http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/201110121715573693.html?…

“No one ever lost money betting on the dull predictability of the US government. Just as Occupy Wall Street is firing imaginations all across the spectrum – piercing the noxious revolving door between government and casino capitalism – Washington brought us all down to earth, sensationally advertising an Iranian cum Mexican cartel terror plot straight out of The Fast and the Furious movie franchise. The potential victim: Adel al-Jubeir, the ambassador in the US of that lovely counter-revolutionary Mecca, Saudi Arabia. “

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15162-7/the-truth-about-girls-and-boys

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/96062/occupy-wall-street-zizek-lewis?passthru=NWJhNDIyNzAzNmU5MWExYzI1ZmM0ZGU0MDJiZTU2MTk&utm_source=Editors+and+Bloggers&utm_campaign=4e29fdf4cc-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email

The New Republic makes clear that respectable Liberals will find no common cause with the anti-capitalist rhetoric and group think of Occupy Wall Street(OWS): for after all Liberals believe in Capitalism as key to the survival of their philosophy, of themselves as political beings. And a threat to Capitalism is a threat to their very existence as political actors in the civic space of the Republic. In sum, the charge that the editors of this august publication make is that the movement is both politically trivial and that it is nihilistic: if it is trivial, why bother to write an editorial? If it is nihilistic and trivial, not to speak of marginal, will it not implode as a significant political force, as a result of this self-destructive intellectual/political trajectory?  The answer to why OWS has gained momentum might be argued as: “Liberals”, the “Left”, even, “Centrists” have finally given up any hope that the Rhetorical Obama would supersede the Political Obama, in the face of the grim economy; that is growing into the self-fulfilling economic prophecy of a Lost Generation. Is it not the citizens of that Lost Generation that constitute large portions of OWS? And that rhetorical hyperbole is a well worn methodology in mass political movements? These assertions seem to resemble a certain kind of clear thinking, not available to the manufacturers of a usable political hysteria in defense of a Liberalism and a Capitalism for members only.

Political Observer       

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/opinion/the-milquetoast-radicals.html?hp

It appears that David Brooks in his latest essay titled ‘The Milquetoast Radicals’ has let slip his carefully maintained  intellectual poise, his Platonically inflected reductionism, in favor of a hysterical rhetorical screech, as if the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators had committed a heresy in the Temple of Capital. He chatters on about ‘reform’ and wasted time when he in fact means the final destruction of what is left of the New Deal. He argues that the 99% believe themselves to be a political elect. Let us not even raise the idea that Mr. Brooks has an equally high-faultin’ sense of himself, as thinker and civic actor!  And, of course, as a good Conservative Intellectual would, he argues that the sin of anti-capitalism is rampant in this nascent movement, which has hardly had time to formulate a coherent ideology, if it will, ever. That question remains tantalizingly indeterminate at this moment in historical time. So,’ they have no plan’ seems a bit premature, except that it fits quite nicely as the foundational position of a Conservative Legitimist political stance: as a benchmark of ideological maturity and a handy cudgel with which to beat  the heretics into submission, or simply to murder this inchoate political being in its’ cradle.

Almost Marx

"My point is that nothing like the NSC process should ever be used again to kill an American. If another citizen is ever targeted, it should only be after an extensive debate in Congress, leading to the statutory creation of a serious legal procedure designed to eliminate the obvious abuses revealed in the Awlaki case. Because ultimately, isn't preserving American democracy what this is all about?"

Should any American citizen be surprised by this weak questioning of Presidential abuse of power, enunciated by an establishmentarian thinker fully recognizing the parameters of the American Imperial delusion, as it's central conceit? This essay seems promising until the reader reaches the last revelatory paragraph quoted above. The crisis of the Republic has reached its ignominious end: the putative guardians of the Republic have betrayed it with impunity, in the name of a benighted realpolitik precipitated by a crisis. And the political power that fear can make present in a populous, enhancing the argument that surrender of freedom is the path to the elusive notion of security.
Publius     

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-jon-huntsman-foreign-policy-20111010,0,5169344.story

Here is the apparently amiable and rather low key Republican John Huntsman auditioning for the role of Commander in Chief. In a speech at Southern New Hampshire University he calls for a reduction of forces in Afghanistan, as reported in this story in the L.A. Times. But he does not advocate a complete withdrawal of troops but simply a reduction, a quote from the story is relevant:

“Our nation has done its duty. After 6,000 lives lost and more than $1 trillion spent, it is time to bring our brave troops home,” he said, adding later, “We could go from 100,000 boots on the ground to a much smaller footprint in a year, while leaving behind an adequate number of counter-terrorists and intelligence functions and a facile special forces presence. And I believe we should.”

Mr. Huntsman is not a dove, but appears less stridently militaristic than does Romney and arguably President  Obama, yet this telling quote speaks volumes about the political necessity for any candidate  to appear strong in the eyes of the electorate; and to appear to be an exemplar of the hyper-masculine hetero ideal, inherent in the idea of Commander in Chief. To show weakness in this realm is to invite ridicule from one’s peers in the contest and ultimately to risk defeat by that demonstration of weakness.

With this bit of bellicose rhetoric about Iran, a mirror of the Soviet Union as implacable menace in the Cold War, Mr. Huntsman makes concrete in the electorates mind his resolve, his toughness in the face of the intransigent, irrational enemy:

“I cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. If you want an example of when I would use American force, it would be that”

Queer Atheist

http://www.businessinsider.com/gingrich-occupy-wall-street-a-natural-outcome-of-a-bad-education-system-teaching-them-really-dumb-ideas-2011-10

Certainly, it is interesting to watch both Mr. Cain and Mr. Gingrich sound the oft repeated notes that Conservatives muster when they feel themselves challenged by the ‘great unwashed’:  class warfare and anti-capitalism. Mr. Gingrich, being the more intellectually resourceful and given to polemic, resorts to an ad homonym attack on the American educational system, that is a deeply held belief, even a part of Conservatism's  political mythology, of the control that the  liberal elite holds over educational policy. The historically distant figures of Dewey and James receive their drubbing, in the historic present, by one Presidential candidate as the other nods vaguely in approval, of a well worn ideological platitude uttered as if it had the ethical status of a great truth.

Political Cynic       

http://opsafeintl.com/2010/08/gallery-beautiful-faces/

• 
• • Ally Fogg
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 October 2011 07.45 EDT
  • Article history

Welsh fans celebrate their team’s win over Ireland after their Rugby World Cup quarter-final in New Zealand. Photograph: Rob Griffith/AP