Politics: Where we struggle to kneel in the muck.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
Cameron Diaz has the right to age 20 years in the past 5. And she has exercised that right.

But what did the rape comment mean? Do you think she means Kerry will let the Taliban in to run things under UN auspices, or is this a hint she's afraid that Clinton might step back in?

[Not Bob]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
He said "more likeable" not "likeable."

Nixon v. Kennedy = Kennedy
Nixon v. Humphrey or McGovern=Nixon

Wrong. Everybody (other than Hunter S. Thompson) loved the Happy Warrior and his Politics of Joy. Nixon barely won in 1968 despite things like the implosion in Chicago ("the whole world is watching!") and Wallace sucking off Democratic votes.

You're right on McGovern, though, especially after CREEP hung him with the "acid, amnesty, and abortion" line. Not to mention the Eagleton fiasco, which made George look like (1) an idiot who picked a nut-job as VP nominee, and yet (2) a bastard who was insensitive to victims mental illness.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
He said "more likeable" not "likeable."

Nixon v. Kennedy = Kennedy
Nixon v. Humphrey or McGovern=Nixon

You don't know much about George McGovern and Richard Nixon, do you?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
What? Did Oprah give you a new Pontiac?

I have about as much time for Oprah as I do for Drudge.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Gee, when you don't have a substantive answer that can't be blown apart on a first pass, just call the other side "silly" or "stupid" or something. You know this Sebby character?

The fact is, people use codewords like "crowded and dirty" to justify moving from Austin to Oak Park, though the neighborhoods are virtually identical but-for this one little thing that the evil coalition has wrought.

Work? Who left the city first, the scared whites or Sears, Motorola and Exelon? Its the whole critical mass thing I addressed in another post.

Cheaper? Your subdivision wasn't new, was it? There have been numerous articles and studies in the Chicago area noting that the infrastructure for new communities (roads, sewers, schools) is bought with tax money from old communities. But hey, those aren't your neighbors anymore, so fuck-em, right?

So tell me about more holes in my theory regarding fairness etc. The fact is, you and the rest of the scared whites originally protested the idea of spreading section 8 to Lake Forest and Schaumburg and wherever-the-fuck Sebby lives. Let me guess, Motorola and Exelon and Sears won't hire those people, or they wouldn't be able to afford your half-off townhome, or... uhm, why shouldn't you suffer like those in the city again?

The thing is, nobody here has been able to justify the opposition. Y'all are too busy explaining that nope, its just better in the suburbs, and the lack of public housing and section 8 is just gravy!

Like I said. Wanna see how quickly the Democratic party agrees to get rid of your precious social programs? Threaten to fairly implement them so Democrats have to live with the results.

From the Republicans, the argument (not that you've presented any) is just disingenuous. From y'all Democrats, its downright hypocritical.

Hello

Actually, the dirty and crowded neighborhood I left was Lincoln Park. And as for your assumption that the reason I left the city was to get away from the Black and the Brown folks -- fuck you, you racist asshole.

That's right, I called YOU a racist. You assume that everybody in the suburbs is some scared white asshole, separated from your basic redneck cracker only by a higher level of education and a lower level of firearm and stars and bars flag ownership. Well, I call bullshit. Your assumptions are as bad as the people you purport to condemn.

What's more, I would welcome section 8 housing in my community. I have long advocated widely-scattered low density public housing as a first step in eliminating the permanent underclass. So you can take your superior attitude and you can shove it up your pompous self-satisfied ass.

Just a guess here, but you went to U of Chicago and you still live in Hyde Park, right?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You don't know much about George McGovern and Richard Nixon, do you?

One spoke at my graduation and one is my favorite politician.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Not Bob
Wrong. Everybody (other than Hunter S. Thompson) loved the Happy Warrior and his Politics of Joy. Nixon barely won in 1968 despite things like the implosion in Chicago ("the whole world is watching!") and Wallace sucking off Democratic votes.

You're right on McGovern, though, especially after CREEP hung him with the "acid, amnesty, and abortion" line. Not to mention the Eagleton fiasco, which made George look like (1) an idiot who picked a nut-job as VP nominee, and yet (2) a bastard who was insensitive to victims mental illness.

is this an attempt to be metrosexual?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
Maybe he hasn't been to the near north side in a while. W/in five years Cabrini Green will be replaced by condos. It's so gentrified there are very few minorities left. People still flee to the burbs, though.

Not me though. Never. I could understand living in the burbs of another city. Some are quite scenic and offer many opportunites for outdoor activities, etc. Not the Chicago burbs. No hills. Shitty traffic. Overpriced farmland.

I'm fully aware of the gentrification taking place on the near north side, the near west side and the near south side. All the yuppie sinlgles and dinks want condos and townhomes close enough to the Loop to walk to work. But then, with the prices they're paying for them, they need to be close to work to put in the hours.

I didn't move out of the city to get away from the colored folks. I moved to the burbs because I like them. Now I have even more reason to be here because I work out here. But it never had anything to do with white flight.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I have about as much time for Oprah as I do for Drudge.

So she stuck with the tax bill on that Pontiac, huh?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

An e-mail from Andrew Sullivan's site gives the conservative case for Kerry:

• When the invasion of Iraq was being debated, I had just returned from two years in Morocco and my now wife had just returned from a year in Egypt. We both considered supporting the war. The Arab world is mired in a political culture obsessed with blaming others for their misfortunes and obsessing over Israel while doing nothing to find practical solutions to their own problems closer to home.
  
  When I was in Morocco, there was a demonstration in Rabat that drew between half a million and three million demonstrators against the reoccupation of the West Bank in April of 2002. Never mind that Israel is on the other side of the Mediterranean and that their demonstration could have no impact on the Palestinians' situation. Never mind that their own government has occupied the Western Sahara against the wishes of the native inhabitants of that territory, a situation that in some ways parallels the situation of Israel and Palestine. Never mind that, in the early 21st century, they are still ruled by a Monarchy making only feeble gestures towards instituting a democracy, and have a stagnant economy barely able to keep up with the country's birth rate, let alone employ the millions of idle, jobless young Moroccans whose best hope in life is to emigrate legally or illegally to Europe in hopes of finding menial, low-wage labor. Few Moroccans will lift a finger to try to change their own situation, but they will pour into the streets for the sake of an impotent gesture on the behalf of the Palestinians. Political discussions tend to revolve around conspiracy theories involving "The Jews." The 10 year old who lived downstairs from me was convinced that 4000 Jews had called in sick to work on 9/11, tipped off by the Mossad that the attack was going to occur. His father would not admit to holding this view, but probably did and would say publicly that Bin Laden was not behind the attack (Powell promised a dossier in Arabic spelling out evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11. This was never done, to my knowledge. A serious oversight.).
  
  My wife had similar experiences in Egypt. We both thought that a shock to the system and a scheme to jar at least one Arab country onto the right track might be worth it. In the end, we both decided that it would be a bad idea, and for good conservative reasons. Utopian social programs rarely work domestically, in circumstances in which the architects of social engineering share a language and culture with their subjects and in which the surrounding society is stable and prosperous. If this is the case, how can we expect a radical experiment in social engineering to succeed in a foreign country with a radically different culture, and in which distrust of the United States is imbibed with mother's milk? Arabs are fixated enough on what they perceive as past humiliations, how can adding another defeat to the list help them?
  
  Subsequent rationales for the war were not convincing. Engage the terrorists in Iraq or face them here? Does anyone really believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had a one-way ticket to the US and a scholarship at a flight school but decided to turn around and have a go at us in Iraq after he heard about the invasion? Iraq, in fact, supplies a theater for attacking the US that most of the fighters there, foreign and Iraqi, would not have if we had not given it to them. If Saddam Hussein were still in power, we could continue to contain him for 2 billion per year and when his system did finally collapse, it would be up to Iraqis to sort out the mess, not us. As for Blair's claim that Muslim militants hate the West for our very existence, I don't buy it. Resent us, yes. Envy us, sure. But if we didn't meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, I doubt they would attack us. Bush's claim in his first public statement after 9/11 that they hate us for our freedom is a close parallel to the claim of Muslim militants that we hate them for their core identity and values, that is, that we hate them for being Muslims, that we hate Islam as such. The Middle East is a disaster. Its economies are stagnant, its resources are minimal and being depleted, its population is growing, its infrastructure is crumbling, its literacy rates are low and so on and so forth. There will be no stability there in the foreseeable future and the correct response to this should be to minimize involvement with the region.
  
  Now, we are stuck fighting to try to democratize a polity that is inherently unstable. If there are democratic elections, the result is not likely to be a liberal democracy, but rather one of the illiberal sort. Defeat would be a disaster, victory will be hard to define and unlikely to bring great reward. I agree with Christopher Hitchens that it is shameful to be wishing defeat on the US in Iraq in the hopes that this translates into defeat for Bush at home. I agree that we have to face the fact that we are committed in Iraq now and cannot afford to talk about the past as though turning back the clock were an option. I am no fan of Kerry. Despite all of this, I don't want to hand another four years to a man who brought us unnecessarily into this predicament at such great cost and who waged this war so incompetently. This, combined with the irresponsible economic policy that you have also criticized, have convinced me to cast my vote for Kerry. We cannot afford to dwell on the past at the expense of engaging with the present as it is. But neither can we forget past lapses of judgment and hope that they will not occur again.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
So she stuck with the tax bill on that Pontiac, huh?

Actually, my standing policy is to accept a new Pontiac from anyone who wants to give me one.

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
OK, so showing that yuppies come back when they aren't subject to concentrated public housing and section 8 goes against what I'm saying how? Meantime, the tax base of the south suburbs is steadily dropping as section 8 concentrations move in. Where haven't we seen that before? But its all just a coincidence, because some people just want a one acre lot (with no poor people within 10 miles).

Is it possible that the tax base has been dropping because the section 8 housing has a lowr value?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Actually, my standing policy is to accept a new Pontiac from anyone who wants to give me one.

Well, they do come with nice, solid bumpers.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Well, they do come with nice, solid bumpers.

I'm really looking for bumpers that can take repeated blows, though. Does Pontiac make durable bumpers?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Is it possible that the tax base has been dropping because the section 8 housing has a lowr value?

Is it possible that Section 8 vouchers don't pay for much, and can only cover housing in the worst neighborhoods?