Booman Tribune

Goldberg Compares Volunteerism to Slavery

by BooMan
Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:10:45 PM EST

Jonah Goldberg, the son of l'affaire Lewinsky superheroine Lucianne Goldberg, has a job writing columns for the Los Angeles Times. He is probably the stupidest person in the entire country to have one of these plum positions with a major distribution paper. I mean that. He's practically an idiot. Other conservative columnists make bad arguments all the time, but they know they're doing it and most of them are quite effective in spewing their lies. Goldberg isn't effective at all. His arguments are laughable and of the kind you hear from uninformed neighbors at block parties. Take today's offering for example:

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

I guess in Obama's mind it must be a crime to be born or to go to college.

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

The rest of his column isn't any better. Nowhere in his column does he mention that we had a draft in this country for a good part of the 20th-Century, not to mention during the Civil War. Comparing the draft to slavery is insulting but it would make more sense than comparing government-compensated volunteerism to slavery. You can read about Barack Obama's actual service proposals here. I can tell you one proposal that is going to be very popular with parents.

Require 100 Hours of Service in College: Obama will establish a new American Opportunity Tax Credit that is worth $4,000 a year in exchange for 100 hours of public service a year.

If you want that $16,000 discount on a four-year university education, you'll need to volunteer 400 hours. You will be getting paid $40/hour for 'volunteering'. In Jonah Goldberg's universe, this is slavery. Can the Los Angeles Times hire Digby or something? This is just embarrassing.



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Golberg also thinks fascism is a left-wing thing. He's just bizarre. But knowing he's the son of oh-so-socially connected Lucianne makes his employment there understandable. We need to give citizens a "Government Shill 101" course so they can laugh these people off the oped pages.

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes
by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:25:00 PM EST
Also of note.  If you work 50 weeks a year for 40 hours a week and you get paid $40/hour, you will bring in $80,000.  If you get a paid two-week vacation on top of it, you'll earn more.

I don't know what the LA Times pays Goldberg to write his crap, but it must be a lot for him to compare $80,000/year to slavery.

by BooMan on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:25:23 PM EST
Goldberg and neocons in general are facts deficient. They care not. When Goldberg and his neo-con colleagues define slavery, slavery is what it is..

To volunteer in service to your country is slavery....perhaps that's why Goldberg didn't volunteer for Iraq?  

Goldberg should know. The US has a few hundred thousand slaves - slaves to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan...continued tours of duty, treated as slaves PTSD. The Pentagon's recruiting teams fanned out into countries with struggling economies, whose peoples have a certain skin tone. "Commie, commie here.. we've some uncle Sam devalued bucks for you...if you live to see it."

Vets are slaves. The U.S. embassy in Iraq built by slaves.

Well, "You can't vote for war and disown the results"

by idredit on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:28:32 PM EST
Mama was a right-wing intel asset.

Lucienne Goldberg

Her career started at the Washington Post in 1957 followed by a year working at the Democratic National Committee in 1960. She became a consultant to the White House staff under President Kennedy in 1961 for two years. She set up Cummings and Associates in 1963.
Decades later, Jeffrey Toobin's book A Vast Conspiracy alleged that Goldberg claimed to friends that she had an affair with Lyndon Johnson while working in the White House. [1] After Goldberg threatened Random House with a libel suit, a Washington Post writer claimed he and others overheard her bragging about an affair with Vice President Hubert Humphrey as well. Goldberg denied both affairs and denied telling any such stories. [2]
In 1966, she married Sidney Goldberg, an editor at the news syndicate North American Newspaper Alliance and Lucianne Goldberg did occasional freelance work for the syndicate. During the 1972 presidential campaign she joined the press corps covering candidate George McGovern, claiming to be a reporter for the Women's News Service, an affiliate of NANA. In fact, she was paid $1000 a week by Richard Nixon operative Murray Chotiner for regular reports about happenings on the campaign trail. She said "They were looking for really dirty stuff...Who was sleeping with who, what the Secret Service men were doing with the stewardesses, who was smoking pot on the plane--that sort of thing." [3] [4]
Goldberg set up her own literary agency in 1972. One of her clients, celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley, sued Goldberg in 1983, charging breach of contract, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty over proceeds from Kelley's book on Elizabeth Taylor. The jury awarded Kelley $60,000, but the judge reduced the award to $40,000 and dismissed the ruling of fraud. [5]
She published her first book, Purr Baby Purr, in 1970, which was a critique of feminism. Goldberg started writing a column called "Footlights of Broadway", syndicated by NANA. Goldberg published her first novel, Friends in High Places co-written with Sondra Robinson, in 1979. Her first solo novel Madame Cleo's Girls, a story of three call girls, was published in 1992, followed by People Will Talk in 1994. Goldberg has also ghostwritten the steamy novel Washington Wives (1987) for Maureen Dean (wife of Watergate figure John Dean), among other works.[6]

The Making of a Scandal

This "sudden" scandal took long preparation by powerful forces. Years ago, the extreme right-wing Rutherford Foundation took up the sexual harassment case of Paula Jones as a way to embarrass Bill Clinton. Their operation got a boost when the Rehnquist Supreme Court allowed the civil case of Paula Jones to continue while Clinton was still in office. Sitting presidents are usually shielded from legal cases--and the Supreme Court's decision took away that protection.

Then came a second unusual ruling--this time by Judge Susan Webber Wright, the conservative federal judge overseeing the Paula Jones case. Wright allowed Jones' attorneys to try to document in court a "pattern" of sexual misconduct by Bill Clinton. Paula Jones' lawyers could demand sworn statements from women who had nothing to do with Paula Jones. They paid private investigators to canvas Little Rock and Washington looking for women willing to accuse Clinton. Monica Lewinsky was brought to court where she swore, under oath in early January, that she had never had sex with Clinton.

Meanwhile, Monica Lewinsky was being set up. A former White House secretary Linda Tripp got Lewinsky to talk about Clinton over the phone and illegally taped the conversations. Tripp got her directions from Lucienne Goldberg, a former "dirty tricks" operative for Richard Nixon. Goldberg gathers scandalous rumors about Clinton--serving as "literary agent" for Arkansas statetroopers, an alleged former lover of Bill Clinton, and Linda Tripp herself. Goldberg is also literary agent for the racist cop Mark Fuhrman.

Tripp took the Lewinsky tapes and other evidence to Kenneth Starr--who then claimed the tapes showed that Lewinsky lied and that someone connected to the White House had urged her to do it. Starr, whose initial assignment was to investigate Arkansas real estate, now authorized an FBI sting operation. Linda Tripp was wired with a microphone and sent to get more revelations from Lewinsky. Federal agents later held Lewinsky in a hotel room for 10 hours without a lawyer, demanding that she participate in a sting operation aimed at Clinton.

Kenneth Starr is an active right-winger. In 1989 as the Solicitor General of the Bush administration, Starr argued that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade because, "There is simply no credible foundation for the proposition that abortion is a fundamental right." Recently, Starr has worked for the "school choice" movement against public education, as a lawyer for the tobacco industry, and as a speaker at a Christian-fascist law school associated with Pat Robertson.

Attorney General Reno gave Starr permission to launch a full-scale investigation into the possibility that someone in the White House told Lewinsky to lie in court.

The apple didn't roll far from the tree.

In the rotten orchard of the mass media.

Why even read his shit?

Wjhy even read the LA Times?

Just another  asset.

NY Times Jr.

Bet on it.

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:31:53 PM EST
Not just right wing - NANA - the North American Newspaper Alliance, fronted people for the CIA as well, notably Priscilla Johnnson McMillan, who interviewed Oswald pre-assassination in the USSR and then wrote a book about his wife after that Marina called a pack of lies.

Priscilla also claimed an affair - with President Kennedy - in the National Enquirer or one of those rags. She was not exactly a looker. Please. JFK had his pick, and it would never have been HER.

Priscilla's CIA file lists her as a "witting" asset (as opposed to their unwitting assets who don't even know they're being manipulated by the CIA).

"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

by Real History Lisa (lpeaseRemoveThis@gte.net) on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:51:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I have always objected to the 'witting" term when used in this way.

First of all...anyone who still possess the wit with we we are almost all born would not work for the CIA in any capacity as it stands today and as ithas stood since the late '40s.

Secondly, if they do not know they are being used by the secret police...because that is what the CIA and other intel ops really are when acting domestically, let's call a spade a spade here...then they are witless out front.

The system is rotted almost all the way through now. Like a giant tree in its last days, it totters and is about to fall.

Call the Tree Whisperer!!!

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

QUICK!!!

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 03:41:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]
This is one apple that is a lot less intelligent than the tree it came from.
by BooMan on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:58:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
by northcountry on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:41:48 PM EST
you could call it 'involuntary servitude' but it wasn't slavery.  Those two terms are not synonymous.
by BooMan on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:56:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]
but my Jonah's logic....
by northcountry on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 08:06:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Jonah jumped the shark at least 6 months ago.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt
by Steven D on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 01:44:56 PM EST
Then what was Reagan with his "Thousand Points of Light"?  Wasn't that a call to volunteerism?  IOKIYAR?
by SusanD on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 02:18:32 PM EST
that was Poppy, not Ray-gun.
by BooMan on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 02:52:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oops.  To quote LOLcats, "I can't brain today.  I haz teh dumb."
by SusanD on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 03:00:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Why is it that the right is DOMINATED right now by those who obtained their status by nepotism?

Goldberg

William Kristol

Kagan

Kagan

Inevitably, since these princes of right-wing nuttery gained their status by dad/mom shoving aside others for them, we get 2nd rate intellects.  

What's the deal there?

by dataguy on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 02:23:45 PM EST
Why?

They're aliens.

It's genetic.

Alien to human love, at the very least.

Maybe worse.

MUCH worse.

They live. And they reproduce. BEEN doing so from the dawn of human history.

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

It's genetic.

Bet on it.

Later...

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 03:52:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
As I recall, slavery wasn't voluntary. Does he think everyone should get the tuition credit for doing nothing?  Who knew Jonah would grow up to be a socialist? Hooray!! Now he can atone for the sins of his parents.
by Veritas78 on Tue Jul 8th, 2008 at 06:44:02 PM EST


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