Jacobin

Amid the bad results for the Left in the European elections, the Greek outcome was particularly poignant. In the last such contest in 2014, Syriza rode the revolt against austerity to become the largest single party, in its final step toward national office. Five years later, in last month’s election, it finished ten points behind the right-wing New Democracy.

Luke Savage has a very good question for Jacobin readers this week: Who Will Be the American Justin Trudeau? "With a restless Democratic base leaning left," he wrote, "party centrists are looking for their Justin Trudeau-- a candidate who will seem progressive while preserving the status quo." I offered 4 pretty obvious possibilities in a twitter poll yesterda

-by Valley Girl"Politics is the Art of the Possible."Hearing that phrase always makes me grind my teeth. One person on a college email list I am on (all Democrats) likes to repeat this phrase. Sanctimonious Bullshit I say.On his twitter stream, Howie posted a link to a Jacobin article, which I read with great interest.

Last Friday, Yanis Varoufakis was in Italy to promote European Spring, a list of candidates standing across the continent in next May’s European election. The former Greek finance minister visited Rome just days after the European Commission had struck down the Italian government’s budget, sparking further rows over Brussels’ authority to curb member states’ spending. At his press conference, Varoufakis called for a “radical Europeanism,” as an alternative to both the populist right and the neoliberal center.


Alternate Current Radio Presents: Boiler Room – Uninterruptible Talk Radio on ACR

Today’s livestream at 3 PM central will be me solo manning the chats and images with a discussion of some basic, but often forgotten aspects of how we’ve gotten to where we are. It’s impossible to understand modernity without understanding the ideological and financial origins of modernity and how powerful social engineering in pop culture and public education truly is. Nation, family, church, state, philosophy, education, and the arts have all been revolutionized. As long as we remain locked in the dialectical trap of modernity, we cannot recover.

Don't expect the video above to be played at the "left-leaning" (NOT) Democratic Party conference today. "Voters," wrote Will Bunch (more below), "understood that a vote for Bernie was no guarantee they'd actually get single-payer health care or free public tuition the day after inauguration, but that really wasn't the point. The point was that someone understood their problems with seeing a doctor, or getting their 21-year-old son out of the basement. Somebody listened...and understood."If you're unaware of DWT disdain contempt for the DCCC and the DSCC you must be new to the blog.

The cost of health care vs. the consumer price index for the last ten years (source; click to enlarge). Note especially 2009 and 2010, recession years for the CPI. If you do click through to the source, note that its author apparently doesn't understand the relationship between monopolies and pricing power.

Thursday, when Herr Trumpf pontificated that "you have to be wealthy in order to be great" how offended were you? What a disgusting little man! I wonder how many evangelicals who voted for him are doing penance.