Dr Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler: Intellectualizing happiness and the antebellum critique

It is a leap to compare the nature of catching a cold with the phenomena of obesity. But an article by Alice Park in the 12/22/08; Time Magazine based on a work by Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler published in the British Medical Journal does exactly that.

Analysis and critical thought or the dialectical method has always recognized the dynamic of the detail and for lack of or it's presence has in one form or the other been a cornucopia or bane of the human condition and it's Political-Economy.

Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler premise the supposition that if infectious pathogens are a social virial then human emotion, lets say happiness should not also be infectious but it is infectious.

This puts me in the mind of the antebellum critique' where carpet beggar Northerners were blamed for Southern Black militancy. As if the oppressed needed paternalism to objectify the condition.

Historically idealism's knock has simply been, it's intellectualism for it's sake. This labor by the aforementioned authors is victim of intellectualism's at the expense of the dialectical truth that there really is an object and subject.


By Apropos

Howard Dean and "The Scream" has been Vindicated

Any talk about corporate media circumscribing political narrative has to include "The Scream". Who can forget Howard Dean's exuberance in Iowa, "The Scream" and how it was used against him by his enemies and their columns to derail Deanism.

Still Howard Dean had one last hurrah, the 2008 Presidential election and it's historical conclusion.

Barack Obama has "The Scream" to thank.

Democrats have "The Scream" to thank for the 2006 mid-term gains to Barack Obama's triumph.

By Apropos

Lynn Swann Republican, Collaborator and Organic-Empiricism

On 10/22/08; Lynn Swann, the former Football player and one time Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, was trotted out on the Lou Dobbs show for the specific purpose of dismissing Colin Powell's criticism of the Republican party, John McCain and Sarah Palin during Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama.

It wasn't surprising to see Lynn Swann play that historical role of collaborator, that easy way out of embracing the status quo narrative at the expense of annihilating the suppositions of reaction.

Colin Powell's analysis and critique of Republican political practice as exemplified by the Palin-idiocy of God, Guns, Family and the backwardness of Urban, Rural antagonism's was positive. Instead of Lynn Swan invoking and resurrecting positive Republican analysis, the party of Fredrick Douglas. He perpetuated the very zeitgeist that kept him from triumph in 2006.

Is it any wonder contemporary Republican politics runs counter to the organic-empiricism of American-Political Economy?

By Apropos

Bernard Madoff, The Ponzi Spin and Money Laundering

The naive are buying this Ponzi scheme spin on the Bernard Madoff swindle.

Isn't money laundering a more credible explanation? The public is being asked to accept that Bernard Madoff ran a decades long Ponzi-Pyramid scheme analog type scam which has resulted in the $50 Billion swindle of all sorts of investors.

It is just incredibly far fetched that the short term scope of the Ponzi type scheme could sustain the long lasting structure necessary to swindle $50 Billion from investors with varied imperatives.

What is realistic is Bernard Madoff was operating a money laundering scheme, rehabilitating capital and enabling its viability at a certain strata of society.

This Bernard Madoff Ponzi spin is a diversion.

By Apropos

Bob Corker's Delusions, Bob Corker's detour of Political-Economy

Bob Corker's grandstanding on the question of bail out for the big 3 auto makers is down right pathetic.

Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, a former mayor of Chattanooga and construction company owner has been the rabid personification of anti-United Auto Workers Union.

The State of Tennessee has one million people receiving food stamps. The city of Chattanooga has a high unemployment rate. Both state and city exhibit the full antagonistic range of Bob Corker's delusions.

It is annoying that at this stage of the human condition and development. Polemics has to digress in combating the Bob Corker detour of Political-Economy distortions.

Southern Republican Senators Richard Shelby, Bob Corker to name a few are being counted upon to once and for all reveal and expose the naive and reactionary nature of their Political-Economy suppositions...Ha...Ha...Ha.

By Apropos

The 400 Count Indictment of David Scrafano

David Scrafano, a child molester of Smith County, Virginia was sentenced to 2 years in jail, 10 years probation and a $5,000 fine, on 12/4/08.

What is unique and disturbing about the Scrafano case and indictment is David Scrafano was initially charged with 400 counts of child molestation!! But he was convicted on one count!!

So why would the Commonwealth Attorney for Smith County charge David Scrafano with 400 counts of child sex violations but convict him on only one?

By Apropos

190,000 Veterans are Homeless in America

It has been reported that over 190,000 Veterans are homeless in America. Besides the hypocrisy of those whose demagoguery is "support our troops" and "country First" and their failure to respond to this blight on social polity.

Apropos, The Blog of Political-Economy and the Human Condition ask all readers to virialize this idea: turn military bases that are on the to be closed list into temporary housing for veterans who need housing.

By Apropos

Clayton County, Georgia, A Slave Cemetary and Moral Revision

Notwithstanding the controversial decision by Clayton County, Georgia public officials to remove remains of Black Slaves from the present cemetery to another one, clearing way for a land-fill.

There is a primary question of responsibility to heritage. The present slave cemetery point of the Clayton County controversy has not been cared for. It is overgrown with weeds, brush and trash strewn. Headstones are weathered and uncared for. It is an extreme feat and moral revision to make the contradictory and hypocritical argument, that corrupt, corporate lackeys in Clayton County's government in the pay of the landfill company have denied the humanness of Black Slaves buried on the grounds of a proposed landfill by ruling in it's favor. When Black Heritage in Clayton County hasn't seen fit to care for and protect the slave cemetery.

By Apropos

The Catholic Church, Catholicism, Abortion and Barack Obama

Besides railing against abortion, despite it being a legitimate but criticized social fact. What exactly has the Catholic Church and Catholicism actually done in advancing the human condition scientifically?

Lately reactionary comments harking to attitudes and fraudulent certainties of the infamous Spanish Inquisition has been the recourse of certain elements within the Catholic church in response to Barack Obama winning the U.S. Presidency.

Certain Catholic elements, A Cardinal, Bishop and Priests have called the election of President-Elect Barack Obama an "Apocalyptic event", "Evil" and parishioners who voted for Barack Obama must confess it as a sin because of Obama's view that abortion is a parents choice and a legal question.

I think it is a good idea that the Catholic Church is jumping into the Political-Economy arena with it's thinly veiled theocratic presumptions over the abortion question. This now allows Catholicism to experience ideological struggle specifically as progress of objective facts without the obfuscation of the theological faith basis.

By Apropos

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Plaxico Burress Deviance and the Status Quo Narrative

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opening the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomburg has jumped in head first into The Plaxico Burress Shooting incident. With his sanctimonious pronouncements of the full weight of the law coming down on Plaxico Burress, the New York Giants wide receiver who during the Thanksgiving weekend allegedly shot himself in the leg.

There is this amnesiac streak of the status quo narrative in American society when it concerns Black behavior and the Burress incident again exposes it's racist underbelly.

I have one response: It is time every single American life, from post puberty is subjected to microscopic scrutiny and the full weight of Bloomburgian "law" brought to bear. Because this hypocrisy of selective ire and persecution of social deviance by Black citizens at the audacious expense of white collar and corporate crime, the deviance by American Political-Economy elities and it's consequential travesty of "Governmental Bail-Outs", requires a materialist narrative.

By Apropos

Oprah Winfrey interviews the Obama Quid Pro Quo

60 Minutes, Barbara Walters and Meet The Press, might have interviewed Barack Obama in his role as the First Black President-Elect of the United States.

But the plum and the coup de grace has been saved and reserved for Oprah Winfrey.

It is believed Oprah Winfrey will be the first to formerly interview the Obama's in the White House as the first Black President takes on his duties in the Spring of 2009.

Certain Republicans are critical of the Oprah interview as a contradiction of Barack Obama's anti Quid Pro Quo rhetoric. Because of Oprah Winfrey's critical help to the Obama's during the Democratic Party's primary process.

By Apropos

Al Zawahiri, Barack Obama's Sister Souljah: The Al Qaeda Gambit

Much has been made of Al Zawahiri's, Al Qaeda's purported number two, recent "House Negro" snide at Barack Obama. Corporate media's take is Al Qaeda is discrediting Barack Obama as being that classic collaborator. The bane of Black resistance, a House Negro.
The fact of the matter is Al Qaeda's alleged snide at Barack Obama on the contrary, enables Obama to defacto continue the status quo narrative against Al Qaeda.
Al Zawahiri's Obama criticism, just as criticism from certain Black nationalist during candidate Barack Obama's campaign allowed Obama to have his Sister Souljah moment---serves one and only one purpose. It allows non-revolutionary politics to use revolutionary narrative at it's expense.

By Apropos

Distortions, Contradictions, and Antagonisms: Political-Economy and Private Jets

Has it only taken 232 odd years of distortions, contadictions and antagonisms for the reality of revolution to be lost on the American mind?

Listening to resentment and gripes, swirling as legitimate debate surrounding the antangonistic definitions of govermental bail-outs as economic polity. The question is : is it lost on the status-quo narrarive that Revolutions are the result of distortions run amuck, contraditions unresolved and unpacified antagonisms?

This state of Political-Economy affairs is an affont , an insult, a ridiculous kowtow to mediocrity!

Unions being blamed for capital being hoarded?

Whether or not CEO's flew on private jets as points of Politica-Economy analysis?

And the audacity of Congressmen, grandstanding, criticizing the auto industry for mismanagement at the expense of their very own govermental-oversight incompetence, the default and criminal malfeasance.

229 years ago "Let them eat cake" was also an expression of distortions, contradictions and antagonisms.

By Apropos

George Will, David Brooks, Intellectual-Liberalism and What is a Job

Why is there so much cynicism from the "right". The George Wills and David Brooks of Conservative Intellectual-Liberalism on the question of what is a job and the relationship of a job to the economy.

Robert Kutter Author of "Obama's Challenge" on ABC's 11/23/08; "This Week With George Stephanopoulos". Found himself on the receiving end of George Wills anecdotal deviations and the naive ravings of David Brooks, that the economy of personal relationships somehow supersedes the actuality of value as economy real.

David Brooks, to paraphrase, went as far to state a job and it's production of value was economically irrelevant.

By Apropos

Outliers By Malcolm Gladwell: A Review

Whether it is an aphorism, adage or maxim, the phrase "The devil is in the details" anticipated Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers. But as such things go Malcolm Gladwell's labor in Outliers is another addition to the ubiquitous exercise of preaching to the choir.

Outliers is the classic eureka or light bulb moment made public, a nerdish reflection on the human condition as if after millennia of human empiricism, critical-thought has now matured and it's face is Malcolm Gladwell with it's expression the book Outliers.

Outliers postulates, human success is a result of ones environmental situation. To quote Gladwell..."It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't" [Outliers]

Didn't Hillary Clinton premise her ideological struggle with the Phillistines of the Republican Party on "It takes a village to raise a child"? So where has Malcolm Gladwell been hasn't Materialism, dialectical historical materialism already accounted for this intellectualism Outliers presents?

It takes an extraordinary display of arrogance, a presumption of sorts that subjective discovery accounts for existential-dialectics and with Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell is at home with, I think therefore I am.

By Apropos

Rick Sanchez, CNN, Twitter and Reinvention of the Wheel

Is Rick Sanchez and his Twittering nonsense on CNN's 3 p.m. slot enlightening or is it compounding and in fact enabling the dumbing and distortion inherent in American Political-Economy?

If Rick Sanchez was practical in the business of acquiring the nature of Political-Economic facts he would be establishing a threshold of already recognized and unrefuted sets of facts from which discussions proceed.

For example, listening to the nonsense spouted in Rick Sanchez's Twitters, which are amazing re-discovery's and reinventions of the wheel. One has to wonder how long American Democratic-Republicanism can tolerate and sustain this unfathomable ignorance!

By Apropos

Barack Obama, Harry Reid and the Turncoat Joe Lieberman

Concerning the Turncoat and traditions Joe Lieberman , Barack Obama is being presumptuous and idealistic. He is wrong to instruct Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to let bygones be bygones.

Joe Lieberman is politically inconsistent and an opportunistic fraud. Harry Reid and the Senate Democratic caucus are correct in wanting to punish him.

The most Barack Obama should do in the Joe Lieberman question is pacify Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats by allowing the logical conclusion of the Lieberman-spectacle.

An expenditure of Obama political-capital at this juncture is impetuous.

By Apropos

Neal Boortz, The United Auto Workers Union and American Political-Economy

That bowl of squirmy delusions on top of Neal Boortz shoulders caused him to proclaim the United Auto Workers Union was to blame for the manufacturing dysfunction and economic default of the auto industry.

The question isn't who is Neal Boortz instead it is the barricade hurrah of what is Neal Boortz. Neal Boortz a relic requiem, a geriatric affection of the effeminate wing of the anarchic idealism of Libertarianism.

The Neal Boortz's of American Political-Economy and it's "trickle this and trickle that" distortions thrash around in that swampy-morass of intellectual-liberalism, functionaries of facts they cowardly dare not confront.

By Apropos

Obama, Southern Votes and Reaganomics

The only statement made by those pockets of Southern-Votes who came out in force against Obama, during Obama's historical triumph is: Reactionary hold outs and racist-romantics still beyond the pale, populate American economic backwoods.

The 2008 U.S. Presidential elections and Obama's win has exposed the historical charade of Republican-Conservatism as ever being progressive.

Lastly it hammered the final nail in the Reaganomics coffin and it's Evangelical-Christian legacy of Anti-Abortion and Gay-Bashing as being social-nurturing ideals.

By Apropos

Whoopi Goldberg's Cat and "The View"

On 11/o6/o8; and the lighter side of things. Whoopi Goldburg's cat, Oliver Hoyt Goldburg, wrote a letter to President-Elect Barack Obama. Plugging why the Obama's should get a cat and intellectualizing why feline apathy should grace the Whitehouse hallways.

But then how different from the eccentric Whoopi Goldberg on "The View" is a cat and "The View's" cattish exchanges.

By Apropos