StephenKMackSD's Blog

Paul Krugman on Inspiration for a Liberal Economist | FiveBooks | The Browser

Posted on June 25, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

via thebrowser.com

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Additional Reviews and/or Endorsements for Barrett, L.: Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds.

Posted on June 25, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

via press.princeton.edu

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Marquand, D.: The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe.

Posted on June 25, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

via press.princeton.edu

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

Posted on June 25, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

Check out this website I found at facebook.com

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Repeal the Patriot Act by Juan Cole

Posted on June 24, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/repeal-the-patriot-act-is-the-lesson-of-bush-white-house-spying.html

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Leslie Gelb:The ethical void at the center of the mechanism of policy construction by Political Observer

Posted on June 24, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/23/why-obama-should-have-declared-mission-accomplished-in-afghanistan.html?om_rid=De4wA2&om_mid=_BOBIlAB8cDbthu

The great thinker and political commentator Walter Lippmann extolled the virtues of the ‘expert’ in American political life, in a mass society in the 20^th Century: a misplaced faith? One need only read Mr. Leslie Gelb’s latest piece at The Daily Beast entitled ‘Mission Accomplished’ to understand our dire predicament as citizens of a Republic, under a concerted attack by the agents of Empire and their intellectual rationalizers. Here is the manufactured, self-congratulatory political chatter of one of those well placed rationalizers. In his essay he fashions himself as the middle ground, the rational alternative to both left and right positions on the war in Afghanistan. He is not above questioning the sanity of his political antagonists , he has taken the high road, rhetorically speaking. Mr. Gelb is impressive in his use of statistical data to bolster his argument along with the nugget of information that he regularly speaks with White House policy makers, this to give credence to his arguments, as based in a superior knowledge, not readily available to ordinary citizens. Mr. Gelb’s is the voice of the well connected technocrat, here, able in this vortex of data and policy argument to articulate his own moral vacuity, the ethical void at the center of the mechanism of policy construction; himself. He does not and cannot speak of the human costs of war, it is beyond his ken, but on ‘policy’ on ‘strategy’ he is the indispensable ‘expert’.

Political Observer

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Political Observer on George Will, bad faith and the propaganda potential of the neo-imperial John McCain

Posted on June 23, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccains-neverending-war/2011/06/21/AGlbiSgH_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions

Poor Mr. Will is on a fruitless search for someone or something to blame for the state of endless war that, now, is a fact of our lives as Americans. Mr. Will is the bearer of the bad faith of Conservative Thinkers, who are constitutionally incapable of an utterly necessary self-critique. So he searches for the culprits everywhere, while never turning his critical eye where, if anything like political honesty resided, he might discover his own responsibility staring back at him. Here he names the culprit of the moment, as John McCain, the rudderless political opportunist, the pitiable has-been who mocks his own status as War Hero and Political Champion. Mr. McCain takes the role, in this essay, as the philosophical /political champion of Neo-Imperialism, as growing out of American Values. This is a dubious argument exploited by Mr. Will. He manages to garnish this monument to his dishonesty with apposite historical references, rendering this polemic as politically useful propaganda.

Political Observer

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Political Observer on George Will and the selective use of cultivated political outrage

Posted on June 23, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/libya-and-the-potemkin-alliance/2011/06/17/AGdQ2UZH_story.html

‘America’s intervention in Libya’s civil war, the most protracted and least surreptitious assassination attempt in history, was supposed to last “days, not weeks,” but is in its fourth month and has revealed NATO to be an increasingly fictitious military organization. Although this war has no discernible connection with U.S. national security, it serves the national interest, in three ways. It is awakening some legislators to their responsibilities. It is refuting the pretense that the United Nations sets meaningful parameters to wars it authorizes — or endorses, which is quite different. And it is igniting a reassessment of NATO, a Potemkin alliance whose primary use these days is perverse: It provides a patina of multilateralism to U.S. military interventions on which Europe is essentially a free rider.’

Mr. George Will has lost his usual sang-froid, such as it is or could be, in his latest essay grandiloquently titled Libya and the Potemkin alliance. As this opening paragraph illustrates, although not very succinctly. What did Mr. Will expect after the Bush Restoration and its dull-witted intellectual minions John Yoo, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz made all out war on the very notion and practice of constitutional governance and tripartite power sharing. Mr. Yoo and the utterly bogus idea of ‘The Unitary Presidency’ now is fully entrenched in our National Political Life. It is fully operative and completely useful to the abuse of executive power. Who can stop the President from actions he deems necessary, since he possesses superior knowledge? That was always the argument: so why the outrage from the prescient Mr. Will? As America’s foremost public intellectual could he not see the ramifications of the War on Terror, The Patriot Act and its readily ascertainable concentration of power into the practice of executive fiat? Where was the political indignation, then, about a constitutional affront to the very practice of republican governance and its implicit ethical imperatives? It was sacrificed to the cultivation of political hysteria realized through unrelenting fear mongering. The real question here is where were Mr. Will’s critical faculties, then, as opposed to a now? When a through critique of those policies and laws could have made a difference, in preventing exactly what is happening, today. But the political questions raised by Mr. Will results in a condemnation of Mr. Obama and his policy blunderings that are manifestly serviceable to the imperatives of the approaching campaign.

Political Observer

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Life sentences for Bahrain activists – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

Posted on June 22, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

via english.aljazeera.net

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Define American: Jose’s Story

Posted on June 22, 2011 by stephenkmacksd

via youtube.com

Essential, of the highest importance!!!!!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

	Janan Ganesh:… on Professional boulevardier Jana…
	Janan Ganesh:… on Janan Ganesh on ‘The wel…
	Janan Ganesh:… on Is it possible that boulevardi…
	Janan Ganesh:… on It’s almost a pleasure t…
	Janan Ganesh:… on Janan Ganesh on: ‘The sh…

StephenKMackSD's Blog

Paul Krugman on Inspiration for a Liberal Economist | FiveBooks | The Browser

Additional Reviews and/or Endorsements for Barrett, L.: Beyond the Brain: How Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds.

Marquand, D.: The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe.

Honeybee Democracy by Thomas D. Seeley

Repeal the Patriot Act by Juan Cole

Leslie Gelb:The ethical void at the center of the mechanism of policy construction by Political Observer

Political Observer on George Will, bad faith and the propaganda potential of the neo-imperial John McCain

Political Observer on George Will and the selective use of cultivated political outrage

Life sentences for Bahrain activists – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

Define American: Jose’s Story

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta