"I cannot not tell a lie."
—Bubbs
__
If you follow American election season, you'll hear about the just-critical-enough differences between the two richest party organizations. You'll also hear that they're in all critical aspects the same. Purveyors of either perception point a finger at those of the other as being responsible, respectively, for the failures of the political party, or a lack of a real opposition.
I subscribe primarily to the latter view, though find many of the similarities trivial: Members of both parties are quick to admit a mistake as long as it's attributed to the department of marketing & miscommunication. Neither will admit to having misguided intentions. Both eventually say that they might better have done more, neither without a caveat.
Both have plenty a party patrician who can enumerate a cherry-picked, fudged checklist of all they done good. Neither will submit to a live cross-examination on matters that matter by somebody not of their own choosing.
Then there are trivial differences one can find when examining the remarkable overlap in party financing, which effectively writes a narrative of personality for the selective assignation of blame, especially when you look at one election cycle.
Of greater significance, however, is where the source of their funds remains the same over the long term, which, if you were to Venn diagram, would resemble a total eclipse of the sun.
__
There are not many better at lecturing the masses about where we went wrong — while omitting his critical role in the same — than Dubya Jeff McClinton.
The former president doesn't get much flack for his part in mandatory minimum drug sentencing and privatizing prisons because the legacy belongs to Reagan/Bush. Yet he gets a share of the blame for NAFTA even though he didn't start that either, just drove it to the finish line.
Much like today, the current president and his party get cover for their war waging policies due to war having been such a prominent feature of the previous administration. As a consequence of the preemptive pass given to each new occupant of the office, few partisan voters have the will to hold their own to account for anything. Therefore, the president doesn't have much to worry about regarding Fast Track, TPP, TTIP etc., irrespective of how much of it is his own administration's doing.
Back to this era's master of not not telling the truth, from his capable tongue twinned with not not telling a lie, his each utterance umbra, from the afore-linked foreword to Solutions: American Leaders Speak Out on Criminal Justice, Bubba beguiles:
In this time of increased political polarization, there is one area where we have a genuine chance at bipartisan cooperation: the over-imprisonment of people who did not commit serious crimes.A special few are fooled by a politician who expresses one sentiment while benefiting from another, but when the literal verbiage of one part means the precise opposite of the implication of the whole, either he poorly picked his words, or he's doing his famous parsing routine for the grammar gorgon at the gates of the HellTM. But we know what he means, right?
To address our prison problem, we need real answers, a real strategy, real leadership — and real action. We can show how change can happen when we work together across partisan and political divides. That is the great promise of America.If the referenced political divide does not extend beyond the Democratic and Republican parties, the "great promise" is to someone unstated in his foreword, altogether different from what the usage implies.
__
ArianneOnLine is ten! Tweening has never felt so good!
To celebrate her steroid-advanced first pube, the matriarch of modern progressivism has one of her patented CONversations (emphasis mine), this time with business model partner Lloyd Blankfein.
They wax about the inspirational nature of their undertakings in a "talk" about their 10-year business plan, how they might "accelerate the recovery" that has led to "inequalities growing" and the opportunities that present themselves going forward, amongst which is their investment in education.
So investing in education is one opportunity that we've tried to grab onto in all the investments that we make, and that, as a country, we need to be prioritizing, because if we invest in early education or training prisoners, any investment would have an enormous return.Goldman Sachs "grabbing onto" early education? What could go wrong? Again, the language they use hides their lies in plain sight. It really is as if the undercover cop is required by law to reveal his identity.
But that won't stop fierce loyalists from going all in. Their party is 100 percent behind investment banking, unopposed on corporate education and monetized penitentiaries, and is leading the charge in increased military policing. But somehow there will always be the ways the other party is so much worse.
