, except to those apologists whose myopia, or actual blindness to that truth is ever present, in any foreign policy discussion/debate.

All of this leading to conjecture about President Obama’s foreign policy ‘weakness’, ‘fecklessness’, which takes the onus off Mr. Luce, but puts this accusation into rhetorical play. One-upmanship is still being practiced, but not very adroitly by Mr. Luce. One might look at Obama’s first term as being advised and assisted by Samantha Power, Victoria Nuland and Mrs. Clinton, and in his second term by John Kerry, who has taken the dominant role as adviser, a decided realignment but not by much: The New Cold Warriors supplanted by an ersatz Dove?

American Writer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c598ba32-d1a1-11e5-92a1-c5e23ef99c77.html#axzz40FLIZ3bz

The hard truth that all bourgeois respectable pundits avoid is that Originalism is the child of the politics of States Rights, as the political rationale for Jim Crow. How bitter is the reality that American Jurists swear not just allegiance, but fealty to an idea that has its root in post Civil War America, that produced the Klu Klux Clan as enforcer of that practice of States Rights! Its an ugly history of the enforcement of political conformity by terror, nothing less, with racism at its core!

The revival of States Rights, renamed, transmogrified and or grafted on to Originalism post Brown v Board of Education I & II is one of the marvels of America’s Public Relations revolution: all about the care and maintenance of political respectability. And certainly Antonin Scalia’s judicial career was fully vested in that re-framing of American racism.

See The Partisan by John A. Jenkins :

http://www.johnajenkins.com/BookpageThePartisan.html

And John Dean’s Book The Rehnquist Choice:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rehnquist-Choice-Appointment-Redefined/dp/0743233204

for confirmation of the part played by Brown I & II in the political rise and legitimization of Originalism, and the careers of Rehnquist and Scalia as the first two Orginalists on the Supreme Court.

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Here is a still from pages 186 & 187  from  Rudiger Safranski’s Philosophical Biography of Nietzsche, available as a PDF here: (Thank you to Ross Wolfe!)

Click to access rucc88diger-safranski-nietzsche-a-philosophical-biography.pdf

I had read this essay at The Financial Times on the death of Scalia and its effect on American politics last night, before going to sleep:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5e4e521c-d29e-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27.html#axzz4094YVrB3

Besides the report on the continuing political melodrama in Washington D.C.: will or won’t the Republicans display, in an election year, their self-destrutive penchant, their  utterly  persistent nihilism- the pronouncement of McConnell being an unsurprising yes to that question. What is also here is the usual Party Line on Scalia: witty sometimes scathing commentary lodged in his his finely crafted legal opinions, that are markers in the history of American Jurisprudence. The usual postmortem complementary chatter: one wonders at the lack of judgement, that reeks of bourgeois conformism

In this long quotation from Mr. Safranski’s biography of Nietzsche supplies a highfalutin description of what might be a self-conception, that was central to the life of Justice Scalia. He conceived of himself as ‘noble’ and most others as ‘base’ or just ‘insignificant’. I think he was more like a bully, who exercised his judicial will from a position of power, that could not be challenged.The radical political nostalgia for an imagined past of white, male,heterosexual power. In an age that was hostile to claims that more properly belong in 1859 America.

If you read both the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, written by Justice Roberts and maladroitly ‘doctored’ by Scalia, and then compare it to the Ginsberg dissent- one comes to the conclusion that Ginsberg utterly eviscerates the notion that ‘things have changed’,the central metaphor that anchors the Roberts/Scalia majority opinion, as rationale for striking down the ‘pre-clearance clause’ in the Voting Rights Act. Even given the unimpressive retaliatory remarks in the majority opinion aimed at the Ginsberg dissent: a dissent that provides ample evidence that the ‘pre-clerance clause’ is still essential to the protections of voting rights that that clause provides.

Philosophical Apprentice

Where else but at The Financial Times  would a critic cite Dixiecrat Feudalist Tom Wolf and ‘America’s Mayor’ Rudy Giuliani as somehow expert in the field of music criticism, or just the leading characters in the beat down of the leading  duo in American popular music. Who dared to link Black Lives Matter with the Black Panthers as expression of anger, indeed rage at the political present, that excuses the epidemic of the murder of black folks in American! The feigned naivete expresses itself in the idea that Beyoncé and JayZ are just like Leonard Bernstein and company in Wolf’s  Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers . It reeks of political desperation as an apologetics for the intolerable.

It is politically convenient but there are better sources for the ‘politics’ of Hip Hop: Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can’t_Stop_Won’t_Stop_%28book%29

And such artists as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Disposable_Heroes_of_Hiphoprisy

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney expresses the current Party Line, here at the Financial Times, of the Revolt Against The Elites, in his own idiosyncratic, not to speak of maladroit way, as a purported critique of the money hungry duo of  Beyoncé and JayZ. I thought the raison d’êre of this publication was to construct an ongoing apologetics for the economic plunder of powerless by the economically powerful?

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e1a26f10-d012-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz4041MKo49

The professional Economic Buccaneer needs to be very careful about his public advocacy for friends and allies that he might hold in high esteem: J. Ezra Merkin? For the checkered career of Mr. Ackman Wikipedia provides valuable information to evaluate his credentials:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman

Mr. Ackman manages to produce not a pastiche of a campaign press release, but to simply produce one that enunciates the cliches of the genre, with a telling fidelity to the imperatives that  Bernays laid out in 1928.

The opening paragraphs rely on the oft used metaphor of a country as a business. Is a country like a business, subject to the laws of supply and demand, not to speak of the ever present profit motive? What is the definition of success that is common to a country and a business? Or is this labored metaphor a device to give us the assurance that a hard headed  business man is what is needed, to bring America out of the eighth year of economic stagnation, following the catastrophic collapse of the Free Market Delusion? In rides Mr. Bloomberg on a white stallion awash in the shimmer of false hope. Perfect as an antidote to the rebellion against the elites, the current Part Line of the bourgeois  respectable pundits at The Financial Times.

See my comment on the Bloomberg record here:

https://stephenkmacksd.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/on-the-bloomberg-candidacy-a-comment-by-political-observer/

‘Today America is burning. Our government is wasteful and dysfunctional. Our national debt exceeds our gross domestic product. Our bridges, roads, airports and tunnels are crumbling. Our school system fails to educate our children. Our middle class is shrinking. Our tax code drives our most profitable businesses to relocate to foreign jurisdictions. Our immigration laws force talented young scientists and entrepreneurs to competitor nations. Our incomprehensible regulations fail to protect us from fraud, crime, pollution and abuse of power, while stunting growth and impairing our global competitiveness. Our international standing has deteriorated. Our enemies no longer take our pronouncements seriously and our military supremacy is threatened. The American dream is fading.’

This coda is in keeping with Bloomberg as the only, inevitable choice of the thinking oligarch:

‘It is time to put the fires out and restore the United States to greatness. Mr Bloomberg is the right choice.’

One needs to exercise patience, not to speak forbearance  with Mr. Ackman’s political advocacy.

Almost Marx

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1c440342-d0a2-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz3zxd7nlf6

One can almost welcome Mr. Bloomberg into the presidential race of 2016. The Republicans are a collection of Neo-Cons, Dixicrat Feudalists, Free Market Fundamentalists, that expresses a collective political nihilism. And the exhausted, indeed near desperate campaign of Mrs. Clinton. Her allies rehabilitation of the propaganda line of Obama Bros of of 2008, into Bernie Bros of the present. And her political exhumation of Albright and Steinam to shame young women for their lack of loyalty to a Sclerotic Feminism.

Consider Bloomberg’s authoritarianism:

Stop and Frisk, broken windows policing as conceived at the Mahattan Institute.The removal of Judge Shira Scheindlin from 5 year litigation that Bloomberg looked to be losing: patently obvious political manipulation of judicial system. Just one marker of his authoritarian character. Two sources:

http://www.thenation.com/article/removing-judge-who-ruled-stop-and-frisk-unconstitutional-blow-justice/

‘ Nearly 90 percent of the 4.4 million people the police stopped for questioning between 2004 and 2012 had done nothing wrong, according to evidence presented at a nonjury trial Scheindlin conducted last spring.’

A portion of the statement made by the court that removed Judge Shira Scheindlin:

‘A federal appeals panel in Manhattan that had abruptly removed Judge Shira A. Scheindlin from New York City’s high-profile stop-and-frisk litigation and questioned her conduct in the case issued a lengthy explanation on Wednesday, saying it had made “no findings of misconduct, actual bias or actual partiality” by the judge.

The three-judge panel’s Oct. 31 order has been the subject of pointed debate among judges, lawyers and others, and the statement on Wednesday appeared to be an effort to soften the tone of the original ruling, if not its import. The new opinion was another turn in the stop-and-frisk litigation, in which Judge Scheindlin issued a landmark decision in August imposing sweeping changes on the Police Department, including the appointment of a monitor.’

Appointment of John Micklethwait as Bloomberg’s chief executive and co-author of Right Nation, excerpted on Front LIne:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/repub/rightnation.html

and The Fourth Revolution, see this YouTube video for an interview with its authors: (See this witty,scathing review of The Fourth Revolution, in The New York Times by Rosa Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/books/review/the-fourth-revolution-by-john-micklethwait-and-adrian-wooldridge.html  {Added 02/09/16 3:23 PST})

Might we see where Mr. Bloomberg will be taking his ‘campaign’ for president from his appointment of his chief executive?

Add to this Mr. Bloomberg’s support for Charter Schools:

http://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/mike-bloomberg-details-nycs-bold-education-reform-efforts/

See Sharon Higgins’ blog  titled Charter School Scandals:

http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/

Or this:

http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/the-ugly-charter-school-scandal-arne-duncan-is-leaving-behind/

‘On that day, Duncan rattled the education policy world with news of a controversial grant of $249 million ($157 the first year) to the charter school industry. This announcement was controversial because, as The Washington Post reports, an audit by his department’s own inspector general found “that the agency has done a poor job of overseeing federal dollars sent to charter schools.”

Post reporter Lynsey Layton notes, “The agency’s inspector general issued a scathing report in 2012 that found deficiencies in how the department handled federal grants to charter schools between 2008 and 2011” – in other words, during Duncan’s watch.’

Political Observer

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b6d1fc34-ce9f-11e5-831d-09f7778e7377.html#axzz3zcPXxPk4

Mrs. Clinton is going to need more than ‘Progressive Music’ as advocated in Mr. Schama’s essay, awash in purple so as to mask its demonstrable shallowness? In opposition to ‘Sanderian magical thinking’: the observations of a hardheaded political realist, or the acceptance of the political inevitability of Mrs. Clinton, as the only rational choice?

Or will those speeches, that she  gave to Wall Street bankers, to follow the musical thread, become her political swan song? Like Mr. Romney’s notorious 47% speech, surreptitiously recorded by a bartender at a private fund raiser. Here is a link to a Washington Post report on the speech question:

‘Hillary Clinton’s campaign was noncommittal Friday about if, or when, it would release transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks and other groups.

Instead, a day after she said during a debate that she would look into making them public, advisers sought to downplay the importance of the issue.

“I don’t think voters are interested in the transcripts of her speeches,” Clinton’s pollster, Joel Benenson, said during a Friday breakfast with reporters hosted by the Wall Street Journal.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-camp-stays-mum-on-plans-to-look-into-releasing-speech-transcripts/2016/02/05/b9a9f186-cc1b-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html?postshare=8861454708001170&tid=ss_tw-bottom

When both Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow of a major network ask pointed question of a candidate, it can’t be laughed at like Mrs. Clinton did to reporter Lee Fang:

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/5/hillary_clinton_refuses_to_say_if